Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1915 — the Immortal Shade [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

the Immortal Shade

By Perley Poore Sheehan

(Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Co.) As the san came up over Paris, one of the first things to emerge from the blue-gray mist was the gilded dome of the Hotel des Invalides. Not even the sky-kissing uplift of the Eiffel tower, which had been exchanging news and views all night long between the armies of the east and west, by wireless, like some supernatural interpreter; not even the white basilica on top of the Butte Montmartre, nor the towers of Notre Dame, were visible for a good ten minutes afterward. And, in the meantime, the dome became a sort of counterpart of the sun itself —shimmering, golden, afloat in the opaque air. It hung like an aureole of glory over the great man whose tomb was there—Napoleon—his last wish fulfilled. "I desire that my ashes may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of this French people I so greatly loved." Then, as the sun mounted still higher, the rest of the Hotel des Invalides came into view— a great mass of buildings as blue-gray as the dawn had been. After a while, when the place was flooded with genial light and warmth, out came the invalids themselves —the veterans who made this combination of barracks, museum, church and tomb their home. First to appear was Corporal Plctou, who lost part of one leg and all of one arm at Solferino, in 1859, yet was still the fine, military semblance of a man —pink face, choleric eye, white mustache waxed and white imperial trimmed, the breast of his long, blue coat adorned with half a dozen medals. A second or two afterward came Marine Fremy, a famous beau in his day, but now slow of foot, much stooped, and very deaf, never quite recovered from the wound in his head received in Tongking in 1862. They sat down side by side on the bench that ran along the sun-warmed wall, and the cofporal glared at the marine. The latter put up his eartrumpet, and the corporal roared into it: "The Prussians still advance!" The marine looked dreamily into space and whispered: "We lack Napoleon.” Trumpeter Martin had come out — truculent, spry, and barely eighty—walking on two woojien pegs, neatly turned and painted black. In response to the corporal’s words he ripped out an oath and shook his cane in the air. "The army’s led by a lot of unlicked cubs,” he declared. "There’s Joffre, for example—" Other comrades Joined the group— Quartermaster Sandeau, decorated on the field of battle at Montebello; Sergeants Motte and Latude, inseparable now as they were in the Crimea; Farrier Saint-Lambert, who helped put down the Kabyles of North Africa in 1858. A desperate group they were, too. In a measure, they felt themselves almost the last hope of France. Something had to be done. “We’ll form a brigade,” said Farrier Saint-Lambert, "and —name of a cannon- —if they do come into Paris, we’ll drown ourselves in their blood! ” "Last night,” quavered Quartermaster Sandeau, "I slept with this under my pillow." He drew from under his coat an enormous horse-pistol of antique pattern. “It kept me from sleep ing, it hurt my ear, but by the— ’* Sergeants Motte and Latude exchanged a look of mutual understanding, and the former unbuttoned his coat, his comrade aiding him. “Look!” panted Motte. He held his coat open with arms that trembled from age and rheumatism. The group stared in amazement, some of them saluting, others uncovering their bald or frosty heads. Around the breast of the sergeant, where it had been concealed, was a faded flag, thin and torn. A dozen voices whispered: "The colors of the emperor!” "We took it yesterday," said Sergeant Latudd in stifled tones, as he stood at the side of his friend with that mingled air of reverence and personal pride with which a sacristan exhibits the bones of a saint. “The commandant was having the battleflags of the nations taken down, in there, so that they could not fall into the hands of the enemy should he enter Paris, as he did in 1870. Motte and I, watching our chance, took this-—his flag—our flag--the flag that floated over his sacred tent—the flag of Napoleon!” Latude began to choke, with emotion, or age, or both. While this was going on, two other comrades had arrived —a strange pair, strangely linked—one of them pushing the other in an invalid-chair. They were the two extremes —the oldest and the youngest of that little band of veterans still sheltered in the Hotel des Invalides. The man in the chair was Adjutant Latour-Michel, who had been blinded away back in the revolution of 1848., But, as he himself always said, he bad <een enough before the accident ar-

