Part 9

Regnier gave me (writes Bazaine) so many details of his soi-disant relations with the Empress and her entourage that, notwithstanding the strangeness of the apparition, I put faith in his mission, and believed that I ought not, in the general interest, to neglect the opportunity opened to me of putting myself in communication with the outside world. I consequently told him that he would be duly brought into relations with Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I would inform in regard to his proposals, and whom I would place at liberty to act as each might choose in the matter.

Finally Regnier produced the photograph of Hastings with the Prince Imperial's signature at the foot, and begged the Marshal to add his, which he did "as a souvenir of the interview" explained Regnier, according to the Marshal; according to Regnier, that he could exhibit the signature to Bismarck in proof that he had the Marshal's assent to his proposals. Diplomacy conducted by chance signatures on casual photographs has a certain innocent simplicity, but is not in accordance with modern methods. Perhaps, however, the strangest thing in connection with this strange interview is Bazaine's final comment:--

All this which I have narrated was only a simple conversation to which I attached a merely secondary importance, since M. Regnier had no written authority from the Empress nor from M. de Bismarck.... This personage, therefore, appeared to act without the knowledge of the German military authorities, and it was not until considerably later that I became convinced of their cognisance, and of their mutual understanding as regards M. Regnier's visit to Metz.

And this in the face of General Stiehle's letter to him in his hand, brought in by Regnier, sanctioning the exit of the nine surgeons; and the Marshal's promise to Régnier that he and the officer who should accept the mission to Hastings should quit the camp incognito along with the Luxembourg surgeons.

Reference has been made to a discordance between the testimony of Marshal Bazaine and of Regnier on a very important point in regard to this interview. In his notes taken at the time the latter writes:--

The Marshal tells me of his excellent position, of the long period for which he can hold out; that he considers himself as the Palladium of the Empire. He speaks of the very healthy condition of the troops; and, if I may judge by his own rosy face, he is quite right. He tells of all the successful sallies he had made, and of the facility with which he can break through the besieging lines whenever he chooses to do so.

Later, he contradicts all this, explaining that finding himself in the Prussian lines and his papers liable to be read, he had written just the reverse of what he was told by the Marshal. He says that what Bazaine actually informed him was that the bread ration had been already diminished and would be necessarily further reduced in a few days; that the horses lacked forage and had to be used for food; and that in such conditions and taking into account the necessity of carrying four or five days' rations for the army and keeping a certain number of horses in condition to drag the guns and supplies, there would be great difficulty in holding out until the 18th of October. Bazaine, for his part, vehemently denied having given Regnier any such information, and it seems utterly improbable that he should have done so. It is nevertheless the fact that the 18th of October was the last day on which rations were issued to the army outside Metz. Regnier must have been a wizard; or Bazaine must have leaked atrociously; or there must have been lying on the Marshal's table during the interview with Regnier, the most recent state furnished by the French intendance, that of the 21st of September which specified the 18th of October as the precise date of the final exhaustion of the army's supplies.

At midnight of the 23rd Regnier went to the outposts and next morning to Corny, where he found a telegram from Bismarck authorising the departure for Hastings of a general from the army of Metz. He was back again at Ban-Saint-Martin on the afternoon of the 24th, when Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki were summoned to headquarters to meet him and the Luxembourg surgeons were assembled. Canrobert declined the proposed mission on the plea of ill-health. Bourbaki had to be searched for and was ultimately found at St. Julien with Marshal Lebceuf. As he dismounted at the headquarters he asked Colonel Boyer--they had both been of the intimate circle of the Empire--whether he knew the person walking in the garden with the Marshal?

"No," replied Boyer.

"What?" rejoined Bourbaki; "have you never seen him at the Tuileries?"

"No," said Boyer. "I forget names, but not faces--I never saw this fellow. He is neither a familiar of the Tuileries nor an employé." Whereupon the two aristocrats despised the bourgeois Regnier. But Bourbaki, nevertheless, had to endure the presentation to him of the "fellow," who promptly entered on a political discourse to the effect that the German Government was reluctant to treat with the Paris Government, which it did not consider so lawful as that of the Empress, and that if it treated with her the conditions would be less burdensome; that the intervention of the army of Metz was indispensable; that it was all-important that one of its chiefs should repair to the side of the Empress to represent the army with her; and that he, Bourbaki, was the fittest person to occupy that position on the declinature of Marshal Canrobert. Bourbaki turned from the man of verbiage to Bazaine and asked, "Marshal, what do you wish me to do?" The Marshal answered that he desired him to repair to the Empress.

