meant, like a stage aside, to be duly heard and appreciated by the
audience. And yet my sisters are thought very admirably bred women, too!
But then, a woman alone--a foreigner, a stranger--surely no one would
exact courtesy to such, from "ladies of position?"
"Have you ever seen Princess Helene, the Duchess of Lemongenseidlitz,
may I ask?" Marechale inquired, hastily, to cover his wife's sneer. He's
a very good fellow, and finds the constant and inevitable society of a
saint slightly trying, and a very heavy chastisement for a few words
sillily said one morning in St. George's.
"I have seen her, monsieur--yes!"
"And is she a second Marie Antoinette?"
She laughed gayly, showing her beautiful white teeth.
"Ah, bah, monsieur! many would say that is a great deal too good a
comparison for her! A second Louise de Savoie--a second Duchesse de
Chevreuse--nay, a second Lucrezia Borgia, some would tell you. She likes
pleasure--who does not, though, except those with whom 'les raisins sont
trop verts et bons pour des goujats?'"
"What an insufferably bold person!" murmured Constance.
"Very disagreeable to meet this style of people!" returned Agneta.
And both stiffened themselves with a little more starch; and we know
that British wheats produce the stiffest starch in the world!
"Who, indeed!" cried Marechale, regardless of madame's frown. "You know
this for truth, then, of Princess Helene?"
"Ah, bah, monsieur! who knows anything for truth?" laughed the lovely
brunette. "The world dislikes truth so much, it is obliged to hide
itself in out-of-the-way corners, and very rarely comes to light. Nobody
knows the truth about her. Some think her, as you say, a second Marie
Antoinette, who is surrendered to dissipation and levity, cares for
nothing, and would dance and laugh over the dead bodies of the people.
Others judge her as others judged Marie Antoinette; discredit the
gossip, and think she is but a lively woman, who laughs at forms, likes
to amuse herself, and does not see why a court should be a prison! The
world likes the darker picture best; let it have it! I do not suppose it
will break her heart!"
And the fair stranger laughed so sweetly, that every man at the
dinner-table fell in love with her on the spot; and Lady Marechale and
Mrs. Protocol sat throughout the remainder of the meal in frozen dignity
and unbreakable silence, while the lovely brunette talked with and
smiled on us all with enchanting gayety, wit, and abandon, chatting on
all sorts of topics of the day.
Dinner over, she was the first to rise from the table, and bowed to us
with exquisite grace and that charming smile of hers, of which the
sweetest rays fell upon _me_, I swear, whether you consider the oath an
emanation of personal vanity or not, my good sir. My sisters returned
her bow and her good evening to them with that pointed stare which says
so plainly, "You are not my equal, how dare you insult me by a
courtesy?"
And scarcely had we begun to sip our coffee up-stairs in the apartments
Chanderlos had secured for the miladies Anglaises, than the duo upon her
began as the two ladies sat with Spes between them on a sofa beside one
of the windows opening on the balcony that ran round the house. A chance
inadvertent assent of Dunbar's, a propos of--oh, sin unpardonable!--the
beauty of the incognita's eyes, touched the valve and unloosened the
hot springs that were seething below in silence. "A handsome woman!--oh
yes, a gentleman's beauty, I dare say!--but a very odd person!"
commenced Mrs. Protocol. "A very strange person!" assented Mrs.
Marechale. "Very free manners!" added Agneta. "Quite French!" chorused
Constance. "She has diamond rings--paste, no doubt!" said the
Politician. "And rouges--the color's much too lovely to be natural!"
sneered the Saint. "Paints her eyebrows, too!" "Not a doubt--and tints
her lashes!" "An adventuress, I should say!" "Or worse!" "Evidently not
a proper person!" "Certainly not!"
Through the soft mellow air, hushed into evening silence, the words
reached me, as I walked through the window on to the balcony, and stood
sipping my coffee and looking lazily over the landscape wrapped in
sunset haze, over the valley where the twilight shadows were deepening,
and the mountains that were steeped yet in a rose-hued golden radiance
from the rays that had sunk behind them.
"My dear ladies," I cried, involuntarily, "can't you find anything a
little more kindly to say of a stranger who has never done you any harm,
and who, fifty to one, will never cross your path again?"