rived. Those eyes of his—now wide open, gazing mystically on space—had once looked into the eyes of Napoleon himself. The adjutant was very oldmore than a hundred. He was a mere white shadow of a man in a rolling chair, but he still carried with him an aroma of power. He was the man who had seen Napoleon I 7' As for the man who pushed LatourMichel along with touching care, he also was bound up in the Napoleonic tradition. This was Grenadier Mere —the baby of the company, a man of seventy-five or so, with a shaven, expressive face, kindling eyes, a readiness to smile. They called him Cou-d’Argent, or Sllverneck, from the way that conning surgeons had made him presentable after Gravelotte; and they say that he had smiled while the surgeons were doing it He was that kind —to smile for hatred, or pain, or grief. But the grenadier had been an actor in his day, down near Marseilles, and once, just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, he had been cast for the role of Napoleon in a certain military drama, which had failed as the greater drama unrolled. That was his claim to Napoleonic glory. The man who had seen Napoleon and the man who had impersonated him joined the group. “What is this—what is I feel?" the blind man wanted to know. "The emperor’s flag,” they told him. Motte and Latude came up to the chair, and Latour-Michel put out a hand to touch the thing Motte had wrapped about him. “Oh!” the adjutant cried. His mouth opened, he turned his sightless eyes aloft while he still touched the faded silk with his superfine hands. “That’s it, comrades! We’ll make his spirit live again. They march on Paris. They’re already on the Marne —” The Grenadier Mere became the mouthpiece for the old adjutant, as he often did. Although there were tears in his eyes, there was that eternal smile on his lips, and his voice rolled out surprisingly rich and full. He had never lost his Gascon accent, nor his Gascon choice of words. "Oui! Let us recall the spirit of the great emperor! Let us evoke the immortal shade!” II Quartermaster Sandeau went about uneasily, nursing his murderous horsepistol and thoughts to match. Corporal Pictou, who had been in the artillery, made secret tours of the obsolete cannon that decorated the little park. Those cannon were still sound. There was plenty of ball about. Trumpeter Martin, testy, but going as quietly as his two wooden legs would let him, made repeated trips to the far end of the great gallery of the military museum. After his last trip there was still a placard in the particular showcase he had visited, and nothing else. The placard read: Unexploded hand-grenades found at Sebastopol. “Do you mean to say,” asked Grenadier Mere, as he pushed the chair of Adjutant Latour-Michel toward their

destination, "do you mean to say that 'you have talked with the emperor lately?” “Just that,” the blind man answered. “Hold! The entrance of the tomb is just in front of us, is it not?” “Yes—the lofty pillars—the high gable—all soaked in golden sunshine.” "And over it—" "The words —T desire that my ashes —’” The man who had played the part of Napoleon was playing the part again. “ ’May rest on the banks of the Seine —’ ” “ "Twas thus he spoke in life,” said Latour-Michel "Tn the midst of this French people I so greatly loved.’ ” “Not only his ashes, but his spirit,” said Latour-Michel softly, as they came into the grotto under the gilded dome. They paused at the parapet surrounding the tomb. There Grenadier Mere looked down at the great stone coffin, while Latour-Michel looked up —seeing, doubtless, with his sightless eyes, what he had seen in the days of his youth. “And do yon doubt that his spirit still lives?” the blind man asked. "No!” the grenadier answered. “Just now, when I was repeating his words, ft was as if he lived. And listen, adju-

