“And now,” said Mack, “here is your road, sire; you will reach Albano in an hour; at Albano you are safe.”

  “You are leaving me, General?”

  “Sire, it was my duty to think of the King before everything; it is now my duty to think of the army. And now, may God guard Your Majesty!”

  Mack bowed to the King, and putting his horse to the gallop, retook the road by which he had come.

  “And may the Devil take you, imbecile,’’ the King murmured, burying his spurs in his horse, and urging him at full speed on the road to Albano. As it would appear, he had not changed his mind in regard to his general-in-chief.

  Such was the panic-inspired pace set by Ferdinand that he and the Duke of Ascoli, on their splendid mounts, soon left the escort behind. If there is a spot in the world which, at night above all, is fantastic in aspect, it is the Roman Campagna, with its broken aqueducts like rows of gigantic figures marching in the darkness, its tombs suddenly rising up, sometimes to right of one, sometimes to left, and those mysterious sounds which seem like the lamentations of their inhabiting shades. Continually the King would bring his horse alongside his companion’s, and gathering up the reins in readiness to leap the ditch, ask: “Do you see, d’Ascoli?....”

  “Do you hear, d’Ascoli? “And d’Ascoli, calmer because he was braver, would look and answer, “I see nothing, sire”; would listen and reply, “Sire, I hear nothing.” And Ferdinand, with his usual cynicism, would add:

  “I told Mack I wasn’t sure I was brave; well now, I have made up my mind about it: decidedly, I am not.”

  Thus they reached Albano. It was close on midnight. Every door was shut, including that of the posting station. The Duke of Ascoli, recognising it from the inscription over the door, dismounted and knocked loudly.

  The postmaster came grumbling to the door in a very bad humour, but d’Ascoli pronounced that magic word at which all doors open: “Be easy, you will be well paid; we require a carriage, three post horses and a smart postillion “; and his face calmed.

  “Their Excellencies shall have them in a quarter of an hour,” said he, and, as a fine rain began to fall, he added: “Will the gentlemen come into my room, in the meantime?”

  “Yes, yes,” said the King, who had his own idea; “you are right, a room, a room immediately.”

  “And what am I to do with their Excellencies’ horses?”

  “Stable them; they will be fetched for me, for the Duke of Ascoli, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  The Duke of Ascoli stared at the King.

  “I know what I am doing,” said Ferdinand; “let us get on and lose no time.”

  The innkeeper took them to a room and lighted two candles, and then seeing the King uncloaked and quite plastered with orders, retired backwards bowing to the ground.

  “Ah, my dear d’Ascoli,” said the King in his most caressing voice, as soon as they were alone, “you don’t know what you are about to do.”

  “I, sire?”

  “But no,” said the King, “it may be you will not....”

  “Sire!” said d’Ascoli, gravely; “I will do all Your Majesty desires.”

  “Oh! I know well you are devoted to me; I know well you are my only friend, I know well you are the only man of whom I could ask such a thing.”

  “It is difficult?”

  “So difficult, that if you were in my place, and I in yours, I do not know that I should do for you what I am going to ask you to do for me.”

  “Oh! sire, that is not a reason,” replied d’Ascoli with a faint smile.

  “I believe you doubt my friendship, that’s bad,” said the King.

  “What matters at the moment, sire, is that Your Majesty should not doubt mine,” responded the Duke with supreme dignity.

  “Oh! when you have given me this proof, I shall be in no further doubt, I answer for it.”

  “What is this proof, sire? Probably something quite simple.”

  “Very simple, very simple,” murmured the King; “you know that those brigands of Jacobins have threatened to hang me if I fall into their hands. Well, my dear friend, well, my dear d’Ascoli, it is simply to change clothes with me. You understand: if they take us, believing you to be the King, they will concern themselves with you only; meanwhile, I shall slip away, and then you will disclose your identity, and without having run much risk you will have the glory of saving your sovereign. You understand?”

  “It is not a matter of the greater or less risk I shall run, sire; it’s a matter of being of service to Your Majesty.” And the Duke of Ascoli, taking off his coat and presenting it to the King, merely said, “Yours, sire!”

