Part 20
La Vallière did not even attempt to defend herself; she bore all these accusations without answering otherwise than by shaking her head, without uttering other words than those two which escape from hearts profoundly afflicted:
— My God! my God!
But, instead of calming the king's irritation, this cry of pain increased it: it was an appeal to a power superior to his own, to a being who could defend La Vallière against him.
Besides, he felt himself seconded by de Saint-Aignan. De Saint-Aignan, as we have said, saw the storm gathering; he did not know the degree of love Louis XIV might feel; he sensed coming all the blows of the three princesses, the ruin of poor La Vallière, and he was not enough of a knight not to fear being dragged into that ruin.
De Saint-Aignan therefore answered the king's questions only with words pronounced half under his breath or with jerky gestures, which had for their object to embitter matters and bring about a quarrel whose result must deliver him from the care of crossing the courts in broad daylight, to follow his illustrious companion to La Vallière's.
During this time, the king grew more and more excited.
He took three steps to leave and came back.
The young girl had not lifted her head, although the sound of footsteps should have warned her that her lover was moving away.
He stopped an instant before her, his arms crossed.
— One last time, mademoiselle, said he, will you speak? Will you give a cause for this change, for this fickleness, for this caprice?
— What would you have me say to you, my God? murmured La Vallière. You see well, Sire, that I am crushed at this moment! you see well that I have neither the will, nor the thought, nor the word!
— Is it then so difficult to tell the truth? In fewer words than you have just uttered, you would have told it!
— But, the truth, about what?
— About everything.
The truth did indeed rise from La Vallière's heart to her lips. Her arms made a movement to open, but her mouth remained silent, her arms fell back. The poor child had not yet been unhappy enough to risk such a revelation.
— I know nothing, she stammered.
— Oh! this is more than coquetry, cried the king; this is more than caprice: this is treason!
And, this time, without anything stopping him, without the tuggings of his heart being able to make him turn back, he dashed out of the chamber with a desperate gesture.
De Saint-Aignan followed him, asking nothing better than to leave.
Louis XIV stopped only on the staircase, and, clutching the rail:
— Do you see, said he, I have been shamefully duped.
— How so, Sire? asked the favorite.
— De Guiche fought for the Vicomte de Bragelonne. And that Bragelonne!...
— Well?
— Well! she still loves him! And, in truth, de Saint-Aignan, I should die of shame if, in three days, there remained in my heart so much as an atom of that love.
And Louis XIV resumed his course toward his own apartment.
— Ah! I told Your Majesty so, murmured de Saint-Aignan, continuing to follow the king and timidly watching at every window.
Unfortunately, it was not at the exit as it had been at the arrival.
A curtain was lifted; behind it was Madame.
Madame had seen the king leave the apartment of the maids of honor.
She rose when the king had passed, and hurried out of her own rooms; she climbed, two steps at a time, the stairs leading to that chamber from which the king had just come out.
Chapter CLXIV — Despair
After the king's departure, La Vallière had raised herself, arms outstretched, as if to follow him, as if to stop him; then, when, the doors having been closed by him, the sound of his steps was lost in the distance, she had just enough strength left to go and fall at the foot of her crucifix.
She remained there, broken, crushed, engulfed in her sorrow, aware of nothing other than her sorrow itself, a sorrow which she understood, moreover, only by instinct and sensation.
Amid this tumult of her thoughts, La Vallière heard her door open again; she started. She turned, believing it was the king returning.
She was mistaken, it was Madame.
What did Madame matter to her! She fell back, her head on her prie-Dieu. It was Madame, moved, irritated, threatening. But what was that?
— Mademoiselle, said the princess stopping before La Vallière, it is very fine, I grant, to kneel, to pray, to play at religion; but, submissive as you are to the King of Heaven, it befits you to do a little the will of the princes of the earth.
La Vallière painfully lifted her head in sign of respect.
— Just now, continued Madame, a recommendation was made to you, it seems to me?
La Vallière's eye, at once fixed and wandering, showed her ignorance and her forgetfulness.
— The queen recommended to you, continued Madame, to spare yourself enough that no one might spread rumors about you.
La Vallière's gaze became questioning.
— Well! continued Madame, someone is just leaving your rooms whose presence is an accusation.
La Vallière remained silent.
— It must not be, continued Madame, that my house, which is that of the first princess of the blood, give a bad example to the Court; you would be the cause of that bad example. I declare to you therefore, mademoiselle, out of the presence of any witness, for I do not wish to humiliate you, I declare to you therefore that you are free to leave from this moment, and that you may return to the house of your mother, Madame, at Blois.
La Vallière could fall no lower; La Vallière could suffer no more than she had suffered.
Her bearing did not change; her hands remained joined upon her knees like those of the divine Magdalene.
