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FRANCEZKA
by
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
Author of
The Sprightly Romance of Marsac, The
History of the Lady Betty Stair, etc.
Illustrated by
HARRISON FISHER
New York
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers
Copyright 1902
The Bowen-Merrill Company
October
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I In the Heart of Paris 1
II The Little Actress 17
III The Rescue 30
IV In Beauty's Quarrel 40
V The Elder Brother 49
VI On the Balcony 62
VII An Ugly Duchess 72
VIII Our City of Refuge 86
IX A Crimson Mantle 98
X A Pilgrim and a Wayfarer 110
XI A Lost Cause 132
XII Only the Sunny Hours 142
XIII His Grace and Peggy 157
XIV The Drenched Hen 173
XV The Lost Sheep 187
XVI The Setting of a Star 200
XVII An Impatient Lover 216
XVIII A Vindictive Rogue 229
XIX The Happiest Man Alive 242
XX Forging the Chain 253
XXI The Service of a Friend 270
XXII Her Best Beloved 282
XXIII A Loving Quest 297
XXIV Confident To-morrows 307
XXV A Discomfited Bishop 319
XXVI Come and Rejoice 335
XXVII A Royal Recompense 350
XXVIII A Campaign of Pleasure 368
XXIX As Having No Past 383
XXX The Boar Hunt 395
XXXI The Bitterness of Doubt 410
XXXII In Snuff-Colored Clothes 423
XXXIII A Devil's Imp 433
XXXIV A Garret in Prague 448
XXXV Would You Leave Me Now 458
CHAPTER I
IN THE HEART OF PARIS
I maintain that my master, Maurice, Count of Saxe, Marshal-general of
France, Duke of Courland and Semigallia, Knight of the Most Noble
Order of Merit, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the White Eagle,
Knight of St. Louis, Knight of St. Stanislaus, and of many other noble
Orders--I maintain him, I say, to be the greatest man, the bravest
man, the finest man, the handsomest man, the man most dreaded by his
foes, the most loved by his friends, the most incomparable with the
ladies, the first soldier of all time--in short, the most superb, the
most terrible and the most admirable man who ever lived--and I can
prove it.
There are fractious men everywhere who dispute the plainest facts.
With these unfortunates I am willing to argue for a time, but if they
grow impudent about Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, or any of
those men who have made a noise in the world, I bring against them one
invincible argument--my sword. I am no great lover of the pistol. My
sword is enough, and it never misses fire. I am the most peaceable
creature alive, and never but twice did I lose my temper over the
matter of Count Saxe's greatness. Once was when a bragging rascal of a
pseudo-nobleman from the marches of Brandenburg dared to call this
greatness into question, and with offensive words. I gave him his
choice of taking a hundred kicks in the stomach or having his ears cut
off. He chose the latter, and I sliced one of them off; he begged so
hard for the other one that I let it stay on his head.
The second time was with young Gaston Cheverny, who afterward became a
devoted adherent of my master--and whose strange story will be told in
these pages. I will say, however, it is pretty generally understood
when Babache, captain of Count Saxe's body-guard of Uhlans, sometimes
known as the Clear-the-way-boys, or the Storm-alongs, and also as the
Devil's Own, is in the neighborhood, that Count Saxe is the greatest
man that ever lived.
I am supposed to be a Tatar prince, by birth, that is; but in truth
the only claim I have to either the race or the title is, that I am
very ugly. God could have made an uglier man than I am, because He is
omnipotent, but I am sure He never did. I accept my ugliness. I can
say as the actor at the Theatre Francais said, when the audience
hissed him on account of his ugliness--it will be a great deal easier
for people to get used to my face than for me to change it.
As to my birthplace, I was born in the Marais, in the cursed town of
Paris, and my father was a notary in a small way. So was the father of
Monsieur Francois Marie Arouet, who now calls himself Voltaire--and
Count Saxe always swore I could write tragedies and national epics as
well as Arouet had I but tried. Especially, as I ever wrote, with the
greatest readiness imaginable, a much better hand than Arouet, or
Voltaire, or whatever his name is--we knew the fellow well in Paris.
But I never laid claim to more than what the English call mother-wit,
the Spanish call freckled grammar, and the French call, being born
with one's shirt on. It was, however, my readiness with the pen that
first won for me the highest fortune that could befall a man--the
patronage, the friendship and the affection of Maurice, Count of
Saxe.