  Profoundly egotistic though the King was, he yet felt touched with this devotion; he took the Duke in his arms and pressed him to his heart; then taking off his own coat he helped him into it and buttoned it on him with the dexterity of a practised valet. “There,” said he, “now the ribbons; are you not a commander of Saint George? Have you not the ribbon of Marie Thérèse? Nor of St. Januario? You shall have them all, my poor d’Ascoli; you have earned them, but don’t forget to remind me,” said the King, passing the ribbons over his neck; “I should be quite capable of forgetting.”

  “Yes,” said the Duke; “Your Majesty is certainly very absent-minded, I know that.”

  “Chut! it is not generous to mention my faults at such a moment. How well you look in the coat! One would say it had been made for you. You may have the badge of St. Januario which is attached; it is in diamonds, but I wish it were worth twice as much. It is singular how at ease I feel in your coat, d’Ascoli; I don’t know why, but the other was stifling me. Ah!....” And the King drew a deep breath.

  At that moment they heard the master of the post coming. The King seized the cloak, and prepared to put it round the Duke’s shoulders.

  “But, sire. I cannot permit....”

  “Silence.”

  The master of the post entered. “The horses are in your Excellencies’ carriage,” said he, and stopped in astonishment, for some change for which he could not exactly account seemed to have taken place between the travellers.

  Meanwhile, the King arranged the cloak on d’Ascoli’s shoulders. “His Excellency, in order not to be disturbed on the journey, desires to pay up to Terracina,” said he; “and will give a ducat to the postillions if they make good progress.”

  “In that case,” said the man, bowing down before d’Ascoli, “His Excellency should progress like the King.”

  “Exactly,” cried Ferdinand, “that is how His Excellency does wish to progress “; and he plunged his hand into the Duke’s pocket and paid with his money, laughing at the good turn he was doing him.

  The innkeeper took a candle and lighted d’Ascoli down the stairs with every mark of attention; but on reaching the carriage the Duke, doubtless from habit, gave place to the King.

  “Never, never,” cried Ferdinand, bowing hat in hand; “after Your Excellency. It is already too much honour for me to ride in the same carriage.” And taking his seat after him, he placed himself on his left, crying: “His Excellency pays the post boys double I”

  In an instant a postillion had leapt on horseback, and the carriage set off at a gallop on the road to Velletri, passing shadows in motion on both sides of the way with extraordinary velocity. These shadows caused the King uneasiness.

  “My friend,” said he to the postillion, “who are these people going our road, and at such a pace?”

  “Excellency,” replied the postillion, “it seems that there was a battle to-day between the French and the Neapolitans, and that the Neapolitans were defeated; those people are the ones who are running away.”

  “‘Pon my word,” said the King to d’Ascoli, “I thought that we were the first; we are distanced. It is humiliating. What shanks those fellows have! Two ducats, postillion, if you pass them.”

  Mack had been right in fearing the rapidity of movement of the French army: already, during the night after the battle, the two vanguards, one led by Salvato Palmieri, the other by Hector Caraffa, had taken the road, one hoping to reach Sora, the other to reach Ceprano, and thus to close the pass of the Abruzzi to the Neapolitans.

  As to Championnet, as soon as he had finished his business at Rome, he was to take the Velletri and Terracina road through the Pontine marshes.

  At daybreak, after having despatched to Lemoine and Casabianca news of the victory, with the order to march on Civita Ducale, to join forces with the army corps of Macdonald and Duhesme, and with them to take the road to Naples, he set out with six thousand men to return to Rome, and next day at eight in the morning appeared at the People’s Gate, re-entered the city amid joyful salvoes from the Castle of St. Angelo, took the left bank of the Tiber, and regained the Corsini palace, where, as Baron Riescach had promised, he found everything just where he had left it.

  The same day the Republican government was set up again at Rome.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  “ALL IS LOST SAVE HONOUR “.

