MADAME DE VALENÇAY
The gayety and racketing went on during the whole year at one place or
another--the Château de Belgarde, other châteaus, Paris and Versailles.
Trimousette saw Madame de Valençay oftener than any other woman of her
acquaintance. Madame de Valençay was fairly polite, but in her eyes
and smile lurked a kind of insolence which the reticent young duchess
understood quite well, but of which she made not the slightest sign.
She had no more liberty and not much more money as Duchess of Belgarde
than when she lived in her grandmother’s house as a little demoiselle.
There was much to buy and to give, and besides, ever since King Louis
the Sixteenth called the States General together, the peasants had
refused to pay their rents and even their taxes, and the work people
demanded their money with threats and curses. So far from having a
thousand louis d’ors with which to pay Victor’s debts, the poor little
duchess had only managed, by skimping and saving in her own personal
expenses, to scrape together three hundred louis--and it was so little
she was ashamed to offer it to Victor.
A year after her marriage Trimousette disappointed and offended the
duke very much by bringing into the world a daughter. A son would have
been welcomed; but a girl--well, the poor little thing, as if knowing
she was not wanted by anyone except her young mother, soon wailed her
life away. Trimousette grieved as one whose heart was broken, and wore
nothing but black. This still more annoyed the duke, but on this point
alone Trimousette showed a slight obstinacy. The duke wished her to
go about, to visit Versailles, to be seen at the theatre. The young
duchess humbly obeyed these instructions, but not in the spirit the
duke desired. Trimousette’s heart, poor lonely captive, beat against
its prison bars, and made its melancholy cry a little heard; then grew
silent.
She led a life singularly lonely for a great lady who received twice in
the week, and who went to a ball nearly every night. Her grandmother
thought she had done enough in marrying Trimousette off to one of the
greatest dukes in France, and gave herself up to sermons, taking no
more thought of her granddaughter. Victor had his own amusements, as
became an officer of the Queen’s Musketeers and a gay dog. Only the
poor, broken-legged hound Diane seemed to seek Trimousette’s company,
and together the two creatures who loved the duke listened for his
footsteps, and hung timidly upon his words.
But there was so great a noise of other things in Paris that private
woes were not much heeded. It was impossible for a lady to walk without
molestation upon the streets full of turbulent people, and it was
actually dangerous to drive about in a ducal coach. The pavements were
thronged by hungry creatures, both men and women, with menacing eyes,
and threatening, yelling voices, who had been known to scream and flout
ladies in their carriages, and to drag gentlemen from their horses and
maltreat them. Once Madame de Valençay, seeing Trimousette preparing
to go forth somewhat unwillingly in her coach, hinted that perhaps the
duchess was afraid.
“Not in the least, madame,” answered Trimousette quietly. “Perhaps you
will join me in my coach and drive with me to the Palais Royal.”
Madame de Valençay was so stunned by this proposal that she accepted
it, the duke standing by and wondering if his taciturn young duchess
had not lost her wits.
The two ladies were assisted into the coach, which set off toward the
Palais Royal. It was about seven in the evening when the work of the
day was over and the streets were fullest of these ragged, starving
beings who had found voice at last, and shouted out the story of their
rags, their hunger, their misery, and their determination to punish
somebody for it. The splendid coach and six of the Duchess of Belgarde
was like showing a red rag to a bull. The mob surrounded it, hooting
and screaming, and wrenched the whips from the hands of the coachmen
and postilions, and the canes from the three footmen hanging on behind.
Madame de Valençay, who had started out laughing and defiant, grew
pale and then frightened, and when a wretched woman, with the glare of
famine in her eyes, dragged the coach door open and tore the ribbons
from Madame de Valençay’s hat, that lady fell to whimpering and almost
fainting with terror. Not so little Trimousette. It had been complained
of her often that she was too silent and impassive, and she remained
so now, giving no sign whatever of fear or uneasiness. She even smiled
with a faint contempt at Madame de Valençay’s terrors, and refused to
give orders for the coachman to return to the Hôtel de Belgarde until
they had made the circuit of the Palais Royal. When they returned, the
duke was awaiting them in the courtyard of the hotel. He was wondering
what would be the next miracle. Madame de Valençay had been so terribly
scared that she could not disguise it, and clamored to have not only
the duke, but all the men servants in the hotel to escort her home.
