Part 26
— This letter, something tells me, was therefore written for you.
— For me? repeated the unhappy young girl with the docility of an automaton.
— And I, who saw this letter on Madame's desk before it was sealed, thought I read...
— You thought you read?...
— Perhaps I was mistaken.
— What?... Let us see.
— The name of Bragelonne.
La Vallière rose, prey to the most painful agitation.
— Montalais, she said in a voice full of sobs, already all the smiling dreams of youth and innocence have fled. I have nothing left to hide from you, or from anyone. My life lies open, and spreads like a book wherein all may read, from the king to the first passerby. Aure, my dear Aure, what is to be done? What is to become of me?
Montalais drew nearer.
— Well, take counsel with yourself, said she.
— Why, I do not love M. de Bragelonne; when I say I do not love him, understand me: I love him as the tenderest sister may love a good brother; but that is not what he asks of me, that is not what I promised him.
— In short, you love the king, said Montalais, and that is a fair enough excuse.
— Yes, I love the king, murmured the young girl darkly, and I have paid dearly for the right to utter those words. Well then! speak, Montalais; what can you do for me or against me in the position wherein I find myself?
— Speak to me more clearly.
— What shall I tell you?
— So, nothing more particular?
— No, said Louise with astonishment.
— Very well! Then it is a simple counsel you ask of me?
— Yes.
— Concerning M. Raoul?
— Nothing else.
— That is delicate, replied Montalais.
— No, nothing in that is delicate. Must I marry him to keep my pledged word? must I continue to heed the king?
— Do you well know you place me in a difficult position? said Montalais with a smile. You ask me whether you should marry Raoul, who is my friend, and to whom I do a mortal displeasure by declaring against him. You then speak to me of heeding the king no more, the king, whose subject I am, and whom I should offend by advising you in a certain way. Ah! Louise, Louise, you make light of a most difficult position.
— You have not understood me, Aure, said La Vallière, wounded by the slightly mocking tone Montalais had assumed: if I speak of marrying M. de Bragelonne, it is because I could marry him without giving him any displeasure; but, by the same reason, if I heed the king, must I make him the usurper of a possession truly very mediocre, but to which love lends a certain appearance of worth? What I ask of you, then, is to teach me a means of extricating myself honorably, on one side or the other, or rather I ask you from which side I may extricate myself most honorably.
— My dear Louise, answered Montalais after a silence, I am not one of the seven sages of Greece and I have no rules of conduct perfectly invariable; but, in exchange, I have some experience, and I may tell you that never does a woman ask a counsel of the sort you ask of me without being sorely embarrassed. Now, you have made a solemn promise, you have honor; if therefore you are embarrassed, having taken such an engagement, it is not the counsel of a stranger—all is strange to a heart full of love—it is not, I say, my counsel that will free you from embarrassment. I shall therefore not give it to you, all the more since in your place I should be even more embarrassed after the counsel than before. All I can do is repeat to you what I have already said: will you that I aid you?
— Oh! yes.
— Well! that is all... Tell me in what you wish me to aid you; tell me for whom and against whom. In this way we shall found no school.
— But first, you, said La Vallière pressing her companion's hand, for whom or against whom do you declare yourself?
— For you, if you are truly my friend...
— Are you not Madame's confidante?
— All the more reason to be of use to you; if I knew nothing from that quarter, I could not help you, and you would therefore draw no profit from my knowledge. Friendships live on such mutual benefits.
— It follows that you will remain at the same time Madame's friend?
— Evidently. Do you complain of it?
— No, said La Vallière dreamily, for this cynical frankness seemed to her an offense against the woman and a wrong to the friend.
— So much the better, said Montalais; for in that case you would be a great fool.
— Then, you will serve me?
— With devotion, above all if you serve me likewise.
— One would say you do not know my heart, said La Vallière looking at Montalais with wide astonished eyes.
— Why! it is that, since we have been at Court, my dear Louise, we are much changed.
