THE AFTER-DINNER TALK OF THREE GREAT LADIES.
The three ladies grouped themselves about the fire, which they found
already lighted. The duchesse chose a Henry II. carved aim chair, one,
she laughingly remarked, quite large enough to have held both the King
and Diana. A lackey carrying the inevitable muff-dogs, their fans, and
scent-bottles, had followed the ladies; he placed a hassock at the
duchesse's feet, two beneath the slender feet of Madame de Kerman, and,
after having been bidden to open one of the casements, since it was
still so light without, withdrew, leaving the ladies alone.
Although Madame de Sévigné had comfortably ensconced herself in one of
the deep window seats, piling the cushions behind her, no sooner was
the window opened than with characteristic impetuosity she jumped up to
look out into the country that lay beyond the leaded glass. In spite of
the long day's drive in the open air, her appetite for blowing roses
and sweet earth smells had not been sated. Madame de Sévigné all her
life had been the victim of two loves and a passion; she adored society
and she loved nature; these were her lesser delights, that gave way
before the chief idolatry of her soul, her adoration for her daughter.
[Illustration: MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ]
As she stood by the open window, her charming face, always a mirror of
her emotions, was suffused with a glow and a bloom that made it seem
young again. Her eyes grew to twice their common size under the
"wandering" eyelids, as her gaze roved over the meadows and across the
tall grasses to the sea. A part of her youth was being, indeed, vividly
brought back to her; the sight of this marine landscape recalled many
memories; and with the recollection her whole face and figure seemed to
irradiate something of the inward ardor that consumed her. She had
passed this very road, through this same country before, long ago, in
her youth, with her children. She half smiled at the remembrance of a
description given of the impression produced by her appearance on the
journey by her friend the Abbé Arnauld; he had ecstatically compared
her to Latona seated in an open coach, between a youthful Apollo and a
young Diana. In spite of the abbe's poetical extravagance, Madame de
Sévigné recognized, in this moment of retrospect, the truth of the
picture. That, indeed, had been a radiant moment! Her life at that time
had been so full, and the rapture so complete--the rapture of
possessing her children--that she could remember to have had the sense
of fairly evaporating happiness. And now, the sigh came, how scattered
was this gay group! her son in Brittany, her daughter in Provence, two
hundred leagues away! And she, an elderly Latona, mourning her Apollo
and her divine huntress, her incomparable Diana.
The inextinguishable name of youth was burning still, however, in
Madame de Sévigné's rich nature. This adventure, this amazing adventure
of three ladies of the court having to pass the night in a rude little
Normandy inn, she, for one, was finding richly seasoned with the spice
of the unforeseen; it would be something to talk of and write about for
a month hence at Chaulnes and at Paris. Their entire journey, in point
of fact, had been a series of the most delightful episodes. It was now
nearly a month since they had started from Picardy, from the castle of
Chaulnes, going into Normandy _via_ Rouen. They had been on a driving
tour, their destination being Rennes, which they would reach in a week
or so. They had been travelling in great state, with the very best
coach, the very best horses; and they had been guarded by a whole
regiment of cavaliers and halberdiers. Every possible precaution had
been taken \against their being disagreeably surprised on their route.
Their chief fear on the journey had been, of course, the cry common in
their day of "_Au voleur!_" and the meeting of brigands and assassins;
for, once outside of Paris and the police reforms of that dear Colbert,
and one must be prepared to take one's life in one's hand. Happily, no
such misadventures had befallen them. The roads, it is true, they had
found for the most part in a horrible condition; they had been pitched
about from one end of their coach to the other they might easily have
imagined themselves at sea. The dust also had nearly blinded them, in
spite of their masks. The other nuisances most difficult to put up with
had been the swarm of beggars that infested the roadsides; and worst of
all had been the army of crippled, deformed, and mangy soldiers. These
latter they had encountered everywhere; their whines and cries, their
armless, legless bodies, their hideous filth, and their insolent
importunities, they had found a veritable pest.
Another annoyance had been the over-zealous courtesy of some of the
upper middle-class. Only yesterday, in the very midst of the dust and
under the burning noon sun, they had all been forced to alight, to
receive the homage tendered the duchesse, of some thirty women and as
many men. Each one of the sixty must, of course, kiss the duchesse's
hand. It was really an outrage to have exposed them to such a form of
torture! Poor Madame de Kerman, the delicate one of the party, had
entirely collapsed after the ceremony. The duchesse also had been
prostrated; it had wearied her more than all the rest of the journey.
