IN THE SALON DE LA PAIX AT VERSAILLES
“MON DIEU! my dear Abbé,” exclaimed the Comtesse des Forges, dropping
her cards to let her languishing, heavy-lidded eyes linger on the
smiling face of her latest _protégé_, “you make my blood run cold.”
“_Brélan de rois_” called the plump Duchesse de Pontchartrain,
carefully noting the fact on her tablets before she allowed her
suspicions to master her. “But are you quite sure?”
The dandy Abbé St. Victor with the air of a connoisseur compared
the Venus on the cover of his snuff-box with the delicately-tinted
shoulders of her grace.
“As sure,” he said slowly, “as Madame the Dauphine is dead, rest her
poor German soul, and that Monsieur the Dauphin will marry again.”
It was Sunday evening a good year after Fontenoy. The Court was
just out of mourning, to its great joy, and the Salon de la Paix at
Versailles blazed with lights and with the jewels and silks of a
brilliant throng, a few of whom were dispersed in groups making love
or talking scandal over their chocolate, while the greater part were
playing cards, the ladies at the fashionable _brélan_, the men at the
dice which led to duels and mortgaged estates.
“It will be the deuce for the peace negotiations,” Philippe Comte de
Mont Rouge remarked, scowling at the Abbé for no other reason than that
he was condemned to sit at this table while Denise, the favourite of
the Queen’s maids of honour, was talking in an alcove behind his back
to the Chevalier de St. Amant.
“Go you, my dear Abbé,” said the Comtesse, “and bring Des Forges and
St. Benôit here. Your news will excite them more than throwing three
sixes running.”
“And,” added the Duchess in her pouting staccato, “put your head into
the gallery yonder, dear friend, and see if my husband has finished his
flirtation with that pretty wench of mine.”
“And if he hasn’t, Duchess?”
“Give them a plenary absolution and let them begin all over again,”
interposed the Comtesse.
“To be sure,” the Duchess assented plaintively, “it will keep them both
out of worse mischief. Really I cannot dismiss the girl. She washes my
lace to perfection.” And she resettled the delicate trimming on her
corsage for the benefit of the Comte de Mont Rouge.
“Well, what is it?” St. Benôit demanded.
The Abbé took a fresh pinch of snuff. “The messenger,” he said with no
little excitement, “the messenger who was conveying secret instructions
from the King to the army in Flanders was found last night in a ditch
near Vincennes drugged, his arms and feet bound, and----”
“The despatches gone?”
“Naturally.”
The Comte des Forges meditatively licked his signet ring. “I knew
something d-dreadful had hap-happened,” he stammered. “Why ever should
I only be able to t-throw twos to-to-night?”
“What do you make of that?” asked Mont Rouge.
St. Benôit appeared to study his uniform of the Chevau-légers de la
Garde in the mirror. His eye rested on Denise and her companion. “The
second time in the last three months,” he muttered. “What does the
courier say?”
“Say,” repeated the Comtesse des Forges, “say! Not a word, you may
swear. The fool knows nothing till he woke to find a gag in his mouth
and two peasants glaring at him as if he were the devil.”
“Pontchartrain,” remarked the Duchess, “is sure the man fell in with a
siren at the cabaret where he had his supper. Pontchartrain knows most
of the cabarets and all the sirens.”
“Wait, wait,” pursued the Abbé. “The courier was carrying not merely
army despatches, but,” his voice dropped, “a private cipher message
from His Majesty to the agent of the Jacobites.”
St. Benôit so forgot the etiquette of the Salon de la Paix as to
whistle softly.
“B-by Jove!” stammered Des Forges.
“They say,” whispered the Abbé to his enthralled audience, “that the
message was an invitation to Prince Charles Edward to ignore the King’s
explicit promise to the English ambassador and to present himself at
Versailles.”
“Dear Prince!” exclaimed the Duchess. “If only he would come to Court
I believe I could make Pontchartrain jealous and still have my lace
washed by Françoise.”
“I should kiss him, yes I should kiss him, the royal hero. You agree,
Des Forges?” cried the Comtesse. “The English--pah! I would do anything
to spite the English for their treachery to their lawful Prince.”
“But your kisses, _ma mie_,” replied her husband, “w-would only keep
the P-prince from g-going again to seek his c-crown.”
“Pray what does the Comte des Forges know of madame’s kisses?” asked
the Duchess innocently, and they all laughed, no one more heartily than
the Comtesse herself.
“And this is serious,” said St. Benôit, “even more serious than the
kisses of Madame la Comtesse.”
“And the King is really angry,” the Comtesse said. “M. d’Argenson came
away from his audience this morning looking as if he had stolen the
despatches himself.”
“And His Majesty remained on his knees at mass ten minutes after
every one else had risen,” said the Abbé; “he always does when he is
thoroughly angry.”
“I told you it would play the devil with the peace negotiations,” Mont
Rouge commented.
