The Bourgeois Philibert, after an arduous day's work, was enjoying in
his armchair a quiet siesta in the old comfortable parlor of his city
home.
The sudden advent of peace had opened the seas to commerce, and a fleet
of long-shut-up merchantmen were rapidly loading at the quays of the
Friponne as well as at those of the Bourgeois, with the products of the
Colony for shipment to France before the closing in of the St. Lawrence
by ice. The summer of St. Martin was lingering soft and warm on the
edge of winter, and every available man, including the soldiers of the
garrison, were busy loading the ships to get them off in time to escape
the hard nip of winter.
Dame Rochelle sat near the window, which to-day was open to the balmy
air. She was occupied in knitting, and occasionally glancing at a volume
of Jurieu's hard Calvinistic divinity, which lay upon the table beside
her. Her spectacles reposed upon the open page, where she had laid
them down while she meditated, as was her custom, upon knotty points
of doctrine, touching free will, necessity, and election by grace;
regarding works as a garment of filthy rags, in which publicans and
sinners who trusted in them were damned, while in practice the good
soul was as earnest in performing them as if she believed her salvation
depended exclusively thereupon.
Dame Rochelle had received a new lease of life by the return home of
Pierre Philibert. She grew radiant, almost gay, at the news of his
betrothal to Amélie de Repentigny, and although she could not lay aside
the black puritanical garb she had worn so many years, her kind face
brightened from its habitual seriousness. The return of Pierre broke
in upon her quiet routine of living like a prolonged festival. The
preparation of the great house of Belmont for his young bride completed
her happiness.
In her anxiety to discover the tastes and preferences of her young
mistress, as she already called her, Dame Rochelle consulted Amélie on
every point of her arrangements, finding her own innate sense of the
beautiful quickened by contact with that fresh young nature. She was
already drawn by that infallible attraction which every one felt in the
presence of Amélie.
“Amélie was too good and too fair,” the dame said, “to become any man's
portion but Pierre Philibert's!”
The dame's Huguenot prejudices melted like wax in her presence, until
Amélie almost divided with Grande Marie, the saint of the Cevennes, the
homage and blessing of Dame Rochelle.
Those were days of unalloyed delight which she spent in superintending
the arrangements for the marriage which had been fixed for the
festivities of Christmas.
It was to be celebrated on a scale worthy of the rank of the heiress of
Repentigny and of the wealth of the Philiberts. The rich Bourgeois, in
the gladness of his heart, threw open all his coffers, and blessed with
tears of happiness the money he flung out with both hands to honor the
nuptials of Pierre and Amélie.
The Bourgeois was profoundly happy during those few brief days of Indian
summer. As a Christian, he rejoiced that the long desolating war was
over. As a colonist, he felt a pride that, unequal as had been the
struggle, New France remained unshorn of territory, and by its resolute
defence had forced respect from even its enemies. In his eager hope he
saw commerce revive, and the arts and comforts of peace take the place
of war and destruction. The husbandman would now reap for himself the
harvest he had sown, and no longer be crushed by the exactions of the
Friponne!
There was hope for the country. The iniquitous régime of the Intendant,
which had pleaded the war as its justification, must close, the
Bourgeois thought, under the new conditions of peace. The hateful
monopoly of the Grand Company must be overthrown by the constitutional
action of the Honnêtes Gens, and its condemnation by the Parliament
of Paris, to which an appeal would presently be carried, it was hoped,
would be secured.
The King was quarreling with the Jesuits. The Molinists were hated by
La Pompadour, and he was certain His Majesty would never hold a lit de
justice to command the registration of the decrees issued in his name by
the Intendant of New France after they had been in form condemned by the
Parliament of Paris.
The Bourgeois still reclined very still on his easy chair. He was not
asleep. In the daytime he never slept. His thoughts, like the dame's,
reverted to Pierre. He meditated the repurchase of his ancestral home in
Normandy and the restoration of its ancient honors for his son.
Personal and political enmity might prevent the reversal of his own
unjust condemnation, but Pierre had won renown in the recent campaigns.
He was favored with the friendship of many of the noblest personages
in France, who would support his suit for the restoration of his family
honors, while the all-potent influence of money, the open sesame of
every door in the palace of Versailles, would not be spared to advance
his just claims.
