THE HEART OF THE POMPADOUR
AFTER he had left Denise the Chevalier walked for some time in the
empty gallery up and down, up and down, striving to master the strong
emotion within. But when at last he made his way into the gardens he
was once more the jaunty dare-devil cynic whose fine blue eyes had
made many a Court beauty feel that even the veteran Vicomte de Nérac
had lessons to learn in the art of courtship. By the same Fountain
of Neptune where he had met Denise the Chevalier now found a woman
waiting, as indeed he expected. Yet, greeting scarcely passed between
them.
“You were right,” he began with bitter brevity, “and you have had your
way.”
The woman pondered on the reply. “Yes,” she said presently. “I knew I
was right. She loves him. And you?” she added, with a swift touch of
anxiety.
“I shall finish what I have begun,” he answered with calm
determination. “It will cost me my life, perhaps, but,” his tone was
savagely reckless, “revenge is better than love.”
The woman put her hand on his arm with affectionate entreaty. “Why
not,” she asked, “why not give it all up? It is becoming too dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Of course. But it is too late to draw back, and I will keep
my oath now--now,” he repeated, lingering on the word, “if I perish
to-morrow.” He put his hand quietly on her shoulder and looked into her
eyes. “You, too, some day will come to believe that revenge is better
than love.”
“At least we have no choice,” she answered with a cruel little laugh.
“Don’t! don’t,” the Chevalier whispered, in a sudden tenderness. “What
does it matter for me? but you--you--I can’t bear it for you.”
“It is fate,” she said very quietly, “your fate and mine.”
With his arm about her she stood in silence for no small while. They
were both thinking their own thoughts, and they were not pleasant.
“Are you quite sure he loves her?” the Chevalier asked.
“I shall know for certain before many days,” she answered, “although a
woman feels sure now.”
They parted, as they had met, without greeting, but had the Chevalier
followed her he would have seen that the woman went in the direction of
“The Cock with the Spurs of Gold.” It was probably because he already
knew this that he returned to the palace.
All this time Denise had sat crushed and sad, alone in the
antechamber. Nor did she know that André had stood for some minutes in
the doorway looking at her, had twice stepped forward to speak, had
twice restrained himself, and finally had left her to her tears and her
silence.
But the one person whom he did not desire to meet found him out by
accident at that moment.
“Vicomte,” the Comtesse des Forges called softly, “will you do me a
favour?”
André smiled with skilful hypocrisy. The Comtesse was looking her best,
and her heavy-lidded eyes were bright with admiration and an exquisite
suggestion of self-surrender. “A favour,” she repeated, “which is also
a secret. You will promise not to betray me.”
André took her hand to his lips for answer. The jewel on the lady’s
breast gently rose and fell, echoing tenderly the coy trembling of her
fingers. It was not the first time these two had played with passion,
heedless of the future, but André swiftly recognised that this evening
it would not be play, pastime, or pleasure.
“We have a petition to the King,” the Comtesse said in her silkiest
tones, “a petition from the Court praying His Majesty to dismiss that
woman, and we want you to present it. His Majesty will listen to you
more than to any other.”
André still held her hand; the devotion in his face was intended to
conceal his thoughts. For the crisis that he feared had come. This
petition to the King from the Court was also an ultimatum to himself
from his friends.
“It will be useless,” he said gently, “the petition.”
“No--no! You can succeed with the King--you! André,” she pleaded with
a thrill of genuine passion, “do it to please me. You know I can be
grateful.”
“I cannot,” he replied, controlling himself, “not even to please you,
Gabrielle.”
“You will desert your friends and me--me?” she asked, a menace creeping
into her languorous voice. “André, it is impossible, surely impossible.”
“I cannot present the petition,” he answered.
Jealousy, fear, anger, swept the passion out of her eyes. “You are
afraid?” she demanded, with biting scorn.
“Yes, I am afraid,” he assented, and if the Comtesse had not lost her
self-control she must have detected the delicate irony in his grave bow.
“Ah!” she stepped back. “Ah! If Denise had asked you, you would have
consented.”
“No,” he corrected with a freezing pride. “I would not permit the
Marquise de Beau Séjour even to make the request.”
