Part 23

Sometimes a stray bullet finds its mark in a battle. This word, which the king had not spoken with any intent, struck Madame and shook her for a moment: she might, one day or another, have cause to fear reprisals.

— Well, said she, Sire, explain yourself.

— I ask you, madame, what has Mlle de La Vallière done against you?

— She is the most artful contriver of intrigues I know; she caused two friends to fight, she caused herself to be spoken of in such shameful terms that the whole Court frowns at the mere sound of her name.

— She? she? said the king.

— Beneath that so gentle and hypocritical exterior, continued Madame, she hides a spirit full of cunning and darkness.

— She?

— You may be mistaken, Sire; but I know her: she is capable of stirring even the best of relatives and the closest of friends to war. See already what discord she sows between us.

— I protest to you... said the king.

— Sire, consider this well: we lived in good understanding, and, by her reports, her artful complaints, she has estranged Your Majesty from me.

— I swear, said the king, that never a bitter word has passed her lips; I swear that, even in my fits of anger, she has not let me threaten anyone; I swear that you have no friend more devoted, more respectful.

— A friend? said Madame with an expression of supreme disdain.

— Take care, madame, said the king, you forget that you understood me, and that, from that moment, all is equalized. Mlle de La Vallière shall be what I wish her to be, and tomorrow, if such is my will, she shall be ready to sit upon a throne.

— She will not have been born to it, at least, and you may do what you will for the future, but nothing for the past.

— Madame, I have been full of complaisance and civility toward you: do not remind me that I am master.

— Sire, you have already repeated that to me twice. I have had the honor to tell you that I yield.

— Then, will you grant me that Mlle de La Vallière return to your household?

— To what end, Sire, since you have a throne to give her? I am too insignificant to protect such power.

— Enough of this malicious and disdainful wit. Grant me her pardon.

— Never!

— You push me to war within my own family?

— I have my family too, where I shall take refuge.

— Is that a threat, and will you forget yourself to such a degree? Do you believe that, were you to carry the offense so far, your relatives would uphold you?

— I hope, Sire, that you will not force me to anything unworthy of my rank.

— I had hoped that you would remember our friendship, that you would treat me as a brother.

— It is not to fail to recognize you as my brother, said she, to refuse an injustice to Your Majesty.

— An injustice?

— Oh! Sire, if I were to reveal to all the world the conduct of La Vallière, if queens knew...

— Come, come, Henriette, let your heart speak, remember that you have loved me, remember that the hearts of men must be as merciful as the heart of the sovereign Master. Have no inflexibility toward others; pardon La Vallière.

— I cannot; she has offended me.

— But I, I?

— Sire, for you I would do anything in the world, except that.

— Then you counsel me to despair... You cast me back upon that last resort of weak souls; then you counsel me to anger and outburst?

— Sire, I counsel you to reason.

— Reason?... My sister, I have no more reason.

— Sire, I beg you!

— My sister! for pity's sake, it is the first time I have pleaded; my sister, I have no hope left but in you.

— Oh! Sire, you weep?

— With rage, yes, with humiliation. To have been obliged to abase myself with prayers, I! the king! All my life I shall detest this moment. My sister, you have made me endure in a single second more ills than I had foreseen in the hardest extremities of this life.

And the king, rising, gave free course to his tears, which were indeed tears of anger and shame.

Madame was not touched — for the best of women have no pity in their pride — but she feared lest those tears carry away with them all that was human in the king's heart.

— Command, Sire, said she; and, since you prefer my humiliation to your own, though mine be public and yours have only me for witness, speak, I shall obey the king.

— No, no, Henriette! cried Louis, transported with gratitude, you shall have yielded to the brother!

— I have no brother, since I obey.

— Will you have my whole kingdom for thanks?

— As you love! said she, when you love!

He made no answer. He had taken Madame's hand and covered it with kisses.

— Thus, said he, you will receive this poor girl, you will pardon her, you will acknowledge the sweetness, the uprightness of her heart?

— I will maintain her in my household.

— No, you will restore her your friendship, my dear sister.

— I never loved her.

— Well! for love of me, you will treat her well, will you not, Henriette?

— So be it! I will treat her as one of your daughters!

The king rose. By this word, so fatally escaped, Madame had destroyed all the merit of her sacrifice. The king owed her nothing more.

Stung to the quick, mortally wounded, he replied:

— Thank you, madame, I shall remember eternally the service you have rendered me.

And bowing with an affectation of ceremony, he took his leave.

Passing before a mirror, he saw his red eyes and stamped his foot in anger.

But it was too late: Malicorne and d'Artagnan, stationed at the door, had seen his eyes.

"The king has wept," thought Malicorne.

D'Artagnan approached the king respectfully.

— Sire, said he in a low voice, you must take the little staircase to return to your rooms.

— Why?

