THE SUN REAPPEARS.
For nearly a week the king was constant to his new humour. The routine
of his life remained unchanged, save that it was the room of the frail
beauty, rather than of Madame de Maintenon, which attracted him in the
afternoon. And in sympathy with this sudden relapse into his old life,
his coats lost something of their sombre hue, and fawn-colour,
buff-colour, and lilac began to replace the blacks and the blues.
A little gold lace budded out upon his hats also and at the trimmings of
his pockets, while for three days on end his _prie-dieu_ at the royal
chapel had been unoccupied. His walk was brisker, and he gave a
youthful flourish to his cane as a defiance to those who had seen in his
reformation the first symptoms of age. Madame had known her man well
when she threw out that artful insinuation.
And as the king brightened, so all the great court brightened too.
The _salons_ began to resume their former splendour, and gay coats and
glittering embroidery which had lain in drawers for years were seen once
more in the halls of the palace. In the chapel, Bourdaloue preached in
vain to empty benches, but a ballet in the grounds was attended by the
whole court, and received with a frenzy of enthusiasm. The Montespan
ante-room was crowded every morning with men and women who had some suit
to be urged, while her rival's chambers were as deserted as they had
been before the king first turned a gracious look upon her. Faces which
had been long banished the court began to reappear in the corridors and
gardens unchecked and unrebuked, while the black cassock of the Jesuit
and the purple soutane of the bishop were less frequent colours in the
royal circle.
But the Church party, who, if they were the champions of bigotry, were
also those of virtue, were never seriously alarmed at this relapse.
The grave eyes of priest or of prelate followed Louis in his escapade as
wary huntsmen might watch a young deer which gambols about in the meadow
under the impression that it is masterless, when every gap and path is
netted, and it is in truth as much in their hands as though it were
lying bound before them. They knew how short a time it would be before
some ache, some pain, some chance word, would bring his mortality home
to him again, and envelop him once more in those superstitious terrors
which took the place of religion in his mind. They waited, therefore,
and they silently planned how the prodigal might best be dealt with on
his return.
To this end it was that his confessor, Pere la Chaise, and Bossuet, the
great Bishop of Meaux, waited one morning upon Madame de Maintenon in
her chamber. With a globe beside her, she was endeavouring to teach
geography to the lame Due du Maine and the mischievous little Comte de
Toulouse, who had enough of their father's disposition to make them
averse to learning, and of their mother's to cause them to hate any
discipline or restraint. Her wonderful tact, however, and her
unwearying patience had won the love and confidence even of these little
perverse princes, and it was one of Madame de Montespan's most bitter
griefs that not only her royal lover, but even her own children, turned
away from the brilliancy and riches of her salon to pass their time in
the modest apartment of her rival.
Madame de Maintenon dismissed her two pupils, and received the
ecclesiastics with the mixture of affection and respect which was due to
those who were not only personal friends, but great lights of the
Gallican Church. She had suffered the minister Louvois to sit upon a
stool in her presence, but the two chairs were allotted to the priests
now, and she insisted upon reserving the humbler seat for herself. The
last few days had cast a pallor over her face which spiritualised and
refined the features, but she wore unimpaired the expression of sweet
serenity which was habitual to her.
"I see, my dear daughter, that you have sorrowed," said Bossuet,
glancing at her with a kindly and yet searching eye.
"I have indeed, your Grace. All last night I spent in prayer that this
trial may pass away from us."
"And yet you have no need for fear, madame--none, I assure you. Others
may think that your influence has ceased; but we, who know the king's
heart, we think otherwise. A few days may pass, a few weeks at the
most, and once more it will be upon your rising fortunes that every eye
in France will turn."
The lady's brow clouded, and she glanced at the prelate as though his
speech were not altogether to her taste. "I trust that pride does not
lead me astray," she said. "But if I can read my own soul aright, there
is no thought of myself in the grief which now tears my heart. What is
power to me? What do I desire? A little room, leisure for my
devotions, a pittance to save me from want--what more can I ask for?
