LES DEMOISELLES MONTJOIE AT HOME
Outside the snow had ceased to fall; in its place had come the clear,
crisp, and biting stillness of an intense frost, accompanied by that
penetrating cold which gives those who are subjected to it the feeling
that they are themselves gradually freezing, that the blood within
them is turning to ice itself. A cold, hard night; with the half-foot
long icicles cracking from the increasing density of the frost, and
falling, with a little clatter and a shivering, into atoms on the
heads or at the feet of the passers-by; a night on which beggars
huddled together for warmth in stoops and porches, or, being solitary,
laid down moaning in their agony on doorsteps until, at the end, there
came that warm, blissful glow which precedes death by frost. A night
when the well-to-do who were abroad drew cloaks, roquelaures, and
houppelandes tighter round them as they shivered and shook in chariots
and sedan chairs; when dogs were brought in from kennels and placed
before the blazing fires so that their unhappy carcases might be
thawed back to life and comfort, and when horses in their stalls had
rugs and cloths strapped over their backs so that, in the morning,
they should not be found stretched dead upon their straw.
Inside, except in the garrets and other dwellings of the outcasts, who
had neither fuel to their fires nor rags to their backs, every effort
was made to expel the winter cold; wood fires blazed on hearths and in
Alsatian stoves; each nook and cranny of every window was plugged
carefully; while men, and in many cases, women as well, drank spiced
Lunel and Florence, Richebourg and St. Georges, to keep their
temperatures up. And drank copiously, too.
It was the coldest night of the winter 1719-20; the coldest night of
that long spell of frost which had gripped Paris in its icy grasp.
Yet, in the salons of the Demoiselles Montjoie that frost was
confronted--defeated; it seemed unable to penetrate into the warmed
and scented rooms, over every door and window of which was hung arras
and tapestry; unable to touch, and cause to shiver in touching, either
the bare-shouldered women who lounged in the velvet fauteuils or the
group of men who, in their turn, wandered aimlessly about.
"Confusion!" exclaimed one of the latter, a well-dressed, middle-aged
man, "when is Susanne about to begin? What are we here for? To gaze
into each other's fascinating faces or to recount our week-old
scandals? The fiend take it! one might as well be at home and have
been spared the encounter with the night air!"
"Have patience, Morlaix!" exclaimed a second; "the game never begins
until the pigeons are here. Sportsmen fire not into the air, nor
against one another. Do you want to win my louis-d'ors, or I yours?
No, no! On the contrary, let us combine. So, so," he broke off, "there
come two. The Prince Mirabel and Sainte Foix."
"Mirabel and Sainte Foix!" exclaimed the other. "Mirabel and Sainte
Foix! My faith, all we shall get out of them will not make us fat.
Sainte Foix cannot have got a thousand louis-d'ors left in the world,
and those which he has Mirabel will attach for himself. Mon Dieu! that
one of the Rohans should be one of us!"
The other shrugged his shoulders; then he said:
"Speak for yourself, mon ami. Meanwhile, I do not consider myself the
same as Mirabel. I have not been kicked out of the army. I am no
protector of all the sharpers in Paris. Speak for yourself, my friend.
For yourself."
"Now, there," said the other, taking not the slightest notice of his
acquaintance's protestations, which he probably reckoned at their
proper value. "There is one who might be worth----"
"Nothing! He would have been once, but his money is all gone. La Mothe
over there has had some of it, Mirabel also; even I have touched a
little. Now, there is none to touch. They even say he owes the
respected Duc Desparre twenty thousand livres, and cannot pay them."
"Desparre will expect them."
"That is possible. But I have great doubts--as to his ever getting
them, I mean. Yet he is a gentleman, this Englishman; it may be he
will find means to pay. It is a pity he does not ask his countryman,
John Law, for assistance. He might put him in the way of making
something."
"He might; though that I also doubt. Law has bigger friends to help
than dissolute young Englishmen; and they are not countrymen, the
financier being Scotch. Meanwhile, as I say, Desparre will expect his
money. He will want it, rich as he is, for his honeymoon."
"His honeymoon! Faugh! the wretch. He is fifty if an hour. And,
frankly, is it true? Has he bought Laure Vauxcelles?"