— Because the dust of the road has left traces upon your face, said d'Artagnan. Go, Sire, go!

"Mordioux!" thought he, when the king had yielded like a child, "woe to those who make weep her who makes the king weep."

Chapter CLXX — Mademoiselle de La Vallière's Handkerchief

Madame was not wicked: she was merely hot-tempered. The king was not imprudent: he was merely in love.

Scarcely had the two concluded this sort of pact, which resulted in the recall of La Vallière, than each sought to gain advantage in the bargain.

The king wished to see La Vallière at every moment of the day.

Madame, who felt the king's resentment since the scene of supplications, would not abandon La Vallière without a fight.

She therefore strewed difficulties in the king's path.

Indeed, the king, to obtain his mistress's presence, was forced to pay court to his sister-in-law.

From this plan derived all of Madame's policy.

As she had chosen someone to second her, and that someone was Montalais, the king found himself encircled each time he came to Madame's. He was surrounded and not let go. Madame displayed in her conversations a grace and wit that eclipsed all else.

Montalais succeeded her. She soon became insupportable to the king.

That was what she awaited.

Then she launched Malicorne; he found the means to tell the king that there was a young person most unhappy at Court.

The king asked who this person was.

Malicorne answered that it was Mlle de Montalais.

Then the king declared that it served a person right to be unhappy when she did the same to others.

Malicorne explained: Mlle de Montalais had given her orders.

The king opened his eyes; he noticed that Madame, as soon as His Majesty appeared, appeared also; that she was in the corridors until after the king's departure; that she saw him out for fear he might speak in the antechambers to one of the girls.

One evening, she went further.

The king was seated among the ladies, and he held in his hand, beneath his cuff, a note he wished to slip into La Vallière's hands.

Madame guessed this intention and this note. It was quite difficult to prevent the king from going where he pleased.

Yet he must be prevented from going to La Vallière, from saying good evening to her, and from letting the note fall upon her lap, behind her fan or into her handkerchief.

The king, who was also observing, suspected a trap was being laid for him.

He rose and moved his armchair without affectation near Mlle de Châtillon, with whom he trifled.

They were making rhymed couplets; from Mlle de Châtillon he went toward Montalais, then toward Mlle de Tonnay-Charente.

Then, by this skillful maneuver, he found himself seated before La Vallière, whom he entirely screened.

Madame feigned great occupation: she was correcting a flower design on a tapestry canvas.

The king showed the corner of the white note to La Vallière, and she extended her handkerchief, with a look that said: "Put the note inside."

Then, as the king had set his own handkerchief upon his chair, he was adroit enough to let it fall to the ground.

So that La Vallière slid her own handkerchief onto the chair.

The king took it without seeming to, put the note in it, and replaced the handkerchief upon the chair.

La Vallière had just time to reach out and take the handkerchief with its precious deposit.

But Madame had seen all.

She said to Châtillon:

— Châtillon, pick up the king's handkerchief, if you please, from the carpet.

And the young girl having obeyed precipitately, the king having moved aside, La Vallière having been flustered, the other handkerchief was seen upon the chair.

— Ah! pardon! Your Majesty has two handkerchiefs, said she.

And the king was forced to shut La Vallière's handkerchief, with his own, into his pocket. He gained thereby this keepsake of his lover, but the lover lost a quatrain that had cost the king ten hours, and that was perhaps worth, alone, a long poem.

Whence the king's anger and La Vallière's despair.

It would be impossible to describe.

But then an incredible event occurred.

When the king left to return to his rooms, Malicorne, warned no one knows how, was in the antechamber.

The antechambers of the Palais-Royal are naturally dark, and, in the evening, little ceremony was observed at Madame's; they were poorly lit.

The king loved this dim light. General rule, love, whose spirit and heart constantly flame, loves no light elsewhere than in the spirit and heart.

So, the antechamber was obscure; a single page bore the torch before His Majesty.

The king walked with slow step and devoured his anger.

Malicorne passed very near the king, almost jostling him, and begged his pardon with perfect humility; but the king, in very ill humor, treated Malicorne very ill, who slipped away without noise.

Louis went to bed, having had, that evening, some small quarrel with the queen, and the next morning, at the moment he passed into his cabinet, the desire came to him to kiss La Vallière's handkerchief.

He called his valet de chambre.

— Bring me, said he, the suit I wore yesterday; but take great care to touch nothing that it might contain.

The order was executed, the king searched the pocket of his suit himself.

He found but one handkerchief, his own; La Vallière's had disappeared.

As he was lost in conjecture and suspicion, a letter from La Vallière was brought to him. It was conceived in these terms:

"How kind of you, my dear lord, to have sent me those beautiful verses! how ingenious and persevering is your love! How could you not be loved?"

— What does this mean, thought the king, there is some mistake. Search well, said he to the valet de chambre, for a handkerchief that should be in my pocket, and if you do not find it, and if you have touched it..."