  No capital in the world contains so many poets as Naples, and since the King’s departure, and especially since his success, there had been a perfect deluge of sonnets, acrostics, quatrains, and distiches, insomuch that the Queen, judging it useless for the court poet to compose any, was employing him at a double salary to select the best among the three or four hundred pieces pouring in every day.

  The evening of the ninth of December, 1789, had been fixed for the reading of those selected in the theatre of the Castle of Caserta; and in the presence of the six hundred spectators filling the auditorium this reading had been followed by the communication of a letter from the King to the Queen, which had just arrived by Courier from the theatre of war, mainly, to be sure, about the pleasures of the chase, but terminating with the optimistic words, “I expect news of a great victory in the evening?”

  When the ballet was ended, the theatre emptied, the lights extinguished, and the guests dispersed, the Queen returned to her apartments with those intimate friends who were to remain and sup at the Castle with her, among whom were of course included Emma, her ladies-in-waiting, Sir William, Lord Nelson, the Prince of Castelcicala, Acton; and finally, and this was naturally most unusual, the aged Princesses Victoire and Adelaide, daughters of Louis XV., whom Caroline, on her husband’s injunction, had invited to Court for

  a fortnight with their bodyguard of seven. One of this bodyguard was invited to accompany them to the royal supper each evening, and on this occasion it had been the turn of Jean Baptiste de Cesare, of an old Corsican family, whose entry in a lieutenant’s uniform had made some sensation, such was his remarkable resemblance to Prince Francis, the heir-apparent, a situation in which he acquitted himself, however, with much presence of mind.

  The supper was very gay, everyone being persuaded, or having the appearance of it, that the French were actually defeated at that moment. Nelson only, in spite of Emma’s magnetic looks, seemed so preoccupied that at last the Queen asked him what was on his mind. Nelson replied that he was uneasy because there was no indication that the Emperor of Austria had commenced operations, which looked as if he would postpone doing so till April.

  “But,” asked Emma, “did he not write to the King to begin his campaign, assuring him of his assistance when the King entered Rome?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” stammered the Queen.

  “Did you see the letter yourself, madame?” demanded Nelson, fixing her with his grey eye as if she were an ordinary woman.

  “No; but the King told M. Acton, and even supposing that we were deceived, is that a cause for despair?”

  “Not necessarily,” returned Nelson, “but, if by mischance, Mack has been defeated yesterday, in a fortnight the French would be in Naples.”

  The aged Princesses paled perceptibly; and the Queen, who attached more importance to Nelson’s remarks than she chose to let appear, enquired if he really believed the Neapolitans, who were six to one of the French, unable to win when the English often attacked with equal or inferior forces.

  “At sea, madame, yes, because the sea is our element,” responded Nelson, “but on land it is another matter; on land the French are what the English are at sea. God knows I hate the French, and have vowed to exterminate that impious nation which denies its God and cuts off the heads of its rulers. But to hate them is not to despise them; I do them justice.”

  “Oh, come, dear lord,” said Emma, with inimitable grace and charm, “do not be a bird of ill-omen here. The French will be beaten on land by General Mack as they have been beaten at sea by Admiral Nelson..... And hark, I hear a whip crack; is it the arrival of the courier the King promised us?” and as she spoke the noise repeated, coming nearer and nearer, was distinctly heard, and with it the roll of carriage wheels.

  Everyone rose spontaneously to listen; and Acton, visibly excited, at a sign from the Queen sprang to the door just as the carriage was heard to stop at the bottom of the grand staircase. But he quickly returned, and backwards, like a man faced with some impossible apparition.

  “The King!” cried he; “the King! What does it mean?” and almost directly the King entered, in fact, followed by the Duke of Ascoli.

  King Ferdinand was in a curious state of mind: his vexation at his defeat was struggling within him against satisfaction at his escape, and he was feeling his natural need of mockery, and mockery embittered in the circumstances he was in. Add to that the physical discomfort of a man, more, of a King, who has just accomplished sixty leagues in a wretched chaise, without food. It was December, moreover.

  “Brrrou!” cried he on entering, while rubbing his hands without seeming to notice the persons present. “It is better here than on the road from Albano; what do you say, d’Ascoli?”