— How so!
— It is very simple: were you the second queen of France, back there, at Blois?
La Vallière lowered her head and began to weep.
Montalais looked at her in an indefinable way and one heard her murmur these words:
— Poor girl!
Then, recovering herself.
— Poor king! said she.
She kissed Louise on the forehead and returned to her apartment, where Malicorne awaited her.
Chapter CLXXV — The Portrait
In that malady called *love*, the fits follow one another at intervals ever more close from the moment the ill begins.
Later, the fits draw apart from one another, in proportion as the cure arrives.
This laid down, as axiom in general and as chapter heading in particular, let us continue our tale.
The next day, the day fixed by the king for the first interview at de Saint-Aignan's, La Vallière, on opening her screen, found upon the floor a note written in the king's hand.
This note had passed from the lower floor to the upper through the crack of the parquet. No indiscreet hand, no curious eye could ascend where this simple paper ascended.
It was one of Malicorne's ideas. Seeing how useful de Saint-Aignan was about to become to the king through his lodgings, he had not wished the courtier to become likewise indispensable as messenger, and had, on his own authority, reserved for himself this last post.
La Vallière read avidly this note which fixed for her two o'clock in the afternoon as the moment of the rendezvous, and which indicated to her the means of lifting the parquet board.
— Make yourself beautiful, added the postscript of the letter.
These last words astonished the young girl, but at the same time they reassured her.
The hour moved slowly. It ended, however, by arriving.
As punctual as the priestess Héro, Louise lifted the trap at the last stroke of two, and found upon the first steps the king, who awaited her respectfully to give her his hand.
This delicate deference touched her sensibly.
At the foot of the stair, the two lovers found the count, who, with a smile and a reverence of the best taste, made his thanks to La Vallière for the honor he received from her.
Then, turning toward the king:
— Sire, said he, our man has arrived.
La Vallière, uneasy, looked at Louis.
— Mademoiselle, said the king, if I have prayed you to do me the honor of descending here, it is from interest. I have sent for an excellent painter who catches likenesses perfectly, and I desire that you authorize him to paint you. Besides, if you absolutely required it, the portrait would remain with you.
La Vallière blushed.
— You see it, said the king to her, we shall no longer be three only: we are four. Eh! my God! from the moment we are not alone, we shall be as many as you please.
La Vallière gently pressed the tips of the fingers of her royal lover.
— Let us pass into the next chamber, if it please Your Majesty, said de Saint-Aignan.
He opened the door and ushered his guests through.
The king walked behind La Vallière and devoured with his eyes her neck white as mother-of-pearl, around which coiled the tight and crisped rings of the young girl's silver hair.
La Vallière was clad in a stuff of thick silk of a pearl-grey color frosted with rose; a jet ornament set off the whiteness of her skin; her fine and diaphanous hands crushed a bouquet of pansies, Bengal roses and clematis with finely cut foliage, above which there rose, like a cup to pour forth perfumes, a Haarlem tulip of grey and violet tones, a pure and marvelous species, which had cost the gardener five years of combinations and the king five thousand livres.
This bouquet, Louis had placed in La Vallière's hand as he saluted her.
In this chamber, which de Saint-Aignan had just opened, stood a young man clad in a suit of light velvet, with fine black eyes and great brown hair.
It was the painter.
His canvas was all ready, his palette made.
He bowed before Mlle de La Vallière with that grave curiosity of the artist who studies his model, saluted the king discreetly, as if he did not know him, and as he would therefore have saluted another gentleman.
Then, leading Mlle de La Vallière to the seat prepared for her, he invited her to sit.
The young girl posed gracefully and with abandon, her hands occupied, her legs extended upon cushions, and, so that her glances might have nothing vague or affected, the painter prayed her to choose herself an occupation.
Then Louis XIV, smiling, came to sit upon the cushions at the feet of his mistress.
