"The Splendid One"--"_Le Dieudonné_"--otherwise Louis XIV., King of
France and Navarre, sat in the _Galerie des Cerfs_ at Fontainebleau
before a blazing log fire, his feet and legs encased in long, heavy
riding boots, half a dozen dogs round him, and, on his lap, a little
spaniel of the breed afterwards known in England as that of King
Charles, with whose long silky ears he toyed.
Near the King, yet still at some distance from him, were many members
of his family and Court, including the Queen, who sat before a second
fire farther down the room in the riding-dress in which she had that
day accompanied her husband to a wild stag hunt in the forest. A
little distance off, chattering, laughing--in discreetly subdued
tones--were women who bore, or were yet to bear, names that the world
will never forget. One there was, who, although already a recipient of
the favours of Le Roi Soleil if not as yet of his love, sat plainly
dressed and with her eyes demurely cast down, near to Madame de
Montespan--_mâitresse en titre_--and only raised those eyes at some
sallies from the children of the latter who played around her knees.
After which she would let them steal swiftly towards the face of the
ruler of France's destiny as well as of the destiny of half Europe.
Yet, sometimes, too, she would smile softly at some thought not
aroused by the children's gambols, when her lips would part and
disclose her teeth which were already giving signs of the decay that,
later, was to take entire possession of them. When this occurred,
those near her would wonder what the woman who, as Françoise
d'Aubigne, had been born in a prison, was thinking of. Perhaps, they
speculated to themselves, on the jokes and gibes of her dead husband,
the diseased and crippled poet, romancer and dramatist, Paul Scarron.
Or, perhaps, on the lovers she had so often run to meet (when she was
supposed to be at mass or confession) in the little, green-hung
_parloir_ lent her by Ninon de l'Enclos for her rendezvous: perhaps of
the manner in which, slowly but surely, she was spinning her web
around the King and enfolding him in it even as the spider spins its
web and enfolds and strangles the fly.
Near her were, however, other women who, had they had their way, would
themselves have strangled the life out of this woman, now, by creation
and gift of estate and brevet, Madame de Maintenon, as willingly as
she was secretly strangling the will and power out of Louis; women
whom once the King had loved more fiercely than--though not so
subserviently as--he was now beginning to love her. Close by _la femme
funeste_ was the once lovely Duchesse de Châtillon--now grown fat and
troubled with a nervous twitching of the face--who had once disputed
with Madame de Beauvais, who had never been lovely and who squinted,
the right of having been Louis' first love. Here, too, was the
beautiful Mdlle. d'Argenson now married to a husband who was reported
to beat her; and many others. While, had the phantoms of all those
whom the King had adored and then neglected, and then cast off, been
able to appear, the room would have been full of sombre shadows.
Before the King there was placed a small table on which, at this
moment, was piled up in great disarray a vast heap of letters that had
that afternoon arrived by special courier, and which he was at this
time engaged in reading after his return from the stag hunt. Or
rather, he was engaged in reading all those which a courtier who sat
next to him in a smaller, less comfortable chair, handed to him after
he himself had perused them. This courtier was no less a person than
the Marquis de Louvois, whose precise position was that of Minister of
War but who, during the ascendancy that he had for some years been
gradually obtaining over the King--in which ascendancy he ran a race
of deadly rivalry with Madame de Maintenon--had become his right hand.
"Two letters, both of the same import," Louis said now, placing one
which he held in his hand face downwards on top of another he had
previously laid on the table; "two letters from two women, and each
telling the same story. Letters coming, you observe, from widely
different cities. One from London. The other from Geneva. Almost, it
seems, there must be some truth in what they tell."
The King might also have added, had he not doubtless entirely
forgotten the fact, that the two women from whom those letters came
had each been strongly affected towards him and his interests if they
had not, like so many others, allowed themselves to love him.
"Can it be true?" he went on now. "Can it? Yet, it must be, Louise is
in a position to know all, everything that transpires, everything that
is known in London: the Duchesse de Castellucchio must know every
secret that her admirer possesses."
"If, sire, he is her admirer."
"What else should he be?"