— You have heard me? said Madame.
A simple shiver which ran through all La Vallière's body answered for her.
And, as the victim gave no other sign of existence, Madame withdrew.
Then, to her suspended heart, to her blood as it were frozen in her veins, La Vallière felt by degrees succeed quicker pulsations at the wrists, the neck, and the temples. These pulsations, increasing progressively, soon changed into a vertiginous fever, in the delirium of which she saw whirling all the faces of her friends struggling against her enemies.
She heard clashing at once in her deafened ears threatening words and words of love; she no longer remembered being herself; she was lifted out of her first existence as if by the wings of a mighty tempest, and, at the horizon of the path into which the vertigo pushed her, she saw the tombstone rising and showing her the formidable and dark interior of eternal night.
But this painful obsession of dreams ended by calming, to give place to the habitual resignation of her character.
A ray of hope slipped into her heart like a ray of daylight into the dungeon of a poor prisoner.
She turned back to the road to Fontainebleau, she saw the king on horseback at the door of her carriage, telling her he loved her, asking her love, making her swear and swearing himself that never should an evening pass upon a quarrel without a visit, a letter, a sign coming to substitute the repose of night for the trouble of evening. It was the king who had thought of that, who had made her swear that, who had himself sworn it. It was therefore impossible that the king should fail the promise he had himself exacted, unless the king were a despot who commanded love as he commanded obedience, unless the king were an indifferent man whom the first obstacle sufficed to stop on the way.
The king, that gentle protector, who, by a word, by a single word, could make all her pains cease, the king was therefore joining her persecutors.
Oh! his anger could not last. Now that he was alone, he must suffer all that she herself suffered. But he, he was not chained as she was; he could act, move, come; she, she, she could do nothing but wait.
And she waited with all her soul, the poor child; for it was impossible that the king should not come.
It was scarcely half past ten.
He was going either to come, or to write to her, or to have a kind word brought to her by M. de Saint-Aignan.
If he came, oh! how she would spring to meet him! how she would push back that delicacy which she now found ill-judged! how she would say to him: 'It is not I who do not love you; it is they who will not that I love you.'
And then, it must be said, in reflecting upon it, and as she reflected upon it, she found Louis less guilty. Indeed, he knew nothing. What must he have thought of her obstinacy in keeping silence? Impatient, irritable, as the king was known to be, it was extraordinary that he had even kept his composure so long. Oh! doubtless she would not have acted thus, she: she would have understood all, guessed all. But she was a poor girl and not a great king.
Oh! if he would come! if he would come!... how she would forgive him all he had just made her suffer! how she would love him the more for having suffered!
And her head stretched toward the door, her lips half-open, awaited, God forgive her that profane thought! the kiss which the king's lips distilled so sweetly in the morning when he pronounced the word love.
If the king did not come, at least he would write; that was the second chance, a chance less sweet, less happy than the other, but which would prove just as much love, and only a more timid love. Oh! how she would devour that letter! how she would hasten to answer it! how, once the messenger gone, she would kiss, reread, press upon her heart the blessed paper which was to bring her rest, tranquillity, happiness!
Finally, the king did not come; if the king did not write, it was at least impossible that he should not send de Saint-Aignan or that de Saint-Aignan should not come of his own accord. To a third party, how she would tell all! Royal majesty would no longer be there to freeze her words upon her lips, and then no doubt could remain in the king's heart.
All, in La Vallière, heart and gaze, matter and spirit, turned therefore toward waiting.
She told herself she still had an hour of hope; that, until midnight, the king might come, write, or send; that at midnight only would all waiting be useless, all hope lost.
As long as there was any noise in the palace, the poor child believed herself the cause of that noise; as long as people passed in the court, she believed those people were messengers of the king coming to her.
Eleven o'clock struck; then a quarter past eleven; then half past eleven.
The minutes flowed slowly in that anxiety, and yet they fled still too fast.
The three-quarters struck.
Midnight! midnight! the last, the supreme hope came in its turn.
With the last tolling of the clock, the last light went out; with the last light, the last hope.
Thus, the king himself had deceived her; he first lied to the oath he had taken that very day; twelve hours between the oath and the perjury! That was not to have kept the illusion long.
Therefore, not only did the king not love, but he despised her whom everyone overwhelmed; he despised her to the point of abandoning her to the shame of an expulsion which equalled an ignominious sentence; and yet, it was he, he, the king, who was the first cause of that ignominy.
A bitter smile, the only symptom of anger which, during that long struggle, had passed over the angelic face of the victim, a bitter smile appeared upon her lips.
Indeed, for her, what remained on earth after the king? Nothing. Only, God remained in heaven.
She thought of God.
— My God! said she, you will yourself dictate to me what I have to do. It is from you that I await all, from you that I must await all.