So that she, leaning backward, against the back of the armchair, her flowers in hand, so that he, his eyes raised toward her and devouring her with his gaze, they formed a charming group which the artist contemplated several minutes with satisfaction, while, for his part, de Saint-Aignan contemplated it with envy.
The painter sketched rapidly; then, beneath the first strokes of the brush, one saw issue from the grey ground that soft and poetic figure with gentle eyes, pink cheeks framed in hair of pure silver.
However the two lovers spoke little and looked much at one another; sometimes their eyes became so languishing, that the painter was forced to interrupt his work so as not to represent an Erycine instead of a La Vallière.
It is then that de Saint-Aignan came back to the rescue; he recited verses or told some of those little tales as Patru told them, as Tallemant des Réaux told them so well.
Or else La Vallière was tired, and they rested.
Straightway a tray of Chinese porcelain, laden with the finest fruits that could be found, straightway sherry wine, distilling its topazes in the chiseled silver, served as accessories to this picture, of which the painter was to trace only the most ephemeral figure.
Louis intoxicated himself with love; La Vallière, with happiness; de Saint-Aignan, with ambition.
The painter composed memories for his old age.
Two hours thus elapsed; then, four o'clock having struck, La Vallière rose, and made a sign to the king.
Louis rose, approached the picture, and addressed some flattering compliments to the artist.
De Saint-Aignan praised the likeness, already assured, as he claimed.
La Vallière, in her turn, thanked the painter blushing, and passed into the next chamber, where the king followed her, after having called de Saint-Aignan.
— Till tomorrow, is it not? said he to La Vallière.
— But, Sire, do you reflect that one will certainly come to my rooms, that I shall not be found there?
— Well?
— Then, what shall become of me?
— You are very fearful, Louise!
— But, in short, if Madame sent for me?
— Oh! replied the king, will not a day come when you yourself will tell me to brave all rather than leave you?
— That day, Sire, I should be a madwoman and you should not believe me.
— Till tomorrow, Louise.
La Vallière uttered a sigh; then, without strength against the royal request:
— Since you wish it, Sire, till tomorrow, repeated she.
And, at these words, she lightly mounted the steps and disappeared from her lover's eyes.
— Well! Sire?... asked de Saint-Aignan when she was gone.
— Well! de Saint-Aignan, yesterday I thought myself the happiest of men.
— And Your Majesty, today, said the count smiling, would it by chance think itself the most unhappy?
— No, but this love is an unquenchable thirst; in vain I drink, in vain I devour the drops of water your industry procures me: the more I drink, the more I thirst.
— Sire, it is a little your fault, and Your Majesty has made the situation such as it is.
— You are right.
— Therefore, in such case, Sire, the means of being happy is to think oneself satisfied and to wait.
— Wait! Do you then know that word, you, wait?
— There, Sire, there! do not despair. I have already sought, I shall seek again.
The king shook his head in a despairing air.
— What! Sire, are you no longer content already?
— Eh! yes indeed, my dear de Saint-Aignan; but find, my God! find.
— Sire, I engage to seek, that is all I can say.
The king wished to see the portrait again, unable to see the original. He indicated some changes to the painter, and went out.
Behind him, de Saint-Aignan dismissed the artist.
Easels, colors and painter were not yet disappeared, when Malicorne showed his head between the two portières.
De Saint-Aignan received him with open arms, and yet with a certain sadness. The cloud that had passed over the royal sun veiled, in its turn, the faithful satellite.
Malicorne saw, at first glance, that crepe spread upon the face of de Saint-Aignan.
— Oh! monsieur le comte, said he, how black you look!
— I have good cause for it, faith! my dear Monsieur Malicorne; would you believe the king is not content?
— Not content with his stair?
— Oh! no, on the contrary, the stair much pleased.
— It is then the decoration of the chambers that is not to his taste?
— Oh! for that, he has not so much as thought of it. No, what displeased the king...