"_Prétendu_, perhaps, sire. Perhaps _soupirant_, awaiting events and
fortune. Needy men have often married rich women, heiresses, women who
can set them on their feet again; and they have done so without loving
them."
"It is true," the King said, speaking in tones so low that none but
his companion could hear him, but still tones clear, keen, incisive.
Then, lowering his voice as he changed the subject, the King said, "Is
_he_ gone?"
"He is, sire, in this room."
"Summon him."
Obedient to this order De Louvois rose from the far from comfortable
seat in which he sat, and, proceeding down the gallery while smiling
with a smile that had little mirth in it and scarcely any cordiality,
reached at last a courtier who, clad in a green hunting costume
adorned with gold lace and having on his shoulder the device in gold
of a bugle above a sun, was talking to a lady. This courtier was no
less a person than De Beaurepaire in his dress of Grand Veneur, while
the lady, who possessed a simpering weak face that, in her case, was
no index to her mind, and whose little curls all over her head gave
her an appearance of youth to which she no longer had any claim, was
Madame de Sevigne.
"His Majesty," De Louvois said to the former, after bowing to the
latter, "desires to speak with you."
"I am at his service as always," De Beaurepaire replied. "I trust he
is satisfied with the day's sport. It was worthy of a royal hunt,
thirteen stags being killed."
"No doubt, no doubt," De Louvois muttered, as now De Beaurepaire
followed him to where the King sat, while he observed as they drew
near their master that the two letters were no longer lying on the
table as they had originally been placed.
"Ah! Louis!" the King said to his namesake, addressing his old
playfellow as he had always done since boyhood, "so you have not yet
left for your house at Saint Mandé, where you now keep yourself so
much when you are not called forth from it by your duties to me. Your
duties of huntsman and Colonel of my Guards."
"Not yet, sire. The evening runs on; later I will ask your Majesty to
permit me to depart. May I crave to know if your Majesty is contented
with the day's hunt?"
"Beyond doubt. What you do for me, either as purveyor of sport or as
the chief of my guards," bearing again on the fact of the Prince
occupying the latter position, "is always well done."
"And always will be, sire. As it has ever been since, if I may recall
the past, it was done when I was permitted to be your Majesty's
principal playmate and comrade."
"Yes," the King replied, his bright blue eyes resting softly on the
other, "my playmate and comrade. My playmate and comrade," he said
again. "They were happy days. Once, Louis, you saved my life from an
infuriated stag here in this very Forest of Fontainebleau--you
remember?--and once in the Forest of Vincennes from an intending
assassin."
"I have not forgotten, sire. If your life is ever in danger again,
which heaven forfend, I pray it may be I who shall again save it."
"I hope so," the King said gently, "I hope so. Having saved that life
before it should be dear to you now. Now, when I am environed with
enemies worse than starving footpads and assassins; when the Dutchman,
Orange, would, they say, go down on his knees and thank God for my
taking off; when the ministers of my imbecile brother-in-law, Charles
of Spain, would have me assassinated on my own hearth if it could be
accomplished. When," he continued, "there is not a country in all
Europe, except that over which Charles Stuart now reigns, that does
not thirst for my life. In truth, I need good friends like you, Louis,
and you, Louvois. The one to whom I have confided the charge of my own
guards, the other the care of my whole army."
"Your Majesty may rely on me and my guards," De Beaurepaire said.
"Your Majesty may rely on----"
"I know. I know," Louis said. "Should I have confided that charge to
you otherwise?"
"And on me for the whole of your Majesty's army," De Louvois
exclaimed.
"That too, I know. Now," the King said, rising from his chair, at
which action all the others who were seated in the room rose as one
person. "Now, let us prepare for supper. Louis," he said, addressing
De Beaurepaire, "I spoke of an imbecile but now. There is another in
Paris like unto him, who has a reckoning to make with you. The Duc de
Castellucchio. What have you done with his wife?"
"She should be in Milan now, sire, and in her sister's arms. I sent
her on to Nancy from Paris well escorted. I did my best for her. If
the Duc de Castellucchio has aught to say to me he will know where I
am to be found."
"He will not endeavour to find you himself. He may, however, persuade
my _Grande Chambre_ to do so."