“It is curious,” mused St. Benôit, “very curious that this infernal
treason should begin again just when the Chevalier de St. Amant has
returned to his duties.”
“The Chevalier?” they all questioned eagerly.
“Do you remember the night before Fontenoy,” St. Benôit continued,
“when our friend André de Nérac saved the army from foul treachery?
Well, I never could get the whole truth from him, but he allowed me to
infer that the Chevalier was playing a very fishy part in the business.”
“Impossible,” protested the Duchess. “The Chevalier is on our side--the
Queen’s side--the right side.”
“The Marquise de Beau Séjour, I suppose,” sneered the Comtesse, “is
guarantee for that.”
“That is not worthy of you, dear lady,” St. Benôit corrected gently,
looking into her great blue eyes as he had looked twelve months ago.
“Mademoiselle de Beau Séjour is Mademoiselle de Beau Séjour. It will
take more than a parvenu Italian chevalier to make her forget she is
of the same quality and sex as the Comtesse des Forges. But I would
wager a diamond bracelet to a sou that either the Chevalier is at the
bottom of this dirty business--or,” he delicately sniffed at his lace
handkerchief as one who feared infection, “or that woman.”
“Poisson-Pompadour, a fishy grisette,” sniggered Des Forges, playing on
the name, “at the b-bottom of a f-fishy business--eh?”
“The Abbé can give us news again,” remarked Mont Rouge sweetly. “He
attended the grisette’s toilet this morning.”
“Impossible!” the Comtesse exclaimed with sincere anger.
“He blushes, our dear friend,” pursued the remorseless Mont Rouge,
“blushes a rose de Pompadour. Ha! ha!” The hit went home. Rose de
Pompadour was the new colour invented in honour of the King’s favourite
at the world-famed royal manufactory at Sèvres.
“The Duc de Pontchartrain was there too,” retorted the Abbé sulkily.
“That,” pouted the Duchess, “is a worse insult to me than if----”
“Than what, _ma mignonne_?” blandly inquired his Grace, who had stolen
in upon the group. “I would have you know, ladies, that in a white
peignoir, with her hair about her bare shoulders, the Marquise de
Pompadour is the prettiest woman save one at Versailles, or Paris for
that matter.”
“Every one,” laughed the Abbé, “knows that Monsieur le Duc is a
connoisseur of painting.”
“And the name of the other divine grisette?” asked the Comtesse
roguishly, for the Duke was studying her as he studied the _coryphées_
of the opera or his race-horses.
The Duke kissed the plump fingers of his wife with the most charming
grace imaginable. “The mirror will answer Madame la Duchesse,” quoth he.
“But my peignoir is blue,” she protested, “and even Françoise could
tell you my shoulders on such occasions never are bare.”
“The more’s the pity.” St. Benôit bowed to the diamonds on her breast.
“Amen!” droned the Abbé in the officiating priest’s sing-song, and the
Duchess dimpled with delight.
“The Abbé has not told you,” said the Duke, “how he sat on the f-fishy
grisette’s bed. He is a bold man our spiritual friend. Listen. There
were we all at madame’s toilet this morning--charming shoulders she has
I repeat--and kept standing on our feet were we, for she is royal now
is the Marquise, and no one may have a chair.”
“The insolence of the jade,” cried the Comtesse. “That Versailles
should endure it!”
“And presently strides in the King. No chair for him either. _Parbleu!_
My legs were breaking and so apparently were the Abbé’s. Presently I
heard a crack, and there had our witty friend plumped himself down
right on Madame’s bed. ‘With your permission, sire,’ he said with a
comic cock of his eye, ‘but I am dead tired.’ And the King, who had
come in as sulky as a bear, burst into laughter. ‘Look, Madame,’ he
said, ‘look at this poor devil of an Abbé!’”
“And the Pompadour?”
“She shrugged her bare shoulders and laughed too, because the King was
amused, but she put back her ears, very pretty ears, by the way, like
a vicious horse. My faith! she will not forget ‘this poor devil of an
Abbé.’”
“My friend, I could embrace you,” cried the Duchess.
“If you would only do it again,” said the Comtesse, “I would embrace
you, too.”
“Do you remember De Nérac’s prophecy,” St. Benôit asked quietly, “that
if that woman came to Versailles she would come to stay?”
“Ah! if only some one would poison her,” murmured the Duchess.
“Or another take her place,” cried the Comtesse.
“For the good of the country,” interposed the Duke, “I am quite ready
to sacrifice the Duchess, even though she----”
“This is no jesting matter,” St. Benôit interrupted sharply. “The
Queen and the ministers know that unless we can ruin this jade of the
_bourgeoisie_ France and we will be ruined. I wish to heaven André de
Nérac were here instead of risking his life in Flanders to no purpose
than the glory of the Pompadour.”
“A miracle, a miracle!” cried the Duchess, pointing with her fan.
At the end of the salon a little knot of excited courtiers had
gathered, and in their midst stood the Vicomte de Nérac.
