MONSIEUR DE RÉPENTIGNY
For several days he revelled in exploring Eaux Tranquilles. He became
familiar with the paths of the gardens, the different statues and
fountains. Sweet odours continually seemed to fill his breathing. He sat
dreaming in the trellised vineries, or wandered with his host along the
walks overhung by carefully trimmed shade-trees. Sometimes he would
ramble in the park, which occupied about a mile of hill across the mere;
sometimes he strolled curiously about in the old castle, along devious
passages and from chamber to chamber, wondering at its heavily
tapestried walls, its gloomy dungeons with the water lapping just
beneath, its small windows painted with little coats of arms, and its
walls ten feet thick.
One of his strong recommendations in the eyes of de Bailleul was that he
knew a fine horse and how to ride him. The Chevalier, being lord of a
large extent of country, and a very conscientious man who sympathised
energetically with the broad-minded schemes of the Duke de la
Rochefoucauld for bettering the peasants, they did much visiting of
curés and cottagers.
"Parsangbleu," he exclaimed to Germain. "What is more simple than that
every one of the people is a man like any of the rest of us."
That was then new doctrine to society.
Just when they were starting off one day together, the Chevalier's groom
handed him a note.
While they cantered outward he perused it and commented.
"Our visitors arrive from the Palace this afternoon. One is my very
amiable friend, the Prince de Poix, of the family of the Noailles,
colonel of bodyguards to his Majesty. With him of course comes his
Princess. Make yourself agreeable to her, Germain, which is very easily
done. She is the key of the situation for you. In her charge will be
some ladies. Don't be afraid of the crinoline, my boy. There will also
be some officers of the Prince's command, the Noailles company, namely,
Baron de Grancey, Viscount Aymer d'Estaing, the Count de Bellecour, the
Marquis d'Amoreau, and the Chevalier de Blair. They lead a famous corps,
for every private in the bodyguard is a noble, and has the rank of
captain. They have come to Fontainebleau with the hunt."
The news brought Germain a shock. Since his experiences at the "Holy
Ghost" he had progressively arrived at the conviction that the only
parallel to the distinction of caste between the hereditary gentry and
all other persons as then drawn in France was the distinction between
the heavens above and the earth beneath; the distance between was
considered simply immeasurable and impassable except by the
transmigration of souls. We cannot understand the extent of it in our
day. No aristocrat is now so blind, no plebeian so humble, as to
sincerely believe the doctrine. But in that age France was steeped in
it. High refinement of manners had grown to really differentiate the
Court from the masses, and the members of the governing order were
jealous of the privileges of their circle to a degree which has no
parallel now. To be suspected of being a farmer or a merchant, no
matter how cultivated or wealthy, was to be written "ignoble." The
higher _noblesse_, making up in their own society, by the acquisitions
of descent and leisure, a delightful sphere of all that was most
fascinating in art, music, dress, and blazonry, as well as power and
fame, moved as very gods, flattered with the tenet that other classes
were an inferior species actually made out of a different clay.
Genealogy and heraldry formed a great part of education. The members of
the privileged families all wore territorial titles as their badge. The
most beggarly individual who wore the sword claimed precedence of the
most substantial citizen. Whatever name was plain, to them was base.
Now Germain's name was plain, and he knew his class was held by these
people as base. His Elysian gardens, thought he, were about to be
snatched away.
About two o'clock in the day he saw with beating heart a courier gallop
up to the staircase of the main entrance, dismount, and wait.
The Chevalier's _maître d'hôtel_ hastily caused the doors to be thrown
wide open, and the hall swarmed full of servants. De Bailleul, donning
his Grand Cross of St. Louis, placed Germain at his side, and stood at
the foot of the steps.
The Princess arrived in a sedan-chair at the head of a procession of
carriages, the first of which contained her chief servants and an abbé,
who was her reader; those following held her husband and the other
guests.
Germain blanched when he saw the latter descend. They wore that bearing
which marked their class, and the dress of each seemed to him like the
petals of some rich flower. The Canadian youth looked at them,
fascinated. At his age the soul watches eagerly from its tower (what is
a man but the tower of a soul?); each new turn of the kaleidoscope,
each new figure crossing the landscape, is bathed in the rosy glow of
morning. Yet he thought of them with a sense of imprisonment and
sadness.
"I have not known till now what I desire; alas! I am nothing."
The Chevalier assisted the Princess to alight, and, kissing her hand,
turned and said--
"Permit me, Madame, to present to your Excellency Monsieur Lecour, of
Répentigny, in Canada."