I did not turn my hand to writing for money, and paying my court to
the great, as Arouet did; but being left penniless and an orphan at
fourteen, and his Majesty's recruiting officers coming after me, I
went to serve as a foot soldier in Flanders. I carried a musket for
twelve years. Of those years I like neither to speak nor to think. At
the end of that time came what I supposed would be the end of Babache:
standing up before a file of soldiers, to be shot down and to die like
a dog, for theft. I was innocent--that I swore on the holy Gospels,
and call God to witness--but the money, two crowns, was found on me;
and I could not tell how it got there, except that I had been
carousing in bad company. Count Saxe being very strict against
marauding, I was tried and condemned to be shot.
The whole business, trial and all, was over in a day, and on a summer
morning I was led out to be shot on a bastion of the walls of Mons. It
was a very beautiful morning, I remember, and also that the buglers,
playing the dirge, played horribly out of time, as they always do at
military executions. As I was on my way to die, Count Saxe, with a
half dozen officers galloping after him, met the procession. I raised
my dull eyes and looked him in the face--a thing I would not have
done, except that a man who has but a quarter of an hour to live need
not be bashful about anything. Count Saxe asked about my case, and the
officer in charge said I was to die for stealing two crowns--and that
I had been a good soldier. Count Saxe rode up close to me.
"What a fool you were to risk your life for a couple of crowns," he
said.
"I risk it every day," I replied, "for a couple of sous. But I am
innocent."
"Give him his life," said Count Saxe.
The buglers changed their tune from a dirge to a lively marching air;
the drummer beat a couple of ruffles on his drum, and we faced
about--I think the honest soldiers who were going to shoot me felt
almost as glad as I. Men have to be driven and threatened with
punishment to keep them from shirking when it is necessary to shoot a
comrade, and there would certainly be a mutiny every time, except that
a certain number of muskets have no ball cartridges in them--and every
fellow thinks that he has got an empty cartridge.
That same day I wrote a letter to Count Saxe, expressing, as well as I
knew how, my thanks for my life. I took it myself to his quarters--and
as good luck would have it, while I was begging a pert young aide to
give the letter to Count Saxe, the count himself came out of his tent.
He read the letter--asked me if I wrote it--and not believing me, told
me to come into his tent, sit down at his table, and write at his
dictation. I did so, and I have written every line to which his name
is signed since, except his love letters. Writing is, in itself, no
great accomplishment. Monsieur Voltaire himself has said that a man
may have a great deal of esprit and yet write like a cat. Still less
important is spelling.
My master would not in his youth give attention to writing and
spelling, having more important things to learn, and he had an early
quarrel with grammar, which was never made up. Nevertheless, he has
written the best book about war yet published--that is to say, he
dictated it to me. And the French Academy elected him a member; but he
made merry at the expense of the Academicians, saying as he knew not
how to spell, much less to write, a seat in the Academy would become
him about as well as a ring would become a cat. Also, that if the
Academy elected him, it should also elect Marshal Villars, who could
neither read nor write; but that I, Babache, was better fitted for an
Academician than either.
It is certain, however, that no lady ever refused to accept a love
letter from Count Saxe because it was ill spelled and ill written--for
that part of his correspondence he attended to strictly himself. I
know that certain things concerning the ladies have been urged against
him. I know he has been described as "a glorious devil, loving beauty
only"--but all I know concerning Count Saxe and the ladies is, the
women mobbed him and sent him thousands of love letters. It may be
said that I know more than I will admit. Not so. And it may also be
said that I could have known all if I had wished. Well, so might I
have known astronomy, if I had possessed a taste for the science. But
I never liked it. I ever felt small enough anyhow without considering
those myriads of suns and worlds which make one feel considerably less
than nothing.
One thing I do know about Count Saxe and one lady, in particular; if
he had been willing to marry that ugly Duchess of Courland, Anna
Iwanowna, now Czarina of Russia, he would have been Duke of Courland
_de facto_ as well as _de jure_; he would have become "cousin" to the
Kings of France and Spain; he would have been "most Illustrious" to
the Emperor, and "most Illustrious, most Mighty," to the King of
Poland, and what is more, he would have had the right of coining
money.
But Count Saxe never put any compulsion on himself in affairs of the
heart. And I say this; that with the only two ladies concerning whose
relations with him I was familiar--for he was as secretive with me as
I could wish about such things--I never knew a man more blameless. And
these two ladies were both of them singularly beautiful and charming.