Madame de Sévigné alone had not suffered. She was possessed of a degree
of physical fortitude which made her equal to any demand. The other two
ladies, as well as she herself, were now experiencing the pleasant
exhilaration which comes with the hour of rest after an excellent
dinner. They were in a condition to remember nothing except the
agreeable. Madame de Sévigné was the first to break the silence.
She turned, with a brisk yet graceful abruptness, to the two ladies
still seated before the low fire. With a charming outburst of
enthusiasm she exclaimed aloud:
"What a beauty, and youth, and tenderness this spring has, has it not?"
"Yes," answered the duchesse, smiling graciously into Madame de
Sévigné's brilliantly lit face; "yes, the weather in truth has been
perfect."
"What an adorable journey we have had!" continued Madame de Sévigné, in
the same tone, her ardor undampened by the cooler accent of her
friend--she was used to having her enthusiasm greeted with
consideration rather than response. "What a journey!--only meeting with
the most agreeable of adventures; not the slightest inconvenience
anywhere; eating the very best of everything; and driving through the
heart of this enchanting springtime!"
Her listeners laughed quietly, with an accent of indulgence. It was the
habit of her world to find everything Madame de Sévigné did or said
charming. Even her frankness was forgiven her, her tact was so perfect;
and her spontaneity had always been accounted as her chief excellence;
in the stifled air of the court and the _ruelles_ it had been
frequently likened to the blowing in of a fresh May breeze. Her present
mood was one well known to both ladies.
"Always 'pretty pagan,' dear madame," smiled Madame de Kerman,
indulgently. "How well named--and what a happy hit of our friend
Arnauld d'Audilly! You are in truth a delicious--an adorable pagan! You
have such a sense of the joy of living! Why, even living in the country
has, it appears, no terrors for you. We hear of your walking about in
the moonlight-you make your very trees talk, they tell us, in
Italian--in Latin; you actually pass whole hours alone with the
hamadryads!" There was just a suspicion of irony in Madame de Kerman's
tone, in spite of its caressing softness; it was so impossible to
conceive of anyone really finding nature endurable, much less
pretending to discover in trees and flowers anything amusing or
suggestive of sentiment!
But Madame de Sévigné was quite impervious to her friend's raillery.
She responded, with perfect good humor:
"Why not?--why not try to discover beauties in nature? One can be so
happy in a wood! What a charming thing to hear a leaf sing! I know few
things more delightful than to watch the triumph of the month of May
when the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the lark open the spring in our
forests! And then, later, come those beautiful crystal days of
autumn--days that are neither warm, nor yet are they really cold! And
then the trees--how eloquent they can be made; with a little teaching
they may be made to converse so charmingly. _Bella cosa far aniente_,
says one of my trees; and another answers, _Amor odit inertes_. Ah,
when I had to bid farewell to all my leaves and trees; when my son had
to dispose of the forest of Buron, to pay for some of his follies, you
remember how I wept! It seemed to me I could actually feel the grief of
those dispossessed sylvans and of all those homeless dryads!"
"It is this, dear friend--this life you lead at Les Rochers--and your
enthusiasm, which keep you so young. Yes, I am sure of it. How
inconceivably young, for instance, you are looking this very evening!
You and the glow out yonder make youth seem no longer a legend."
The duchesse delivered her flattering little speech with a caressing
tone. She moved gently forward in her chair, as if to gain a better
view of the twilight and her friend. At the sound of the duchesse's
voice Madame de Sévigné again turned, with the same charming smile and
the quick impulsiveness of movement common to her. During her long
monologue she had remained standing; but she left the window now to
regain her seat amid the cushions of the window. There was something
better than the twilight and the spring in the air; here, within, were
two delightful friends-and listeners; there was before her, also, the
prospect of one of those endless conversations that were the chief
delight of her life.
She laughed as she seated herself--a gay, frank, hearty little
laugh--and she spread out her hands with the opening of her fan, as,
with her usual vivacious spontaneity, her mood changed.
"Fancy, dear duchesse, the punishment that comes to one who commits the
crime of looking young--younger than one ought! My son-in-law, M. de
Grignan, actually avows he is in daily terror lest I should give him a
father-in-law!"
All three ladies laughed gayly at this absurdity; the subject of Madame
de Sévigné's remarrying had come to be a venerable joke now. It had
been talked of at court and in society for nearly forty years; but such
was the conquering power of her charms that these two friends, her
listeners, saw nothing really extravagant in her son-in-law's fear; she
was one of those rare women who, even at sixty, continue to suggest the
altar rather than the grave. Madame de Kerman was the first to recover
her breath after the laughter.