— I am going to tell you, monsieur le comte: it is that he, a fourth, came to a love rendezvous. How, monsieur le comte, did you not guess that, you?
— But how should I have guessed it, dear Monsieur Malicorne, when I did but follow to the letter the king's instructions?
— In truth, His Majesty wished, by all means, to see you near him?
— Positively.
— And His Majesty wished besides to have M. the painter whom I met below?
— Exacted, Monsieur Malicorne, exacted!
— Then I understand, pardieu! well, that His Majesty was discontented.
— Discontented that one punctually obeyed his orders? I no longer understand you.
Malicorne scratched his ear.
— At what hour, asked he, had the king said he would come to you?
— At two o'clock.
— And you were at home awaiting the king?
— From half past one.
— Ah! truly!
— Peste! it would have been fine to see me inexact before the king.
Malicorne, despite the respect he bore de Saint-Aignan, could not forbear shrugging his shoulders.
— And this painter, said he, had the king asked him also for two o'clock?
— No, but I, I held him here from noon. Better, you understand, that a painter wait two hours, than the king one minute.
Malicorne fell to laughing silently.
— Come, dear Monsieur Malicorne, said Saint-Aignan, laugh less at me and speak more.
— You require it?
— I beg you.
— Well! monsieur le comte, if you wish the king to be a little more content the first time he comes...
— He comes tomorrow.
— Well! if you wish the king to be a little more content tomorrow...
— Ventre-saint-gris! as his grandsire said, if I wish it! I should think so!
— Well! tomorrow, at the moment the king arrives, have business outside, but for a thing that cannot be put off, for an indispensable thing.
— Oh! oh!
— For twenty minutes.
— Leave the king alone for twenty minutes? cried de Saint-Aignan frightened.
— Come, let us say I said nothing, made Malicorne, drawing toward the door.
— Yes indeed, yes indeed, dear Monsieur Malicorne; on the contrary, finish, I begin to understand. And the painter, the painter?
— Oh! the painter, him, he must be late by half an hour.
— Half an hour, you think?
— Yes, I think.
— My dear sir, I shall do as you say.
— And I think you will find it well; will you permit me to come inquire a little tomorrow?
— Certainly.
— I have the honor to be your respectful servant, Monsieur de Saint-Aignan.
And Malicorne went out backwards.
"Decidedly that fellow has more wit than I," said de Saint-Aignan to himself, carried away by his conviction.
Chapter CLXXVI — Hampton-Court
This revelation which we have just seen Montalais make to La Vallière, at the end of our next-to-last chapter, brings us back quite naturally to the principal hero of this history, poor wandering knight at the breath of a king's caprice.
If our reader will kindly follow us, we shall therefore pass with him that strait more stormy than Europe which separates Calais from Dover; we shall cross that green and plenteous countryside with its thousand streams which girds Charing, Maidstone and ten other towns more picturesque one than the other, and we shall arrive at last at London.
Thence, like limiers following a scent, when we shall have recognized that Raoul made a first sojourn at White-Hall, a second at Saint-James; when we shall know that he was received by Monck and introduced into the best societies of the Court of Charles II, we shall run after him even to one of the summer houses of Charles II, near the town of Kingston, at Hampton-Court, which the Thames bathes.
The river is not yet, at this spot, the proud way which each day conveys half a million travelers, and troubles its black waters like those of Cocytus, saying: "I too am the sea."
No, it is still but a sweet and green river with mossy margins, with broad mirrors reflecting the willows and the beeches, with some boat of dried wood that sleeps here and there amid the reeds, in a creek of alders and forget-me-nots.
The landscapes spread around calm and rich; the brick house pierces with its chimneys, with blue smokes, a thick cuirass of tawny and green hollies; the child clad in a red smock appears and disappears in the tall grasses like a poppy that bends beneath the breath of the wind.