The crown of the Bourgeois's ambition would be to see Pierre restored to
his ancestral château as the Count de Philibert, and Amélie as its noble
châtelaine, dispensing happiness among the faithful old servitors and
vassals of his family, who in all these long years of his exile never
forgot their brave old seigneur who had been banished to New France.
His reflections took a practical turn, and he enumerated in his mind the
friends he could count upon in France to support, and the enemies who
were sure to oppose the attainment of this great object of his ambition.
But the purchase of the château and lands of Philibert was in his power.
Its present possessor, a needy courtier, was deeply in debt, and would
be glad, the Bourgeois had ascertained, to sell the estates for such a
price as he could easily offer him.
To sue for simple justice in the restoration of his inheritance would
be useless. It would involve a life-long litigation. The Bourgeois
preferred buying it back at whatever price, so that he could make a gift
of it at once to his son, and he had already instructed his bankers in
Paris to pay the price asked by its owner and forward to him the deeds,
which he was ambitious to present to Pierre and Amélie on the day of
their marriage.
The Bourgeois at last looked up from his reverie. Dame Rochelle closed
her book, waiting for her master's commands.
“Has Pierre returned, dame?” asked he.
“No, master; he bade me say he was going to accompany Mademoiselle
Amélie to Lorette.”
“Ah! Amélie had a vow to Our Lady of St. Foye, and Pierre, I warrant,
desired to pay half the debt! What think you, dame, of your godson?
Is he not promising?” The Bourgeois laughed quietly, as was his wont
sometimes.
Dame Rochelle sat a shade more upright in her chair. “Pierre is worthy
of Amélie and Amélie of him,” replied she, gravely; “never were two out
of heaven more fitly matched. If they make vows to the Lady of St. Foye
they will pay them as religiously as if they had made them to the Most
High, to whom we are commanded to pay our vows!”
“Well, Dame, some turn to the east and some to the west to pay their
vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the
oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amélie, sweet, modest flower
that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to
Amélie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy
in his eyes as herself!”
“Nor deserves to be, master! Theirs is no ordinary affection. If love be
the fulfilling of the law, all law is fulfilled in these two, for never
did the elements of happiness mingle more sweetly in the soul of a man
and a woman than in Pierre and Amélie!”
“It will restore your youth, dame, to live with Pierre and Amélie,”
replied the Bourgeois. “Amélie insists on it, not because of Pierre, she
says, but for your own sake. She was moved to tears one day, dame, when
she made me relate your story.”
Dame Rochelle put on her spectacles to cover her eyes, which were fast
filling, as she glanced down on the black robe she wore, remembering for
whom she wore it.
“Thanks, master. It would be a blessed thing to end the remaining days
of my mourning in the house of Pierre and Amélie, but my quiet mood
suits better the house of my master, who has also had his heart saddened
by a long, long day of darkness and regret.”
“Yes, dame, but a bright sunset, I trust, awaits it now. The descending
shadow of the dial goes back a pace on the fortunes of my house! I hope
to welcome my few remaining years with a gayer aspect and a lighter
heart than I have felt since we were driven from France. What would you
say to see us all reunited once more in our old Norman home?”
The dame gave a great start, and clasped her thin hands.
“What would I say, master? Oh, to return to France, and be buried in the
green valley of the Côte d'Or by the side of him, were next to rising in
the resurrection of the just at the last day.”
The Bourgeois knew well whom she meant by “him.” He reverenced her
feeling, but continued the topic of a return to France.
“Well, dame, I will do for Pierre what I would not do for myself. I
shall repurchase the old château, and use every influence at my command
to prevail on the King to restore to Pierre the honors of his ancestors.
Will not that be a glorious end to the career of the Bourgeois
Philibert?”
“Yes, master, but it may not end there for you. I hear from my quiet
window many things spoken in the street below. Men love you so, and need
you so, that they will not spare any supplication to bid you stay in the
Colony; and you will stay and die where you have lived so many years,
under the shadow of the Golden Dog. Some men hate you, too, because you
love justice and stand up for the right. I have a request to make, dear
master.”