And she looked at her crucifix, whose feet she kissed with love.
— Behold, said she, a master who never forgets and never abandons those who do not abandon him and who do not forget him; it is to him alone that one must sacrifice oneself.
Then, it would have been visible, if anyone could have plunged their gaze into that chamber, it would have been visible, we say, that the poor despairing girl was taking a last resolution, settling a supreme plan in her mind, mounting at last that great ladder of Jacob which leads souls from earth to heaven.
Then, and as her knees no longer had the strength to sustain her, she let herself little by little sink upon the steps of the prie-Dieu, her head resting against the wood of the cross, and, her eye fixed, her breath panting, she watched upon the windowpanes the first hours of day.
Two o'clock in the morning found her in that bewilderment or, rather, in that ecstasy. She already no longer belonged to herself.
Also, when she saw the violet tint of morning descend upon the palace roofs and vaguely outline the contours of the ivory Christ she held embraced, she rose with a certain strength, kissed the feet of the divine martyr, descended the stairs of her chamber, and wrapped her head in a mantle as she went down.
She arrived at the wicket just as the musketeers' round was opening the door to admit the first Swiss post.
Then, slipping behind the guards, she gained the street before the patrol chief had even thought to ask himself who was that young woman escaping so early from the palace.
Chapter CLXV — The Flight
La Vallière went out behind the patrol.
The patrol directed itself to the right by the rue Saint-Honoré; mechanically La Vallière turned to the left.
Her resolution was taken, her design fixed; she wished to go to the Carmelites of Chaillot, whose superior had a reputation for severity which made the worldly ladies of the Court tremble.
La Vallière had never seen Paris, had never gone out on foot, she would not have found her way, even in a calmer state of mind. This explains how she was going up the rue Saint-Honoré instead of down it.
She was in haste to withdraw from the Palais-Royal, and she was withdrawing from it.
She had only heard tell that Chaillot looked upon the Seine; she directed herself therefore toward the Seine.
She took the rue du Coq, and, unable to cross the Louvre, bore toward the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois skirting the site where Perrault since built his colonnade.
Soon she reached the quays.
Her pace was quick and agitated. Scarcely did she feel that weakness which, from time to time, reminded her, by forcing her to limp slightly, of the sprain she had given herself in her youth.
At another hour of the day, her bearing would have aroused the suspicions of the least clear-sighted, attracted the gaze of the least curious passersby.
But, at half past two in the morning, the streets of Paris are deserted or nearly so, and there is to be found there hardly more than the laborious artisans who go to earn the day's bread, or else the dangerous idlers who regain their dwellings after a night of agitation and debauchery.
For the former, the day begins; for the others, the day ends.
La Vallière was afraid of all those faces upon which her ignorance of Parisian types did not permit her to distinguish the type of probity from that of cynicism. For her, misery was a scarecrow; and all those people she met seemed to be wretches.
Her toilet, which was that of the eve, was studied, even in its neglect, for it was the same with which she had presented herself to the queen mother; moreover, beneath her mantle raised so that she might see to guide herself, her pallor and her beautiful eyes spoke a language unknown to those men of the people, and, without knowing it, the poor fugitive solicited the brutality of some, the pity of others.
La Vallière walked thus in one continuous course, panting, precipitate, to the height of the place de Grève.
From time to time, she stopped, pressed her hand to her heart, leaned against a house, caught her breath and continued her course more rapidly than before.
Arrived at the place de Grève, La Vallière found herself face to face with a group of three disheveled men, staggering, drunk, who were coming out of a boat moored at the port.
That boat was laden with wines, and one could see they had done honor to the merchandise.
They were singing their bacchic exploits upon three different tones, when, arriving at the end of the ramp opening onto the quay, they suddenly found themselves obstructing the young girl's path.
La Vallière stopped.
They, for their part, at the sight of this woman in courtly garments, made a halt, and, by common accord, took each other by the hands and surrounded La Vallière, singing to her:
_You who are bored all alone,_ _Come, come laugh with us._
La Vallière then understood that these men were addressing her and wished to prevent her passing; she made several efforts to flee, but they were useless.
Her legs failed her, she understood she was about to fall, and uttered a cry of terror.
But, at the same instant, the circle surrounding her opened under the effort of a powerful pressure.
One of the insulters was knocked over to the left, the other rolled to the right to the water's edge, the third wavered on his legs.
A musketeer officer found himself before the young girl, his brow furrowed, threat upon his lips, his hand raised to continue the threat.
The drunkards slipped away at sight of the uniform, and above all before the proof of strength just given by him who wore it.
— Mortbleu! cried the officer, but it is Mlle de La Vallière!
La Vallière, dizzy from what had just happened, stupefied to hear her name pronounced, La Vallière raised her eyes and recognized d'Artagnan.
