THE PRINCE DE CELLAMARE.
At this invitation there entered a tall, thin, grave man, with a
sunburned complexion, who at a single glance took in everything in the
room, animate and inanimate. The chevalier recognized the ambassador of
their Catholic majesties, the Prince de Cellamare.
"Well, prince," asked the duchess, "what have you to tell us?"
"I have to tell you, madame," replied the prince, kissing her hand
respectfully, and throwing his cloak on a chair, "that your highness had
better change coachmen. I predict misfortune if you retain in your
service the fellow who drove me here. He seems to me to be some one
employed by the regent to break the necks of your highness and all your
companions."
Every one began to laugh, and particularly the coachman himself, who,
without ceremony, had entered behind the prince; and who, throwing his
hat and cloak on a seat, showed himself a man of high bearing, from
thirty-five to forty years old, with the lower part of his face hidden
by a black handkerchief.
"Do you hear, my dear Laval, what the prince says of you?"
"Yes, yes," said Laval; "it is worth while to give him Montmorencies to
be treated like that. Ah, M. le Prince, the first gentlemen in France
are not good enough for your coachmen! Peste! you are difficult to
please. Have you many coachmen at Naples who date from Robert the
Strong?"
"What! is it you, my dear count?" said the prince, holding out his hand
to him.
"Myself, prince! Madame la Duchesse sent away her coachman to keep Lent
in his own family, and engaged me for this night. She thought it safer."
"And Madame la Duchesse did right," said the cardinal. "One cannot take
too many precautions."
"Ah, your eminence," said Laval, "I should like to know if you would be
of the same opinion after passing half the night on the box of a
carriage, first to fetch M. d'Harmental from the opera ball, and then to
take the prince from the Hotel Colbert."
"What!" said D'Harmental, "was it you, Monsieur le Comte, who had the
goodness--"
"Yes, young man," replied Laval; "and I would have gone to the end of
the world to bring you here, for I know you. You are a gallant
gentleman; you were one of the first to enter Denain, and you took
Albemarle. You were fortunate enough not to leave half your jaw there,
as I did in Italy. You were right, for it would have been a further
motive for taking away your regiment, which they have done, however."
"We will restore you that a hundredfold," said the duchess; "but now let
us speak of Spain. Prince, you have news from Alberoni, Pompadour tells
me."
"Yes, your highness."
"What are they?"
"Both good and bad. His majesty Philip V. is in one of his melancholy
moods and will not determine upon anything. He will not believe in the
treaty of the quadruple alliance."
"Will not believe in it!" cried the duchess; "and the treaty ought to be
signed now. In a week Dubois will have brought it here."
"I know it, your highness," replied Cellamare, coldly; "but his Catholic
majesty does not."
"Then he abandons us?"
"Almost."
"What becomes, then, of the queen's fine promises, and the empire she
pretends to have over her husband?"
"She promises to prove it to you, madame," replied the prince, "when
something is done."
"Yes," said the Cardinal de Polignac; "and then she will fail in that
promise."
"No, your eminence! I will answer for her."
"What I see most clearly in all this is," said Laval, "that we must
compromise the king. Once compromised, he must go on."
"Now, then," said Cellamare, "we are coming to business."
"But how to compromise him," asked the Duchesse de Maine, "without a
letter from him, without even a verbal message, and at five hundred
leagues' distance?"
"Has he not his representative at Paris, and is not that representative
in your house at this very moment, madame?"
"Prince," said the duchess, "you have more extended powers than you are
willing to admit."
"No; my powers are limited to telling you that the citadel of Toledo and
the fortress of Saragossa are at your service. Find the means of making
the regent enter there, and their Catholic majesties will close the door
on him so securely that he will not leave it again, I promise you."
"It is impossible," said Monsieur de Polignac.
"Impossible! and why?" cried D'Harmental. "On the contrary, what is more
simple? Nothing is necessary but eight or ten determined men, a
well-closed carriage, and relays to Bayonne."
"I have already offered to undertake it," said Laval.
"And I," said Pompadour.
"You cannot," said the duchess; "the regent knows you; and if the thing
failed, you would be lost."
"It is a pity," said Cellamare, coldly; "for, once arrived at Toledo or
Saragossa, there is greatness in store for him who shall have
succeeded."
"And the blue ribbon," added Madame de Maine, "on his return to Paris."
"Oh, silence, I beg, madame," said D'Harmental; "for if your highness
says such things, you give to devotion the air of ambition, and rob it
of all its merit. I was going to offer myself for the enterprise--I, who
am unknown to the regent--but now I hesitate; and yet I venture to
believe myself worthy of the confidence of your highness, and able to
justify it."----"What, chevalier!" cried the duchess, "you would risk--"
"My life; it is all I have to risk. I thought I had already offered it,
and that your highness had accepted it. Was I mistaken?"
"No, no, chevalier," said the duchess quickly; "and you are a brave and
loyal gentleman. I have always believed in presentiments, and from the
moment Valef pronounced your name, telling me that you were what I find
you to be, I felt of what assistance you would be to us. Gentlemen, you
hear what the chevalier says; in what can you aid him?"
"In whatever he may want," said Laval and Pompadour.
"The coffers of their Catholic majesties are at his disposal," said the
Prince de Cellamare, "and he may make free use of them."
"I thank you," said D'Harmental, turning toward the Comte de Laval and
the Marquis de Pompadour; "but, known as you are, you would only make
the enterprise more difficult. Occupy yourselves only in obtaining for
me a passport for Spain, as if I had the charge of some prisoner of
importance: that ought to be easy."
"I undertake it," said the Abbe Brigaud: "I will get from D'Argenson a
paper all prepared, which will only have to be filled in."
"Excellent Brigaud," said Pompadour; "he does not speak often, but he
speaks to the purpose."
