第17章

After the Emperor's farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble though he was, was put on half-pay.Perhaps the heads of the War Office took fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of antiquity, or perhaps it was known that he felt bound by his oath to the Imperial Eagle.During the Hundred Days he was made a Colonel of the Guard, and left on the field of Waterloo.His wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present at the disbanding of the Army of the Loire, but the King's government declined to recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de Montriveau left France.

An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied by the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition through Upper Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his enthusiasm to a project of great importance, he turned his attention to that unexplored Central Africa which occupies the learned of today.The scientific expedition was long and unfortunate.He had made a valuable collection of notes bearing on various geographical and commercial problems, of which solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the continent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile native tribe.Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years he led a wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages, threatened with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children.Physical strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape well-nigh exhausted his energies.When he reached the French colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his memories of his former life were dim and shapeless.The great sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his studies of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations.

One story will give an idea of all that he passed through.Once for several days the children of the sheikh of the tribe amused themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging horses'

knuckle-bones at his head.

Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man.He had no interest, and wished for none.He would have died twenty times over sooner than ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press the recognition of his claims.Adversity and hardship had developed his energy even in trifles, while the habit of preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most apparently trivial actions.His merits and adventures became known, however, through his acquaintances, among the principal men of science in Paris, and some few well-read military men.

The incidents of his slavery and subsequent escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence, and coolness which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though the artist that fain would keep it must make untold efforts.

Montriveau's position suddenly changed towards the end of that year.He had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at any rate, he had all the advantages of wealth.The King's government, trying to attach capable men to itself and to strengthen the army, made concessions about that time to Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and character offered guarantees of fidelity.M.de Montriveau's name once more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards.All these favours, one after another, came to seek the Marquis de Montriveau; he had asked for nothing however small.Friends had taken the steps for him which he would have refused to take for himself.

After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his custom, he went into society.He was well received, everywhere he met with great deference and respect.He seemed to have found some end in life; but everything passed within the man, there were no external signs; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved face.His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons.He was, indeed, something quite new there.Terse of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it.He was something strange and great.Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper.Their Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M.de Montriveau; his nature only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling.And he would very promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for the men who cried him up behind his back; but for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman who was to fill his thoughts.

For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais's curiosity was no less lively than natural.Chance had so ordered it that her interest in the man before her had been aroused only the day before, when she heard the story of one of M.de Montriveau's adventures, a story calculated to make the strongest impression upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.