She looked a wreck, did this beautiful, gayly gowned lady, with her
hat in fragments, her fan broken, her clothes almost torn off her by
the furious, yelling, laughing crowd of women in the streets. Not so
Trimousette, in her sedate black gown, better suited to eighty than
eighteen.
“I was not at all frightened,” she said to the duke, and if she had
not been so shy, she would have told him all about it. The coachmen
and footmen did this, however, and slyly, after the manner of their
kind, brought the duchess’s calm courage into contrast with Madame de
Valençay’s undignified screams and pleadings.
The duke, who was insensible to fear himself, expected courage in
women, and was secretly disgusted with Madame de Valençay. Besides,
like most ladies of her sort, she was beginning to hound the duke
with what she called her love. It had grown more insistent since his
marriage to the quiet little Trimousette, who appeared not to know
there was such a thing as faithlessness in the world. The duke chafed
a little under Madame de Valençay’s shameless pursuit of him. Not
being a courageous woman she did not venture into the streets when the
people became turbulent; but they were not always turbulent, the poor,
starving people. Although herself often afraid to go out, Madame de
Valençay did not mind sending out her running footmen, and the Duke of
Belgarde could scarcely leave his own door without a lackey in Madame
de Valençay’s livery poking a scented pink note at him. The duke ground
his teeth, and dimly recognized that his friend, as he called her,
harassed and worried him, and indeed hen-pecked him more in two weeks
than his pale, quiet little duchess had done in the whole two years of
their married life. Nevertheless, Madame de Valençay’s glorious and
vivid beauty enchanted him, and made him sometimes forget Trimousette’s
very existence. He even forgot to compliment her little feet, which
Trimousette still, with a faint, foolish hope in her heart, dressed in
charming little shoes, the only patch of coquetry or vanity about her.
The people, meanwhile, were growing more and more unruly, and at last
one day a mob of dressmakers, washerwomen, cooks, and the like, headed
by a tall, red-faced laundress, almost as fierce as the old Countess
of Floramour, began a round of domiciliary visits to persons who owed
them money. They went to many hotels, including that of Madame de
Valençay, who ordered all the doors to be double locked, and ran up to
her bedroom, where she remained cowering and terrified, but unable to
escape the menaces and shouts of the crowd of haggard, savage women
in the courtyard, demanding their money to keep their children from
starving. They got nothing, however.
Next, they visited the old Countess of Floramour, who came down boldly
enough to them, but gave them a sermon instead of money. She exhorted
them to live by Bible texts, and was indignant when the big red-faced
laundress replied that they could neither eat nor wear the Bible.
Thence the riotous women invaded the courtyard of the splendid Hôtel
de Belgarde. They had grown more noisy and the _dames de compagnie_ of
the duchess begged her not to go down to them. But Trimousette was of
all things least a coward, and taking from her escritoire the little
bag of gold she had saved up to pay Victor’s debts, descended the grand
staircase into the sunny courtyard, where the mob clamored and abused
the powdered and silk-stockinged footmen. Something in the aspect of
this pale, soft-eyed little duchess in her black gown, her hair tied
with a black ribbon, moved the wild hearts of these savage women, and
her voice, trembling and embarrassed, made them keep quiet in order to
hear her.
“It is all I have,” she said, blushing and stammering as she handed
the bag to the big red laundress; “it is only a little more than three
hundred louis, and is not enough to pay you. If I had any more, I would
be glad to give it to you.”
The crowd of women looked at her in surprise; she was the first great
lady they had visited so far who had given them a franc. The fierce
laundress became almost civil when she took the bag from Trimousette’s
hands.
“We ask for our money, for we are starving. My little child died last
week because I have not for a year past had money enough to give her
good food. What do you think of that, madame?” she cried, her red face
suddenly growing pale and fiercer.
“My little child died last year,” answered Trimousette, looking at the
woman before her with the kinship of motherhood; and then covering her
face with her hands, she burst into weeping.
The mob was hungry and savage and ragged and hated duchesses in
general, but at the sight of the tears of this black-robed, pale
young girl they remained silent. The washerwoman wiped her eyes with
her apron, laid her hand on the arm of the weeping duchess, and said
roughly:
“It is like this with all of us, we women, duchesses and washerwomen
alike. Every one of us has a little pair of wooden shoes, or a cap, or
something that belonged to a dead child. But ours died because we could
not buy them enough to eat.”
The little duchess wept again at this, but presently drying her eyes,
she said:
“I will do all I can to pay you.”