"It is he who should be made cardinal," said the duchess, "rather than
certain great lords of my acquaintance; but as soon as we can dispose of
the blue and the red, be easy, gentlemen, we shall not be miserly. Now,
chevalier, you have heard what the prince said. If you want money--"
"Unfortunately," replied D'Harmental, "I am not rich enough to refuse
his excellency's offer, and so soon as I have arrived at the end of
about a million pistoles which I have at home, I must have recourse to
you."
"To him, to me, to us all, chevalier, for each one in such circumstances
should tax himself according to his means. I have little ready money,
but I have many diamonds and pearls; therefore want for nothing, I beg.
All the world has not your disinterestedness, and there is devotion
which must be bought."
"Above all, be prudent," said the cardinal.
"Do not be uneasy," replied D'Harmental, contemptuously. "I have
sufficient grounds of complaint against the regent for it to be
believed, if I were taken, that it was an affair between him and me, and
that my vengeance was entirely personal."
"But," said the Comte de Laval, "you must have a kind of lieutenant in
this enterprise, some one on whom you can count. Have you any one?"
"I think so," replied D'Harmental; "but I must be informed each morning
what the regent will do in the evening. Monsieur le Prince de Cellamare,
as ambassador, must have his secret police."
"Yes," said the prince, embarrassed, "I have some people who give me an
account."----"That is exactly it," said D'Harmental.
"Where do you lodge?" asked the cardinal.
"At my own house, monseigneur, Rue de Richelieu, No. 74."
"And how long have you lived there?"
"Three years."
"Then you are too well known there, monsieur; you must change quarters.
The people whom you receive are known, and the sight of strange faces
would give rise to questions."
"This time your eminence is right," said D'Harmental. "I will seek
another lodging in some retired neighborhood."
"I undertake it," said Brigaud; "my costume does not excite suspicions.
I will engage you a lodging as if it was destined for a young man from
the country who has been recommended to me, and who has come to occupy
some place in an office."
"Truly, my dear Brigaud," said the Marquis de Pompadour, "you are like
the princess in the 'Arabian Nights,' who never opened her mouth but to
drop pearls."
"Well, it is a settled thing, Monsieur l'Abbe," said D'Harmental; "I
reckon on you, and I shall announce at home that I am going to leave
Paris for a three months' trip."
"Everything is settled, then," said the Duchesse de Maine joyfully.
"This is the first time that I have been able to see clearly into our
affairs, chevalier, and we owe it to you. I shall not forget it."
"Gentlemen," said Malezieux, pulling out his watch, "I would observe
that it is four o'clock in the morning, and that we shall kill our dear
duchesse with fatigue."
"You are mistaken," said the duchess; "such nights rest me, and it is
long since I have passed one so good."
"Prince," said Laval, "you must be contented with the coachman whom you
wished discharged, unless you would prefer driving yourself, or going on
foot."
"No, indeed," said the prince, "I will risk it. I am a Neapolitan, and
believe in omens. If you overturn me it will be a sign that we must stay
where we are--if you conduct me safely it will be a sign that we may go
on."
"Pompadour, you must take back Monsieur d'Harmental," said the duchess.
"Willingly," said the marquis. "It is a long time since we met, and we
have a hundred things to say to each other."
"Cannot I take leave of my sprightly bat?" asked D'Harmental; "for I do
not forget that it is to her I owe the happiness of having offered my
services to your highness."
"De Launay," cried the duchess, conducting the Prince of Cellamare to
the door, "De Launay, here is Monsieur le Chevalier d'Harmental, who
says you are the greatest sorceress he has ever known."
"Well!" said she who has left us such charming memoirs, under the name
of Madame de Stael, "do you believe in my prophecies now, Monsieur le
Chevalier?"
"I believe, because I hope," replied the chevalier. "But now that I know
the fairy that sent you, it is not your predictions that astonish me the
most. How were you so well informed about the past, and, above all, of
the present?"
"Well, De Launay, be kind, and do not torment the chevalier any longer,
or he will believe us to be two witches, and be afraid of us."
"Was there not one of your friends, chevalier," asked De Launay, "who
left you this morning in the Bois de Boulogne to come and say adieu to
us."
"Valef! It is Valef!" cried D'Harmental. "I understand now."
"In the place of Oedipus you would have been devoured ten times over by
the Sphinx."
"But the mathematics; but the anatomy; but Virgil?" replied D'Harmental.
"Do you not know, chevalier," said Malezieux, mixing in the
conversation, "that we never call her anything here but our 'savante?'
with the exception of Chaulieu, however, who calls her his flirt, and
his coquette; but all as a poetical license. We let her loose the other
day on Du Vernay, our doctor, and she beat him at anatomy."
"And," said the Marquis de Pompadour, taking D'Harmental's arm to lead
him away, "the good man in his disappointment declared that there was no
other girl in France who understood the human frame so well."
"Ah!" said the Abbe Brigaud, folding his papers, "here is the first
savant on record who has been known to make a bon-mot. It is true that
he did not intend it."
And D'Harmental and Pompadour, having taken leave of the duchess,
retired laughing, followed by the Abbe Brigaud, who reckoned on them to
drive him home.
"Well," said Madame de Maine, addressing the Cardinal de Polignac, "does
your eminence still find it such a terrible thing to conspire?"
"Madame," replied the cardinal, who could not understand that any one
could laugh when their head was in danger, "I will ask you the same
question when we are all in the Bastille."
And he went away with the good chancellor, deploring the ill-luck which
had thrown him into such a rash enterprise.
The duchess looked after him with a contempt which she could not
disguise: then, when she was alone with De Launay:
"My dear Sophy," said she, "let us put out our lantern, for I think we
have found a man."