Dauphin no superiority save that of his "_frere aine_;" there was "_le
petit bossu_," Prince Eugene, then soliciting the rochet of a Bishop,
and equally ridiculed when he sought a post in the army; there was M. de
Louvois, who had just signed the order for the Dragonades; there was the
Palatine de Baviere, with her German brusquerie, who had just clumsily
tried to insult Madame de Montespan by coming into the salon with a
great turnspit, led by a similar ribbon and called by the same name, in
ridicule of the pet Montespan poodle; there was La Montespan herself,
with her lovely gold hair, her dove's eyes, and her serpent's tongue;
there was Madame de Sevigne and Madame de Grignan the Duchesse de
Richelieu and the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres; there was Bussy Rabutin and
Hamilton. Who was there not that was brilliant, that was distinguished,
that was high in rank and famed in wit at the fete of Madame la
Marquise?--Madame la Marquise, who floated through the crowd that
glittered in her salon and gardens, who laughed and smiled, showing her
dazzling white teeth, who had a little Cupid gleaming with jewels
(emblematic enough of Cupid as he was known at Versailles) to present
the Princesse de Conti with a bridal bouquet whose flowers were of
pearls and whose leaves were of emeralds; who piqued herself that the
magnificence of her fete was scarcely eclipsed by His Majesty himself;
who yielded the palm neither to La Valliere's lovely daughter, nor to
her friend Athenais, nor to any one of the beauties who shone with them,
and whose likeness by Mignard laughed down from the wall where it hung,
matchless double of her own matchless self.
The Priest of Languedoc watched her, the relentless fangs of passion
gnawing his heart, as the wolf the Spartan. For the first time he was
forgotten! His idol passed him carelessly, gave him no glance, no smile,
but lavished a thousand coquetries on Saint-Elix, on De Rohan-Soubise,
on the boy Vermandois,--on any who sought them. Once he addressed her.
Madame la Marquise shrugged her snow-white shoulders, and arched her
eyebrows with petulant irritation, and turned to laugh gayly at
Saint-Elix, who was amusing her, and La Montespan, and Madame de
Thianges, with some gay mischievous scandal concerning Madame de
Lesdiguieres and the Archbishop of Paris; for scandals, if not wholly
new are ever diverting when concerning an enemy, especially when dressed
and served up with the piquant sauce of wit.
"I no longer then, madame, lead a dog's life in jealousy of this
priest?" whispered Saint-Elix, after other whispers, in the ear of
Madame la Marquise. The Vicomte adored her, not truly in Languedoc
fashion, but very warmly--a la mode de Versailles.
The Marquise laughed.
"Perhaps not! You know I bet Mme. de Montevreau that I would conquer
him. I have won now. Hush! He is close. There will be a tragedy, _mon
ami_!"
"M. le Vicomte, if you have the honor of a noble, the heart of a man,
you fight me to-night. I seek no shelter under my cloth!"
Saint-Elix turned as he heard the words, laughed scornfully, and signed
the speaker away with an insolent sneer:
"Bah! _Reverend Pere!_ we do not fight with women and churchmen!"
The fete was ended at last, the lights that had gleamed among the limes
and chestnuts had died out, the gardens and salons were emptied and
silent, the little Cupid had laid aside his weighty jewelled wings, the
carriages with their gorgeous liveries, their outriders, and their
guards of honor, had rolled from the gates of Petite Foret to the Palace
of Versailles. Madame la Marquise stood alone once more in the balcony
of her salons, leaning her white arms on its gilded balustrade, looking
down on to the gardens beneath, silvered with the breaking light of the
dawn, smiling, her white teeth gleaming between her parted rose-hued
lips, and thinking--of what? Who shall say?
Still, still as death lay the gardens below, that an hour ago had been
peopled with a glittering crowd, re-echoing with music, laughter, witty
response, words of intrigue. Where the lights had shone on diamonds and
pearl-broidered trains, on softly rouged cheeks, and gold-laced coats,
on jewelled swords and broideries of gold, the gray hue of the breaking
day now only fell on the silvered leaves of the limes, the turf wet
with dew, he drooped heads of the Provence roses; and Madame la
Marquise, standing alone, started as a step through the salon within
broke the silence.
"Madame, will you permit me a word _now_?"
Gaston de Launay took her hands off the balustrade, and held them tight
in his, while his voice sounded, even in his own ears, strangely calm,
yet strangely harsh:
"Madame, you love me no longer?"
"Monsieur, I do not answer questions put to me in such a manner."
She would have drawn her hands away, but he held them in a fierce grasp
till her rings cut his skin, as they had done once before.
"No trifling! Answer--yes or no!"
"Well! 'no,' then, monsieur. Since you _will_ have the truth, do not
blame me if you find it uncomplimentary and unacceptable."
He let go her hands and reeled back, staggered, as if struck by a shot.
"Mon Dieu! it is true--you love me no longer! And you tell it me
_thus_!"
Madame la Marquise, for an instant, was silenced and touched; for the
words were uttered with the faint cry of a man in agony, and she saw,
even by the dim twilight of dawn, how livid his lips turned, how ashy
gray grew the hue of his face. But she smiled, playing with Osmin's new
collar of pearls and coral.
"Tell it you 'thus'? I would not have told it you 'thus,' monsieur, if
you had been content with a hint, and had not evinced so strong a desire
for candor undisguised; but if people will not comprehend a delicate
suggestion, they must be wounded by plainer truths--it is their own
fault. Did you think I was like a little shepherdess in a pastoral, to
play the childish game of constancy without variations? Had you
presumption enough to fancy you could amuse me for ever----"
He stopped her, his voice broken and hoarse, as he gasped for breath.