The answer surprised and delighted her. Yet, woman though she was, the
Comtesse failed to read what lay behind it, and in her determination
to win she now made a stupid mistake. “I would save you, André,” she
whispered, “because--” she laid a jewelled hand on his sleeve and
dropped her eyes slowly. “They will ruin you unless you consent.”
Why break with the past, the present, and the future? André hesitated,
but only for a moment.
“I cannot present the petition,” he answered curtly.
“Very well,” she shrugged her shoulders in disdainful wrath. “Very
well. I shall not ask you a second time. You understand; so do I.”
“Adieu!” he said, raising her fingers, but she snatched them back and
swept him a cold curtsey.
“_Soit!_” André was saying to himself as his spurs rang in the empty
corridor, “_c’est la guerre! Soit!_” The die was cast. Madame de
Pompadour was his only friend now. Henceforward the Court, his friends,
his class, the women whom he had loved, would be his bitterest foes.
And it was to that one friend that he now turned. Yet, careful as he
was, he was unaware that the Comtesse had followed him stealthily,
had marked his entry by the secret door, and returned to the Duke of
Pontchartrain with the news.
Madame de Pompadour was alone. “You have something to say?” she
questioned eagerly.
André related what had just passed and Madame laughed. “Ah, my friend,”
she remarked gaily, “it will need more than a petition to-day.” She
flung herself back into her chair, her wonderful eyes ablaze with a
magnificently carnal consciousness of victorious beauty and power.
“And the Vicomte de Nérac cannot go back now,” she added with a sudden
gravity. “The priests, the nobles, the officers might forgive you, but
a woman, a comtesse, will neither forget nor forgive, never, never!”
“Yes, Madame,” André said, “I am in your hands.”
Madame de Pompadour moved swiftly towards him. “And I in yours,” she
whispered.
The perfect music of her voice, the grace of her figure, the flash in
her eyes, were irresistible. Compared with this radiant, triumphant
goddess of a royal love, even Gabrielle des Forges seemed a bloodless,
heartless puppet.
“I have more to say,” André proceeded, “I verily believe I am on the
track of ‘No. 101.’” She turned sharply, her breath came quickly.
“Yvonne,” she added, “Yvonne is proving very useful. I have learned
from her that the English have a spy, an agent in Paris, that he
frequents ‘The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,’ that he has a paid servant
at the palace. Before long I mean to have that spy in fetters, and
then----” he laughed.
“Good--good!” Madame clapped her hands. “It is only what I suspected.
And the wench, Yvonne, is she in it?”
“She is a simple girl, Madame, and I cannot say yet. But in another
week I shall know more.”
“Do not be in a hurry. It is pleasant cajoling the truth from a wench,
_n’est-ce pas?_ We must act with extreme caution, it is a matter of
life and death for you and me. I, too, have not been idle. Listen. The
King’s secret is mine.”
André looked at her sorely puzzled. Madame invited him to sit beside
her on the settee. “What is that secret?” she began. “Simply this:
Behind the ministers’ backs, contrary indeed to their despatches and
their public statements, His Majesty is intriguing with the Jacobites
and others too. More, His Majesty both in Paris and elsewhere spies on
his own servants and frequently thwarts them. The Chevalier was his
secretary and confidant. But there will be no more Chevalier. There
will henceforth only be,” she sprung up with a dramatic gesture, “the
Marquise de Pompadour.”
“But why,” asked André slowly, “why does His Majesty do it?”
“God knows. It is his foible, his passion. But so long as he had
secrets from me I was in constant peril. To-day I have learned all that
there is to know; and now,” she paused, “and now, please Heaven, the
King will be in my hands alone.”
André was beginning to understand. “The King, in fact,” he commented,
“says one thing to the English ministers who desire peace and another
to the Jacobites; that may prove desperately dangerous if it is
discovered.”
“Exactly. And the master of his secret is master of His Majesty. Ah,
my friend, my foes are learning that already, but it will need some
sharper lessons before they submit. They shall have those lessons, I
promise you. I have accepted the challenge of the Court and we shall
see what we shall see.”
“Yes, Madame,” André said with sincere admiration, “you will be what
you desire to be, the ruler of France.”