"I am ready," answered Bourbaki, "but on certain conditions: you will have the goodness to give me a written order; to announce my departure in army orders; not to place a substitute in my command; and to promise that, pending my return, you will not engage the Guard." His terms were accepted; he was told that he was to leave immediately and he went to his quarters to make his preparations.

It was understood that the general's departure was to be by way of being incognito, so that it should not get wind. He had no civilian clothes and Bazaine fitted him out in his; Regnier had obtained from one of the Luxembourger surgeons a cap with the Geneva Cross which completed the costume. At the Prussian headquarters General Stiehle, Prince Frederick Charles's chief of staff, desired to pay his respects to a man whose brilliant courage he admired. Bourbaki's bitter answer to Regnier who communicated to him Stiehle's wish, was that he would see "none of them, nor even eat a morsel of their bread," which, he said, would choke him. He presently started with the surgeons, travelling in Regnier's name and on Regnier's passport, on an enterprise which was to lead to the wreck of a fine career. At the same time Regnier quitted Corny on his return to Ferrières to report to Bismarck, having promised Bazaine that he would return to Metz within six days. His bolt was about shot. But he had not realised this fact. He maintains in his curious pamphlet that, to quote his own words, "the Minister had given me to understand that if I were backed by Bazaine and his army he would treat with me as if I were the representative of the Emperor or the Regent. I had obtained from the Marshal a capitulation with the honours of war, which the Minister--for the furtherance of our political ends--had consented to accord to him." He hurried expectant to Ferrières; there to be summarily disillusioned. Bismarck gave him an interview on the 28th, and crushed him in a few trenchant sentences:--

I am surprised and sorry (said the Chancellor) that you, who appeared to be a practical man, after having been permitted to enter Metz with the certainty of being able to leave it, a favour never before accorded, should have left it without some more formal recognition of your right to treat than merely a photograph with the Marshal's signature on it. But I, Sir, am a diplomatist of many years' standing, and this is not enough for me. I regret it; but I find myself compelled to relinquish all further communication with you till your powers are better defined.

Regnier expressed his regret at having been so cruelly deceived but thanked Bismarck for his kindness, whereupon the latter offered to give him a last chance. "I would certainly," he said, "have treated with you as to peace conditions, had you been able to treat in the name of a Marshal at the head of 80,000 men; as it is, I will send this telegram to the Marshal: 'Does Marshal Bazaine authorise M. Regnier to treat for the surrender of the army before Metz in accordance with the conditions agreed upon with the last-named?'" On the 29th came Bazaine's somewhat diffuse reply:--

I cannot reply definitely in the affirmative to the question. Regnier announced himself the emissary of the Empress without written credentials. He asked the conditions on which I could enter into negotiations with Prince Frederick Charles. My answer was that I could only accept a convention with the honours of war, not to include the fortress of Metz. These are the only conditions which military honour permits me to accept.

Regnier bombarded the Chancellor with letters until the 30th, when Count Hatzfeld informed him that the Minister would listen to nothing more until Regnier could show full powers without evasion; that the matter must imperatively be conducted openly and above board; and that his Excellency hoped Regnier would be able to get clear of it with honour, and that soon.

So Regnier quitted Ferrières in great dejection. He gives vent ruefully to the belief that Bismarck regarded him as an unaccredited agent of the Empress, while, curiously enough, the partisans of the Empress took him for an emissary of Bismarck. Reaching Hastings on the 3rd of October he found that the Empress was now at Chislehurst. He had telegraphed in advance to "M. Regnier," the name which he had instructed General Bourbaki to pass under until the true Regnier should reach England. But Bourbaki had cast away the false name at the instigation of a brother officer while passing through Belgium. On arriving at Chislehurst he learned from the Empress that he had been made the victim of a mystification on the part of Regnier, and that she had never expressed the desire to have with her either Marshal Canrobert or himself. This intelligence, of which the newspapers had given him a presentiment, struck him to the heart. Although covered by his chief's order he found himself in a false position; and he wrote to the late Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary, begging his good offices to obtain for him an authorisation to return to his post. An assurance was given that this would be accorded, and he hurried to Luxembourg there to await intimation of permission to re-enter Metz. Some delay occurred in the transmission of the Royal order to this effect and although Bourbaki was assured that the decision would shortly reach him, he became impatient, went into France, and placed himself at the disposition of the Provisional Government. But thenceforth he was a soured and dispirited man. The ci-devant aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed under the harrow of Gambetta and Freycinet.