Why, then, should I covet power? If I am sore at heart, it is not for
any poor loss which I have sustained. I think no more of it than of the
snapping of one of the threads on yonder tapestry frame. It is for the
king I grieve--for the noble heart, the kindly soul, which might rise so
high, and which is dragged so low, like a royal eagle with some foul
weight which ever hampers its flight. It is for him and for France that
my days are spent in sorrow and my nights upon my knees."
"For all that, my daughter, you are ambitious."
It was the Jesuit who had spoken. His voice was clear and cold, and his
piercing gray eyes seemed to read into the depths of her soul.
"You may be right, father. God guard me from self-esteem. And yet I do
not think that I am. The king, in his goodness, has offered me titles--
I have refused them; money--I have returned it. He has deigned to ask
my advice in matters of state, and I have withheld it. Where, then, is
my ambition?"
"In your heart, my daughter. But it is not a sinful ambition. It is
not an ambition of this world. Would you not love to turn the king
towards good?"
"I would give my life for it."
"And there is your ambition. Ah, can I not read your noble soul?
Would you not love to see the Church reign pure and serene over all this
realm--to see the poor housed, the needy helped, the wicked turned from
their ways, and the king ever the leader in all that is noble and good?
Would you not love that, my daughter?"
Her cheeks had flushed, and her eyes shone as she looked at the gray
face of the Jesuit, and saw the picture which his words had conjured up
before her. "Ah, that would be joy indeed!" she cried.
"And greater joy still to know, not from the mouths of the people, but
from the voice of your own heart in the privacy of your chamber, that
you had been the cause of it, that your influence had brought this
blessing upon the king and upon the country."
"I would die to do it."
"We wish you to do what may be harder. We wish you to live to do it."
"Ah!" She glanced from one to the other with questioning eyes.
"My daughter," said Bossuet solemnly, leaning forward, with his broad
white hand outstretched and his purple pastoral ring sparkling in the
sunlight, "it is time for plain speaking. It is in the interests of the
Church that we do it. None hear, and none shall ever hear, what passes
between us now. Regard us, if you will, as two confessors, with whom
your secret is inviolable. I call it a secret, and yet it is none to
us, for it is our mission to read the human heart. You love the king."
"Your Grace!" She started, and a warm blush, mantling up in her pale
cheeks, deepened and spread until it tinted her white forehead and her
queenly neck.
"You love the king."
"Your Grace--father!" She turned in confusion from one to the other.
"There is no shame in loving, my daughter. The shame lies only in
yielding to love. I say again that you love the king."
"At least I have never told him so," she faltered.
"And will you never?"
"May heaven wither my tongue first!"
"But consider, my daughter. Such love in a soul like yours is heaven's
gift, and sent for some wise purpose. This human love is too often but
a noxious weed which blights the soil it grows in, but here it is a
gracious flower, all fragrant with humility and virtue."
"Alas! I have tried to tear it from my heart."
"Nay; rather hold it firmly rooted there. Did the king but meet with
some tenderness from you, some sign that his own affection met with an
answer from your heart, it might be that this ambition which you profess
would be secured, and that Louis, strengthened by the intimate
companionship of your noble nature, might live in the spirit as well as
in the forms of the Church. All this might spring from the love which
you hide away as though it bore the brand of shame."
The lady half rose, glancing from the prelate to the priest with eyes
which had a lurking horror in their depths.
"Can I have understood you!" she gasped. "What meaning lies behind
these words? You cannot counsel me to--"
The Jesuit had risen, and his spare figure towered above her.
"My daughter, we give no counsel which is unworthy of our office.
We speak for the interests of Holy Church, and those interests demand
that you should marry the king."
"Marry the king!" The little room swam round her. "Marry the king!"
"There lies the best hope for the future. We see in you a second Jeanne
d'Arc, who will save both France and France's king."
Madame sat silent for a few moments. Her face had regained its
composure, and her eyes were bent vacantly upon her tapestry frame as
she turned over in her mind all that was involved in the suggestion.
"But surely--surely this could never be," she said at last, "Why should
we plan that which can never come to pass?"
"And why?"
"What King of France has married a subject? See how every princess of
Europe stretches out her hand to him. The Queen of France must be of
queenly blood, even as the last was."