"Dear friend, you might assure him that after a youth and the golden
meridian of your years passed in smiling indifference to the sighs of a
Prince de Conti, of a Turenne, of a Fouquet, of a Bussy de Rabutin, at
sixty it is scarcely likely that--"
"Ah, dear lady at sixty, when one has the complexion and the curls, to
say nothing of the eyes of our dear enchantress, a woman is as
dangerous as at thirty!" The duchesse's flattery was charmingly put,
with just enough vivacity of tone to save it from the charge of
insipidity. Madame de Sévigné bowed her curls to her waist.
"Ah, dear duchesse, it isn't age," she retorted, quickly, "that could
make me commit follies. It is the fact that that son-in-law of mine
actually surrounds me with spies--he keeps me in perpetual
surveillance. Such a state of captivity is capable of making me forget
everything; I am beginning to develop a positive rage for follies. You
know that has been my chief fault--always; discretion has been left out
of my composition. But I say now, as I have always said, that if I
could manage to live two hundred years, I should become the most
delightful person in the world!"
She herself was the first to lead in the laughter that followed her
outburst; and then the duchesse broke in:
"You talk of defects, dear friend; but reflect what a life yours has
been. So surrounded and courted, and yet you were always so guarded; so
free, and yet so wise! So gay, and yet so chaste!"
"If you rubbed out all those flattering colors, dear duchesse, and
wrote only, 'She worshipped her children, and preferred friends to
lovers,' the portrait would be far nearer to the truth. It is easy to
be chaste if one has only known one passion in one's life, and that the
maternal one!"
Again a change passed over Madame de Sévigné's mobile face; the
bantering tone was lost in a note of deep feeling. This gift of
sensibility had always been accounted as one of Madame de Sévigné's
chief charms; and now, at sixty, she was as completely the victim of
her moods as in her earlier youth.
"Where is your daughter, and how is she?" sympathetically queried the
duchesse.
"Oh, she is still at Grignan, as usual; she is well, thank God. But,
dear duchesse, after all these years of separation I suffer still,
cruelly." The tears sprang to Madame de Sévigné's eyes, as she added,
with passion and a force one would scarcely have expected in one whose
manners were so finished, "the truth is, dear friends, I cannot live
without her. I do not find I have made the least progress in that
career. But, even now, believe me, these tears are sweeter than all
else in life--more enrapturing than the most transporting joy!"
Madame de Kerman smiled tenderly into the rapturous mother's face; but
the duchesse moved, as if a little restless and uneasy under this
shower of maternal feeling. For thirty years her friends had had to
listen to Madame de Sévigné's rhapsodies over the perfections of her
incomparable daughter. Although sensibility was not the emotional
fashion of the day, maternity, in the person of Madame de Sévigné, had
been apotheosized into the queen of the passions, if only because of
its rarity; still, even this lady's most intimate friends sometimes
wearied of banqueting off the feast of Madame de Grignan's virtues.
"Have you heard from Madame de La Fayette recently?" asked the
duchesse, allowing just time enough to elapse, before putting the
question, for Madame de Sévigné's emotion to subside into composure.
The duchesse was too exquisitely bred to allow her impatience to take
the form of even the appearance of haste.
"Oh, yes," was Madame de Sévigné's quiet reply; the turn in the
conversation had been instantly understood, in spite of the delicacy of
the duchesse's methods. "Oh, yes--I have had a line--only a line. You
know how she detests writing, above all things. Her letters are all the
same--two lines to say that she has no time in which to say it!"
"Did she not once write you a pretty little series of epigrams about
not writing?"
"Oh, yes--some time ago, when I was with my daughter. I've quoted them
so often, they have become famous. 'You are in Provence, my beauty;
your hours are free, and your mind still more so. Your love for
corresponding with everyone still endures within you, it appears; as
for me, the desire to write to any human being has long since passed
away-forever; and if I had a lover who insisted on a letter every
morning, I should certainly break with him!'"
"What a curious compound she is! And how well her soubriquet becomes
her!"
"Yes, it is perfect--'_Le Brouillard_'--the fog. It is indeed a fog
that has always enveloped her, and what charming horizons are disclosed
once it is lifted!"
"And her sensibilities--of what an exquisite quality; and what a rare,
precious type, indeed, is the whole of her nature! Do you remember how
alarmed she would become when listening to music?"