— Yes, monsieur, said she, it is I, it is indeed I.
And, at the same time, she supported herself upon his arm.
— You will protect me, will you not, M. d'Artagnan? she added in a supplicating voice.
— Certainly I will protect you; but where are you going, my God, at this hour?
— I am going to Chaillot.
— You are going to Chaillot by the Rapée? But, in truth, mademoiselle, you have your back turned to it.
— Then, monsieur, be good enough to set me back upon my way and to conduct me for a few steps.
— Oh! gladly.
— But how does it happen that I find you here? By what favor of Heaven were you within reach to come to my rescue? It seems to me, in truth, that I dream; it seems to me that I am going mad.
— I found myself there, mademoiselle, because I have a house in the place de Grève, at the _Image-de-Notre-Dame_; because I went to collect rents yesterday, and passed the night there. Also I desired to be early at the palace to inspect my posts.
— Thank you! said La Vallière.
'That is what I was doing, yes, said d'Artagnan to himself, but she, what was she doing, and why does she go to Chaillot at such an hour?'
And he offered her his arm.
La Vallière took it and set off walking with precipitation.
However this precipitation hid a great weakness. D'Artagnan felt it; he proposed to La Vallière to rest; she refused.
— It is that you doubtless ignore where Chaillot is? asked d'Artagnan.
— Yes, I ignore it.
— It is very far.
— No matter!
— There is a league at least.
— I shall make that league.
D'Artagnan made no reply; he knew, by the simple accent, real resolutions.
He rather carried than accompanied La Vallière.
At last they perceived the heights.
— To what house are you going, mademoiselle? asked d'Artagnan.
— To the Carmelites, monsieur.
— To the Carmelites! repeated d'Artagnan astonished.
— Yes; and, since God sent you toward me to sustain me on my way, receive both my thanks and my farewells.
— To the Carmelites! your farewells! But you are entering religion then? cried d'Artagnan.
— Yes, monsieur.
— You!!!
There was in that _you_, which we have accompanied with three exclamation points to render it as expressive as possible, there was in that _you_ a whole poem; it recalled to La Vallière both her old memories of Blois and her new memories of Fontainebleau; it said to her: '_You_ who might be happy with Raoul, _you_ who might be powerful with Louis, you are going to enter religion, _you!_'
— Yes, monsieur, said she, I. I render myself the handmaid of the Lord; I renounce all that world.
— But are you not mistaken as to your vocation? are you not mistaken as to the will of God?
— No, since it is God who permitted that I should meet you. Without you, I should certainly have succumbed to fatigue, and, since God sent you upon my road, it is that He willed that I might attain the goal.
— Oh! said d'Artagnan with doubt, that seems to me a little too subtle.
— Be that as it may, resumed the young girl, you are now informed of my step and of my resolution. Now, I have a last grace to ask of you, while addressing you my thanks.
— Speak, mademoiselle.
— The king is ignorant of my flight from the Palais-Royal.
D'Artagnan made a movement.
— The king, continued La Vallière, is ignorant of what I am going to do.
— The king ignorant?... cried d'Artagnan. But, mademoiselle, take care; you do not calculate the reach of your action. No one should do anything the king is ignorant of, above all persons of the Court.
— I am no longer of the Court, monsieur.
D'Artagnan looked at the young girl with growing astonishment.
— Oh! do not trouble yourself, monsieur, she continued, all is calculated, and, were all not, it would be too late now to go back upon my resolution; the act is accomplished.
— Well! come, mademoiselle, what do you desire?
— Monsieur, by the pity one owes to misfortune, by the generosity of your soul, by your faith as a gentleman, I adjure you to make me an oath.
— An oath?
— Yes.
— Which?
— Swear to me, M. d'Artagnan, that you will not tell the king you saw me and that I am at the Carmelites.
D'Artagnan shook his head.
— I will not swear that, said he.
— And why?
— Because I know the king, because I know you, because I know myself, because I know all humankind; no, I will not swear that.
— Then, cried La Vallière with an energy of which she would have been thought incapable, instead of the blessings with which I would have showered you to the end of my days, be accursed! for you render me the most wretched of all creatures!
We have said that d'Artagnan knew all the accents which came from the heart; he could not resist that one.
He saw the degradation of those features; he saw the trembling of those limbs; he saw totter all that frail and delicate body shaken by shocks; he understood that resistance would kill her.
— Then let it be as you wish, said he. Be tranquil, mademoiselle, I will say nothing to the king.
— Oh! thank you, thank you! cried La Vallière; you are the most generous of men.
And, in the transport of her joy, she seized d'Artagnan's hands and pressed them between her own.
He felt himself moved.
— Mortbleu! said he, here is one who begins where the others end: it is touching.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”