“What is that, dame?” asked he kindly, prepared to grant any request of
hers.
“Do not go to the market to-morrow,” replied she earnestly.
The Bourgeois glanced sharply at the dame, who continued to ply
her needles. Her eyes were half closed in a semi-trance, their lids
trembling with nervous excitement. One of her moods, rare of late, was
upon her, and she continued:
“Oh, my dear master! you will never go to France; but Pierre shall
inherit the honors of the house of Philibert!”
The Bourgeois looked up contentedly. He respected, without putting
entire faith in Dame Rochelle's inspirations. “I shall be resigned,”
he said, “not to see France again, if the King's Majesty makes it a
condition that he restore to Pierre the dignity, while I give him back
the domain of his fathers.”
Dame Rochelle clasped her hands hard together and sighed. She spake not,
but her lips moved in prayer as if deprecating some danger, or combating
some presentiment of evil.
The Bourgeois watched her narrowly. Her moods of devout contemplation
sometimes perplexed his clear worldly wisdom. He could scarcely believe
that her intuitions were other than the natural result of a wonderfully
sensitive and apprehensive nature; still, in his experience he had found
that her fancies, if not supernatural, were not unworthy of regard
as the sublimation of reason by intellectual processes of which the
possessor was unconscious.
“You again see trouble in store for me, dame,” said he smiling; “but
a merchant of New France setting at defiance the decrees of the Royal
Intendant, an exile seeking from the King the restoration of the
lordship of Philibert, may well have trouble on his hands.”
“Yes, master, but as yet I only see trouble like a misty cloud which as
yet has neither form nor color of its own, but only reflects red rays as
of a setting sun. No voice from its midst tells me its meaning; I thank
God for that. I like not to anticipate evil that may not be averted!”
“Whom does it touch, Pierre or Amélie, me, or all of us?” asked the
Bourgeois.
“All of us, master? How could any misfortune do other than concern us
all? What it means, I know not. It is now like the wheel seen by the
Prophet, full of eyes within and without, like God's providence looking
for his elect.”
“And finding them?”
“Not yet, master, but ere long,--finding all ere long,” replied she in a
dreamy manner. “But go not to the market to-morrow.”
“These are strange fancies of yours, Dame Rochelle. Why caution me
against the market to-morrow? It is the day of St. Martin; the poor will
expect me; if I go not, many will return empty away.”
“They are not wholly fancies, master. Two gentlemen of the Palace passed
to-day, and looking up at the tablet, one wagered the other on the
battle to-morrow between Cerberus and the Golden Dog. I have not
forgotten wholly my early lessons in classical lore,” added the dame.
“Nor I, dame. I comprehend the allusion, but it will not keep me from
the market! I will be watchful, however, for I know that the malice of
my enemies is at this time greater than ever before.”
“Let Pierre go with you, and you will be safe,” said the dame half
imploringly.
The Bourgeois laughed at the suggestion and began good-humoredly to
rally her on her curious gift and on the inconvenience of having a
prophetess in his house to anticipate the evil day.
Dame Rochelle would not say more. She knew that to express her fears
more distinctly would only harden the resolution of the Bourgeois. His
natural courage would make him court the special danger he ought to
avoid.
“Master,” said she, suddenly casting her eyes in the street, “there
rides past one of the gentlemen who wagered on the battle between
Cerberus and the Golden Dog.”
The Bourgeois had sufficient curiosity to look out. He recognized the
Chevalier de Pean, and tranquilly resumed his seat with the remark that
“that was truly one of the heads of Cerberus which guards the Friponne,
a fellow who wore the collar of the Intendant and was worthy of it. The
Golden Dog had nothing to fear from him.”
Dame Rochelle, full of her own thoughts, followed with her eyes the
retreating figure of the Chevalier de Pean, whom she lost sight of
at the first turn, as he rode rapidly to the house of Angélique des
Meloises. Since the fatal eve of St. Michael, Angélique had been tossing
in a sea of conflicting emotions, sometimes brightened by a wild hope
of the Intendant, sometimes darkened with fear of the discovery of her
dealings with La Corriveau.