  Then, as the Queen’s guests confusedly made their bows: “Good evening, good evening,” he went on, “I am very glad to find the table laid. Since we left Rome we haven’t had a taste of meat. Some bread and cheese in one’s fingers, how refreshing that is! Pouah! What miserable inns there are in my kingdom, and how I pity the poor devils relying on them! To table, d’Ascoli, to table! I am outrageously hungry.” And the King seated himself without more ado, and made d’Ascoli sit by him.

  “Sire, would you be good enough to calm my uneasiness,” said the Queen, approaching her august spouse, for whom respect kept all at a distance, “by informing me to what circumstance I owe the happiness of this unexpected return?”

  “Madame, you have related to me, I think — to a certainty it is not San Nicandro — the story of Francis I., who, after I don’t know what battle, prisoner of I don’t know what Emperor, wrote a long letter to his mother, ending with this fine phrase: ‘All is lost but honour.’ Well, suppose I am arriving from Pavia — I remember now that’s the name of the battle — suppose I am arriving from Pavia then, not having been so stupid as to let myself be taken like Francis I., instead of writing to you, I come to tell you myself....”

  “All is lost, except honour!” cried the Queen in alarm.

  “Oh! no, madame,” said the King with a harsh laugh, “there is a little variation: all is lost, and even honour!”

  “Oh! sire,” murmured d’Ascoli, ashamed as a Neapolitan of this cynicism of the King.

  “If honour is not lost, d’Ascoli,” said Ferdinand, frowning and grinding his teeth, a proof that he was not as insensible to the position as he feigned, “after what were those people running who ran so fast that even paying a ducat and a half to the postboys, I had the greatest trouble to pass them? After disgrace!”

  Everyone kept silence; an icy silence; for without as yet knowing anything, everything was already suspected. The King, reaching out his fork, had taken a roasted pheasant from the dish in front of him, had divided it, and had put one half on his plate, and had passed the other to d’Ascoli. Looking round, he saw that everyone was standing, even the Queen.

  “Sit down then, sit down then,” said he; “things won’t go any better for having supped badly.” Then, pouring out a glass of Bordeaux and passing the bottle to d’Ascoli: “To Championnet’s health!” said the King. “That’s right! There is a man of his word: he promised the Republicans to be in Rome before the twentieth day, and he will be there on the seventeenth. It is he who deserves this excellent Bordeaux, and I who ought to drink asprino.”

  “What, sir! What do you say?” cried the Queen. “Championnet is in Rome?”

  “As true as that I am at Caserta.”

  “Where we were little expecting the happiness of seeing you so soon again,” said the Queen. “Scarcely three hours ago I received a letter from you announcing a courier who would bring the news of the battle.”

  “Well, madame,” returned the King: “here is the courier, and here the news: we have been beaten hollow. What do you say to that, milord Nelson, you, the conqueror of conquerors?”

  “I was expressing my fears about half-an-hour before Your Majesty arrived.”

  “But what of Mack’s forty thousand men, then, sire....?” said the Queen.

  “Crushed by Championnet’s ten thousand Republicans,” said he. “I say, d’Ascoli, when I think that I wrote to the sovereign pontiff to come on the wings of cherubims to keep Christmas with me at Rome, I hope he won’t be too much in a hurry to accept the invitation. Pass me that boar’s haunch, Castelcicala; one doesn’t dine on half a pheasant when one has eaten nothing for twenty-four hours.” Then, turning to the Queen: “Have you any further questions to put me, madame?” he enquired.

  “A last one, sire. I should like to ask Your Majesty the reason of this masquerade?” and Caroline pointed to d’Ascoli, his cross, his ribbons and his stars.

  “Ah, to be sure! But first of all, sit down; it annoys; me to be seated and eating, while you are all standing round me, and especially their Royal Highnesses,” said the King rising and bowing to the ladies.

  “Sire,” said Madame Victoire, “whatever may be the circumstances in which we see Your Majesty again, be assured that we are happy to do so.”