The bevy of fair girls still surrounded Bigot on the terrace stair.
Some of them stood leaning in graceful pose upon the balusters. The wily
girls knew his artistic tastes, and their pretty feet patted time to the
music, while they responded with ready glee to the gossiping of the gay
Intendant.
Amid their idle badinage Bigot inserted an artful inquiry for
suggestion, not for information, whether it was true that his friend
Le Gardeur de Repentigny, now at the Manor House of Tilly, had become
affianced to his cousin, Héloise de Lotbinière? There was a start of
surprise and great curiosity at once manifested among the ladies, some
of whom protested that it could not be true, for they knew better
in what direction Le Gardeur's inclinations pointed. Others, more
compassionate or more spiteful, with a touch of envy, said they hoped
it was true, for he had been “jilted by a young lady in the city!” Whom
they “all knew!” added one sparkling demoiselle, giving herself a twitch
and throwing a side glance which mimicked so perfectly the manner of
the lady hinted at, that all knew in a moment she meant no other than
Angélique des Meloises. They all laughed merrily at the conceit, and
agreed that Le Gardeur de Repentigny would only serve the proud flirt
right by marrying Héloise, and showing the world how little he cared for
Angélique.
“Or how much!” suggested an experienced and lively widow, Madame La
Touche. “I think his marrying Héloise de Lotbinière will only prove the
desperate condition of his feelings. He will marry her, not because he
loves her, but to spite Angélique.”
The Intendant had reckoned securely on the success of his ruse: the
words were scarcely spoken before a couple of close friends of Angélique
found her out, and poured into her ears an exaggerated story of the
coming marriage of Le Gardeur with Héloise de Lotbinière.
Angélique believed them because it seemed the natural consequence of her
own infidelity.
Her friends, who were watching her with all a woman's curiosity and
acuteness, were secretly pleased to see that their news had cut her to
the quick. They were not misled by the affected indifference and gay
laughter which veiled the resentment which was plainly visible in her
agitated bosom.
Her two friends left her to report back to their companions, with
many exaggerations and much pursing of pretty lips, how Angélique had
received their communication. They flattered themselves they had had
the pleasure of first breaking the bad tidings to her, but they were
mistaken! Angélique's far-reaching curiosity had touched Tilly with
its antennae, and she had already learned of the visit of Héloise de
Lotbinière, an old school companion of her own, to the Manor House of
Tilly.
She had scented danger afar off from that visit. She knew that Héloise
worshipped Le Gardeur, and now that Angélique had cast him off, what
more natural than that he should fall at last into her snares--so
Angélique scornfully termed the beauty and amiable character of her
rival. She was angry without reason, and she knew it; but that made her
still more angry, and with still less reason.
“Bigot!” said she, impetuously, as the Intendant rejoined her when the
half-hour had elapsed, “you asked me a question in the Castle of St.
Louis, leaning on the high gallery which overlooks the cliffs! Do you
remember it?”
“I do: one does not forget easily what one asks of a beautiful woman,
and still less the reply she makes to us,” replied he, looking at her
sharply, for he guessed her drift.
“Yet you seem to have forgotten both the question and the reply, Bigot.
Shall I repeat them?” said she, with an air of affected languor.
“Needless, Angélique! and to prove to you the strength of my memory,
which is but another name for the strength of my admiration, I will
repeat it: I asked you that night--it was a glorious night, the bright
moon shone full in our faces as we looked over the shining river, but
your eyes eclipsed all the splendor of the heavens--I asked you to give
me your love; I asked for it then, Angélique! I ask for it now.”
Angélique was pleased with the flattery, even while she knew how hollow
and conventional a thing it was.
“You said all that before, Bigot!” replied she, “and you added a foolish
speech, which I confess pleased me that night better than now. You said
that in me you had found the fair haven of your desires, where your
bark, long tossing in cross seas, and beating against adverse winds,
would cast anchor and be at rest. The phrase sounded poetical if
enigmatical, but it pleased me somehow; what did it mean, Bigot? I have
puzzled over it many times since--pray tell me!”
Angélique turned her eyes like two blazing stars full upon him as if to
search for every trace of hidden thought that lurked in his countenance.
“I meant what I said, Angélique: that in you I had found the pearl of
price which I would rather call mine than wear a king's crown.”
“You explain one enigma by another. The pearl of price lay there before
you and you picked it up! It had been the pride of its former owner, but
you found it ere it was lost. What did you with it, Bigot?”
The Intendant knew as well as she the drift of the angry tide, which
was again setting in full upon him, but he doubted not his ability to
escape. His real contempt for women was the lifeboat he trusted in,
which had carried himself and fortunes out of a hundred storms and
tempests of feminine wrath.
“I wore the precious pearl next my heart, as any gallant gentleman
should do,” replied he blandly; “I would have worn it inside my heart
could I have shut it up there.”