It was in vain she tried every artifice of female blandishment and
cunning to discover what was really in the heart and mind of Bigot. She
had sounded his soul to try if he entertained a suspicion of herself,
but its depth was beyond her power to reach its bottomless darkness,
and to the last she could not resolve whether he suspected her or not of
complicity with the death of the unfortunate Caroline.
She never ceased to curse La Corriveau for that felon stroke of her
mad stiletto which changed what might have passed for a simple death by
heartbreak into a foul assassination.
The Intendant she knew must be well aware that Caroline had been
murdered; but he had never named it or given the least token of
consciousness that such a crime had been committed in his house.
It was in vain that she repeated, with a steadiness of face which
sometimes imposed even on Bigot, her request for a lettre de cachet, or
urged the banishment of her rival, until the Intendant one day, with
a look which for a moment annihilated her, told her that her rival had
gone from Beaumanoir and would never trouble her any more.
What did he mean? Angélique had noted every change of muscle, every
curve of lip and eyelash as he spake, and she felt more puzzled than
before.
She replied, however, with the assurance she could so well assume,
“Thanks, Bigot; I did not speak from jealousy. I only asked for justice
and the fulfilment of your promise to send her away.”
“But I did not send her away. She has gone away, I know not
whither,--gone, do you mind me, Angélique? I would give half my
possessions to know who helped her to ESCAPE--yes, that is the
word--from Beaumanoir.”
Angélique had expected a burst of passion from Bigot; she had prepared
herself for it by diligent rehearsal of how she would demean herself
under every possible form of charge, from bare innuendo to direct
impeachment of herself.
Keenly as Bigot watched Angélique, he could detect no sign of confusion
in her. She trembled in her heart, but her lips wore their old practised
smile. Her eyes opened widely, looking surprise, not guilt, as she shook
him by the sleeve or coquettishly pulled his hair, asking if he thought
that “she had stolen away his lady-love!”
Bigot though only half deceived, tried to persuade himself of her
innocence, and left her after an hour's dalliance with the half belief
that she did not really merit the grave suspicions he had entertained of
her.
Angélique feared, however, that he was only acting a part. What part? It
was still a mystery to her, and likely to be; she had but one criterion
to discover his real thoughts. The offer of his hand in marriage was the
only test she relied upon to prove her acquittal in the mind of Bigot of
all complicity with the death of Caroline.
But Bigot was far from making the desired offer of his hand. That
terrible night in the secret chamber of Beaumanoir was not absent from
his mind an hour. It could never be forgotten, least of all in the
company of Angélique, whom he was judging incessantly, either convicting
or acquitting her in his mind as he was alternately impressed by her
well-acted innocent gaiety or stung by a sudden perception of her power
of deceit and unrivalled assurance.
So they went on from day to day, fencing like two adepts in the art
of dissimulation, Bigot never glancing at the murder, and speaking of
Caroline as gone away to parts unknown, but, as Angélique observed with
bitterness, never making that a reason for pressing his suit; while she,
assuming the rôle of innocence and ignorance of all that had happened at
Beaumanoir, put on an appearance of satisfaction, or pretending still
to fits of jealousy, grew fonder in her demeanor and acted as though she
assumed as a matter of course that Bigot would now fulfill her hopes of
speedily making her his bride.
The Intendant had come and gone every day, unchanged in his manner, full
of spirits and gallantry, and as warm in his admiration as before; but
her womanly instinct told her there was something hidden under that gay
exterior.
Bigot accepted every challenge of flirtation, and ought to have declared
himself twenty times over, but he did not. He seemed to bring himself
to the brink of an avowal only to break into her confidence and surprise
the secret she kept so desperately concealed.
Angélique met craft by craft, duplicity by duplicity, but it began to
be clear to herself that she had met with her match, and although the
Intendant grew more pressing as a lover, she had daily less hope of
winning him as a husband.
The thought was maddening. Such a result admitted of a twofold meaning:
either he suspected her of the death of Caroline, or her charms, which
had never failed before with any man, failed now to entangle the one man
she had resolved to marry.
She cursed him in her heart while she flattered him with her tongue, but
by no art she was mistress of, neither by fondness nor by coyness, could
she extract the declaration she regarded as her due and was indignant
at not receiving. She had fairly earned it by her great crime. She had
still more fully earned it, she thought, by her condescensions. She
regarded Providence as unjust in withholding her reward, and for
punishing as a sin that which for her sake ought to be considered a
virtue.
