A Woman of Thirty | Page 5

beneath her
lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as by
one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an old
father. Suddenly Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation.
Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the cry;
but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the court towards
the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at the sound. He went to the
arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries, and recognized the young lady
who had been hidden for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the
grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself
had given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the fashionable
crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew the enraptured child
towards him.
"I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if /you/ are in
waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance at

the officer.
"If you want a good position, M. le Duc," the young man answered,
"we must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to
be kept waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our
readiness."
As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of old
acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff had
great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
beings.
"Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was radiant now).
"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
pillar.
But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green velvet
and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest
of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.
The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into the
palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his
hand a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little
service he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall really see
you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the respectful
bow by which the officer took leave of them before he vanished.
The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her into
false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned to

her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
was lost upon him.
"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the
spectacle in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from
thousands upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder.
Another array of sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the
old noble and his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the
railings which crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a line
parallel with the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass,
variegated by the colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold line
across the centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the fourth side of a
vast parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the Palace of the
Tuileries itself. Within the precincts thus railed off stood the regiments
of the Old Guard about to be passed in review, drawn up opposite the
Palace in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in depth. Without