Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/377

Rh specially from those of this city. Emile, you understand some thing of his meaning, and of mine?"

Emile turned aside to avoid meeting the eyes of Ivan, for his words had touched a chord within. Thrown in idleness upon the great, unquiet, corrupt world of Paris, the position of the youth was truly perilous. Secret political intrigue was wooing him upon the one hand, while vice was spreading its snares to allure him upon the other. Ivan had succeeded in conveying an emphatic warning at the same time against both.

"I wish I were more like Henri," Emile said at last. "He is sometimes tiresome—a little, but he is as steady as a rock, a perfect gentleman, and a stainless man of honour."

"God will help you, Emile; then all will be well," said Ivan as he left the room.

The manifold excitements of the next few days put aside for the time all graver thoughts. The unpretending carriage of the De Talmonts mingled with a continuous stream of other vehicles on their way to the Plaine des Vertus, and the striking and amusing sights afforded by the journey were almost sufficient to turn the brain, of Stéphanie at least. But the grand review itself confused and bewildered the imaginations of far more experienced spectators. "Do not ask me what I think of it," said Madame de Salgues in the evening, when at last a happy, weary, excited party sat down to rest in their hotel. "I feel as if for a whole year at least I had not been myself, but some one else, and had been living amidst glare and glitter, bright colours and splendid uniforms. Such masses of men moving as one—such glorious martial music!—such deafening thunder of artillery!—I could not have dreamed of anything like it."

Emile whistled softly to himself. "It has made my grandmother quite poetical," he said.

"That is not wonderful," remarked Madame de Talmont. "It was indeed the poetry of war."

"Yes," said Henri thoughtfully; "and if I had not been