Part 6

Ah! indeed, we are mistaken, there remained to him the paternal coffer. He made use of a method about which he kept the deepest secrecy, and which consisted in advancing to himself, upon the syndic's coffer, half a dozen years, that is to say some fifteen thousand livres, swearing well and truly, to himself, to fill this deficit as soon as the occasion should present itself.

The occasion was to be the granting of a fine office in the household of Monsieur, when that household should be set up at the time of his marriage.

That time had come, and the household was at last to be set up. A good office with a prince of the blood, when given through the credit and on the recommendation of a friend such as the Count de Guiche, is at least twelve thousand livres a year, and, with the habit Malicorne had taken of making his revenues bear fruit, twelve thousand livres might rise to twenty.

Then, once holder of that office, Malicorne would marry Mlle de Montalais; Mlle de Montalais, of a family where the womb ennobled, would not only bring a dowry, but would moreover ennoble Malicorne. But, that Mlle de Montalais, who had no great patrimonial fortune, though she were an only daughter, might be suitably dowered, it was needful that she belong to some great princess, as prodigal as the Dowager Madame was avaricious. And so that the wife should not be on one side while the husband was on the other, a situation which presents grave inconveniences, especially with characters such as were those of the future spouses, Malicorne had devised to place the central point of reunion in the household itself of Monsieur, brother of the king.

Mlle de Montalais would be maid of honour to Madame. M. Malicorne would be officer to Monsieur. One sees that the plan came from a good head; one sees also that it had been bravely executed.

Malicorne had asked Manicamp to ask the Count de Guiche for a warrant as maid of honour.

And the Count de Guiche had asked this warrant of Monsieur, who had signed it without hesitation.

The moral plan of Malicorne—for one thinks well that the combinations of a mind as active as his were not confined to the present and extended to the future—the moral plan of Malicorne, we say, was this:

To introduce into the household of Henriette a woman devoted to him, witty, young, pretty and intriguing; to know, through this woman, all the feminine secrets of the young household, while he, Malicorne, and his friend Manicamp would know, between them two, all the masculine mysteries of the young community.

It was by these means that one would arrive at a fortune at once rapid and splendid.

Malicorne was an ugly name; he who bore it had too much wit not to hide this truth from himself; but one bought an estate, and Malicorne de something, or even Malicorne plain, sounded most nobly to the ear.

It was not improbable that one might find for this name of Malicorne an origin most aristocratic.

Indeed, might it not come from a land where a bull with deadly horns had caused some great misfortune and baptised the soil with the blood it had shed?

Certainly this plan presented itself bristling with difficulties; but the greatest of all was Mlle de Montalais herself. Capricious, changeable, sly, scatterbrained, libertine, prudish, a virgin armed with claws, an Erigone smeared with grapes, she would sometimes overturn, with a single touch of her white fingers or a single breath of her laughing lips, the edifice that the patience of Malicorne had taken a month to build. Love apart, Malicorne was happy; but this love, which he could not help feeling, he had the strength to hide carefully, persuaded that at the least slackening of those bonds with which he had garrotted his female Proteus, the demon would overthrow him and mock him. He humiliated his mistress by disdaining her. Burning with desires when she advanced to tempt him, he had the art of seeming of ice, persuaded that, did he open his arms, she would flee mocking him. For her part, Montalais believed she did not love Malicorne, and, quite on the contrary, she loved him. Malicorne repeated to her so often his protestations of indifference, that she ended from time to time by believing it, and then she believed she detested Malicorne. Would she seek to bring him back by coquetry, Malicorne became more coquettish than she. But that which made Montalais hold to Malicorne in an indissoluble fashion, was that Malicorne was always stuffed with fresh news brought from court and town; that Malicorne always brought to Blois a fashion, a secret, a perfume; that Malicorne never asked for a rendezvous, and, quite on the contrary, made himself be entreated to receive favours he burned to obtain. For his part, Montalais was not sparing of stories. Through her, Malicorne knew all that passed in the household of the Dowager Madame, and he made of it for Manicamp tales to die of laughing, which the latter, through idleness, carried ready-made to M. de Guiche, who carried them to Monsieur. Therein, in two words, lay the web of little interests and little conspiracies which united Blois to Orleans and Orleans to Paris, and which was about to bring into that last city, where it was to produce so great a revolution, the poor little La Vallière, who was far from suspecting, as she returned all joyful on her mother's arm, to what strange future she was reserved.