He checked himself. To make a matter of state of the loss of this handkerchief was to open a whole chronicle; he added:

— I had in that handkerchief an important note that had slipped into its folds.

— But, Sire, said the valet de chambre, Your Majesty had but one handkerchief, and here it is.

— That is true, replied the king, grinding his teeth, that is true. O poverty, how I envy you! Happy he who himself takes and removes from his pocket handkerchiefs and notes.

He reread La Vallière's letter, seeking by what chance the quatrain could have reached her. There was a postscript to this letter:

"I return to you by your messenger this reply so little worthy of the gift."

— Very well! I shall learn something, said he with joy. Who is there, said he, and who brings me this note?

— M. Malicorne, replied the valet de chambre timidly.

— Let him enter.

Malicorne entered.

— You come from Mlle de La Vallière? said the king with a sigh.

— Yes, Sire.

— And you carried something from me to Mlle de La Vallière?

— I, Sire?

— Yes, you.

— No, Sire, no.

— Mlle de La Vallière says so formally.

— Oh! Sire, Mlle de La Vallière is mistaken.

The king frowned.

— What game is this? said he. Explain yourself; why does Mlle de La Vallière call you my messenger?... What did you carry to that lady? Speak quickly, monsieur.

— Sire, I carried to Mlle de La Vallière a handkerchief, and that is all.

— A handkerchief... What handkerchief?

— Sire, at the moment I had the sorrow, yesterday, to jostle the person of Your Majesty — a mishap I shall deplore all my life, especially after the displeasure you showed me; at that moment, Sire, I remained motionless with despair, Your Majesty was too far to hear my excuses, and I saw something white upon the ground.

— Ah! said the king.

— I bent down, it was a handkerchief. For an instant I had the idea that, in jostling Your Majesty, I had helped this handkerchief fall from your pocket; but, on respectfully feeling it, I sensed a cipher which I examined, it was the cipher of Mlle de La Vallière; I presumed that on arriving this young lady had let her handkerchief fall, I hastened to return it to her on her way out, and that is all I delivered to Mlle de La Vallière; I beseech Your Majesty to believe it.

Malicorne was so naive, so desolate, so humble, that the king took excessive pleasure in hearing him.

He was grateful for this chance as for the greatest service rendered.

— That makes already two fortunate encounters I have had with you, monsieur, said he: you may count on my friendship.

The fact is that, purely and simply, Malicorne had stolen the handkerchief from the king's pocket as gallantly as one of the pickpockets of the good city of Paris might have done.

Madame never knew this story. But Montalais caused La Vallière to suspect it, and La Vallière later told the king, who laughed excessively and proclaimed Malicorne a great politician.

Louis XIV was right, and we know that he understood men.

Chapter CLXXI — Wherein Is Treated of Gardeners, Ladders, and Maids of Honor

Unfortunately, miracles could not always last, while Madame's ill humor lasted always.

At the end of eight days, the king had come to no longer be able to look at La Vallière without a glance of suspicion crossing hers.

When a walking party was proposed, to avoid the scene of the rain or the royal oak being renewed, Madame had indispositions all ready: thanks to these indispositions, she did not go out, and her maids of honor remained at home.

Of nocturnal visits, not the slightest; there was no means.

This was because, in this regard, from the first days, the king had met with a painful failure.

As at Fontainebleau, he had taken Saint-Aignan with him and had wished to go to La Vallière. But he had found only Mlle de Tonnay-Charente, who had begun to cry fire and thief; so that a legion of chambermaids, overseers, and pages had come running, and Saint-Aignan, left alone to save the honor of his fled master, had incurred, from the queen mother and Madame, a severe rebuke.

Moreover, the next day, he had received two challenges from the Mortemart family.

The king had had to intervene.

This mischance had come of Madame having suddenly ordered a change of lodging for her girls, and La Vallière and Montalais had been called to sleep in the very cabinet of their mistress.

Nothing was therefore more possible, not even letters: to write beneath the eyes of an argus so fierce, of a sweetness so uneven as Madame's, was to expose oneself to the greatest dangers.

One may judge in what state of continuous irritation and growing anger all these pinpricks put the lion.

The king wore out his blood seeking means, and, as he opened himself neither to Malicorne nor to d'Artagnan, the means were not found.

Malicorne had here and there some heroic gleams to encourage the king to full confidence.

But, whether from shame or distrust, the king would first bite, then soon abandon the hook.

Thus, for example, one evening when the king was crossing the garden and sadly regarding Madame's windows, Malicorne struck a ladder against a boxwood border, and said to Manicamp, who walked with him behind the king, and who had struck nothing nor seen anything:

— Did you not see that I just struck a ladder and nearly fell?

— No, said Manicamp, distracted as usual; but you did not fall, it would seem?