"I do not fear even that august assembly, sire, so long as I have your
protection."
"Do you fear aught on earth, Louis?"
"Nothing, sire, except your displeasure," the Prince answered with the
courtier's true--yet false--air.
When, however, some hours later, De Beaurepaire had withdrawn, not
only from the Royal Presence but also from all the crowd of courtiers
who hovered round _Le Roi Soleil_, and he was seated on the back of a
fresh, mettlesome horse which was to bear him to Paris as swiftly as
might be, he rode as one rides whose mind is ill at ease. For his head
was bent forward over the animal's mane, his handsome features were
clouded and the reins in his hand were carelessly held.
"How he harped on the word assassin," he mused, "how oft he repeated
it. How, too, he dwelt on my command of his guards. Yet I am no
assassin nor would-be assassin. Whatever evil I may meditate against
him, I have never thought of that. Nor has there been any talk of
murder, of assassination--of him--so far as I have heard. La Truaumont
spoke nothing of this after he rode back from Switzerland, but
only that I should put myself at the head of the discontented
nobility of Normandy who so protest against heavy taxation and the
ignoring of their rights. Assassination! God! it is an evil word.
And--assassination of him, my friend, my early playmate! The King who
has showered benefits on me full-handed."
Musing still, meditating always, he rode on down the great avenue that
led towards the little town of Fontainebleau, and, past it, to Paris
five-and-thirty miles off; while, as he continued upon his way, he
still mused, though now his thoughts took a different turn.
"A pity 'tis," he pondered, "that Humphrey West pryed into
their--our--secrets. I would have had him spared, or, at least, slain
in open honest fight, not done to death by so foul a thing as that
Boisfleury--as La Truaumont says he was after he confessed that he
knew all. Boisfleury! A piece of vermin fit only to crawl in the
gutters of Paris, to herd with the lowest, but not fit to take the
life of young, handsome Humphrey West. Humphrey, poor Humphrey! And
poor Mademoiselle d'Angelis. She loved him passing well."
He paused ere concluding what he was saying, and, reining in his
horse, stared fixedly into a dense copse that bordered the side of the
drive. He stared at something he saw moving suspiciously through the
undergrowth and as though with the desire of avoiding attention.
Recollecting, however, that, on such a night as this, and after a
great hunt in the vast forest which, at that time, covered very nearly
a hundred square miles of ground, and where, too, hundreds of
villagers, _vauriens_ and ne'er-do-wells generally would be about, he
muttered, "Psha! what need to be surprised at the sight of any
creeping, crawling vagabond here," and withdrew his hand with almost a
feeling of self-contempt from the holster towards which he had thrust
it.
As, however, he again set his horse in motion, he saw that which, in
all likelihood, had caused the creeping figure to take shelter in the
undergrowth, if it was not due to his own appearance. Coming up the
long avenue from the direction where, afar off, Paris lay, was one of
those vehicles known as a _chaise roulante_--a small carriage which
would hold but one person; a thing not much larger than a sedan-chair,
but which was transported on two wheels and had a seat in front for
the driver. To-night, since it was entirely dark, a lamp placed by the
driver's side was alight and the rays from it were sufficient to
illuminate the whole of the interior of the small carriage.
Attracted by the appearance of this vehicle, wondering who could be
coming in so plain and common a conveyance to Fontainebleau at this
hour--Fontainebleau, with the King in residence!--De Beaurepaire could
not resist the impulse of curiosity which impelled him to glance in at
the occupant.
Then, suddenly, his hands so tightened on the reins they held that his
high-mettled horse rose on its hind legs and, in its rearing, nearly
threw him.
He had tightened the reins thus as he saw a white, death-like looking
face gazing out as he glanced in at the window; a face from out of
which two hollow eyes stared into the darkness of the night.
"_Dieu!_" De Beaurepaire whispered, even as he knew, as he divined,
that he had himself turned as white as that sepulchral-looking face
inside the _chaise roulante_, and while he felt his whole body
suffused with the perspiration that burst from every pore. "He is
alive. And he knows all. To-night the King will know all, too. He must
be here to tell him all!"