tant; ft was that way when I was the emperor in the play. I was an actor then. They said that no one could have read the lines, acted tfee part, incarnated the majesty and the soul of him, as did L - And why? Because I was the emperor; his soul was mine, his voice—” - ’T’ve often heard people say, even nowadays, that you look like him,” said Latour-Michel "The passion of my life! Why, up in my Quarters, sometimes, I still put on the bicorne hat, the boots, the long cloak; and then his spirit—" "Jacques,” said Latour-Michel, calling hls t comrade by'his first name, as he did occasionally, "what do those other fellows out there know about Napoleon? They’re brave. They’re good Frenchmen, good patriots; but it devolves on us to make Napoleon’s spirit live again—to evoke, as you have said, the immortal shade. And if I die, here —” Ther was a pause, an instant of indescribable silence, and then, through the overpowering stillness of this place where Napoleon slept, there came a reverberation of distant thunder.’ “The cannon! I hear the cannon!” Grenadier Mere cried. The thunder was repeated. ■ I “Adjutant!' Adjutant! It’s the cannon!” the grenadier cried as he stepped in front of his ancient friend’s chair. It seemed as if a bullet, or a piece of shrapnel, or a shell from those very cannon that were roaring now, had stricken the grenadier where he stood. For, stricken and petrified, he was looking at this old, old friend of his and the friend was sitting there dead. Adjutant Latour-Michel, more than a hundred years old, the man who had seen Napoleon, had died there .at the very side of the place where the emperor slept. V 111 After that first moment or two of stupefaction the grenadier did a very peculiar thing. He was still looking at the dead centenarian, and he spoke to him as if he could hear; spoke softly, but seriously, ar though he expected an answer; spoke smilingly and coaxingly. "Art thou —art thou, perchance,” he asked, "gone to summon him?” To summon whom? The temerity of what he had said frightened Grenadier Mere. Then, as he stood there in the gloom, that hope of theirs came back to him, no longer nebulous, but vivid and wild. Just now Latour-Michel had spoken of the emperor’s spirit as being awake and near. Just now Latour-Michel had spoken of death; and here he was, dead. Were there not many things in the world that ordinary people did not understand? Mere tore open the greatcoat of his friend, tore open the shirt, put his hand pn the heart. The heart was still. He .heard a step in the corridor beyond the crypt There entered a caretaker, very old, who held his lantern aloft and saw Mere standing there. "Good evening, M. Mere,” he said. “They still advance!” The caretaker saw the rolling chair and the still form in it.* It was not at all surprising to find these two comrades here at any hour of the day or night. / “And M. Latour-Michel, how is he?” the caretaker asked, addressing the form in the chair.' Said Mere softly; “He sleeps.” The caretaker went away after a cursory tour. Mere turned to his friend and whispered: “Thou sleepest? Not so, my comrade! And thou, thou—oh, Napoleon!” Then there occurred a very strange and beautiful thing. His old brain was shaky, perhaps, and his old nerves unstrung; but he had a vision. It was as if from the great sarcophagus of Finland granite there had come a wraith, scarcely perceptible at first in the dim light, them clearer and clearer as it mounted and took form, until he was looking at Napoleon himself. Mere was stricken with awe and nameless rapture. The emperor was gazing with indomitable eyes out over a far-flung battlefield, where flags tossed in the van of charging regiments, where cannon roared and filled the air with smoke, and cavalry thundered with sabers “Vive la France!” cried the Grenadier Mere in a strangled voice. At the cry, the enemy broke and fled. "Vive la France!” The grenadier heard the echo of his own voice, felt the pounding of his heart. Sheer emotion made him weak. Excitement overwhelmed him; but his arteries were liquid fire. '• "Napoleon lives!” he stammered. "He saves the country. Grenadier Mere! Present, my emperor! Go carry the word to General Joffre! Oui Oui! a “Oh, God!” cried the grenadier, who had dropped his monologue for a supplication. “Your help, and our army moves forward this night to victory, to deliverance, following the immortal shade of Napoleon!” , IV Joseph Dubois was doing courier duty that night in a powerful automobile that sped between Paris and the harried left wing of the allies, then back again; then over the road once more. He tells how, on one of his trips, while nursing his machine around a bad place, he almost ran over an old invalid, a veteran of 1870 with a silver plate on his neck and a big package underhls arm. "Take me to the front,” the veteran demanded. "I can’t,” Joseph says he responded.