"Bravo!" echoed Marechale, who has never gone as quietly in the
matrimonial break as Protocol, and indeed will never be thoroughly
broken in--"bravo! women are always studying to make themselves
attractive; it's a pity they don't put down among the items a trifle of
generosity and charity, it would embellish them wonderfully."
Lady Marechale beat an injured tattoo with the spoon on her saucer, and
leaned back with the air of a martyr, and drawing in her lips with a
smile, whose inimitable sneer any lady might have envied--it was quite
priceless!
"It is the first time, Sir George, I should presume, that a husband and
a brother were ever heard to unite in upbraiding a wife and a sister
with her disinclination to associate with, or her averseness to
countenance, an improper person!"
"An improper person!" I cried. "But, my dear Constance, who ever told
you that this lady you are so desperately bitter upon has any fault at
all, save the worst fault in her own sex's eyes--that of beauty? I see
nothing in her; her manners are perfect; her tone----"
"You must pardon me if I decline taking your verdict on so delicate a
question," interrupted Lady Marechale, with withering satire. "Very
possibly you see nothing objectionable in her--nothing, at least, that
_you_ would call so! Your views and mine are sufficiently different on
every subject, and the women with whom I believe you have chiefly
associated are not those who are calculated to give you very much
appreciation for the more refined classes of our sex! Very possibly the
person in question is what _you_, and Sir George too, perhaps, find
charming; but you must excuse me if I really cannot, to oblige you,
stoop to countenance any one whom my intuition and my knowledge of the
world both declare so very evidently what she should not be. She will
endeavor, most probably, if she remain here, to push herself into our
acquaintance, but if you and my husband should choose to insult us by
favoring her efforts, Agneta and I, happily, can guard ourselves from
the objectionable companionship into which those who _should_ be our
protectors would wish to force us!"
With which Lady Marechale, with a little more martyrdom and an air of
extreme dignity, had recourse to her _flacon_ of Viola Montana, and sank
among the sofa cushions, a model of outraged and Spartan virtue. I set
down my coffee-cup, and lounged out again to the peace of the balcony;
Marechale shrugged his shoulders, rose, and followed me. Lo! on the
part of the balcony that ran under _her_ windows, leaning on its
balustrade, her white hand, white as the flowers, playing with the
clematis tendrils, the "paste" diamond flashing in the last rays of the
setting sun, stood our "dame d'industrie--or worse!" She was but a few
feet farther on; she must have heard Lady Marechale's and Mrs.
Protocol's duo on her demerits; she _had_ heard it, without doubt, for
she was laughing gayly and joyously, laughter that sparkled all over her
_riante_ face and flashed in her bright falcon eyes. Laughing still, she
signed me to her. I need not say that the sign was obeyed.
"Chivalrous knight, I thank you! You are a Bayard of chivalry; you
defend the absent! What a miracle, mon Dieu! Tell your friends from me
not to speak so loudly when their windows are open; and, for yourself,
rest assured your words of this evening will not be forgotten."
"I am happy, indeed, if I have been fortunate enough to obtain a chance
remembrance, but do not give me too much praise for so simple a service;
the clumsiest Cimon would be stirred into chivalry under such
inspiration as I had----"
The beautiful hazel eyes flashed smilingly on me under their lashes.
(_Those_ lashes tinted! Heaven forgive the malice of women!) She broke
off a sprig of the clematis, with its long slender leaves and fragrant
starry flowers, and gave it to me.
"_Tenez, mon ami_, if ever you see me again, show me that faded flower,
and I shall remember this evening at Vicq d'Azyr. Nay, do not flatter
yourself--do not thrust it in your breast; it is no gage d'amour! it is
only a reward for loyal service, and a souvenir to refresh my own
memory, which is treacherous sometimes, though not in gratitude to those
who serve me. Adieu, mon Bayard--et bonsoir!"
But I retained the hand that had given me my clematis-spray.
"Meet you again! But will not that be to-morrow? If I am not to see you,
as your words threaten, till the clematis be faded and myself forgotten,
let me at least, I beseech you, know where, who, by what name----"
She drew her hand away with something of a proud, surprised gesture;
then she laughed again that sweet, ringing, mocking laugh:
"No, no, Bayard, it is too much to ask! Leave the future to hazard; it
is always the best philosophy. Au revoir! Adieu--perhaps for a day,
perhaps for a century!"