"Ay, body and soul; from her uncle Vandecque. She is his, and cannot
escape; she is in his grip. There is no hope for her. Vandecque is her
guardian; our law gives him full power over her. It is obedience to
the guardian's orders--or--you know!"
"Yes, I know. A convent; the veil. I know. Ha! speak of the angels!
Behold!" and his eyes turned towards the heavily-curtained doorway, at
which a woman, accompanied by a man much her senior in years, appeared
at the moment.
A woman! Nay! little more than a girl--yet a girl who ere long would
be a beauteous woman. Tall and supple, with a figure giving promise of
ripe fulness ere many months should have passed, with a face of sweet
loveliness--possessing dark hazel eyes, an exquisite mouth, a head
crowned with light chestnut hair, one curl of which (called by the
roués of the Regent's Court a "follow me, young man") fell over the
shoulder to the fair bosom beneath. The face of a girl to dream of by
night, to stand before by day and worship.
No wonder that Desparre, forty-five years of age as he really was, and
a dissolute, depraved roué to whom swift advancing age had brought no
cessation of his evil yearnings, was supposed to have shown good taste
in purchasing this modern Iphigenia, in buying her from her uncle, the
gambler, Vandecque--the man who entered now by her side.
In this salon there was a score of women, all of whom were well
favoured enough; yet the glances they cast at Laure Vauxcelles showed
that they owned their superior here. Moreover, they envied her.
Desparre was thought to be enormously rich--had, indeed, always been
considered so since he inherited his dukedom; but now that he had
thrust his hand into the golden rain that fell in the Rue Quincampoix
and, with it, had drawn forth more than a million livres--as many
said!--there was not one of them who, being unmarried, would not have
sold herself to him. But he had elected to buy Laure Vauxcelles, they
understood; and yet Laure hated him. "She was a beautiful fool!" they
whispered to each other.
The tables were ready by the time she and her uncle had made their
greetings. The "guests" sat down to biribi, pharaon (faro), and
lansquenet. It was what they had come for, since the Demoiselles
Montjoie kept the most fashionable gambling-house in Paris--a house in
which the Regent had condescended to play ere now. A house in which,
many years later, a milliner's girl, who was brought there to exhibit
her beauty, managed to become transformed into a king's favourite,
known afterwards as Madame du Barry.
Soon the gamblers were at it fast and furious. The stockbrokers of the
Rues Quincampoix[1] and Vivienne--not having had enough excitement
during the day in buying and selling Mississippi shares--were now
engaged in retrieving their losses, if possible, or losing their
gains. Even the greater part of the women had left the velvet lounges
and fauteuils and were tempting fate according to their means, with
crowns, louis-d'ors shares of the Royal Bank, or "The Louisiana
Company"; gambling in sums from twenty pounds to a thousand.
And Vandecque, Laure's uncle, having now his purse well lined, though
once nothing rubbed themselves together within it but a few beggarly
coppers, was presiding at the lansquenet table, had flung down an
important sum to make a bank, and was--as loudly as the manners of
good society under the Regency would permit--inviting all round him to
try their chance. While they, on their part, were eager enough to
possess themselves of that purse's contents, though he himself had
very little fear that such was likely to be the case.
Two there were, however, who sat apart and did not join in the
play--one, the ruined young Englishman of whom Morlaix and his
companion had spoken, the other, Laure Vauxcelles, the woman who
was to be sold in marriage to Desparre. Neither had spoken, however,
on Laure's entrance with Vandecque. The man had remained seated
on one of the velvet lounges at the far end of the room, his eyes
fixed on the richly-painted ceiling, with its cupids and nymphs and
goddesses--fitting allegories to the greatest and most aristocratic
gambling hell in Paris! The girl, on entering, had cast one swift
glance at him from those, hazel eyes, and had then turned them away.
Yet he had seen that glance, although he had taken no notice of it.
Presently, the game waxing more and more furious while Vandecque's
back was turned to them (he being much occupied with his earnest
endeavours to capture all the bank notes and the obligations of the
Royal Bank and the Louisiana Company, and the little piles of gold
pieces scattered about), the young man rose from his seat, and,
walking to where Laure Vauxcelles sat some twenty paces from him,
staring straight before her, said:
"This should be almost Mademoiselle's last appearance here. Doubtless
Monsieur le Duc is anxious for--for his union with Mademoiselle. When,
if one may make so bold to ask, is it likely to take place?"