Madame de Pompadour drifted into a silent reverie. The dreams could be
read in her parted lips and faint smile as the soft light played on
every supple curve which this woman’s genius knew how to suggest with
such subtle restraint.
“But one person can destroy me,” she remarked presently; “‘No. 101.’”
André was startled by the gravity of her voice. “It is the truth,” she
was speaking now with nervous rapidity. “If, which God forbid, the
King’s secret intrigues are betrayed by treachery, to save his honour
and himself he will, must, find a victim. That victim will be I. Yes,
yes, I know the game is dangerous, but play it I must because the King
insists. Vicomte, ‘No. 101’ must never, _never_ succeed in securing any
of the King’s secrets as has happened in the past.”
“Surely, Madame, you and I can prevent that.”
“Can we? Can we? Vicomte, I am not a coward nor a fool, but I feel in
the poisonous air of this Court, surrounded by deadly enemies, my fate
at the mercy of the King’s caprice, that I am fighting not with flesh
and blood but with a foe mysterious, superhuman, invincible. And I
repeat, should the King’s secret be betrayed by ‘No. 101’ to my enemies
I am ruined.”
“I am confident,” André answered, “that not only can I baffle that
traitor but that I can discover him.”
Madame de Pompadour studied his calm, handsome face. Then the room
seemed suddenly to swim in the glories of a golden dawn. “My friend,”
she cried, holding out both her hands impulsively, “I believe you. Did
not Fontenoy teach me you are a man?”
“And it taught me--” he began softly.
“Hush!” she rippled over into an adorable coquetry. “You are not the
King yet, not yet, though--” it was the _vivandière_ of Fontenoy whose
saucy eyes and curtsey finished the sentence.
“When you are victorious, Madame,” André said, “I shall ask for one
favour.”
“Tut! only one! Dare I grant it beforehand?”
She was now the refined Marquise of a remorselessly critical Versailles.
“You can take your revenge on the Court, Madame, as you please, but you
must spare,” she put down her fan and waited anxiously, “the Marquise
de Beau Séjour.”
There was silence for a minute.
“A woman, a haughty, petted beauty,” she murmured, “and my bitterest
foe. Are you aware that Mademoiselle Denise is the soul of the party
that would destroy me, the close friend of the Chevalier de St. Amant,
and no friend to you.”
“Yes, I know it all.”
Madame de Pompadour came close to him. “She is not worthy of you,” she
said quietly, “she does not love you.”
“Madame, I love her.”
“And if I refuse to forego my just vengeance on her?” she awaited his
answer with anxiety wreathed in tempting smiles.
“I will share her fate if she will permit it,” he answered simply.
“Chivalrous fool!” she retorted, and she was not wholly jesting. “No
woman is worth the sacrifice of such a man as you.”
“Pardon, Madame. Every man who loves a woman perhaps is a fool, but the
folly is a folly inspired by God and it leads to heaven.”
The answer surprised her and for the moment she faltered between tears
and laughter. “I will not ask again,” André said in a low voice, “for I
trust you, Marquise. Adieu!”
She hardly heeded his salute, and André was already in the dark on the
secret stairs when he felt a sharp touch on his shoulder. “Be loyal to
me, too!” she whispered pleadingly into his ear. “Give me your hand,”
and she laid it on her breast. In the darkful hush André could feel the
fierce beating of that insurgent, ambitious heart.
“Swear,” she whispered. “Swear with your hand there that you will be
loyal also to me, to Antoinette de Pompadour.”
“I swear.” Two words, but two words between a man and a woman can sweep
a soul into hell or lift it to heaven.
“The heart of the Pompadour,” she murmured. “Can any man or woman
read it? Can she read it herself? God knows. Take care, take care of
yourself, my friend,” she added with a sudden wistful pathos. “You
alone I can trust. Adieu!”
“The heart of the Pompadour,” André muttered as he stole back to the
Queen’s apartments. “The heart of the Pompadour.” What, indeed, was
there not written there of passion and ambition? Only a woman’s heart.
Yes, but one of the half-dozen women, in the history of the world,
the beatings of whose heart have shaped the destinies of peoples and
moulded the fate of kingdoms.