She often reflected with regretful looking back upon the joy which Le
Gardeur de Repentigny would have manifested over the least of the favors
which she had lavished in vain upon the inscrutable Intendant. At such
moments she cursed her evil star, which had led her astray to listen to
the promptings of ambition and to ask fatal counsel of La Corriveau.
Le Gardeur was now in the swift downward road of destruction. This was
the one thing that caused Angélique a human pang. She might yet fail
in all her ambitious prospects, and have to fall back upon her first
love,--when even that would be too late to save Le Gardeur or to save
her.
De Pean rode fast up the Rue St. Louis, not unobservant of the dark
looks of the Honnêtes Gens or the familiar nods and knowing smiles of
the partisans of the Friponne whom he met on the way.
Before the door of the mansion of the Chevalier des Meloises he saw
a valet of the Intendant holding his master's horse, and at the broad
window, half hid behind the thick curtains, sat Bigot and Angélique
engaged in badinage and mutual deceiving, as De Pean well knew.
Her silvery laugh struck his ear as he drew up. He cursed them both;
but fear of the Intendant, and a due regard to his own interests, two
feelings never absent from the Chevalier De Pean, caused him to ride on,
not stopping as he had intended.
He would ride to the end of the Grande Allée and return. By that time
the Intendant would be gone, and she would be at liberty to receive his
invitation for a ride to-morrow, when they would visit the Cathedral and
the market.
De Pean knew enough of the ways of Angélique to see that she aimed at
the hand of the Intendant. She had slighted and vilipended himself even,
while accepting his gifts and gallantries. But with a true appreciation
of her character, he had faith in the ultimate power of money, which
represented to her, as to most women, position, dress, jewels, stately
houses, carriages, and above all, the envy and jealousy of her own sex.
These things De Pean had wagered on the head of Angélique against
the wild love of Le Gardeur, the empty admiration of Bigot, and the
flatteries of the troop of idle gentlemen who dawdled around her.
He felt confident that in the end victory would be his, and the fair
Angélique would one day lay her hand in his as the wife of Hugues de
Pean.
De Pean knew that in her heart she had no love for the Intendant, and
the Intendant no respect for her. Moreover, Bigot would not venture to
marry the Queen of Sheba without the sanction of his jealous patroness
at Court. He might possess a hundred mistresses if he liked, and be
congratulated on his bonnes fortunes, but not one wife, under the
penalty of losing the favor of La Pompadour, who had chosen a future
wife for him out of the crowd of intriguantes who fluttered round her,
basking like butterflies in the sunshine of her semi-regal splendor.
Bigot had passed a wild night at the Palace among the partners of the
Grand Company, who had met to curse the peace and drink a speedy renewal
of the war. Before sitting down to their debauch, however, they had
discussed, with more regard to their peculiar interests than to the
principles of the Decalogue, the condition and prospects of the Company.
The prospect was so little encouraging to the associates that they were
glad when the Intendant bade them cheer up and remember that all was
not lost that was in danger. “Philibert would yet undergo the fate of
Actaeon, and be torn in pieces by his own dog.” Bigot, as he said this,
glanced from Le Gardeur to De Pean, with a look and a smile which caused
Cadet, who knew its meaning, to shrug his shoulders and inquire of De
Pean privately, “Is the trap set?”
“It is set!” replied De Pean in a whisper. “It will spring to-morrow and
catch our game, I hope.”
“You must have a crowd and a row, mind! this thing, to be safe, must be
done openly,” whispered Cadet in reply.
“We will have both a crowd and a row, never fear! The new preacher of
the Jesuits, who is fresh from Italy and knows nothing about our plot,
is to inveigh in the market against the Jansenists and the Honnêtes
Gens. If that does not make both a crowd and a row, I do not know what
will.”
“You are a deep devil, De Pean! So deep that I doubt you will cheat
yourself yet,” answered Cadet gruffly.
“Never fear, Cadet! To-morrow night shall see the Palace gay with
illumination, and the Golden Dog in darkness and despair.”