Trimousette did not think it necessary to mention this adventure to
the duke. She did not see him every day even when he was in Paris, and
besides, when she tried to tell him things, she always grew frightened
and the words died upon her lips. The servants, however, told the
duke of it when he came home in the evening. He had spent most of
the intervening time trying to quiet Madame de Valençay, who was in
paroxysms of terror. The duke grew every day more bored by his friend,
and concluded to spend the evening at home, in order to escape Madame
de Valençay and her scoundrelly running footmen, who watched his
comings and goings as if he were a criminal.
For the third or fourth time since his marriage he sought, of his own
free will, his wife’s society. She spent her evenings in a little
room on the ground floor of the Hôtel de Belgarde which opened upon
the garden. When Trimousette heard the duke’s knock, she thought
it was Victor’s and ran to open the door. The sight of her husband
disconcerted her so that she stopped and hesitated awkwardly, quite
unlike Madame de Valençay, who could not be awkward if she tried.
Diane, the broken-legged hound, who was Trimousette’s constant
companion, licked the duke’s hand, and gave a soft whine of delight.
Trimousette, whose heart fluttered whenever she saw her husband, was
undemonstrative and inarticulate. The duke, after politely greeting his
duchess, and patting Diane’s head, walked to the fireplace, where a
little blaze crackled. The time was September, and there was an autumn
sharpness in the air.
“I am afraid you were alarmed to-day by that mob of wretched women,”
said the duke presently, as he warmed his hands at the fire, the mantel
mirror reflecting his handsome face and figure.
“No,” replied Trimousette timidly, “I was not frightened.”
The duke stroked his chin reflectively. Silent women like his duchess
were sometimes preferable to those who shrieked and screamed at the
least provocation, like his friend Madame de Valençay.
Having said so much Trimousette picked up her embroidery frame
and, seating herself, began to embroider. The duke, looking at her,
congratulated himself that she had lost the habit of blushing and
starting every time he spoke to her, which, for a while after his
marriage, made him apprehend that she might fall in love with him and
that would have been excessively annoying. Meanwhile, Trimousette’s
heart was palpitating faintly, and her black eyes were cast down
because she was too embarrassed to look up.
“I think,” said the duke, “it would be as well to go to the Château de
Belgarde a little earlier this year.”
He was thinking that he must get away for a time from Madame de
Valençay’s cursed running footmen perpetually chasing him with her pink
notes. Trimousette felt a sudden access of courage, which nerved her to
say, almost boldly:
“Would it not be pleasanter to go to Boury?”
“That little dungeon in Brittany!” cried the duke, laughing.
“But it is so quiet and peaceful there,” continued Trimousette,
blushing at her own boldness. “I think I--I--should like to go to
Boury.”
It was the first time since their marriage that she had ever proffered
a request; and the duke, like most imperial masters, was sometimes
capable of a generous action. Besides, it occurred to him that Madame
de Valençay would scarcely follow him to Boury.
All at once, while the duke stood hesitating, the duchess’s shyness
vanished for one brief moment, and she became positively eloquent.
“I know all about it,” she said, clasping her hands eagerly; “it is by
the sea, and there is a garden running to the cliffs, with plants so
hardy that even the fierce sea winds cannot kill them. And there are
beautiful woods and fields, and you--I--we could read in the mornings,
and in the afternoons you could go out with your fowling piece, and
in the evenings--” She stopped, trembling and quite unable to put into
words the enchanting dream that rose before her. The quiet evenings
tête-à-tête with the duke, he reading perhaps--he sometimes read the
works of Monsieur Voltaire and Monsieur Rousseau. And she would sit
by working at her tambour frame, with Diane, her faithful friend and
sympathizer, at her feet. The vision that hovered in Trimousette’s mind
was not reflected in the duke’s. He only saw that his quiet little
duchess wished very much to go to Boury, and had made the longest and
boldest speech he had ever heard from her lips.
“Then, madame,” he cried, “I will consider what you say. At all events,
we will leave Paris, and possibly we may dwell, like a pair of turtle
doves in a cage, for the space of a week at Boury.”
When the duke went out, banging the door after him, Trimousette
actually danced about the room in her joy and triumph. She would have
him at the little country place all to herself, and for one whole
week. There would be no brazen intrusion of Madame de Valençay, and
perhaps--perhaps the duke might forget her; and then would come true
that dream of the honeymoon--for Trimousette had never had a honeymoon.
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