As for the goodman Malicorne—we mean the syndic of Orleans—he saw no clearer into the present than others into the future, and little suspected, in walking every day, from three to five o'clock, after his dinner, upon the Place Sainte-Catherine, in his grey coat cut under Louis XIII and his cloth shoes with great puffings, that it was he who paid for all those bursts of laughter, all those furtive kisses, all those whisperings, all that ribbonry and all those whispered projects which made a chain of forty-five leagues from the palace of Blois to the Palais-Royal.

Chapter LXXX — Manicamp and Malicorne

So Malicorne set out, as we have said, and went to find his friend Manicamp, in momentary retreat in the town of Orleans. It was just at the moment when this young gentleman was occupied in selling the last habit somewhat clean that remained to him.

He had, fifteen days before, drawn from the Count de Guiche a hundred pistoles, the only ones that could help him to take the field, to go to meet Madame, who was arriving at Le Havre.

He had drawn from Malicorne, three days before, fifty pistoles, the price of the warrant obtained for Montalais.

He expected therefore nothing more, having exhausted all resources, save to sell a fine habit of cloth and satin, all embroidered and laced with gold, which had been the admiration of the court.

But, to be in a position to sell this habit, the last that remained to him, as we have been forced to confess to the reader, Manicamp had been obliged to take to his bed.

No more fire, no more pocket money, no more walking-about money, nothing more but sleep to replace meals, companies and balls.

It has been said: "He who sleeps dines"; but it has not been said: "He who sleeps plays", or "He who sleeps dances". Manicamp, reduced to this extremity of no longer playing or no longer dancing for at least a week, was therefore very sad. He was expecting a usurer and saw Malicorne enter.

A cry of distress escaped him.

— Well! said he in a tone that nothing could render, is it you again, dear friend?

— Good! you are polite! said Malicorne.

— Ah! you see, it is that I was expecting money, and, instead of money, you arrive.

— And if I brought you some, money?

— Oh! then, it is another thing. Be welcome, dear friend.

And he held out his hand, not to Malicorne's hand, but to his purse.

Malicorne pretended to mistake it and gave him his hand.

— And the money? said Manicamp.

— My dear friend, if you wish to have it, earn it.

— What must one do for that?

— Earn it, zounds!

— And in what way?

— Oh! it is hard, I warn you!

— The devil!

— You must quit the bed and go find straightway M. the Count de Guiche.

— I, get up? said Manicamp, stretching voluptuously in his bed. Oh! not at all.

— You have then sold all your habits?

— No, there remains one to me, the finest even, but I await a buyer.

— And hose?

— It seems to me you see them on that chair.

— Well! since there remain to you hose and a doublet, put on the one and don the other, have a horse saddled and set out on your way.

— Not at all.

— Why so?

— Morbleu! do you not know that M. de Guiche is at Etampes?

— No, I thought him at Paris, I; you will have but fifteen leagues to make instead of thirty.

— You are charming! If I make fifteen leagues with my habit, it will be no longer wearable, and, instead of selling it for thirty pistoles, I shall be obliged to give it for fifteen.

— Give it for what you will, but I must have a second commission as maid of honour.

— Good! for whom? Is La Montalais then double?

— Wicked man! it is you who are one. You swallow up two fortunes: mine and that of M. the Count de Guiche.

— You might well say that of M. de Guiche and yours.

— That is just, to every lord his honour; but I come back to my warrant.

— And you are wrong.

— Prove that to me.

— My friend, there will be but twelve maids of honour for Madame; I have already obtained for you what twelve hundred women dispute for, and for that, I had to deploy a diplomacy…

— Yes, I know you have been heroic, dear friend.

— One knows the affairs, said Manicamp.

— To whom do you say that! Also, when I am king, I promise you one thing.

— Which? to call you Malicorne I?

— No, to make you superintendent of my finances; but it is not of that we speak.

— Unfortunately.

— It is a question of procuring me a second office of maid of honour.

— My friend, you might promise me heaven that I would not stir myself in this moment.

Malicorne made his pocket sound.

— There are twenty pistoles there, said Malicorne.

— And what would you do with twenty pistoles, my God?

— Eh! said Malicorne a little vexed, if only to add them to the five hundred you already owe me!

— You are right, resumed Manicamp, holding out his hand again, and under this aspect I may accept them. Give them to me.

— One moment, the devil! it is not only a matter of holding out the hand; if I give you the twenty pistoles, shall I have the warrant?

— Doubtless.

— Soon?

— Today.

— Oh! take care, M. de Manicamp! you engage yourself much, and I do not ask so much of you. Thirty leagues in a day is too much, and you would kill yourself.

— To oblige a friend, I find nothing impossible.

— You are heroic.

— Where are the twenty pistoles?