"And yet, with all this sensibility and delicacy of organization there
was another side to her nature." Madame de Kerman paused a moment
before she went on; she was not quite sure how far she dared go in her
criticism; Madame de La Fayette was such an intimate friend of Madame
de Sévigné's.
"You mean," that lady broke out, with unhesitating candor, "that she is
also a very selfish person. You know that is my daughter's theory of
her--she is always telling me how Madame de La Fayette is making use of
me; that while her sensitiveness is such that she cannot sustain the
tragedy of a farewell visit--if I am going to Les Rochers or to
Provence, when I go to pay my last visit I must pretend it is only an
ordinary running-in; yet her delicacy does not prevent her from making
very indelicate proposals, to suit her own convenience. You remember
what one of her commands was, don't you?"
"No," answered the duchesse, for both herself and her companion. "Pray
tell us."
Madame de Sévigné went on to narrate that once, when at Les Rochers,
Madame de La Fayette was quite certain that she, Madame de Sévigné, was
losing her mind, for no one could live in the provinces and remain
sane, poring over stupid books and sitting over fires.
"She was certain I should sicken and die, besides losing the tone of my
mind," laughed Madame de Sévigné, as she called up the picture of her
dissolution and rapid disintegration; "and therefore it was necessary
at once that I should come up to Paris. This latter command was
delivered in the tone of a judge of the Supreme Court. The penalty of
my disobedience was to be her ceasing to love me. I was to come up to
Paris directly--on the minute; I was to live with you, dear duchesse; I
was not to buy any horses until spring; and, best of all, I was to find
on my arrival a purse of a thousand crowns which would be lent me
without interest! What a proposition, _mon Dieu_, what a proposition!
To have no house of my own, to be dependent, to have no carriage, and
to be in debt a thousand crowns!"
As Madame de Sévigné lifted her hands the laces of her sleeves were
fairly trembling with the force of her indignation. There were certain
things that always put her in a passion, and Madame de La Fayette's
peculiarities she had found at times unendurable. Her listeners had
followed her narration with the utmost intensity and absorption. When
she stopped, their eyes met in a look of assenting comment.
"It was perfectly characteristic, all of it! She judged you, doubtless,
by herself. She always seems to me, even now, to keep one eye on her
comfort and the other on her purse!"
"Ah, dear duchesse, how keen you are!" laughingly acquiesced Madame de
Sévigné, as with a shrug she accepted the verdict--her indignation
melting with the shrug. "And how right! No woman ever drives better
bargains, without moving a finger. From her invalid's chair she can
conduct a dozen lawsuits. She spends half her existence in courting
death; she caresses her maladies; she positively hugs them; but she can
always be miraculously resuscitated at the word money!"
"Yes," added with a certain relish Madame de Kerman. "And this is the
same woman who must be forever running away from Paris because she can
no longer endure the exertion of talking, or of replying, or of
listening; because she is wearied to extinction, as she herself admits,
of saying good-morning and good-evening. She must hide herself in some
pastoral retreat, where simply, as she says, 'to exist is enough;'
where she can remain, as it were, miraculously suspended between heaven
and earth!"
A ripple of amused laughter went round the little group; there was
nothing these ladies enjoyed so keenly as a delicate dish of gossip,
seasoned with wit, and stuffed with epigrams. This talk was exactly to
their taste. The silence and seclusion of their surroundings were an
added stimulus to confidence and to a freer interchange of opinions
about their world. Paris and Versailles seemed so very far away; it
would appear safe to say almost anything about one's dearest friends.
There was nothing to remind them of the restraints of levees, or the
penalty indiscretion must pay for folly breathed in that whispering
gallery--the _ruelle_. It was indeed a delightful hour; altogether an
ideal situation.
The fire had burned so low only a few embers were alive now, and the
candles were beginning to flicker and droop in the sconces. But the
three ladies refused to find the little room either cold or dark; their
talk was not half done yet, and their muffs would keep them warm. The
shadow of the deepening gloom they found delightfully provocative of
confidences.
After a short pause, while Madame de Kerman busied herself with the
tongs and the fagots, trying to reinvigorate the dying flames, the
duchesse asked, in a somewhat more intimate tone than she had used yet:
"And the duke--do you really think she loved the Duke de La
Rochefoucauld?"
"She reformed him, dear duchesse; at least she always proclaims his
reform as the justification of her love."