"All this may be overcome."
"And then there are the reasons of state. If the king marry, it should
be to form a powerful alliance, to cement a friendship with a neighbour
nation, or to gain some province which may be the bride's dowry.
What is my dowry? A widow's pension and a work-box." She laughed
bitterly, and yet glanced eagerly at her companions, as one who wished
to be confuted.
"Your dowry, my daughter, would be those gifts of body and of mind with
which heaven has endowed you. The king has money enough, and the king
has provinces enough. As to the state, how can the state be better
served than by the assurance that the king will be saved in future from
such sights as are to be seen in this palace to-day?"
"Oh, if it could be so! But think, father, think of those about him--
the dauphin, monsieur his brother, his ministers. You know how little
this would please them, and how easy it is for them to sway his mind.
No, no; it is a dream, father, and it can never be."
The faces of the two ecclesiastics, who had dismissed her other
objections with a smile and a wave, clouded over at this, as though she
had at last touched upon the real obstacle.
"My daughter," said the Jesuit gravely, "that is a matter which you may
leave to the Church. It may be that we, too, have some power over the
king's mind, and that we may lead him in the right path, even though
those of his own blood would fain have it otherwise. The future only
can show with whom the power lies. But you? Love and duty both draw
you one way now, and the Church may count upon you."
"To my last breath, father."
"And you upon the Church. It will serve you, if you in turn will but
serve it."
"What higher wish could I have?"
"You will be our daughter, our queen, our champion, and you will heal
the wounds of the suffering Church."
"Ah! if I could!"
"But you can. While there is heresy within the land there can be no
peace or rest for the faithful. It is the speck of mould which will in
time, if it be not pared off, corrupt the whole fruit."
"What would you have, then, father?"
"The Huguenots must go. They must be driven forth. The goats must be
divided from the sheep. The king is already in two minds. Louvois is
our friend now. If you are with us, then all will be well."
"But, father, think how many there are!"
"The more reason that they should be dealt with."
"And think, too, of their sufferings should they be driven forth."
"Their cure lies in their own hands."
"That is true. And yet my heart softens for them."
Pere la Chaise and the bishop shook their heads. Nature had made them
both kind and charitable men, but the heart turns to flint when the
blessing of religion is changed to the curse of sect.
"You would befriend God's enemies then?"
"No, no; not if they are indeed so."
"Can you doubt it? Is it possible that your heart still turns towards
the heresy of your youth?"
"No, father; but it is not in nature to forget that my father and my
grandfather--"
"Nay, they have answered for their own sins. Is it possible that the
Church has been mistaken in you? Do you then refuse the first favour
which she asks of you? You would accept her aid, and yet you would give
none in return."
Madame de Maintenon rose with the air of one who has made her
resolution. "You are wiser than I," said she, "and to you have been
committed the interests of the Church. I will do what you advise."
"You promise it?"
"I do."
Her two visitors threw up their hands together. "It is a blessed day,"
they cried, "and generations yet unborn will learn to deem it so."
She sat half stunned by the prospect which was opening out in front of
her. Ambitious she had, as the Jesuit had surmised, always been--
ambitious for the power which would enable her to leave the world better
than she found it. And this ambition she had already to some extent
been able to satisfy, for more than once she had swayed both king and
kingdom. But to marry the king--to marry the man for whom she would
gladly lay down her life, whom in the depths of her heart she loved in
as pure and as noble a fashion as woman ever yet loved man--that was
indeed a thing above her utmost hopes. She knew her own mind, and she
knew his. Once his wife, she could hold him to good, and keep every
evil influence away from him. She was sure of it. She should be no
weak Maria Theresa, but rather, as the priest had said, a new Jeanne
d'Arc, come to lead France and France's king into better ways. And if,
to gain this aim, she had to harden her heart against the Huguenots, at
least the fault, if there were one, lay with those who made this
condition rather than with herself. The king's wife! The heart of the
woman and the soul of the enthusiast both leaped at the thought.