— Here they are, said Malicorne, showing them.

— Good.

— But, my dear M. Manicamp, you will devour them merely in post horses.

— Not so; be tranquil.

— Pardon me.

— Fifteen leagues from here to Etampes…

— Fourteen.

— Be it; fourteen leagues make seven posts; at twenty sous the post, seven livres; seven livres of courier, fourteen; as much for return, twenty-eight; lodging and supper as much; it is some sixty livres that this complaisance will cost you.

Manicamp stretched himself like a serpent in his bed, and fixing his two great eyes on Malicorne:

— You are right, said he, I could not return before tomorrow.

And he took the twenty pistoles.

— Then, set out.

— Since I can only return tomorrow, we have time.

— Time to do what?

— Time to play.

— What would you play?

— Your twenty pistoles, zounds!

— Not so, you will always win.

— I wager them to you, then.

— Against what?

— Against twenty others.

— And what shall be the object of the wager?

— Here. We have said fourteen leagues to go to Etampes.

— Yes.

— Fourteen leagues to return.

— Yes.

— Consequently twenty-eight leagues.

— Without doubt.

— For these twenty-eight leagues, you grant me well fourteen hours?

— I grant them to you.

— One hour to find the Count de Guiche?

— Be it.

— And one hour to make him write the letter to Monsieur?

— Admirably.

— Sixteen hours in all.

— You count like M. Colbert.

— It is noon?

— And a half.

— Why! you have a fine watch.

— You were saying?… said Malicorne, putting his watch back in his fob.

— Ah! it is true; I was offering to win you twenty pistoles against those you have lent me, that you shall have the letter of the Count de Guiche in…

— In how long?

— In eight hours.

— Have you a winged horse?

— That concerns me. Do you still wager?

— I shall have the letter of the count in eight hours?

— Yes.

— Signed?

— Yes.

— In hand?

— In hand.

— Well, be it! I wager, said Malicorne, curious to know how his habit-seller would get out of it.

— Is it said?

— It is said.

— Pass me the pen, the ink and the paper.

— Here.

— Ah!

Manicamp raised himself with a sigh, and leaning on his left arm, in his finest handwriting he traced the following lines: "Good for an office of maid of honour of Madame which M. the Count de Guiche shall undertake to obtain at first sight. From Manicamp." This painful labour accomplished, Manicamp lay down again at full length.

— Well? asked Malicorne, what does that mean?

— It means that if you are in haste to have the letter of the Count de Guiche for Monsieur, I have won my wager.

— How so?

— It is limpid, it seems to me; you take this paper.

— Yes.

— You set out in my place.

— Ah!

— You launch your horses at full speed.

— Good!

— In six hours, you are at Etampes; in seven hours, you have the letter of the count, and I have won my wager without having stirred from my bed, which suits me at once and you also, I am quite sure.

— Decidedly, Manicamp, you are a great man.

— I know it well.

— I set out then for Etampes.

— You set out.

— I go to find the Count de Guiche with this note.

— He gives you a like one for Monsieur.

— I set out for Paris.

— You go to find Monsieur with the note of the Count de Guiche.

— Monsieur approves.

— At the instant.

— And I have my warrant.

— You have it.

— Ah!

— I hope I am nice, eh?

— Adorable!

— Thanks.

— You do then with the Count de Guiche all that you wish, my dear Manicamp?

— All, except money.

— The devil! the exception is vexatious; but finally, if instead of asking him for money, you asked him…

— What?

— Something important.

— What do you call important?

— Finally, if a friend of yours asked you a service?

— I would not render it him.

— Egoist!

— Or at least I would ask him what service he would render me in exchange.

— That's right! Well! this friend speaks to you.

— It is you, Malicorne?

— It is I.

— Ah there! are you then very rich?

— I have yet fifty pistoles.

— Just the sum of which I have need. Where are these fifty pistoles?

— There, said Malicorne, tapping his fob.

— Then, speak, my dear; what do you need?

Malicorne took back the ink, the pen and the paper, and presented them to Manicamp.

— Write, said he to him.

— Dictate.

— "Good for an office in the household of Monsieur."

— Oh! said Manicamp, raising the pen, an office in the household of Monsieur for fifty pistoles?

— You have misheard, my dear.

— How did you say?

— I said five hundred.

— And the five hundred?

— There they are.

Manicamp devoured with his eyes the roll; but, this time, Malicorne held it at a distance.

— Ah! what say you of that? Five hundred pistoles…

— I say it is for nothing, my dear, said Manicamp, taking up the pen again, and that you will use up my credit; dictate.