This was the crucial moment in the history of the merchant's son. As he
heard his name uttered the thought rushed into his mind how baldly and
badly it sounded. There was a second of suspense, soon over. The great
lady, arrayed in all the mountainous spread and shimmering magnificence
of the Court costume, glanced at him with formal smile and impassive
face, drew back, and made the _grande révérence_ of the woman of high
society. He noted it breathlessly, and as he returned it, full of
quick-summoned grace and courage, he heard an inner music beginning to
sound, loud, triumphant, and strange. He became seized of a new-found
confidence that he could sustain his part. Every small doing now
appeared of importance. The five Life Guards stood near. De Bailleul
introduced Germain to Baron de Grancey and went away. Grancey, not
having caught the Canadian's name, amiably asked Germain to repeat it.
He stopped, blushed, and faltered--
"Germain--Lecour----"
"De?" the Baron asked, supposing as a matter of course that a
territorial title was to follow.
Lecour, in his confusion taking the requested "de" to mean merely
"from," proceeded to utter four fatal words--
"De Répentigny en Canada."
The Baron turned to his nearest companion, and again the formula of
introduction fell on Germain's ear--
"Chevalier de Blair, I have the honour of presenting you to _Monsieur de
Répentigny_."
"Monsieur, I have the honour of saluting you," said de Blair.
Before Germain could collect his ideas he had bowed to each of the other
Guards under the name "de Répentigny."
It cannot be said that, once he had recovered his self-possession after
his narrow escape from being announced as a plebeian, any great qualms
for the present overtook him. He reasoned that the title just attributed
to him was not the result of his own seeking. Though destined to bring
on all the serious consequences which form the matter of this story and
to change a lighthearted young man into a desperate adventurer, it came
in the aspect of a petty accident, which but facilitated his reception
at the hands of the companions who crowded around him.
"Have I not seen you at Court? Were you not presented six months ago in
the Oeil de Boeuf?" inquired de Blair.
"I am only a provincial," he answered. "I know nothing of the Court."
"When I first came from Dauphiny up to Versailles," laughed the Count de
Bellecour, "I spoke such a _patois_ they thought I was a horse."
"You come from Canada? Tell us about the Revolution in the English
colonies. It is not a new affair, but we army men are always talking
about it."
Germain ventured on an epigram.
"That was simple; it was the coming of age of a continent."
"A war of liberty against oppression?"
"Rather, gentlemen, a war of human nature against human nature. We had
experience of the armies of both sides in our Province."
"Would I had been there with Lafayette!" another Guardsman cried.
"You, d'Estaing!" exclaimed Grancey. "You would cry if an Englishman
spoiled your ruffles!"
"Sir, my second shall visit you this evening!"
"Pray, you twin imitations of Modesty-in-Person, let us have a real
tragediette in steel and blood," put in d'Amoreau, the fifth Life Guard.
D'Estaing and Grancey, drawing swords, lunged at each other. D'Amoreau
and the Count de Bellecour each ran behind one of them and acted as a
second, the Chevalier de Blair standing umpire, when the Abbé, the
Princess's reader, entered. The blades were thrust, mock respectfully,
back into their scabbards, and they all bowed low to the ecclesiastic.
A short, spare man of thirty with a cadaverous face, whose sharp,
lustreless black eyes, thin projecting nose, and mouth like a sardonic
mere line, combined with a jesuitical downwardness of look, made one
feel uneasy--such was the Abbé Jude as he appeared to Germain's brief
first glance.
"Never mind, gentlemen; one less of you would not be missed," he
retorted to their obeisance.
"You would like a death-mass fee, Abbé?"
The Canadian, brought up to other customs, wondered how a priest could
be addressed with such contempt by good Catholics.
"Is he a monk or a curé?" he inquired, when the reader had passed on.
"He is nothing," answered d'Estaing, with clear eye and scornful lip.
"Paris is devastated by fellows calling themselves abbés. They have no
connection with the Church, except a hole in the top of their wigs. This
fellow is Jude, the Princess's parasite."
To Germain the Guardsmen made themselves very agreeable. The manners of
the Canadian attracted men who held that the highest human quality after
rank was to be amiable. The Baron took him violently into his heart. He
was a large, well-made fellow of a certain grand kindliness of bearing,
and wore his natural hair, which was golden. The rich-laced blue silk
tunic of the Bodyguard shone on his shoulders in ample spaces, and he
well set off the deep red facings, the gold stripes, big sleeves, and
elegant sword, the coveted uniform, loved of the loveliest and proudest
of Versailles.