One of them was an actress--Mademoiselle Adrienne Lecouvreur, and the
other one was Mademoiselle Francezka Capello--that star-like creature
whose beauty, whose riches, whose airy high spirit, whose strange,
brilliant story, laid her open to peculiar dangers. Yet, toward
Mademoiselle Capello, Count Saxe behaved with the most delicate
chivalry during the whole of her eventful life. And he forwarded the
love of Mademoiselle Capello and Gaston Cheverny with the noblest
disinterestedness.
Count Saxe had a taste not common among soldiers. He liked to hear
sermons read--good sermons, that is, by the great guns of the pulpit,
like Bossuet. I often read them to him, and have been compelled to
chastise several persons who thought this matter food for mirth.
It seems to me sometimes as if I had never known but one man and one
woman in my life--Count Saxe and Francezka Capello; they alone reached
the ideal heights, in my mind--for a Tatar prince and the son of a
poor notary has his ideals, just the same as a duke and the son of a
duke--and the fact that I was a private soldier before I became a
Tatar prince and a captain of Uhlans has nothing to do with the
matter. It may be that Mademoiselle Capello, who had a combination of
Scotch and Spanish pride, won me with the most delicate flattery in
the world by honoring me with her regard--and Babache, the Tatar, was
often smiled on, when dukes and marquises were scowled at, terribly.
Of course, I knew that the very difference in our rank made this
possible; and I had a cross eye which stood as a sentinel in my face,
to warn Love away.
Only in my dreams, did I breathe of love to Mademoiselle Capello; and
in those soft and splendid visions in the mysterious night and under
the earnest stars which seemed then so near and so kind, Francezka
often smiled upon me--nay, even kissed me.
But it was only a dream. At all times, though, I was hers, soul and
body, with a doglike devotion--and in the end, I was given to her, in
a singular manner, by Count Saxe. She lavished upon me, from the
beginning, many kind and familiar speeches and acts; and I would have
died rather than throw away, by so much as one word of folly, the
treasure of her confidence and friendship. I took with thankfulness
what she gave me--and was not such a fool as to ask for more.
The very first time I saw Mademoiselle Capello was unforgettable for
more reasons than one. It was the first and most serious of those
adventures into which her spirit, her talents and her beauty were
perpetually leading her--and it might have been her destruction.
One afternoon about six o'clock in the first days of May, 1726, I was
passing along the tangle of streets back of the Quai des Theatines,
when I noticed in the walled garden of the great Hotel Kirkpatrick one
of those cheap, open-air theaters of which the Parisians of the
humbler classes are so fond. The place itself was retired enough, and
only accessible from the maze of back streets of which I spoke. There
was a wide, grassy space in the garden where the theater was set, with
its rude appliances. On one side, quite screening it from the formal
gardens of the hotel, was an ancient lilac hedge, a forest of bloom
and perfume, in those first days of May. There were great clumps of
guelder-roses on each side, and syringas, which had grown to be trees,
and looked like fountains of white blossoms.
It was so very sweet and peaceful--it being quite deserted at the
time--that I stood, looking through the open grille of the huge
gateway, and felt the scent of the lilacs and syringas getting into my
blood, as the earth scents and earth sights will; for we are all the
children of Nature, the mighty mother, whether we be born with only
the tiles between us and the stars, or whether our cradle be the
ground itself, and in our mother's bosom shall we sleep at last; so
that is why the green earth is never strange to us, nor any of its
sweetness unfamiliar.
No one would have thought that this old garden--this rich, wild, fair,
virginal place--was in the heart of Paris. The sun was well in the
west, and the shadows on the velvet grass were long. As I meditated I
began to wonder how such a thing as a cheap theater should be set up
in the grounds of the chatelaine of this splendid hotel--who was the
renowned, the redoubtable and the indomitable Madame Margarita Riano
del Valdozo y Kirkpatrick, Countess of Riano, with many other titles,
but who was commonly called Scotch Peg, or Peggy Kirkpatrick, and was
as well-known in Paris as the statue of Henri Quatre on the Pont
Neuf.
Her history was familiar to all Paris. She was the daughter of a poor
Scotch Jacobite, as proud as Lucifer and all hell besides. She had
married Count Riano, a Spanish nobleman, five times a grandee of
Spain, three times a grandee of Portugal, and God knows what else,
with more money than any or all of the Kirkpatricks had ever seen in
their lives. He was the meekest, the mildest, the least haughty man on
earth, having no more pride in him than the kitchen knife. It was
known in every street in Paris that from the day the good man married
Peggy Kirkpatrick she never allowed him to forget the enormous honor
that a daughter of the penniless, bare-legged clan of Kirkpatrick had
done him and the kingdom of Spain, in marrying him. The poor man has
long been with the saints in heaven, and few of them deserved the
martyr's crown more than he.