— No matter! it is nonetheless dangerous to leave ladders thus lying about.

— Yes, one may hurt oneself, especially when distracted.

— That is not it: I mean that it is dangerous to leave ladders thus lying beneath the windows of the maids of honor.

Louis trembled imperceptibly.

— How so? asked Manicamp.

— Speak louder, whispered Malicorne, pushing his arm.

— How so? said Manicamp louder.

The king lent ear.

— See, for example, said Malicorne, a ladder of nineteen feet, exactly the height of the window cornice.

Manicamp, instead of answering, mused.

— Ask me of which windows, whispered Malicorne.

— But of which windows do you speak, then? asked Manicamp aloud.

— Of Madame's.

— Eh!

— Oh! I do not say that one ever dares ascend to Madame; but in Madame's cabinet, separated by a mere partition, sleep Mlles de La Vallière and de Montalais, who are two pretty persons.

— By a mere partition? said Manicamp.

— See, here is the rather bright light of Madame's apartments: do you see those two windows?

— Yes.

— And that window near the others, lit less vividly, do you see it?

— Perfectly.

— It is the maids' window. See, it is warm, there is Mlle de La Vallière opening her window; ah! what things a bold lover might say to her, did he suspect there this nineteen-foot ladder that reaches just to the cornice!

— But she is not alone, did you say? she is with Mlle de Montalais?

— Mlle de Montalais does not count; she is a childhood friend, entirely devoted, a veritable well into which one may throw all the secrets one wishes to lose.

Not a word of the conversation had escaped the king.

Malicorne had even remarked that the king had slowed his pace to give him time to finish.

Also, arrived at the door, he dismissed everyone, with the exception of Malicorne.

This astonished no one; the king was known to be in love and suspected of making verses by moonlight.

Though there was no moon that evening, the king might nonetheless have verses to make.

Everyone departed.

Then the king turned toward Malicorne, who respectfully awaited the king addressing him.

— Of what were you speaking just now of a ladder, Monsieur Malicorne? he asked.

— I, Sire, was speaking of a ladder?

And Malicorne raised his eyes to heaven as if to catch his flown words.

— Yes, of a ladder of nineteen feet.

— Ah! yes, Sire, that is true, but I was speaking to M. de Manicamp, and I should have been silent had I known Your Majesty could hear us.

— And why should you have been silent?

— Because I would not have wished the gardener who forgot it to be scolded... poor devil!

— Fear nothing... Come, what of this ladder?

— Does Your Majesty wish to see it?

— Yes.

— Nothing easier, it is there, Sire.

— In the boxwood?

— Exactly.

— Show it to me.

Malicorne retraced his steps and led the king to the ladder.

— There it is, Sire, said he.

— Draw it out a little.

Malicorne set the ladder in the alley.

The king walked lengthwise along the ladder.

— Hum! said he... You say it is nineteen feet?

— Yes, Sire.

— Nineteen feet is much: I do not believe it so long, myself.

— One sees poorly thus, Sire. If the ladder were upright against a tree or a wall, for example, one would see better, since comparison would help much.

— Oh! no matter, Monsieur Malicorne, I can scarce believe the ladder is nineteen feet.

— I know how sure Your Majesty's eye is, and yet I would wager.

The king shook his head.

— There is an infallible means of verification, said Malicorne.

— Which?

— Everyone knows, Sire, that the ground floor of the palace is eighteen feet.

— True, that may be known.

— Well! by applying the ladder along the wall, one would judge.

— That is true.

Malicorne lifted the ladder like a feather and reared it against the wall.

He chose, or rather chance chose, the very window of La Vallière's cabinet for his experiment.

The ladder reached exactly the edge of the cornice, that is to say almost to the window sill, so that a man placed on the next-to-last rung, a man of middling height, as the king was, for example, could easily communicate with the inhabitants, or rather inhabitantesses, of the chamber.

Scarcely was the ladder set, than the king, leaving the sort of comedy he was playing, began to climb the rungs, while Malicorne held the ladder. But he was scarce halfway up his aerial route when a patrol of Swiss guards appeared in the garden and advanced straight toward the ladder.

The king descended precipitately and hid in a thicket.

Malicorne understood that he must sacrifice himself. If he hid on his side, they would search until they found either him or the king, and perhaps both.

Better that he be found alone.

Accordingly, Malicorne hid so clumsily that he was arrested alone. Once arrested, Malicorne was conducted to the post; once at the post, he named himself; once named, he was recognized.

During this time, from thicket to thicket, the king regained the small door of his apartment, much humiliated and above all much disappointed.

All the more that the noise of the arrest had drawn La Vallière and Montalais to their window, and that Madame herself had appeared at hers between two candles, asking what was the matter.

During this time, Malicorne claimed d'Artagnan. D'Artagnan came running at Malicorne's call.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”