“Take me—for the love of God!" Joseph still hesitated. "Take me. It’s for victory! It’s for France!” ■ I "In the absence of orders to the contrary," Joseph says, "I did as the old man requested. I carried him fifteen kilometers to the northeast, and there left him at the of Messigny, which was well within our lines.” -r - There will be occasion to quote Joseph again, a little later on; but between the time at which he stops and the time at which he begins again there is a hiatus of several hours. They were hours of lurid warfare for the most part. Then there came a lull, with a noise and glare of battle rolling off to the eastward like a retreating thunderstorm. The allied army, in this part of the field, occupied the segment of a vast amphitheater, where the hills sloped gently down to a wide valley. The lull strangely deepened. Something was about to happen. The intuition, or telepathy, that sheds a common feeling through vast masses of men was at work. Nerves strained, muscles quivered, lungs labored, and every pair of eyes that had that black silhouette of a ridge against the red background in range was staring in that direction —ready—ready for no one knew what Then a single figure appeared. It appeared out there on the ridge, all alone —a short, stout figure in a long cloak and a bicorne hat, majestic, calm —the figure of Napoleon. It had come out of the night. It had been conjured up by the cannon. The word spread, faltering, yet rapid, from post to post and trench to trench. Napoleon! It came first from the noncommissioned officers, the sergeants and the corporals who were cheek by jowl with their men, and who stared through their binoculars, transfixed. Then it was seen that the higher officers were staring, too. There were audible cries: "The emperor!” "It’s Napoleon!" “He’s come to lead us!” The quiver, the was contagious. It spread from company to company, from regiment to regiment, from corps to corps. It revivified hope, glorified courage, gave an almost superhuman sense of confidence and power. Then there was the rush of an aerial express train and shock of blinding thunder, as the enemy resumed the bombardment. Over the ridge where the figure of the emperor had appeared there came a huge flash and a rolling billow of smoke, then darkness, then the quaver of flame again, brighter than ever where the weeds and brush had caught fire. He was still there! There was a rolling cheer. 6 As he was before, he was now — leisurely, calm, commanding. He turned to face the long French lines. Then, while the shrapnel burst overhead like rockets, and geysers of fire disgorged where other shells struck the ground, they saw him lift his hand in a gesture that was both salute and benediction. Again the thunder-clouds of smoke and fire had hidden him. , But the army was inspired, was straining now in frenzied eagerness. There came a shrilling blast of bugles for miles and miles, an infinite, flooding roar of cheers, and down the slopes- and out across the valley toward the ridge, and on, and on, and on, corps after corps of exalted hearts and reaching bayonets. The army that had seen Napoleon was driving the enemy back from Paris. V Let us take up the narrative of Joseph Dubois again. He reports how he had followed the advance of the allies almost to the new outposts they had thrown out, and how, while the army was still hurling itself forward, he was constrained to return to Paris with dispatches. He came to the ridge just beyond the burning hamlet of (name deleted by the censor) and there he found an old man, “dressed like Napoleon,” lying grievously wounded by the road. “It was the same old man I had carried forward in the night,” skys Joseph; )“Thls time he was wearing a bicorne hat and a long cloak; but, from the silver plate on his neck, I knew him for my invalid. So I asked him if he wanted anything, and he said: " T desire —that my ashes —banks of the Seine —this French people I have so greatly loved.’ "I took him in my machine and carried him back to Paris, where we arrived at dawn.” Joseph doesn’t mention it in his report, but various comrades of the Grenadier Mere —such as the Corporal Pictou, Marine Fremy, Quartermaster Sandeau and Farrier Saint-Lambert—-all of them, in fact, tell how they had watched and waited throughout the night, how they were the first to hear that the tide of battle had turned. Then, just as the gilded dome of the Hotel des Invalides was emerging from the blue-gray mists of this historic night, a military courier from the front had arrived, bringing them the body of him who had spoken of evoking the immortal shade. M They carried him into the crypt where Napoleon slept, and where the body of that other hero—-old* Adjutant Latour-Michel —also lay in state. So the three of them slept there, side by side, contented, presumably, while, far above them, the gilded dome shimmered like an aureole of glory.

“It Kept Me From Sleeping.”