Bigot smiled in complacent self-approval at his own speech. Not so
Angélique! She was irritated by his general reference to the duty of
a gallant gentleman to the sex and not to his own special duty as the
admirer of herself.
Angélique was like an angry pantheress at this moment. The darts of
jealousy just planted by her two friends tore her side, and she felt
reckless both as to what she said and what she did. With a burst of
passion not rare in women like her, she turned her wrath full upon him
as the nearest object. She struck Bigot with her clenched hand upon the
breast, exclaiming with wild vehemence,--
“You lie! François Bigot, you never wore me next your heart, although
you said so! You wear the lady of Beaumanoir next your heart. You have
opened your heart to her after pledging it to me! If I was the pearl
of price, you have adorned her with it--my abasement is her glory!”
Angélique's tall, straight figure stood up, magnified with fury as she
uttered this.
The Intendant stepped back in surprise at the sudden attack. Had the
blow fallen upon his face, such is human nature, Bigot would have
regarded it as an unpardonable insult, but falling upon his breast, he
burst out in a loud laugh as he caught hold of her quivering hand, which
she plucked passionately away from him.
The eyes of Angélique looked dangerous and full of mischief, but Bigot
was not afraid or offended. In truth, her jealousy flattered him,
applying it wholly to himself. He was, moreover, a connoisseur in female
temper: he liked to see the storm of jealous rage, to watch the rising
of its black clouds, to witness the lightning and the thunder, the gusts
and whirlwinds of passion, followed by the rain of angry tears, when the
tears were on his account. He thought he had never seen so beautiful a
fury as Angélique was at that moment.
Her pointed epithet, “You lie!” which would have been death for a man
to utter, made no dint on the polished armor of Bigot, although he inly
resolved that she should pay a woman's penalty for it.
He had heard that word from other pretty lips before, but it left no
mark upon a conscience that was one stain, upon a life that was one
fraud. Still his bold spirit rather liked this bold utterance from an
angry woman, when it was in his power by a word to change her rage into
the tender cooing of a dove.
Bigot was by nature a hunter of women, and preferred the excitement of a
hard chase, when the deer turns at bay and its capture gave him a trophy
to be proud of, to the dull conquest of a tame and easy virtue, such as
were most of those which had fallen in his way.
“Angélique!” said he, “this is perfect madness; what means this burst of
anger? Do you doubt the sincerity of my love for you?”
“I do, Bigot! I doubt it, and I deny it. So long as you keep a mistress
concealed at Beaumanoir, your pledge to me is false and your love an
insult.”
“You are too impetuous and too imperious, Angélique! I have promised you
she shall be removed from Beaumanoir, and she shall--”
“Whither, and when?”
“To the city, and in a few days: she can live there in quiet seclusion.
I cannot be cruel to her, Angélique.”
“But you can be cruel to me, Bigot, and will be, unless you exercise the
power which I know is placed in your hands by the King himself.”
“What is that? to confiscate her lands and goods if she had any?”
“No, to confiscate her person! Issue a lettre de cachet and send her
over sea to the Bastile.”
Bigot was irritated at this suggestion, and his irritation was narrowly
watched by Angélique.
“I would rather go to the Bastile myself!” exclaimed he; “besides, the
King alone issues lettres de cachet: it is a royal prerogative, only to
be used in matters of State.”
“And matters of love, Bigot, which are matters of State in France!
Pshaw! as if I did not know that the King delegates his authority, and
gives lettres de cachet in blank to his trusted courtiers, and even
to the ladies of his Court. Did not the Marquise de Pompadour send
Mademoiselle Vaubernier to the Bastile for only smiling upon the King?
It is a small thing I ask of you, Bigot, to test your fidelity,--you
cannot refuse me, come!” added she, with a wondrous transformation of
look and manner from storm and gloom to warmth and sunshine.
“I cannot and will not do it. Hark you, Angélique, I dare not do it!
Powerful as I may seem, the family of that lady is too potent to risk
the experiment upon. I would fain oblige you in this matter, but it
would be the height of madness to do so.”
“Well, then, Bigot, do this, if you will not do that! Place her in the
Convent of the Ursulines: it will suit her and me both,--no better place
in the world to tame an unruly spirit. She is one of the pious souls who
will be at home there, with plenty of prayers and penances, and plenty
of sins to pray for every day.”
“But I cannot force her to enter the Convent, Angélique. She will think
herself not good enough to go there; besides, the nuns themselves would
have scruples to receive her.”
“Not if YOU request her admission of Mère de la Nativité: the Lady
Superior will refuse no application of yours, Bigot.”
“Won't she! but she will! The Mère de la Nativité considers me a sad
reprobate, and has already, when I visited her parlor, read me a couple
of sharpest homilies on my evil ways, as she called them. The venerable
Mère de la Nativité will not carry coals, I assure you, Angélique.”