As for Regnier, on his return to England he seems to have haunted Chislehurst. Once, so he frankly writes, after waiting a full hour in expectation of an audience of the Empress Madame Le Breton came to tell him that Her Majesty was sorry to have kept him waiting so long, but that she had now definitely resolved not to receive him. Yet he hung on, and the same evening he tells that he was called somewhat abruptly into a room in which stood several gentlemen, when a lady suddenly rose from a couch and addressed him standing. At last he was face to face with the Empress. "Sir," said Her Majesty, "you have been persistent in wishing to speak with me personally; here I am; what have you to say?" Then Regnier, by his own account, harangued that august and unfortunate lady in a manner which in print seems extremely trenchant and dictatorial. It was all in vain, he confesses; he could not alter the convictions of the Empress. He says that "she feared that posterity, if she yielded, would only see in the act a proof of dynastic selfishness; and that dishonour would be attached to the name of whoever should sign a treaty based on a cession of territory." Probably Her Majesty spoke from a more lofty standpoint than Regnier was able to comprehend or appreciate.

Regnier's subsequent career during that troublous period was both curious and dubious. General Boyer states that on the 28th of October he found Regnier tête-à-tête with Prince Napoleon (Plon-Plon). Later he went to Cassel, where he busied himself in trying to implicate in political machinations sundry French officers who were prisoners there. Presently we find him at Versailles, figuring among the conductors of the Moniteur Prussien, Bismarck's organ during the German occupation of that city, in which journal he published a series of articles under the title of Jean Bonhomme. During the armistice after the surrender of Paris he betook himself to Brussels, where he told General Boyer that he had gone to Versailles to attempt a renewal of negotiations tending towards an Imperial restoration. He showed the general the original safe-conduct which Bismarck had given him at Ferrières, and a letter of Count Hatzfeld authorising him to visit Versailles. The last item during this period recorded of this strange personage--and that item one so significant as to justify Mrs. Crawford's shrewd suspicion "that Regnier played a double game, and that Prince Bismarck, if he chose, could clear up the mystery which hangs over Regnier's curious negotiations"--is found in a page of the Procès Bazaine. This is the gem: "On the 18th of February 1871 he was in Versailles, where he met a person of his acquaintance, to whom he uttered the characteristic words--'I do not know whether M. de Bismarck will allow me to leave him this evening.'" He is said to have later been connected with the Paris police under the late M. Lagrange. Whether Regnier was more knave or fool--enthusiast, impostor, or "crank"--will probably be never known.

RAILWAY LIZZ

BY AN HOSPITAL MATRON

We see many curious phases of humanity--we who administer to the sick in the great hospitals which are among the boasts of London. The mask worn by the face of the world is dropped before us. We see men as they are, and while the sight is often not calculated to enhance our estimate of human nature, there are occasionally strong reliefs which stand out from the mass of shadow. There are curious opinions entertained in the outer world as to the internal economy of hospitals, not a few "laymen" imagining that the main end of such establishments is that the doctors may have something to experiment upon for the advancement of their professional theories--something which, while it is human, is not very valuable in the social scale and therefore open to be hacked and hewn and operated upon with a freedom begotten of the knowledge that the subject is a mere vile corpus.

Nor is this the only delusion. Many people think that the hospital nurse is but another name for a heartless harpy, brimful of callous selfishness. Her attentions--kindness is an inadmissible word--are believed to be purely mercenary. Those who themselves can afford to fee her or who have friends able and willing to buy her services, may purchase civil treatment and careful nursing while the poor wretch who has neither money nor friends may languish unheeded. There is no greater mistake than this. Year by year the character of hospital nursing has improved. It is not to be denied that in times gone by there were nurses the mainsprings of whose actions may be said to have been money and gin; but these have long since been driven forth with contumely. I have seen a poor wretch of a discharged soldier without a single copper to bless himself with, nursed with as much tender assiduity and real feeling as if he were in a position to pay his nurses handsomely.

