Part 5

— Yes, milord, that is all!

After this brief reply from Parry there was a long interval of silence; nothing was heard but the sound of the young man's heel furiously tormenting the parquet floor.

The old man tried to change the conversation.

— Milord, said he, what is all that noise that went before me? Who are those people crying: 'Long live the king!'... Of what king is it spoken, and why all these lights?

— Ah! Parry, you do not know, said the young man ironically, it is the King of France visiting his good city of Blois; all those trumpets are his, all those gilded horse-trappings are his, all those gentlemen have swords that are his. His mother precedes him in a carriage magnificently inlaid with silver and gold! Happy mother! His minister amasses millions for him and leads him to a rich bride. Then all the people are joyful, they love their king, they caress him with their acclamations, and they cry: 'Long live the king! long live the king!'

— Very well! very well! milord, said Parry, more uneasy at the turn this new conversation was taking than at the other.

— You know, resumed the stranger, that my mother, that my sister, while all this takes place in honor of King Louis XIV, have no more money, no more bread; you know that I shall be miserable and disgraced in fifteen days, when all Europe learns what you have just told me!... Parry... Are there examples of a man of my condition having...

— Milord, for Heaven's sake!

— You are right, Parry, I am a coward, and if I do nothing for myself, what will God do? No, no, I have two arms, Parry, I have a sword...

And he struck his arm violently with his hand and detached his sword hanging on the wall.

— What are you going to do, milord?

— Parry, what am I going to do? what everyone does in my family: my mother lives on public charity, my sister begs for my mother, I have somewhere brothers who likewise beg for themselves; I, the eldest, am going to do as they all do, I am going to go and ask for alms!

And with these words, which he cut short with a nervous and terrible laugh, the young man girded on his sword, took his hat from the chest, had a black cloak fastened over his shoulder which he had worn throughout the journey, and pressing the two hands of the old man who looked at him anxiously:

— My good Parry, said he, have a fire made, drink, eat, sleep, be happy; let us be very happy, my faithful friend, my only friend: we are as rich as kings!

He struck the bag of pistoles with his fist; it fell heavily to the ground; he began again to laugh in that gloomy way which had so frightened Parry, and while the whole house cried, sang, and prepared to receive and install the travelers preceded by their lackeys, he slipped through the great hall into the street, where the old man, who had gone to the window, lost sight of him after a minute.

Chapter VIII — What His Majesty Louis XIV was at the age of twenty-two

As may be seen from the account we have endeavored to give of it, the entry of King Louis XIV into the city of Blois had been noisy and brilliant, and the young Majesty had appeared satisfied therewith. On arriving beneath the porch of the States Castle, the king found there, surrounded by his guards and gentlemen, His Royal Highness the Duke Gaston d'Orléans, whose countenance, naturally rather majestic, had borrowed from the solemn circumstance in which they found themselves a new lustre and a new dignity. For her part, Madame, adorned in her great ceremonial habits, awaited the entrance of her nephew on an inner balcony. All the windows of the old castle, so deserted and so dreary on ordinary days, shone with ladies and flambeaux.

It was then to the noise of drums, trumpets, and cheers, that the young king crossed the threshold of this castle, in which Henry III, seventy-two years before, had called assassination and treason to his aid to maintain upon his head and in his house a crown which already slipped from his brow to fall into another family. All eyes, after admiring the young king, so beautiful, so charming, so noble, sought that other King of France, far more a king than the first, and so old, so pale, so bent, who was called the Cardinal Mazarin.

Louis was then endowed with all those natural gifts which make the perfect gentleman: he had a brilliant and soft eye, of a pure and azure blue; but the most skillful physiognomists, those divers of the soul, had they fixed their gaze thereon—if it had been granted to a subject to sustain the king's gaze—the most skillful physiognomists, we say, would never have been able to find the bottom of that abyss of sweetness. It was that the eyes of the king were as the immense depth of the celestial azure, or those more frightful and almost as sublime which the Mediterranean opens beneath the keel of its ships on a fair summer's day, gigantic mirror wherein the sky loves to reflect now its stars and now its storms. The king was small of stature, he had scarce five feet two inches; but his youth still excused this defect, redeemed besides by a great nobility in all his movements and by a certain dexterity in all bodily exercises.

Certainly, he was already quite the king, and it was much to be the king at that epoch of traditional respect and devotion; but, as hitherto he had been shown to the people but little and always poorly enough, as those to whom he was shown saw beside him his mother, a woman of tall stature, and Monsieur the Cardinal, a man of fine presence, many found him scarce kingly enough to say: The king is less tall than Monsieur the Cardinal.

