Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/280

270 old schemer Talleyrand, who, of course, is turning his coat again. So, my dear grandmother, and you too, my cousins, I think you may indulge a hope that the reign of the antediluvians is about to recommence, and that Moses and Abraham and all the rest of them may be shortly expected in Paris."

Evidently Scripture history was not taught carefully at the Ecole Polytechnique; still there was a strain of reason in the boy's random talk. It was as true of the men before the Revolution as of those before the Flood, that "they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded," heedless of the rising tide of divine and human wrath, until the torrent overflowed its bounds and swept them all away. Would their successors do the same?

"As for me, I am not one of your slight, inconstant time-servers, ever ready to swim with the current and to turn towards the rising sun," Emile pursued, with a tragic air and a sublime confusion of metaphors. "I can tell you, very little more would make me go to Fontainebleau and lay my sword and my life at the feet of the Emperor, the great Napoleon, never more truly great than now, in the hour of his overthrow!"

"My dear boy!" Madame de Salgues interposed, in a voice of agony.

"Let us suppose you do it," said Clémence very quietly. "Even such assistance would scarcely, at this stage, restore his fallen fortunes; while you, on your part, would lose that mathematical prize for which you have been trying so hard."

Emile looked angry, and the heart of Clémence smote her. She thought of the glow of enthusiasm with which the young Russian said "My Czar!" and, after all, Emile's hero-worship too was sincere in its way.

"I think," she resumed, "you have already discharged your debt of honour to Napoleon. If all who swore allegiance to him fought as you seem to have done at the Barrière du Trône, the Allies would not be in Paris now."