Yet Peggy Kirkpatrick was not a bad woman. On the contrary, she was
incapable of a mean action, generous with a Spanish, rather than a
Scotch, generosity, and although she undoubtedly hastened Count
Riano's death by harping upon the glories of the Kirkpatrick family,
she paid him great attention in his last illness. As for his funeral,
never was there anything so grand.
In Madrid, whither she carried him, events are still dated from the
Count Riano's funeral. Madame Riano wished to borrow the catafalque
under which Louis le Grand had lain, and was mightily offended when it
was refused her. The funeral lasted six weeks from Paris to Madrid.
The Spanish Court paid the widow much honor, but not giving due space
to the Kirkpatricks in some formal letter of condolence, or matter of
that kind, Scotch Peg shook the dust of Spain from her feet and
returned to Paris to remain, as she said, until Charles Edward Stuart,
the English prince, was restored to the throne of his ancestors.
She was a great, tall woman, as red as a cow, but not unhandsome. She
had a stride like an ostrich, and always carried her nose to the wind
like a cavalry charger. At her side, in place of a sword, hung a huge
fan, which she flourished around very much as if it were the claymore
of the Kirkpatricks. Princes of the blood fled before Scotch Peg.
Marshals of France turned tail and ran. Cardinals and archbishops
quailed at her onslaught. When everybody else in Paris was calling
Cardinal Dubois "the devil's cardinal" behind his back, Peggy
Kirkpatrick called him so to his face--and she was of the same
religion, too. It was she who stalked up to Count Saxe at the king's
levee at Fontainebleau, and bawled at him:
"So you are going on a marauding expedition after the crown of
Courland!"
"Madame," replied my master, turning red with rage, "I am a candidate
for election to the crown of Courland. If elected by that august body,
the Diet of Courland, I shall accept, and I shall defend my right."
"August fiddlestick!" cried Peggy. "All of those elective crowns, like
that of your father, the King of Poland, are nothing but prey for the
strongest highwaymen, and you are not as strong as you think. I
predict you will be running back like a drenched hen from Courland
before the year is out. However, I will say this of you, Maurice of
Saxe, that you are about as good as any of the crown snatchers, or the
august Diet, either--and if you would but stop running after the
petticoats, you would be a considerable man!"
Count Maurice of Saxe running back from Courland like a drenched hen!
And would be a _considerable man_! Maurice of Saxe!
It must be acknowledged, however, that in spite of Scotch Peg being
Scotch Peg, the best company in Paris attended her saloons; she had a
natural aptitude for affairs which always provided her with more money
than those who laughed at her, and she was never known to desert a
friend in distress. She was the aunt and guardian of Mademoiselle
Francezka Capello.
Francezka's father, a handsome, penniless Scotchman, went to Spain
with the Duke of Berwick's army. There, the only daughter of the
Marquis Capello fell in love with the Scotch captain. The old marquis
fought hard against the marriage, but the Duke of Berwick carried it
through. One stipulation was made by the Capellos: that Captain
Kirkpatrick should take the name of Capello instead of Kirkpatrick.
This he did, much to Scotch Peg's indignation, but he was rewarded
with a splendid fortune. With true Scotch thrift, he increased this
fortune, and when his only child, Francezka, was doubly orphaned in
her first years, she became one of the greatest heiresses in France
and the Low Countries--in both of which she had large possessions.
Her father's will, making her sole heiress, gave her complete
control of her estates when she was eighteen, and likewise counseled
her not to marry until she was at least two years beyond her
majority. These facts were well known in Paris, and although, in
1726, Mademoiselle Francezka Capello was only in her fourteenth
year, the fortune-hunters were already congregating about her. But
her aunt, Madame Riano, was as fierce as a dragon when her niece's
marriage was mentioned--although it will be seen, hereafter, that by
no means kept she a dragon watch over the young lady.
All these things being of common repute, they naturally came to my
mind as I stood, watching the shadows lengthen on the grass of the old
garden in the golden afternoon. Presently, from a private entrance,
some children and some older persons appeared. The theater was for
child actors only, and one of them--a floury baker's boy,--came to the
iron gate, and acted as gate-keeper. To him I paid the few copper
coins asked for admittance, and entered.