The big white sheep ruminate with closed eyes under the shade of the little stocky aspens, and, from time to time, the kingfisher, with flanks of emerald and gold, runs like a magic ball upon the surface of the water and foolishly ruffles the line of his fellow, the fisherman, who watches, seated on his little boat, for the tench and the shad.
Above this paradise, made of black shadow and soft light, rises the manor of Hampton-Court, built by Wolsey, a dwelling which the proud cardinal had created desirable even for a king, and which he was forced, as a timid courtier, to give to his master Henry VIII, who had frowned with envy and cupidity at the mere sight of the new castle.
Hampton-Court, with walls of brick, with great windows, with fine iron grilles; Hampton-Court, with its thousand turrets, its bizarre bell-turrets, its discreet galleries and its inner fountains like those of the Alhambra; Hampton-Court, is the cradle of roses, of jasmine and of clematis. It is the joy of the eyes and of the smell, it is the most charming border of that picture of love which Charles II unrolled, amid the voluptuous paintings of Titian, of Pordenone, of Van Dyck, he who had in his gallery the portrait of Charles I, martyr king, and upon his wainscots the holes of the Puritan balls launched by the soldiers of Cromwell, on 24 August 1648, when they had brought Charles I prisoner to Hampton-Court.
It is there that this king, ever drunk with pleasure, held his court; this king poet by desire; this unhappy one of former times who paid himself, by a day of voluptuousness, each minute formerly elapsed in anguish and misery.
It was not the sweet turf of Hampton-Court, so sweet one thinks to tread on velvet; it was not the square of thick flowers which girds the foot of each tree and makes a bed for the rose-trees of twenty feet which burst open in full sky like sheaves of fireworks; it was not the great lindens whose branches fall to the ground like willows, and veil all love or all reverie under their shade or rather under their hair; it was not all that which Charles II loved in his fair palace of Hampton-Court.
Perhaps it was then that beautiful russet water like the waters of the Caspian Sea, that immense water, wrinkled by a fresh wind, like the undulations of Cleopatra's hair, those waters hung with cress, with white water-lilies of vigorous bulbs which half-open to let be seen like the egg the golden germ glowing at the bottom of the milky envelope, those mysterious waters full of murmurs, upon which sail the black swans and the little avid ducks, frail brood with silk down, who pursue the green fly upon the gladioli and the frog in its lairs of moss.
It was perhaps the enormous hollies with two-colored foliage, the laughing bridges thrown over the canals, the does that bellow in the endless alleys, and the wagtails that patter fluttering in the borders of box and clover.
For there is all that in Hampton-Court; there is, besides, the espaliers of white roses which climb along the high trellises to let fall upon the ground their odorous snow; there is in the park the old sycamores with greening trunks which bathe their feet in a poetic and luxuriant mold.
No, what Charles II loved in Hampton-Court, were the charming shadows which ran after noon upon his terraces, when, like Louis XIV, he had caused their beauties to be painted in his great cabinet by one of the intelligent brushes of his epoch, brushes which knew how to fix upon the canvas a ray escaped from so many fair eyes that launched love.
The day we arrive at Hampton-Court, the sky is almost soft and clear as on a day of France, the air is of a humid warmth, the geraniums, the enormous sweet-peas, the syringas and the heliotropes, thrown by millions into the parterre, exhale their intoxicating aromas.
It is one o'clock. The king, returned from the hunt, has dined, paid a visit to the Duchess of Castelmaine, the mistress in title, and, after this proof of fidelity, he may at ease permit himself infidelities until the evening.
All the Court sports and loves. It is the time when the ladies seriously ask the gentlemen their opinion on this or that foot more or less charming, according as it is clad in a pink silk stocking or a green silk stocking.
It is the time when Charles II declares there is no salvation for a woman without the green silk stocking, because Mlle Lucy Stewart wears them of that color.
While the king seeks to communicate his preferences, we shall see, in the alley of beeches which faced the terrace, a young lady in a gown of severe color walking near another gown of lilac and dark blue.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”