“As if I did not know her!” she replied impatiently. “Why, she screens
with all her authority that wild nephew of hers, the Sieur Varin!
Nothing irritates her like hearing a bad report of him, and although she
knows all that is said of him to be true as her breviary, she will not
admit it. The soeurs converses in the laundry were put on bread and
water with prayers for a week, only for repeating some gossip they had
heard concerning him.”
“Ay! that is because the venerable Mère Superior is touchy on the point
of family,--but I am not her nephew, voilà la différance!” as the song
says.
“Well! but you are her nephew's master and patron,” replied Angélique,
“and the good Mère will strain many points to oblige the Intendant of
New France for sake of the Sieur Varin. You do not know her as I do,
Bigot.”
“What do you advise, Angélique?” asked he, curious to see what was
working in her brain.
“That if you will not issue a lettre de cachet, you shall place the lady
of Beaumanoir in the hands of the Mère de la Nativité with instructions
to receive her into the community after the shortest probation.”
“Very good, Angélique! But if I do not know the Mère Superior, you do
not know the lady of Beaumanoir. There are reasons why the nuns would
not and could not receive her at all,--even were she willing to go, as I
think she would be. But I will provide her a home suited to her station
in the city; only you must promise to speak to me no more respecting
her.”
“I will promise no such thing, Bigot!” said Angélique, firing up again
at the failure of her crafty plan for the disposal of Caroline, “to have
her in the city will be worse than to have her at Beaumanoir.”
“Are you afraid of the poor girl, Angélique,--you, with your surpassing
beauty, grace, and power over all who approach you? She cannot touch
you.”
“She has touched me, and to the quick too, already,” she replied,
coloring with passion. “You love that girl, François Bigot! I am never
deceived in men. You love her too well to give her up, and still you
make love to me. What am I to think?”
“Think that you women are able to upset any man's reason, and make fools
of us all to your own purposes.” Bigot saw the uselessness of argument;
but she would not drop the topic.
“So you say, and so I have found it with others,” replied she, “but not
with you, Bigot. But I shall have been made the fool of, unless I carry
my point in regard to this lady.”
“Well, trust to me, Angélique. Hark you! there are reasons of State
connected with her. Her father has powerful friends at Court, and I must
act warily. Give me your hand; we will be friends. I will carry out your
wishes to the farthest possible stretch of my power. I can say no more.”
Angélique gave him her hand. She saw she could not carry her point with
the Intendant, and her fertile brain was now scheming another way to
accomplish her ends. She had already undergone a revulsion of feeling,
and repented having carried her resentment so far,--not that she felt
it less, but she was cunning and artful, although her temper sometimes
overturned her craft, and made wreck of her schemes.
“I am sorry I was so angry, Bigot, as to strike you with this feeble
hand.” Angélique smiled as she extended her dainty fingers, which,
delicate as they were, had the strength and elasticity of steel.
“Not so feeble either, Angélique!” replied he, laughing; “few men could
plant a better blow: you hit me on the heart fairly, Angélique.”
He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips. Had Queen Dido possessed
that hand she would have held fast Aeneas himself when he ran away from
his engagements.
Angélique pressed the Intendant's hand with a grasp that left every
vein bloodless. “As I hold fast to you, Bigot, and hold you to your
engagements, thank God that you are not a woman! If you were, I think I
should kill you. But as you are a man, I forgive, and take your promise
of amendment. It is what foolish women always do!”
The sound of the music and the measured tread of feet in the lively
dances were now plainly heard in the pauses of their conversation.
They rose, and entered the ballroom. The music ceased, and recommenced
a new strain for the Intendant and his fair partner, and for a time
Angélique forgot her wrath in the delirious excitement of the dance.
But in the dance her exuberance of spirits overflowed like a fountain
of intoxicating wine. She cared not for things past or future in the
ecstatic joy of the present.
Her voluptuous beauty, lissomeness, and grace of movement enthralled all
eyes with admiration, as she danced with the Intendant, who was himself
no mean votary of Terpsichore. A lock of her long golden hair broke
loose and streamed in wanton disorder over her shoulders; but she heeded
it not,--carried away by the spirit of the dance, and the triumph of
present possession of the courtly Intendant. Her dainty feet flashed
under her flying robe and scarcely seemed to touch the floor as they
kept time to the swift throbbings of the music.
The Intendant gazed with rapture on his beautiful partner, as she leaned
upon his arm in the pauses of the dance, and thought more than once
that the world would be well lost for sake of such a woman. It was but a
passing fancy, however; the serious mood passed away, and he was weary,
long before Angélique, of the excitement and breathless heat of a wild
Polish dance, recently first heard of in French society. He led her to a
seat, and left her in the centre of a swarm of admirers, and passed into
an alcove to cool and rest himself.