And the bewitching mystery floated away from me and through the open
window of her room. You will imagine that my "intuition" did not lead me
to the conclusion to which Lady Marechale's led her, or assuredly should
I have followed the donor of the clematis, despite her prohibition. Even
with my "intuition" pointing where it did, I am not sure what I might
have done if, in her salon, I had not caught sight of a valet and a
lady's maid in waiting with her coffee, and they are not such spectators
as one generally selects.
The servants closed her windows and drew down their Venetian blinds, and
I returned to my coffee. Whether the two ladies within had overheard her
conversation as she had heard theirs, I cannot say, but they looked
trebly refrigerated, had congealed themselves into the chilliest human
ice that is imaginable, and comported themselves towards me fully as
distantly as though I had brought a dozen ballet-girls in to dinner with
them, or introduced them to my choicest acquaintance from the Chateau
des Fleurs.
"A man's taste is so pitiably low!" remarked Lady Marechale, in her
favorite stage aside to Mrs. Protocol; to which that other lady
responded, "Disgracefully so!"
Who _was_ my lovely unknown with the bright falcon eyes and the charming
laugh, with her strange freedom that yet was _not_, somehow, free, and
her strange fascination? I bade my man ask Chanderlos her
name--couriers know everything generally--but neither Mills nor
Chanderlos gave me any information. The people of the house did not
know, or said they did not; they only knew she had servants in
attendance who came with her, who revealed nothing, and paid any price
for the best of everything. Are impertinent questions ever asked where
money is plentiful?
I was dressing the next morning something later than usual, when I heard
the roll of a carriage in the courtyard below. I looked through the
half-open persiennes with a semi-presentiment that it was my sweet
foreigner who was leaving ere I could presume on my clematis or improve
our acquaintance. True enough, she it was, leaving Vicq d'Azyr in a
travelling-carriage, with handsome roans and servants in imperial-blue
liveries. Who the deuce could she be?
"Well, Constance," said I, as I bade Lady Marechale good morning, "your
_bete noire_ won't 'press herself into your acquaintance,' as you were
dreading last night, and won't excite Marechale and me to any more high
treason. Won't you chant a Te Deum? She left this morning."
"So I perceived," answered Lady Marechale, frigidly; by which I suppose
_she_ had not been above the weakness of looking through _her_
persiennes.
"What a pity you and Agneta agitated yourselves with such unnecessary
alarm! It must have cost you a great deal of eau-de-Cologne and
sal-volatile, I am afraid, last night. Do you think she contaminated the
air of the salle-a-manger, because I will order Mills to throw some
disinfectant about before you go down?"
"I have no inclination to jest upon a person of that stamp," rejoined
Lady Marechale, with immense dignity, settling her turquoise
wristband-studs.
"'That stamp of persons!' What! Do you think she is an adventuress, an
intrigante, 'or worse' still, then? I hoped her dashing equipage might
have done something towards cleansing her character. Wealth _is_ a
universal purifier generally."
"Flippant impertinence!" murmured Lady Marechale, disgustedly, to Mrs.
Protocol, as she swept onwards down the staircase, not deigning me a
glance, much less a response, stiffening herself with a little extra
starch of Lucretian virtue and British-matronly dignity, which did not
grow limp again throughout breakfast, while she found fault with the
chocolate, considered the _petits pains_ execrable, condemned the
sardines as uneatable, petted Spes, kept Marechale and me at Coventry,
and sighed over their enforced incarceration, by Dr. Berkeley's orders,
in Vicq d'Azyr, that kept them in this stupid place away from
Lemongenseidlitz.
Their anticipations from Lemongenseidlitz were charmingly golden and
rose-tinted. They looked forward to consolidating their friendship with
the dear Duchess in its balmy air, to improving a passing acquaintance
into an intimate one with that charming person the Baroness
Liebenfrauenmilch, Mistress of the Robes to Princess Helene, and to
being very intimate at the Court, while the Pullingers (their
bosom-friends and very dear rivals) would be simply presented, and
remain in chagrin, uninvited to the state balls and palace festivities.
And what more delightful than that last clause? for what sauce invented,
from Careme to Soyer, flavors our own _plats_ so deliciously, I should
like to know, as thinking that our beloved next-door neighbor is doomed
to a very dry cutlet?