However it was with these physical observations, which were made especially in the capital, the young prince was received as a god by the inhabitants of Blois, and almost as a king by his uncle and aunt, Monsieur and Madame, the inhabitants of the castle. Yet, it must be told, when he saw in the reception hall chairs equal in height for him, his mother, the cardinal, his aunt, and his uncle—a disposition cleverly hidden by the semicircular form of the assembly—Louis XIV blushed with anger, and looked around him to assure himself by the countenances of the bystanders whether this humiliation had been prepared for him; but as he saw nothing on the impassive face of the cardinal, nothing on that of his mother, nothing on that of the bystanders, he resigned himself and sat down, taking care to seat himself before everyone.

The gentlemen and ladies were presented to Their Majesties and to Monsieur the Cardinal. The king remarked that his mother and he rarely knew the name of those presented to them, while the cardinal, on the contrary, never failed, with an admirable memory and presence of mind, to speak to each of his lands, his ancestors, or his children, some of whom he named to them, which enchanted these worthy country squires and confirmed them in the idea that he alone is truly king who knows his subjects, by the same reason that the sun has no rival, because alone the sun warms and lights.

The study of the young king, begun long since without anyone suspecting it, thus continued, and he looked attentively, to try to discern something in their countenances, at the faces which had at first appeared to him the most insignificant and the most trivial. A collation was served. The king, without daring to claim it of his uncle's hospitality, awaited it with impatience. Thus this time he had all the honors due, if not to his rank, at least to his appetite; as for the cardinal, he contented himself with touching with his withered lips a broth served in a golden cup. The all-powerful minister who had taken from the queen mother her regency, from the king his royalty, had not been able to take from nature a good stomach. Anne of Austria, already suffering from the cancer of which six or eight years later she was to die, ate little more than the cardinal. As for Monsieur, still all flustered by the great event accomplishing itself in his provincial life, he ate not at all.

Madame alone, as a true Lorrainer, held her own against His Majesty; so that Louis XIV, who, without a partner, would have eaten almost alone, was greatly obliged first to his aunt, then afterwards to M. de Saint-Remy, his master of the household, who had truly distinguished himself.

The collation finished, at a sign of approbation from M. de Mazarin, the king rose, and at the invitation of his aunt, he began to traverse the ranks of the assembly.

The ladies then observed—there are certain things wherein women are as good observers at Blois as at Paris—the ladies then observed that Louis XIV had a quick and bold glance, which promised to attractions of good stamp a distinguished appraiser. The men, for their part, observed that the prince was proud and haughty, that he loved to make lower the eyes which looked at him too long or too fixedly, which seemed to presage a master. Louis XIV had accomplished about a third of his review, when his ears were struck by a word pronounced by His Eminence, who was conversing with Monsieur.

That word was a woman's name.

Scarcely had Louis XIV heard that word, than he heard no more, or rather listened to nothing else, and, neglecting the arc of the circle which awaited his visit, he occupied himself only with promptly dispatching the extremity of the curve.

Monsieur, a good courtier, was inquiring of His Eminence after the health of his nieces. Indeed, five or six years before, three nieces had arrived from Italy at the cardinal's: these were Mlles Hortense, Olympe, and Marie de Mancini.

Monsieur was therefore inquiring after the health of the cardinal's nieces; he regretted, he said, not having the happiness of receiving them at the same time as their uncle; they had certainly grown in beauty and grace, as they had promised to do the first time Monsieur had seen them.

What had first struck the king was a certain contrast in the voices of the two interlocutors. Monsieur's voice was calm and natural when he spoke thus, while that of M. de Mazarin jumped a tone and a half to answer him above the pitch of his ordinary voice.

It would have seemed he desired that this voice should go strike at the end of the hall an ear which was withdrawing too far.

— My lord, he replied, the Mlles de Mazarin have yet a whole education to finish, duties to fulfill, a position to learn. The sojourn of a young and brilliant court distracts them somewhat.

Louis, at that last epithet, smiled sadly. The court was young, 'twas true, but the cardinal's avarice had taken good care that it should not be brilliant.

— You have not, however, the intention, answered Monsieur, of cloistering them or making them bourgeois?

— Not at all, resumed the cardinal, forcing his Italian pronunciation so that, from soft and velvety as it was, it became sharp and vibrant; not at all. I have very surely the intention of marrying them, and as well as I possibly can.

— Parties will not be lacking, Monsieur the Cardinal, answered Monsieur with the heartiness of a merchant congratulating his fellow.

— I hope so, my lord, the more so that God has given them at once grace, wisdom, and beauty.

During this conversation, Louis XIV, led by Madame, was accomplishing, as we have said, the circle of presentations.