Others followed me, chiefly working people and serving-men and women,
but there were some of a class not often seen at these cheap,
open-air performances. One man I recognized--Lafarge, an actor of the
Comedie Francaise, and, I think, the poorest actor who ever played in
the House of Moliere. Something, I know not what, excited suspicion of
this man in my mind--I could but wonder what he was doing there. He
had a hang-dog countenance, and was almost as ugly as I.
Presently, whom should I see bustling about, and evidently the manager
of the enterprise, but Jacques Haret! I own I was astonished to find
him doing anything but eating and drinking and riding at somebody
else's expense--but there he was, actually at work, and that, too, in
a very intelligent manner. There was no doubt about his intelligence,
although he was known as a scamp of the first water. His intelligence
had not kept him from gambling away a fine patrimony in the Low
Countries, where his family had once been great.
He was the handsomest dog imaginable, in spite of all the cardinal
sins looking out of his eyes--and he retained certain outward and
visible signs of inward and spiritual graces which he had never had
since I knew him. I will say of him though, that he was not a coward,
nor did I ever hear him utter one word of railing against fate--but
what a rascal he was!
As soon as his eye fell upon me he came across the grass and greeted
me by clapping me on the back. He wore a shabby old laced coat, woolen
stockings, broken shoes, and a splendid velvet hat and feathers; this
last probably picked up at random--which some people call stealing.
Now, I have never known a specimen of rascal-gentleman like Jacques
Haret who could not always stand and sit at ease with all men. I,
Babache, an honest fellow, often feel abashed in the presence of the
great. I am thinking, if I am too friendly they will remember my
origin and think me impudent--and if I be not friendly enough, I fear
I am thought to forget whence I sprang. But Jacques Haret and men like
him are at their ease with kings and beggars alike. There is certainly
something in being born to ride in a coach, even if the coach be
gambled away or drunk up.
Jacques Haret greeted me cordially, as I say, but with good-natured
condescension. He began to tell me that he had the finest child
actress in his troupe he had ever seen. "So tragic, so moving, so
graceful, so droll, so natural; she could, in two years more, wrest
the laurels from the brow of Mademoiselle Lecouvreur herself!" So he
declared, again whacking me on the back.
I was not much interested in his child actress, but bluntly asked him
how he got the use of Madame Riano's garden.
"The easiest thing in the world," he said, laughing. "I went to
her--proved that in 1456 one Jacques Haret, my ancestor, had married
into the noble family of Kirkpatrick, and on the strength of that
relationship asked to set up my theater here. She agreed promptly,
only stipulating that she should see and hear nothing of it. I told
her she could not see without looking, nor hear without listening, and
she screeched out laughing and told me to go my ways and try to be
respectable."
"I hope you have taken Madame Riano's advice," I said dryly.
"In truth I have been obliged to. There are too many fellows like me
in Paris now. I can no longer get clothes and food and wine by telling
a merry tale and singing a ribald song. And, besides, I got a hint
from Cardinal Fleury, that old busybody, who manages a good deal more
than the king's conscience."
"What do you call a hint?" I asked.
"Oh, well, old Fleury sent me word if I did not find some respectable
employment he would have me cool my heels a while in the prison of the
Chatelet--not the Bastille, mind you, where Voltaire and all the wits
and dandies are sent--but to the Chatelet, the prison of the common
malefactors. The cardinal's message is what I call a delicate hint.
However, I may make my fortune yet. The Duc de Lauzun was a mere
provincial like me, and was often in straits--yet he married the
king's niece, and made her pull his boots off for him."
I looked at the fellow in admiration. His evil life had not dimmed his
eye or his smile, his courage or his impudence.
The crowd was still increasing, and there must have been a hundred
persons present by that time. Lafarge, the bad actor from the Comedie
Francaise was hanging about, and I was the more convinced he was bent
on mischief. Jacques Haret had gone off--the performance was about
beginning. A white cloth, fastened to two poles was let down upon the
stage, just as they do with those songs which the actors at the
theaters are forbidden to sing; the orchestra plays the air, and the
audience sings the verses which are painted upon these white cloths.
In this case, though, the inscription in huge red letters was this:
"The part of _Mariamne_, in _Madame Mariamne and Monsieur Herod_, will
be played by
MADEMOISELLE ADRIENNE,
the most wonderful child actress in the world, who will one day
continue the glory of the name of Adrienne!"
The people shouted with delight at this. Mademoiselle Adrienne
Lecouvreur was then the idol of the Parisians, and she was moving all
Paris to tears in Monsieur Arouet's--or Voltaire's, for I continually
forget--tragedy of _Mariamne_. The present performance, I then knew,
was to be a burlesque on the play of the notary's son.