"Silence! Woman, have you no mercy? For you--for such as you--I have
flung away heaven, steeped myself in sin, lost my church, my peace, my
all--forfeited all right to the reverence of my fellows, all hope for
the smile of my God! For you--for such as you--I have become a traitor,
a hypocrite, an apostate, whose prayers are insults, whose professions
are lies, whose oaths are perjury! At your smile, I have flung away
eternity; for your kiss, I have risked my life here, my life hereafter;
for your love, I held no price too vast to pay; weighed with it, honor,
faith, heaven, all seemed valueless--all were forgotten! You lured me
from tranquil calm, you broke in on the days of peace which but for you
were unbroken still, you haunted my prayers, you placed yourself between
Heaven and me, you planned to conquer my anchorite's pride, you wagered
you would lure me from my priestly vows, and yet you have so little
mercy, that when your bet is won, when your amusement grows stale, when
the victory grows valueless, you can turn on me with words like these
without one self-reproach?"
"Ma foi, monsieur! it is you who may reproach yourself, not I," cried
his hearer, insolently. "Are you so very provincial still, that you are
ignorant that when a lover has ceased to please he has to blame his own
lack of power to retain any love he may have won, and is far too
well-bred to utter a complaint? Your language is very new to me. Most
men, monsieur, would be grateful for my slightest preference; I permit
none to rebuke me for either giving or withdrawing it."
The eyes of Madame la Marquise sparkled angrily, and the smile on her
lips was a deadly one, full of irony, full of malice. As he beheld it,
the scales fell at last from the eyes of Gaston de Launay, and he saw
what this woman was whom he had worshipped with such mad, blind,
idolatrous passion.
He bowed his head with a low, broken moan, as a man stunned by a mortal
blow; while Madame la Marquise stood playing with the pearl-and-coral
chain, and smiling the malicious and mischievous smile that showed her
white teeth, as they are shown in the portrait by Mignard.
"_Comme les hommes sont fous!_" laughed Madame la Marquise.
He lifted his eyes, and looked at her as she stood in the faint light of
the dawn, with her rich dress, her gleaming diamonds, her wicked smile,
her matchless beauty; and the passion in him broke out in a bitter cry:
"God help me! My sin has brought home its curse!"
He bent over her, his burning lips scorching her own like fire, holding
her in one last embrace, that clasped her in a vice of iron she had no
power to break.
"Angel! devil! temptress! _This_ for what I have deemed thee--_that_ for
what thou art!"
He flung her from him with unconscious violence, and left her--lying
where she fell.
* * * * *
The gray silvery dawn rose, and broke into the warmth and sunlight of a
summer day; the deer nestled in their couches under the chequered
shadows of the woodlands round, and the morning chimes were rung in
musical carillons from the campanile of the chateau; the Provence roses
tossed their delicate heads, joyously shaking the dew off their scented
petals; the blossoms of the limes fell in a fragrant shower on the turf
below, and the boughs, swayed softly by the wind, brushed their leaves
against the sparkling waters of the fountains; the woods and gardens of
Petite Foret lay, bright and laughing, in the mellow sunlight of the
new day to which the world was waking. And with his face turned up to
the sky, clasped in his hand a medallion enamel on which was painted the
head of a woman, the grass and ferns where he had fallen stained crimson
with his life-blood, lay a dead man, while in his bosom nestled a little
dog, moaning piteous, plaintive cries, and vainly seeking its best to
wake him to the day that for him would never dawn.
When her household, trembling, spread the news that the dead priest had
been found lying under the limes, slain by his own hand, and it reached
Madame la Marquise in her private chambers, she was startled, shocked,
wept, hiding her radiant eyes in her broidered handkerchief, and called
Azor, and bade him bring her her flask of scented waters, and bathed her
eyes, and turned them dazzling bright on Saint-Elix, and stirred her
chocolate and asked the news. "_On peut etre emue aux larmes et
aimer le chocolat_," thought Madame la Marquise, with her friend
Montespan;--while, without, under the waving shadow of the
linden-boughs, with the sunlight streaming round him, the little dog
nestling in his breast, refusing to be comforted, lay the man whom she
had murdered.
The portrait of Mignard still hangs on the walls of the chateau, and in
its radiant colors Madame la Marquise still lives, fair type of her age,
smiling her victorious smile, with the diamonds shining among her hair,
and her brilliant eyes flashing defiance, irony, and coquetry as of
yore, when she reigned amidst the beauties of Versailles;--and in the
gardens beyond in the summer nights, the lime-boughs softly shake their
fragrant flowers on the turf, and the moonlight falls in hushed and
mournful calm, streaming through the network of the boughs on to the
tangled mass of violets and ferns that has grown up in rank luxuriance
over the spot where Gaston de Launay died.
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired.
A few obvious errors in original printing have also been repaired:
Page 82, first paragraph: "out of the Cara di Fiori" corrected to
"out of the Casa di Fiori".
Page 145, last paragraph: "Lady Hautton has just" corrected to
"Lady Hautton had just".
Page 167, 4th paragraph: "anything put a pleasant" corrected to
"anything but a pleasant".
Page 167, last paragraph: "nor even when he went that" corrected to
"nor even when he went on that".
Page 173, 4th paragraph: et C^{ie} is an abbreviation for the
French word "compagnie".
Page 224, last paragraph: "Helvetius" corrected to "Helvetius".
Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.