— Mlle Arnoux, said the princess, presenting to His Majesty a stout blonde of twenty-two, whom at a village feast one would have taken for a dressed-up peasant girl, Mlle Arnoux, daughter of my music mistress.

The king smiled. Madame had never been able to draw four true notes from the viol or the harpsichord.

— Mlle Aure de Montalais, continued Madame, girl of quality and good servant.

This time it was no longer the king who laughed, it was the young girl presented, because, for the first time in her life, she heard herself given by Madame, who ordinarily did not spoil her, so honorable a qualification.

Thus Montalais, our former acquaintance, made His Majesty a profound reverence, and that as much from respect as from necessity, for it was a question of hiding certain contractions of her laughing lips which the king might well not have attributed to their real motive. It was just at this moment that the king heard the word which made him start.

— And the third is called? asked Monsieur.

— Marie, my lord, answered the cardinal.

There was doubtless in that word some magic power, for, as we have said, at that word the king started, and, drawing Madame toward the middle of the circle, as if he would confidentially ask her some question, but in reality to draw nearer the cardinal:

— My lady aunt, said he, laughing and half-voice, my geography master had not taught me that Blois was at so prodigious a distance from Paris.

— How so, my nephew? asked Madame.

— 'Tis that in truth it appears several years are needed for fashions to cross that distance. See these young ladies.

— Well! I know them.

— Some are pretty.

— Do not say that too loud, Monsieur my nephew, you would make them mad.

— Wait, wait, my dear aunt, said the king smiling, for the second part of my sentence must serve as corrective to the first. Well! my dear aunt, some appear old and others ugly, thanks to their fashions of ten years.

— But, Sire, Blois is nevertheless but five days' journey from Paris.

— Eh! said the king, that is it, two years' delay per day's journey.

— Ah! truly, you find? 'Tis strange, I do not notice it, I.

— See here, aunt, said Louis XIV, still drawing nearer Mazarin under pretext of choosing his point of view, see, beside these aged fineries and pretentious headdresses, look at that simple white robe. 'Tis one of my mother's maids of honor, probably, though I know her not. See what simple bearing, what graceful carriage! There! that is a woman, while all the others are but clothes.

— My dear nephew, replied Madame laughing, permit me to tell you that, this time, your divining science is at fault. The person you thus praise is not a Parisian, but a Blésoise.

— Ah! aunt! resumed the king with an air of doubt.

— Approach, Louise, said Madame.

And the young girl who has already appeared to us under this name approached, timid, blushing, and almost bent beneath the royal gaze.

— Mlle Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, daughter of the Marquis de La Vallière, said Madame ceremoniously to the king.

The young girl inclined herself with so much grace amid that deep timidity inspired in her by the king's presence, that he, in looking at her, lost some words of the conversation of the cardinal and Monsieur.

— Daughter-in-law, continued Madame, of M. de Saint-Remy, my master of the household, who presided over the making of that excellent truffled stew which Your Majesty so greatly appreciated.

There was no grace, beauty, or youth that could resist such a presentation. The king smiled. Whether Madame's words were a jest or a naïveté, it was, in any case, the pitiless immolation of all that Louis had just found charming and poetic in the young girl.

Mlle de La Vallière, for Madame, and by rebound for the king, was no longer momentarily but the daughter-in-law of a man who had superior talent with truffled turkeys.

But princes are made thus. The gods were so too in Olympus. Diana and Venus must have ill-treated the fair Alcmene and the poor Io, when one descended by distraction to speak, between nectar and ambrosia, of mortal beauties at the table of Jupiter.

Happily Louise was bent so low that she heard not Madame's words, that she saw not the king's smile. Indeed, if the poor child, who had such good taste that she alone had imagined dressing in white among all her companions; if that dove's heart, so easily accessible to all sorrows, had been touched by Madame's cruel words, by the king's selfish and cold smile, she would have died on the spot.

And Montalais herself, the girl of ingenious ideas, would not have tried to recall her to life, for the ridiculous kills all, even beauty.

But happily, as we have said, Louise, whose ears were buzzing and eyes veiled, Louise saw nothing, heard nothing, and the king, who still had his attention fixed on the talks of the cardinal and his uncle, hastened to return near them. He arrived just as Mazarin was concluding by saying:

— Marie, like her sisters, sets out at this moment for Brouage. I have them follow the opposite bank of the Loire from that which we followed, and if I calculate well their march, according to the orders I have given, they will be tomorrow abreast of Blois.

These words were pronounced with that tact, that measure, that sureness of tone, of intention, and of reach, which made signor Giulio Mazarini the first comedian in the world.

