It seemed as if I had scarcely time to understand what was the meaning
of my party with my beloved brother and sister. My poor Cecile was still
so ill that I could hardly attend to anything else, and when I returned
in the morning I found that, missing me, she had fallen into another
crisis, and that all the danger was renewed.
However, the poor frail creature lived, little as she cared to do so,
except to pray for the soul of the husband to whom her whole being had
been given, ever since they had wedded her to him as a mere child. It
was well that I had her to attend to, or my home would have seemed very
desolate to me, empty as it now was of my brother and sister, and with
my mother spending her time between her Queen and her favourite convent.
Happily for me there was no longer required to be in waiting, but was
free to finish his education. Indeed, I believe the Queen had found out
that Gaspard had put into King Louis’s head certain strange ideas about
sovereigns and subjects, so that she was glad to keep him at a distance.
Queen Henrietta bade me take care what I was doing. Thus Cardinal
Mazarin being absent, and the events of former years not brought to
mind, it was possible to obtain permission to retire for a time to our
estates. Indeed I fancy it was meant to disgrace two such Frondeuses as
we were supposed to have been.
Cecile recovered something like health in the country, but she would
not hear of doing anything save entering a convent. She longed to
be constantly praying for her husband, and she felt herself utterly
incapable of coping with the world, or educating her son. She took
her little girl with her to be a pensionnaire at the Visitation, and
entrusted her boy to me, to be brought up with mine. They have indeed
always been like brothers, and to me the tenderest and most dutiful of
sons. Maurice d’Aubepine never ceased to love his own mother, but as a
sort of saint in a shrine, and he used to say that when he went to see
her he always felt more as if he had been worshipping than making a
visit.
I had learned a little prudence by my former disasters among the
peasantry at Nid de Merle, and we did contrive to make them somewhat
happier and more prosperous without giving umbrage to our neighbours.
They learned to love M. le Marquis with passionate devotion, and he
has loved them in his turn with equal affection. I delight to hear the
shouts of ecstasy with which they receive him when he is seen riding
through the narrow lanes of the Bocage on a visit to his mother and his
home.
The King has always treated him with distinguished politeness, but
without seeming desirous to retain him about Court, so that, as you
know, he has always had employment either in the army or in governments,
gaining ample honour, but without enjoying personal favour or
intercourse with the King, who, it may be, trusts his loyalty, without
brooking his plain speaking.
I saw my sister once again. When she had at last settled in the old
chateau, and after my son and nephew had made their first campaign
at the siege of Lille, we had to join in the progress of the Court
to Dunkirk and Lille to see the King’s new fortifications. A strange
progress it was to me, for Mademoiselle was by this time infatuated
by her unfortunate passion for the Duke of Lauzun, and never ceased
confiding to me her admiration and her despair whenever there was a
shower of rain on his perruque. However, when the Duchess of Orleans
crossed to England I obtained permission to go with my son to visit our
relations, since it was then the object to draw together as close as
possible the links between the countries.
It was a joyous visit, though it was a shock to me to see the grand old
castle of the Walwyn replaced by a square Dutch-looking brick house of
many windows, only recently built, and where I remembered noble woods
and grand trees to see only copse-wood and fields. But who could regret
anything when I saw my dear sister, a glad, proud, happy wife and
mother, a still young, active, and merry matron, dazzlingly fair as
ever, among her growing sons and pretty daughters, and indeed far more
handsome than when she sat in the salons of Paris, weary and almost
fierce, in her half-tamed, wild-cat days, whereas now her step was
about the house and garden everywhere, as the notable housewife and good
mother.
And her husband--Mr. Darpent, as every one called him, with true English
pronunciation--it amused us to see how much of an Englishman he had
become, though Harry Merrycourt told us the squires had began by calling
him Frenchy, and sneering at his lack of taste and skill in their
sports; but they came to him whenever they had a knotty point to
disentangle in law or justice, they turned to him at Quarter-Sessions
for help; and though they laughed at the plans of farming, gardening,
and planting he had brought from Holland, or had learned from Mr. Evelyn
of Says Court, still, when they saw that his trees grew, his crops
prospered, and his sheep fetched a good price at market, some of them
began to declare he was only too clever, and one or two of the more
enlightened actually came privately to ask his advice.
It was pleasant to see him in his library, among books he had picked up,
one by one, at stalls in London, where he read and wrote and taught his
sons, never long without the door being opened by Nan to see whether
his fire needed a fresh log, or whether his ink-stand were full, or to
announce that the pigs were in the garden, and turn out all his pupils
in pursuit! Interrupt as she would, she never seemed to come amiss to
him.
He was glad to talk over all the affairs of our country with us. In his
office in London he had of course been abreast with facts, but he was
keenly interested in all the details of the Prince’s return to favour,
of the Cardinal’s death, of the King’s assumption of the entire
management of State affairs, and of the manner in which the last hopes
of the Parliament of Paris had been extinguished. France was--as he
allowed to my eager son--beginning to advance rapidly on the road of
glory, it might be of universal empire. He agreed to it, but, said he,
with a curious perverse smile: ‘For all that, M. le Marquis, I remain
thankful that my wife’s inheritance is on this side of the Channel, and
though I myself may be but an exile and a fugitive, I rejoice that
my sons and their children after them will not grow up where there
is brilliancy and grandeur without, but beneath them corruption and a
people’s misery!’
THE END.