"You--you esteemed him yourself very highly, did you not?"
"Oh, I loved him tenderly; how could one help it? He was the best as
well as the most brilliant of men! I never knew a tenderer heart;
domestic joys and sorrows affected him in a way to render him
incomparable. I have seen him weep over the death of his mother, who
only died eight years before him, you know, with a depth of sincerity
that made me adore him."
"He must in truth have been a very sincere person."
"Sincere!" cried Madame de Sévigné, her eyes flaming. "Had you but seen
his deathbed! His bearing was sublime! Believe me, dear friend, it was
not in vain that M. de La Rochefoucauld had written philosophic
reflections all his life; he had already anticipated his last moments
in such a way that there was nothing either new or strange in death
when it came to him."
"Madame de La Fayette truly mourned him--don't you think so? You were
with her a great deal, were you not, after his death?"
"I never left her. It was the most pitiable sight to see her in her
loneliness and her misery. You see, their common ill-health and their
sedentary habits, had made them so necessary to each other! It was, as
it were, two souls in a single body. Nothing could exceed the
confidence and charm of their friendship; it was incomparable. To
Madame de La Fayette his loss came as her death-blow; life seems at an
end for her; for where, indeed, can she find another such friend, or
such intercourse, such sweetness and charm--such confidence and
consideration?"
There was a moment's silence after Madame de Sévigné's eloquent
outburst. The eyes of the three friends were lost for a moment in the
twinkling flames. The duchesse and Madame de Kerman exchanged meaning
glances.
"Since the duke's death her thoughts are more and more turned toward
religion. I hear she has been fortunate in her choice of directors, has
she not? Du Guet is said to be an ideal confessor for the authoress of
'La Princesse de Clèves.'" There was just a suspicion of malice in the
duchesse's tones.
"Oh, he was born to take her in hand. He knew just when to speak with
authority, and when to make use of the arts of persuasion. He wrote to
her once, you remember: 'You, who have passed your life in
dreaming--cease to dream! You, who have taken such pride unto yourself
for being so true in all things, were very far, indeed, from the
truth--you were only half true--falsely true. Your godless wisdom was
in reality purely a matter of good taste!'"
"What audacity! Bossuet himself could not have put the truth more
nakedly." The duchesse was one of those to whom truths were novelties,
and unpleasant ones.
"Bossuet, if I remember rightly, was with the Duke de La Rochefoucauld
at the last, was he not?"
"Yes," responded Madame de Sévigné; "he was with him; he administered
the supreme unction. The duke was in a beautiful state of grace. M,
Vinet, you remember, said of him that he died with 'perfect decorum.'"
"Speaking of dying reminds me"--cried suddenly Madame de Sévigné--"how
are the duke's hangings getting on?"
"They begin, the duke writes me, to hang again to-morrow," answered the
duchesse, with a certain air of disdain, the first appearance of this
weapon of the great now coming to the _grande dame's_ aid. Her husband,
the Duke de Chaulnes' trouble with his revolutionary citizens at Rennes
was a subject that never failed to arouse a feeling of angry contempt
in her. It was too preposterous, the idea of those insolent creatures
rising against him, their rightful duke and master!
The duchesse's feeling in the matter was fully shared by her friends.
In all the court there was but one opinion in the matter--hanging was
really far too good for the wretched creatures.
"Monsieur de Chaulnes," the duchesse went on, with ironical contempt in
her voice, "still goes on punishing Rennes!"
"This province and the duke's treatment of it will serve as a capital
example to all others. It will teach those rascals," Madame de Kerman
continued, in lower tones, "to respect their governors, and not to
throw stones into their gardens!"
"Fancy that--the audacity of throwing stones into their duke's garden!
Why, did you know, they actually--those insolent creatures actually
called him--called the duke--'_gros cochon?_'"
All three ladies gasped in horror at this unparalleled instance of
audacity; they threw up their hands, as they groaned over the picture,
in low tones of finished elegance.
"It is little wonder the duke hangs right and left! The dear duke--what
a model governor! How I should like to have seen him sack that street
at Rennes, with all the ridiculous old men, and the women in
childbirth, and the children, turned out pêle-mêle! And the hanging,
too--why, hanging now seems to me a positively refreshing performance!"
And Madame de Sévigné laughed with unstinted gayety as at an excellent
joke.
The picture of Rennes and the cruelty dealt its inhabitants was a
pleasant picture, in the contemplation of which these ladies evidently
found much delectation. They were quiet for a longer period of time
than usual; they continued silent, as they looked into the fire,
smiling; the flames there made them think of other flames as forms of
merited punishment.