It resulted that they struck straight to the heart of Louis XIV, and that the cardinal, turning at the mere sound of His Majesty's steps approaching, saw the immediate effect upon the face of his pupil, an effect betrayed to His Eminence by a simple blush. But also, what was such a secret to unmask for him whose cunning had for twenty years played all European diplomats?

It seemed thenceforth, once these last words were heard, that the young king had received in his heart a poisoned dart.

He could no longer keep still; he cast an uncertain, dull, dead glance over all that assembly. He questioned the queen mother more than twenty times with his eyes, she, given up to the pleasure of entertaining her sister-in-law, and restrained besides by Mazarin's glance, appeared not to comprehend all the supplications contained in her son's looks. From that moment, music, flowers, lights, beauty, all became odious and insipid to Louis XIV. After he had a hundred times bitten his lips, stretched his arms and legs, like the well-bred child who, without daring to yawn, exhausts all the ways of showing his boredom, after having uselessly implored anew mother and minister, he turned a desperate eye toward the door, that is to say, toward liberty.

At that door, framed by the embrasure against which she leaned, he saw above all, standing out in vigor, a proud and brown countenance, with aquiline nose, hard but sparkling eye, gray and long hair, black mustache, a veritable type of military beauty, whose gorget, more sparkling than a mirror, broke all the luminous reflections which came to concentrate there and sent them back in flashes. This officer had a gray hat with red plume on his head, proof that he was called there by his duty and not by his pleasure. Had he been called there by his pleasure, had he been courtier instead of soldier, as one must always pay pleasure some price, he would have held his hat in his hand.

What proved even better that this officer was on duty and accomplishing a task to which he was accustomed, is that he supervised, arms crossed, with remarkable indifference and supreme apathy, the joys and boredom of that feast. He seemed above all, like a philosopher—and all old soldiers are philosophers—he seemed above all to understand infinitely better the boredom than the joys; but of the one he took his part, knowing well how to do without the other. Now, he was there leaning, as we have said, against the sculpted doorframe, when the sad and weary eyes of the king by chance met his.

It was not the first time, apparently, that the officer's eyes met those eyes, and he knew thoroughly their style and thought, for as soon as he had fixed his gaze on the countenance of Louis XIV, and, by the countenance, had read what passed in his heart, that is to say all the boredom which oppressed him, all the timid resolution to depart which stirred in the depths of that heart, he understood that he must render service to the king without his asking, render him service almost in spite of himself, finally, and bold, as if he had commanded the cavalry on a battle day:

— The king's service! he cried in a resounding voice.

At these words, which produced the effect of a roll of thunder prevailing over the orchestra, the songs, the buzzings, and the promenades, the cardinal and the queen mother looked with surprise at His Majesty. Louis XIV, pale but resolved, sustained as he was by that intuition of his own thought which he had found again in the mind of the officer of musketeers, and which had just manifested itself by the order given, rose from his armchair and took a step toward the door.

— You are leaving, my son? said the queen, while Mazarin contented himself with interrogating with his glance, which might have appeared gentle had it not been so piercing.

— Yes, madame, answered the king, I feel fatigued and would besides write this evening.

A smile wandered on the minister's lips, who seemed, by a nod, to give the king leave.

Monsieur and Madame then hastened to give orders to the officers who presented themselves.

The king bowed, crossed the hall, and reached the door. At the door, a line of twenty musketeers awaited His Majesty.

At the extremity of that line stood the impassive officer, his naked sword in hand.

The king passed, and all the crowd rose on tiptoe to see him yet again. Ten musketeers, opening the crowd of antechambers and stairways, made way for the king.

The ten others enclosed the king and Monsieur, who had wished to accompany His Majesty.

The men of the suite marched behind. This little cortège escorted the king to the apartment destined for him.

This apartment was the same that King Henry III had occupied during his stay at the States.

Monsieur had given his orders. The musketeers, led by their officer, entered the small passage which communicates in parallel from one wing of the castle to the other.

This passage was composed first of a small square antechamber, dark even on fine days.

Monsieur stopped Louis XIV.

— You are passing, Sire, he said to him, at the very spot where the Duke of Guise received the first dagger-thrust.

The king, very ignorant of historical matters, knew the fact, but without knowing either the localities or the details.

— Ah! said he, all shuddering. And he stopped.

Everyone stopped before and behind him.

— The duke, Sire, continued Gaston, was about where I am; he walked in the direction in which Your Majesty walks; M. de Loignac was at the place where your lieutenant of musketeers now finds himself; M. de Sainte-Maline and the ordinaries of His Majesty were behind him and around him. 'Tis there he was struck.

The king turned toward his officer, and saw as a cloud pass over his martial and audacious countenance.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”