As Perette, in a humbler fashion, built visions from the pot of milk, so
mesdames mes soeurs, from the glittering court and capital of
Lemongenseidlitz, erected brilliant chateaux en Espagne of all their
sayings and doings in that fashionable little city whither they were
bound, and into which they had so many invaluable passports. They were
impatient to be journeying from our humble, solitary valley, and after
a month of Vicq d'Azyr, they departed for their golden land, and I went
with them, as I had slain izzards almost _ad nauseam_, and Dunbar's
expiration of leave had taken him back to Dublin.
It was five o'clock when we reached its Reidenscher Hof, nine when we
had finished dinner. It was stupid work yawning over coffee and
_Galignani_. What was to be done? Marechale proposed the Opera, and for
the first time in his life was unopposed by his wife. Constance was in a
suave, benignant mood; she was thinking of her Graf von Rosenlaeu, of the
Pullingers, and of the sweet, adroit manner in which she would--when she
had captivated him and could proffer such hints--awaken his Serene
Highness to a sense of his moral guilt in not bringing to instant
capital punishment every agent in those Satanus-farmed banks that throve
throughout his duchy. Lady Marechale and Mrs. Protocol assented, and to
the little miniature gayly-decorated Opera House we drove. They were in
the middle of the second act of "Ernani." "Ernani" was stale to us all,
and we naturally lorgne'd the boxes in lieu of the stage. I had turned
my glass on the left-hand stage-box, and was going steadily round, when
a faint cry of dismay, alarm, amazement, horror, broke, muffled and low,
from mesdames mes soeurs. Their lorgnons were riveted on one spot; their
cheeks were blanched; their hands were tremulous; if they had beheld a
spiritual visitant, no consternation more profound, more intense, could
have seized both with its iron hand. _My_ sisters too! the chilliest,
the calmest, the most impenetrable, the most unassailable of mortals!
"And we called her, in her hearing, not a proper person?" gasped Lady
Marechale.
"We thought her a lorette! an intrigante! a dame d'industrie!" echoed
Mrs. Protocol.
"Who wore paste jewels!"
"Who came from the Rue Breda!"
"Who wanted to know us!"
"Whom we wouldn't know!"
I turned my Voightlander where their Voightlanders turned; there, in the
royal box, leaning back in the fauteuil that marked her rank, there,
with her lovely hazel eyes, her witching smile, her radiant beauty,
matchless as the pearls gleaming above her brow, there sat the
"adventuress--or worse!" of Vicq d'Azyr; the "evidently a not proper
person" of my discerning sisters--H.S.H. Princess Helene, Grand-Duchess
of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz! Great Heavens! how had we never
guessed her before? How had we never divined her identity? How had we
never remembered all we had heard of her love of laisser-aller, her
taste for adventure, her delight in travelling, when she could,
unattended and incognita? How had we never put this and that together,
and penetrated the metamorphosis?
"_And I called her not a proper person!_" gasped Lady Marechale, again
shrinking back behind the azure curtains; the projectiles she had shot
with such vindictive severity, such delighted acrimony, from the
murderous mortar of malice, recoiling back upon her head for once, and
crushing her to powder. What reception would they have _now_ at the
Court? Von Rosenlaeu would be powerless; the Pullingers themselves would
be better off! Perette's pot of milk was smashed and spilt! "Adieu,
veau, vache, cochon, couvee!"
* * * * *
When the pitcher lies shivered into fragments, and the milk is spilt,
you know, poor Perette's dreams are shivered and spilt with them. "I
have not seen you at the palace yet?" asked her Grace of Frangipane. "We
do not see you at the Court, mesdames?" asked M. de la Croix-et-Cordons.
"How did it happen you were not at the Duchess's ball last night?" asked
"those odious Pullingers." And what had my sister to say in reply? My
clematis secured _me_ a charming reception--how charming I don't feel
called upon to reveal--but Princess Helene, with that calm dignity which
easily replaced, when she chose, her witching _abandon_, turned the
tables upon her detractors, and taught them how dangerous it may be to
speak ill--of the wrong people.
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE:
PENDANT TO A PORTRAIT BY MIGNARD.
She was surpassingly fair, Madame la Marquise. Mignard's portraits of
her may fully rival his far-famed Portrait aux Amours. One of them has
her painted as Venus Victrix, in the fashion of the day; one of them, as
herself, as Leontine Opportune de Vivonne de Rennecourt, Marquise de la
Riviere, with her creve-coeurs, and her diamonds, and her gay smile,
showing her teeth, white and gleaming as the pearls mingled with her
curls a la mode Montespan. Not Louise de la Beaume-le-Blanc, when the
elm-boughs of St. Germain first flung their shadow on her golden head,
before it bent for the Carmelite veil before the altar in the Rue St.