Indeed, in most hospitals now the practice of accepting money presents is altogether forbidden; and if the prohibition, as in the case of railway porters and guards, is sometimes looked upon in the light of a dead letter, there is, I sincerely believe, no such thing as any grasping after a guerdon nor any neglect in a case where it is evident no guerdon is to be expected. There is an hospital I could name in which the nurses are prohibited from accepting from patients any more substantial recognition of their services than a nosegay of flowers. The wards of this hospital are always gay with bright, fragrant posies, most of them the contributions of those who, having been carefully tended in their need, retain a grateful recollection of the kindness and now that they are in health again take this simple, pretty way of showing their gratitude. It is two years ago since a rough bricklayer's labourer got mended in the accident ward of this hospital of some curiously complicated injuries he had received by tumbling from the top of a house. Not a Sunday afternoon has there been since the house-surgeon told him one morning that he might go out, that he has not religiously visited the "Albert" ward and brought his thank-offering in the shape of a cheap but grateful nosegay.

Those nurses who thus devote themselves to the tending of sick have often curious histories if anybody would be at the trouble of collecting them. It is by no means always mere regard for the securing of the necessaries of life which has brought them to the thankless and toilsome occupation. We have all read of nunneries in which women immured themselves, anxious to sequester themselves from all association with the outer world and to devote themselves to a life of penance and devotion. After all their piety was aimless and of no utility to humanity. There was a concentrated selfishness in it which detracted from its ambitious aspiration. But in the modern nuns of our hospitals methinks we have women who, abnegating with equal solicitude the pleasures and dissipations of the world, find a more philanthropic opening for their exertions in their retirement than in sleeping on hair pallets, and in eating nothing but parched peas.

It was towards the autumn of a recent year that a modest-looking young woman applied to me for a situation on our nursing staff. She wore a widow's dress and seemed a self-contained, reserved little woman, with something weighing very heavily on her mind. Her testimonials of character were ample and of a very high order but they did not enlighten me with any great freedom as to her past history, and she for her part appeared by no means eager to supplement the meagre information furnished by them. However, people have a right to keep their own counsel if they please, and there was no sin in the woman's reticence. We happened to be very short of efficient nurses at the time and she was at once taken upon trial; her somewhat strange stipulation, which she made absolute, being agreed to--that she should not be compelled to reside in the hospital, but merely come in to perform her turn of nursing, and that over, be at liberty to leave the precincts when she pleased. I say the stipulation was a strange one, because attached to it there was a considerable pecuniary sacrifice as well as a necessity for entering a lower grade.

She made a very excellent nurse, with her quiet, reserved ways and her manner of moving about a ward as if she studied the lightness of every footfall. But she had her peculiarities. I have already said that she was not given to be communicative, and for the first three months she was in the place I do not believe she uttered a word to any one within the walls except on subjects connected with the performance of her duties. Then, too, she manifested a curious fondness for being on duty in the accident ward. Most nurses have very little liking for this ward--the work is very heavy and unremitting and frequently the sights are more than usually repulsive. But she specially made application to be placed in it, and the more terrible the nature of the accident the more eager was her zeal to minister to the poor victim. It seemed almost a morbid fondness which she developed for waiting, in particular, upon people injured by railway accidents. When some poor mangled plate-layer or a railway-porter crushed almost out of resemblance to humanity would be borne in and laid on an empty cot in the accident ward, this woman was at the bedside with a seemingly intuitive perception of what would best conduce to soothe and ease the poor shattered fellow; and she would wait on him "hand and foot" with an intensity of devotion far in excess of what mere duty, however conscientiously fulfilled, would have demanded of her. Indeed, her partiality for railway "cases" was so marked that it appeared to amount to a passion; and among the other nurses, never slow to fix upon any peculiarity and base upon it some not unfriendly nickname, our quiet friend went by the name of "Railway Lizz." Nobody ever got any clue to the reason, if there was one, for this predilection of hers. Indeed, nobody ever was favoured with the smallest scrap of her confidence. I confess to have felt much interest in the sad-eyed young widow and to have several times given her an opening which she might have availed herself of for narrating something of her past life; but she always retired within herself with a sensitiveness which puzzled me not a little, satisfied as I was that there was nothing in her antecedents of a character which would not bear the light.