But close at the heels of her joy there came a sudden revulsion to doubt
and despondency. Was not all this fine prospect a mere day-dream? and
how could these men be so sure that they held the king in the hollow of
their hand? The Jesuit read the fears which dulled the sparkle of her
eyes, and answered her thoughts before she had time to put them into
words.
"The Church redeems its pledges swiftly," said he. "And you, my
daughter, you must be as prompt when your own turn comes."
"I have promised, father."
"Then it is for us to perform. You will remain in your room all
evening."
"Yes, father."
"The king already hesitates. I spoke with him this morning, and his
mind was full of blackness and despair. His better self turns in
disgust from his sins, and it is now when the first hot fit of
repentance is just coming upon him that he may best be moulded to our
ends. I have to see and speak with him once more, and I go from your
room to his. And when I have spoken, he will come from his room to
yours, or I have studied his heart for twenty years in vain. We leave
you now, and you will not see us, but you will see the effects of what
we do, and you will remember your pledge to us." They bowed low to her
both together, and left her to her thoughts.
An hour passed, and then a second one, as she sat in her _fauteuil_, her
tapestry before her, but her hands listless upon her lap, waiting for
her fate. Her life's future was now being settled for her, and she was
powerless to turn it in one way or the other. Daylight turned to the
pearly light of evening, and that again to dusk, but she still sat
waiting in the shadow. Sometimes as a step passed in the corridor she
would glance expectantly towards the door, and the light of welcome
would spring up in her gray eyes, only to die away again into
disappointment. At last, however, there came a quick sharp tread, crisp
and authoritative, which brought her to her feet with flushed cheeks and
her heart beating wildly. The door opened, and she saw outlined against
the gray light of the outer passage the erect and graceful figure of the
king.
"Sire! One instant, and mademoiselle will light the lamp."
"Do not call her." He entered and closed the door behind him.
"Francoise, the dusk is welcome to me, because it screens me from the
reproaches which must lie in your glance, even if your tongue be too
kindly to speak them."
"Reproaches, sire! God forbid that I should utter them!"
"When I last left you, Francoise, it was with a good resolution in my
mind. I tried to carry it out, and I failed--I failed. I remember that
you warned me. Fool that I was not to follow your advice!"
"We are all weak and mortal, sire. Who has not fallen? Nay, sire, it
goes to my heart to see you thus."
He was standing by the fireplace, his face buried in his hands, and she
could tell by the catch of his breath that he was weeping. All the pity
of her woman's nature went out to that silent and repenting figure dimly
seen in the failing light. She put out her hand with a gesture of
sympathy, and it rested for an instant upon his velvet sleeve. The next
he had clasped it between his own, and she made no effort to release it.
"I cannot do without you, Francoise," he cried. "I am the loneliest man
in all this world, like one who lives on a great mountain-peak, with
none to bear him company. Who have I for a friend? Whom can I rely
upon? Some are for the Church; some are for their families; most are
for themselves. But who of them all is single-minded? You are my
better self, Francoise; you are my guardian angel. What the good
father says is true, and the nearer I am to you the further am I from
all that is evil. Tell me, Francoise, do you love me?"
"I have loved you for years, sire." Her voice was low but clear--the
voice of a woman to whom coquetry was abhorrent.
"I had hoped it, Francoise, and yet it thrills me to hear you say it.
I know that wealth and title have no attraction for you, and that your
heart turns rather towards the convent than the palace. Yet I ask you
to remain in the palace, and to reign there. Will you be my wife,
Francoise?"
And so the moment had in very truth come. She paused for an instant,
only an instant, before taking this last great step; but even that was
too long for the patience of the king.
"Will you not, Francoise?" he cried, with a ring of fear in his voice.
"May God make me worthy of such an honour, sire!" said she. "And here I
swear that if heaven double my life, every hour shall be spent in the
one endeavour to make you a happier man!"
She had knelt down, and the king, still holding her hand, knelt down
beside her.
"And I swear too," he cried, "that if my days also are doubled, you will
now and forever be the one and only woman for me."
And so their double oath was taken, an oath which was to be tested in
the future, for each did live almost double their years, and yet neither
broke the promise made hand in hand on that evening in the shadow-girt
chamber.