Jacques; not Henriette d'Angleterre, when she listened to the trouveres'
romances sung under her balcony at St. Cloud, before her young life was
quenched by the hand of Morel and the order of Monsieur; not Athenais de
Mortemart, when the liveries of lapis lazuli blue dashed through the
streets of Paris, and the outriders cleared her path with their whips,
before the game was lost, and the iron spikes were fastened inside the
Montespan bracelets;--none of them, her contemporaries and
acquaintances, eclipsed in loveliness Madame la Marquise. Had she but
been fair instead of dark, the brown Bourbon eyes would have fallen on
her of a surety; she would have outshone the lapis lazuli liveries with
a royal guard of scarlet and gold, and her friend Athenais would have
hated her as that fair lady hated "la sotte Fontanges" and "Saint
Maintenon;" for their sex, in all ages, have remembered the sage's
precept, "Love as though you will one day hate," and invariably carry
about with them, ready for need, a little essence of the acid of Malice,
to sour in an instant the sugared cream of their loves and their
friendships if occasion rise up and the storm-cloud of rivalry loom in
the horizon.
She was a beauty, Madame la Marquise, and she knew it, as she leaned out
over the balcony of her chateau of Petite Foret, that lay close to
Clagny, under the shadow of the wood of Ville d'Avree, outside the gates
of Versailles, looking down on her bosquets, gardens, and terraces
designed by Le Notre; for though she was alone, and there was nothing
but her little dog Osmin to admire her white skin, and her dark eyes,
and her beautiful hands and arms, and her diamond pendants that
glittered in the moonlight, she smiled, her flashing triumphant smile,
as she whispered to herself, "He is mine--mine! Bah! how can he help
himself?" and pressed the ruby agraffe on her bosom with the look of a
woman who knew no resistance, and brooked no reluctance to worship at
her shrine.
Nothing ever opposed Madame la Marquise, and life went smoothly on with
her. If Bossuet ever reproved her, it was in those _anathemes caches
sous des fleurs d'oranger_ in which that politic priest knew how to deal
when expedient, however haughty and relentless to the world in general.
M. le Marquis was not a savage eccentricity like M. de Pardaillon de
Gondran, would never have dreamt of imitating the eccentricity of going
into mourning, but if the Bourbon eye _had_ fallen on his wife, would
have said, like a loyal peer of France, that all his household treasures
were the King's. Disagreeables fled before the scintillations of her
smiles, as the crowd fled before her gilded carriage and her Flanders
horses; and if ever a little fit of piety once in a while came over her,
and Conscience whispered a mal a propos word in her delicate ear, she
would give an enamelled lamp to Sainte Marie Reparatrice, by the advice
of the Comtesse de Soubise and the Princesse de Monaco (who did such
expiatory things themselves, and knew the comfort they afforded), and
emerge from her repentance one of the most radiant of all the brilliant
butterflies that fluttered their gorgeous wings in the Jardin de Flore
under the sunny skies of Versailles.
The moonlight glittered on the fountains, falling with measured splash
into their marble basins; the lime-leaves, faintly stirred by the sultry
breezes, perfumed the night with their voluptuous fragrance, and the
roses, twining round the carved and gilded balustrade, shook off their
bowed head drops of dew, that gleamed brightly as the diamonds among the
curls of the woman who leaned above, resting her delicate rouged cheek
on her jewelled hand, alone--a very rare circumstance with the Marquise
de la Riviere. Osmin did not admire the rare solitude, for he rattled
his silver bells and barked--an Italian greyhound's shrill, fretful
bark--as his quick ears caught the distant sound of steps coming swiftly
over the turf below, and his mistress smiled as she patted his head:
"Ah, Osmin!--here he is?"
A man came out from under the heavy shadow of lime sand chestnuts, whose
darkness the moon's rays had no power to pierce, crossed the lawn just
under the balcony, and, coming up the terrace-steps, stood near her--a
man, young, fair, handsome, whose age and form the uniform of a Captain
of the Guards would have suited far better than the dark robes of a
priest, which he wore; his lips were pressed closely together, and his
face was pale with a pallor that consorted painfully with the warm
passionate gleam of his eyes.
"So! You are late in obeying my commands, monsieur!"