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Updated: June 12, 2025
Dropping upon her knees, and running an arm round the child, she opened the parchment and read. "What what right has he to this?" she cried in a voice of dismay. "A year ago you dispossessed his father from the duchy. Ah, I do not understand it! You only you are the Duc de Bercy." Her eyes were shining with a happy excitement and tenderness. No such look had been in them for many a day.
Grandjon-Larisse, his old enemy in battle, now his personal friend and colleague in this business, had influenced Napoleon, and the Directory through him, to respect the neutrality of the duchy of Bercy, for which the four nations of this Congress declared.
War broke out. I remained silent according to my promise to him. Then came the time when in the States of Bercy he denied that he had a wife. From the hour I knew he had done so I denied him. My child was born in shame and sorrow, I myself was outcast in this island. But my conscience was clear before Heaven. I took myself and my child out from among you and went to Plemont.
With what seemed an unnecessary boldness Detricand slept that night at the inn, "The Golden Crown," in the town of Bercy: a Royalist of the Vendee exposing himself to deadly peril in a town sworn to alliance with the Revolutionary Government.
It was Saturday afternoon about 3 o'clock. There was the usual scene; outside the Gates of Bercy there was a crowd of people, and on the quays, four rows deep, carts and wagons were massed together. Coal carts, carts heaped with hay and straw, all were waiting in the clear, warm June sunshine for the examination from the custom official. All had been hurrying to reach Paris before Sunday.
"To think that they are still here after a whole year since this happened!" a young Frenchman exclaimed in bitterness of soul as we looked out over the thickly scattered graves in the fields around Bercy. To him it was as if a crazed and drunken marauder had taken possession of his house, burned a part of it, and still caroused in another wing. The unforgettable, unforgivable wounds of France!
Then with a change of manner he added quietly: "Your Highness, may the House of Bercy have no worse enemy than I! I came only to plead the cause which, if it give death, gives honour too. And I know well that at least you are not against us in heart.
But for himself, now heir to the principality of Vaufontaine, and therefrom, by reversion, to that of Bercy, it had no importance. He had but one passion now, and it burned clear and strong, it dominated, it possessed him. He would have given up any worldly honour to see it succeed. He had idled and misspent too many years, been vaurien and ne'er-do-well too long to be sordid now.
There are some things of mine that you will keep for your son, if you forgive me dead whom you despised living. Detricand Duke of Bercy will deal honourably by you. All that is mine at the Castle of Bercy he will secure to you. Tell him I have written it so; though he will do it of himself, I know. He is a great man. As I have gone downwards he has come upwards.
He had avoided the marriage so long as he might, in hope of preventing it until the Duke should die, but with the irony of fate the expected death had come two hours after the ceremony. Then, shortly afterwards, came the death of the imbecile Leopold John; and Philip found himself the Duc de Bercy, and within a year, by reason of a splendid victory for the Imperturbable, an admiral.
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