"A curious people those Bas Bretons," finally ejaculated Madame de
Sévigné. "I never could understand how Bertrand Duguesclin made them
the best soldiers of his day in France!"
"You know Lower Brittany very well, do you not, dear friend?"
"Not so well as the coast. Les Rochers is in Upper Brittany, you know.
I know the south better still. Ah, what a charming journey I once took
along the Loire with my friend _Bien-Bon_, the Abbé de Coulanges. We
found it the most enchanting country in the world--the country of
feasts and of famine; feasts for us and famine for the people. I
remember we had to cross the river; our coach was placed on the barge,
and we were rowed along by stout peasants. Through the glass windows of
the coach we looked out at a series of changing pictures--the views
were charming. We sat, of course, entirely at our ease, on our soft
cushions. The country people, crowded together below, were--ugh!--like
pigs in straw."
"Was Bien-Bon with you when you made that little excursion to St.
Germain?" queried the duchesse.
"Ah, that was a gay night," joyously responded Madame de Sévigné. "How
well we amused ourselves on that little visit that we paid Madame de
Maintenon--when she was only Madame Scarron."
"Was she so handsome then as they say she was--at that time?"
"Very handsome; she was good, too, and amiable, and easy to talk to;
one talked well and readily with her. She was then only the governess
of the king's bastards, you know--of the children he had had by Madame
de Montespan. That was the first step toward governing the king. Well,
one night--the night to which you refer--I remember we were all supping
with Madame de La Fayette. We had been talking endlessly! Suddenly it
occurred to us it would be a most amusing adventure to take Madame
Scarron home, to the very last end of the Faubourg Saint Germain, far
beyond where Madame de La Fayette lived--near Vaugirard, out into the
Bois, in the country. The Abbé came too. It was midnight when we
started. The house, when at last we reached it, we found large and
beautiful, with large and fine rooms and a beautiful garden; for Madame
Scarron, as governess of the king's children, had a coach and a lot of
servants and horses. She herself dressed then modestly and yet
magnificently, as a woman should, who spent her life among people of
the highest rank. We had a merry outing, returning in high spirits,
blessed in having no end of lanterns, and thus assured against robbers."
"She and Madame de La Fayette were very close friends, I remember,
during that time," mused the duchesse, "when they were such near
neighbors."
"Yes," Madame de Sévigné went on, as unwearied now, although it was
nearly midnight, as in the beginning of the long evening. "Yes; I
always thought Madame de Maintenon's satirical little joke about Madame
de La Fayette's bed festooned with gold--'I might have fifty thousand
pounds income, and never should I live in the style of a great lady;
never should I have a bed festooned with gold like Madame de La
Fayette'--was the beginning of their rupture."
"All the same, Madame de La Fayette, lying on that bed, beneath the
gold hangings, was a much more simple person than ever was Madame de
Maintenon!"
"Your speaking of bed reminds me, dear ladies ours must be quite cold
by this time. How we have chatted! What a delightful gossip! But we
must not forget that our journey to-morrow is to be a long one!"
The duchesse rose, the other two ladies rising instantly, observing, in
spite of the intimate relations in which they stood toward the
duchesse, the deference due to her more exalted rank. The latter
clapped her hands; outside the door a shuffling and a low groan were
heard--the groan came from the sleepy lackey, roused from his deep
slumber, as he uncoiled himself from the close knot into which his legs
and body were knit in the curve of the narrow stairs.
The ladies, a few seconds later, were wending their way up the steep
turret steps. They were preceded by torches and followed by quite a
long train of maids and lackeys. For a long hour, at least, the little
inn resounded with the sound of hurrying feet, of doors closing and
shutting; with the echo of voices giving commands and of others purring
in sleepy accents of obedience. Then one by one the sounds died away;
the lights went out in the bedchambers; faint flickerings stole through
the chinks of doors and windows. The watchman cried out the hour, and
the gleam of a lantern flashed here and there, illuminating the open
court-yard. The cocks crowed shrilly into the night air. A halberdier
turned in his sleep where he lay, on some straw beneath the coach-shed,
his halberd rattling as it struck the cobbles. And over the whole--over
the gentle slumber of the great ladies and the sleep of beast and
man--there fell the peace and the stillness of the midnight--of that
midnight of long ago.
[Illustration: CHAMBRE DE LA PUCELLE--DIVES]