For a minute or two he halted, gazing about him with a slightly dazed
air. The brilliant lights, the jewels and bare shoulders of the ladies,
the uniforms and stars of the men, the rattle of the dice and the
clatter of a hundred idle tongues seemed to awe him, familiar though he
was with the scene. It was pleasant in this heavily-perfumed air with
the flash of the candelabra on his riding cloak, faded uniform, and
dusty boots, and on his tanned face, to mark the singularly bracing and
vivid contrast that he presented to the luxurious idlers of his world.
His eye had fallen on Denise. His shoulders straightened, his lips
tightened, unconsciously.
“Depend on it,” St. Benôit whispered to the Duke. “André’s appearance
has something to do with this damnable treachery.”
“Or,” added the Duke quietly, “with the schemes of that fishy grisette.
The post of the master of her household is vacant.”
André was soon basking in the smiles of his lady friends, proud to
welcome a hero who had saved an army of France. Ten minutes showed that
he knew nothing of the mysterious affair at Vincennes, and he could
only repeat that he had been summoned to Versailles by the express
commands of his Sovereign. Why and for what he was ignorant.
The ladies in particular as they babbled watched him closely. Eighteen
months of campaigning had not robbed his smile of its charm nor his
dark eyes of their eloquent reserve. He was still the André de Nérac
who had made more husbands jealous, more women rivals, than even the
Duc de Richelieu. For Mademoiselle Claire, for Mademoiselle Eugénie,
and the other maids of honour he had a bow and the finished compliment
so dear to Versailles; he had even a friendly nod for the Chevalier de
St. Amant. But to Denise’s curtsey a cold and correct salute in silence
was all he deigned to reply. The rebuke made the eyes of the Comtesse
des Forges very bright; indeed, it set the Salon de la Paix gossiping
when he withdrew to remove the stains of his hard riding.
“This will ruin everything,” St. Benôit muttered, for he had both fears
and plans in his head. So that when André and Denise suddenly met in
the half-lights of the empty gallery neither knew the meeting was due
to a friendly schemer.
The quick flush in Denise’s cheeks (she ravished the gay blades of
Versailles by scorning powder and paint), the dropping of her grey
eyes, sent a thrill into the soldier’s heart, but he kept a resolute
silence.
“Madame your mother,” Denise began with an effort, “will be proud to
welcome you back. Do you stay long at Versailles?” she added hurriedly,
when he simply bowed.
“I do not know, Mademoiselle; I await His Majesty’s commands.”
“You are perhaps sorry to return?”
“I cannot tell--yet,” he replied with slow emphasis.
Denise flashed an inquiring glance. “What you will find here,” she
said hurriedly, “cannot please a noble of France. A neglected and
dishonoured queen--an adventuress----”
“We are in the King’s hands,” André interrupted with a dry smile.
“Yes. Versailles, France, are in the King’s hands,” she repeated
despairingly. “Ah!” she cried with a sudden flash, “we want all who
would help to--to--” the words died away under the chill of his
demeanour.
“To banish the Marquise de Pompadour?” he inquired after a pause.
“Yes. There will be no peace nor honour for France until the Queen, my
mistress, is restored to her place and that woman ceases to traffic in
the affairs of a great kingdom.”
“I dare say you are right, Mademoiselle. Perhaps it is your business.
It certainly is not mine.”
“Not yours? Why not? Are you not one of us, a soldier, a noble?”
“Doubtless, but,” he shrugged his shoulders, “I at least cannot forget
that a worthless libertine----”
“I had hoped you had forgotten those words; you are cruel,” she
interrupted, “you who have shown----”
“Say no more,” he exclaimed joyfully. “I _have_ forgotten and I ask
you to forgive. I was rude as well as cruel. Yes, I have come back as
I swore I would to prove that I might be worthy of your regard, your
love, Denise.”
He gently touched her hand and raised it to his lips.
“Of my love,” she said quietly, “you must not speak, if you please. But
my regard you have already won in Flanders. And, André,” she continued
earnestly, “there is work for you to do here. You will help us--us who
would--ah!”
She broke off sharply, for one of the ushers of the King’s bed-chamber
had swiftly come upon them.
“Monsieur le Vicomte,” he said, “His Majesty desires you to wait upon
him at once in the salon of Madame la Marquise de Pompadour.”
“But--” André looked at his travel-stained cloak and boots.
“His Majesty desired Monsieur le Vicomte to attend just as he was.”
“Adieu,” Denise whispered, “and do not forget to-night that you are a
noble and soldier of France.”
André turned angrily to obey, for the message from those pleading grey
eyes had stirred all the fierce pride of his class. Confound this
_bourgeoise_ woman who ordered nobles to dance attendance in her salon!
“I will not forget, Denise,” he whispered back and his spurs rang
defiance on the staircase which led to the second floor, where the
favourite so loathed by the Court held sway.