For answer, the girl seated before him raised her eyes to those of the
young Englishman, then--with a glance towards Vandecque's back,
rounded as it bent over the table, while he scooped up the stakes
which a successful deal of the cards had made his--said slowly:
"Never. Never--if I can prevent it."
She spoke in a low whisper, for fear the gambler should hear her, yet
it was clear and distinct enough to reach the ears of the man before
her; and, as he heard the words, he started. Yet, because--although he
was still very young--the life he had led, the people he had mixed
among in Paris, had taught him to steel himself against the exhibition
of all emotion, he said very quietly:
"Mademoiselle is, if I may say it, a little difficult. She appears to
reject all honest admiration offered to her. To--to desire to remain
untouched by the love of any man?"
"The love of any man! Does Monsieur Clarges regard the love of the Duc
Desparre as worth having? Does he regard the Duc Desparre as a man? As
one whose wife any woman should desire to become?"
Monsieur Clarges shrugged his shoulders, then he said:
"There have been others."
"Yes," she answered. "There have been others."
"And they were equally unfortunate. There was one----"
"There was one," she replied, interrupting, and with her glance firmly
fixed him, "who desired my love; who desired me for his wife. A year
ago. Is it not so? And, Monsieur Clarges, what was my answer to him?
You should know. Recall it."
"Your answer was that you did not love him; that, therefore, you could
be no wife of his. Now, Mademoiselle, recall yourself--it is your
turn--what he then said. It was this, I think. That he so loved you
that, without receiving back any love from you in return, he begged
you to grant his prayer; to believe that he would win that love at
last if you would but give yourself to him; while, if you desired it,
he would so show the reverence he held you in--that, once you were his
wife, he would demand nothing more from you. Nothing but that he might
be by your side; be but as a brother, a champion, a sentinel to watch
and guard over you, although a husband in truth. That was what he
said. That was all he desired. Mademoiselle, will the Duc Desparre be
as loyal a husband as this, do you think?"
"The Duc Desparre will never be husband of mine."
The Englishman again shrugged his shoulders. He had learnt the trick
well during a long exile in Paris--an exile dating from the time when
the Pretender's cause was lost by the Earl of Mar, and he, a Jacobite,
had followed him to France after the "'15."
"But how to avoid it now?" he asked. "The time draws near--is at hand.
How escape?"
"Is there not one way?" she asked, with again an upward glance of
those eyes.
"No no no!" he replied, his calmness deserting him now. "No! no! Not
that! Not that!"
"How else? There is no other."
As they spoke the play still went on at the tables; women shrieked
still, half in earnest half in jest, as a card turned up that told
against them. Still Vandecque crouched over the board where he held
the bank and where his greedy hands drew in the stakes, for he was
winning heavily. Already he had twenty thousand livres before him
drawn from the pockets of Mirabel, Sainte Foix, the stockbrokers of
the Rues Quincampoix and Vivienne, and from the female gamblers. And,
gambler himself, he had forgotten all else; he had forgotten almost
that the niece whom he guarded so carefully until the time should come
when he would hand her over to her purchaser, was in the room.
"It is an accursed law," the Englishman murmured; "a vile, accursed
law which gives a father or a guardian such power. In no other country
would it be possible. Yet Lau--Mademoiselle--that which you meditate
must never be. Oh! to think of it! To think of it!"
He buried his head in his hands now as he spoke--he had taken a
seat beside her--and reflected on the terror of the thing, the horror
that she, whom he had loved so madly--whom, alas! he loved still,
though she cared nothing for him--should be doomed to one of two
extremes--marriage with Desparre, or a convent. Or, worse--a third, a
more fearful horror! That which she meditated--death!
For that, if she had taken this resolve, she would carry it out he did
not doubt. She would never have proclaimed her intention had she not
been determined. She had said it was the only way!
But, suddenly, he looked up at her, bent his head nearer to hers,
whispered a word. Then said aloud:
"There is your safety. There your only chance. Take it."
As he spoke, she started, and a rich glow came into her face while her
eyes sparkled; but a moment later her countenance fell again, and she
drew away from him.
"No! no!" she said. "No! no! Not that way. Not that. Not such a
sacrifice as that. Never! never never!"