Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851. Various
scarcely wanted the gift of second sight to see this," said he, bitterly. "A garrison in close siege for four months may be suspected of as much."
"Yes; but they said that as Soult's force fell back upon the city your position would be rendered worse."
"Fell back from where?" asked he, with a searching look at me.
"As I understood, from the Apennines," replied I, growing more confident as I saw that he became more attentive. "If I understood them aright, Soult held a position called the 'Monte Faccio.' Is there such a name?"
"Go on," said he, with a nod of assent.
"That this could not long be tenable without gaining the highest fortified point of the mountain. The 'Monte Creto,' they named it."
"The attempt on which has failed!" said Massena, as if carried away by the subject; "and Soult himself is a prisoner! Go on."
"They added, that now but one hope remained for this army."
"And what was that, sir," said he, fiercely. "What suggestion of cunning strategy did these sea wolves intimate?"
"To cut your way through the blockade, and join Suchet's corps, attacking the Austrians at the Monte Ratte, and by the sea road gaining the heights of Bochetta."
"Do these heroic spirits know the strength of that same Austrian corps?—did they tell you that it numbered fifty-four thousand bayonets?"
"They called them below forty thousand; and that now that Bonaparte was on his way through the Alps, perhaps by this, over the Mount Cenis—"
"What! did they say this? Is Bonaparte so near us?" cried he, placing a hand on either shoulder, as he stared me in the face.
"Yes; there is no doubt of that. The dispatch to Lord Keith brought the news a week ago, and there is no secret made about it in the fleet."
"Over Mount Cenis!" repeated he to himself. "Already in Italy!"
"Holding straight for Milan, Lord Keith thinks," added I.
"No, sir, straight for the Tuileries," cried Massena, sternly: and then, correcting himself suddenly, he burst into a forced laugh. I must confess that the speech puzzled me sorely at the time, but I lived to learn its meaning, and many a time have I wondered at the shrewd foresight which even then read the ambitious character of the future emperor.
"Of this fact, then, you are quite certain?—Bonaparte is on his march hither?"
"I have heard it spoken of every day for the last week," replied I; "and it was in consequence of this that the English officers used to remark, if Massena but knew it he'd make a dash at them, and clear his way through at once."
"They said this, did they?" said he, in a low voice, and as if pondering over it.
"Yes; one and all agreed in thinking there could not be a doubt of the result."
"Where have you served, sir?" asked he, suddenly turning on me, and with a look that showed he was resolved to test the character of the witness.
"With Moreau, sir, on the Rhine and the Schwarzwald; in Ireland with Humbert."
"Your regiment?"
"The Ninth Hussars."
"The 'Tapageurs,'" said he, laughing. "I know them, and glad I am not to have their company here at this moment; you were a lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, supposing that, on the faith of what you have told me, I was to follow the wise counsel of these gentlemen, would you like the alternative of gaining your promotion in the event of success, or being shot by a peloton if we fail."
"They seem sharp terms, sir," said I, smiling, "when it is remembered, that no individual efforts of mine can either promote one result or the other."
"Ay, but they can, sir," cried he, quickly. "If you should turn out to be an Austro-English spy; if these tidings be of a character to lead my troops into danger; if, in reliance on you, I should be led to compromise the honor and safety of a French army—your life, were it worth ten thousand times over your own value of it, would be a sorry recompense. Is this intelligible?"
"Far more intelligible than flattering," said I, laughing; for I saw that the best mode to treat him was by an imitation of his own frank and careless humor. "I have already risked that life you hold so cheaply, to convey this information, but I am still ready to accept the conditions you offer me, if, in the event of success, my name appear in the dispatch."
He again stared at me with his dark and piercing eyes; but I stood the glance with a calm conscience, and he seemed so to read it, for he said:
"Be it so. I will, meanwhile, test your prudence. Let nothing of this interview transpire; not a word of it among the officers and comrades you shall make acquaintance with. You shall serve on my own staff; go now, and recruit your strength for a couple of days, and then report yourself at head-quarters when ready for duty. Latrobe, look to the Lieutenant Tiernay; see that he wants for nothing, and let him have a horse and a uniform as soon as may be."
Captain Latrobe, the future General of Division, was then a young, gay officer of about five-and-twenty, very good looking, and full of life and spirits, a buoyancy which the terrible uncertainties of the siege could not repress.
"Our general talks nobly, Tiernay," said he, as he gave me his arm to assist me; "but you'll stare when I tell you that 'wanting for nothing' means, having four ounces of black bread, and ditto of blue cheese per diem; and as to a horse, if I possessed such an animal, I'd have given a dinner-party yesterday and eaten him. You look surprised, but when you see a little more of us here, you'll begin to think that prison rations in the fleet yonder were luxuries compared to what we have. No matter: you shall take share of my superabundance, and if I have little else to offer, I'll show you a view from my window, finer than any thing you ever looked on in your life, and with a sea-breeze that would be glorious if it didn't make one hungry."
While he thus rattled on, we reached the street, and there calling a couple of soldiers forward, he directed them to carry me along to his quarters, which lay in the upper town, on an elevated plateau that overlooked the city and the bay together.
From the narrow lanes, flanked with tall, gloomy houses, and steep, ill-paved streets, exhibiting poverty and privation of every kind, we suddenly emerged into an open space of grass, at one side of which a handsome iron-railing stood, with a richly ornamented gate, gorgeously gilded. Within this was a garden and a fish-pond, surrounded with statues, and further on, a long, low villa, whose windows reached to the ground, and were shaded by a deep awning of striped blue and white canvas. Camelias, orange-trees, cactuses, and magnolias, abounded every where; tulips and hyacinths seemed to grow wild; and there was in the half-neglected look of the spot something of savage luxuriance that heightened the effect immensely.
"This is my Paradise, Tiernay, only wanting an Eve to be perfect," said Latrobe, as he set me down beneath a spreading lime-tree. "Yonder are your English friends; there they stretch away for miles beyond that point. That's the Monte Creto, you may have heard of; and there's the Bochetta. In that valley, to the left, the Austrian outposts are stationed; and from those two heights closer to the shore, they are gracious enough to salute us every evening after sunset, and even prolong the attention sometimes the whole night through. Turn your eyes in this direction, and you'll see the 'cornice' road, that leads to La Belle France, but of which we see as much from this spot as we are ever like to do. So much for the geography of our position, and now to look after your breakfast. You have, of course, heard that we do not revel in superfluities. Never was the boasted excellence of our national cookery more severely tested, for we have successively descended from cows and sheep to goats, horses, donkeys, dogs, occasionally experimenting on hides and shoe leather, till we ended by regarding a rat as a rarity, and deeming a mouse a delicacy of the season. As for vegetables, there would not have been a flowering plant in all Genoa, if tulip and ranunculus roots had not been bitter as aloes. These seem very inhospitable confessions, but I make them the more freely since I am about to treat you 'en Gourmet.' Come in now, and acknowledge that juniper-bark isn't bad coffee, and that commissary bread is not to be thought of 'lightly.'"
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