Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/339

 CHAPTER XXXIII.

HIS KING SPEAKS TO THE CZAR.

T is amongst the minor yet very real troubles of life that promptitude, courage, and self-denial so often appear to be wasted. The call to action reaches our ear: we spring up responsive, buckle on our armour, and hasten to the front,—only to hear the bugles sounding the retreat, and to find that the conflict has been adjourned sine die. So it happened to Ivan. He was stopped on his way to Vienna by tidings that the Chevalier Guard was now in Poland with the main body of the Russian army. To Poland accordingly he went; but only to linger in enforced idleness day after day, even week after week, first at Wiasma, and then at Prague. He could not dismiss the thought,—Might he not just as well have spent all this time with his bride at Versailles? He certainly might, except for the important consideration that it can never be just as well for a man to neglect his duty as to do it.

Meanwhile the accounts from France added to his perplexity and uneasiness. Napoleon, received everywhere with open arms by the military, swept through the land like an unresisted torrent, and on the 19th of March entered the capital once more. Louis XVIII. abandoned it at his approach without