Malicorne continued:

— "Which my friend the Count de Guiche will obtain from Monsieur for my friend Malicorne."

— There, said Manicamp.

— Pardon, you forgot to sign.

— Ah! it is true. The five hundred pistoles?

— Here are two hundred fifty.

— And the two hundred fifty others?

— When I hold my office.

Manicamp made a grimace.

— In that case, give me back the recommendation, said he.

— What for?

— That I may add a word to it.

— A word?

— Yes, a single one.

— Which?

— "Urgent."

Malicorne returned the recommendation: Manicamp added the word.

— Good! said Malicorne, taking back the paper.

Manicamp began to count the pistoles.

— There are twenty missing, said he.

— How so?

— The twenty I won.

— Where?

— In wagering that you would have the letter of the Duke de Guiche in eight hours.

— That is just.

And he gave him the twenty pistoles.

Manicamp began to take his gold with both hands and made it rain in cascades upon his bed.

— There is a second office, murmured Malicorne, drying his paper, which, at first sight, seems to cost me more than the first; but…

He stopped, took in his turn the pen, and wrote to Montalais:

"Mademoiselle, announce to your friend that her commission cannot delay in reaching her; I set out to have it signed: it is eighty-six leagues I shall have travelled for love of you…"

Then, with his demon's smile, resuming the interrupted phrase:

— There, said he, is an office which, at first sight, seems to cost me more than the first; but… the profit will, I hope, be in proportion to the expense, and Mlle de La Vallière will bring me more than Mlle de Montalais, or else, or else, I am no longer called Malicorne. Farewell, Manicamp.

And he went out.

Chapter LXXXI — The Court of the Hôtel Grammont

When Malicorne arrived at Etampes, he learned that the Count de Guiche had just set out for Paris. Malicorne took two hours' rest and prepared to continue his way.

He arrived in the night at Paris, descended at a small hotel he was accustomed to when on his travels in the capital, and the next day, at eight o'clock, he presented himself at the Hôtel Grammont.

It was time that Malicorne arrived.

The Count de Guiche was preparing to take his leave of Monsieur before setting out for Le Havre, where the elite of the French nobility was going to fetch Madame upon her arrival from England.

Malicorne pronounced the name of Manicamp, and was introduced that same instant. The Count de Guiche was in the court of the Hôtel Grammont, inspecting his equipages, which piqueurs and equerries were passing in review before him.

The count praised or blamed, before his suppliers and his people, the habits, the horses and the harness that had just been brought to him, when amid this important occupation the name of Manicamp was thrown to him.

— Manicamp? cried he. Let him enter, zounds! let him enter!

And he made four steps toward the door. Malicorne slipped through this half-open door, and, seeing the Count de Guiche surprised to see an unknown face in place of the one he expected:

— Pardon, M. le Comte, said he, but I believe there has been an error: you were announced Manicamp himself, and it is but his envoy.

— Ah! ah! said de Guiche, somewhat cooled, and you bring me?

— A letter, M. le Comte.

Malicorne presented the first note and observed the count's face.

The latter read and began to laugh.

— Again! said he, another maid of honour? Why, this rogue Manicamp protects then all the maids of honour of France?

Malicorne bowed.

— And why does he not come himself? asked he.

— He is in bed.

— Ah! the devil! Has he then no money?

De Guiche shrugged his shoulders.

— But what then does he do with his money?

Malicorne made a movement which meant that, on that article, he was as ignorant as the count.

— Then let him use his credit, continued de Guiche.

— Ah! but I believe one thing.

— Which?

— It is that Manicamp has credit only with you, M. le Comte.

— But then he will not be at Le Havre?

Another movement of Malicorne.

— It is impossible, and everyone will be there!

— I hope, M. le Comte, that he will neglect no such fine occasion.

— He should already be at Paris.

— He will take the cross-road to regain lost time.

— And where is he?

— At Orleans.

— Monsieur, said de Guiche, bowing, you seem a man of good taste.

Malicorne had on Manicamp's habit.

He bowed in his turn.

— You do me great honour, sir, said he.

— With whom have I the pleasure of speaking?

— I am named Malicorne, sir.

— M. de Malicorne, how find you the holsters of these pistols?

Malicorne was a man of wit; he understood the situation.

Besides, the de before his name had just raised him to the height of him who spoke to him.

He looked at the holsters as a connoisseur, and, without hesitation:

— A little heavy, sir, said he.

— You see, said de Guiche to the saddler, Monsieur, who is a man of taste, finds your holsters heavy: what did I tell you but now?

The saddler excused himself.

— And this horse, what say you of it? asked de Guiche. It is another purchase I have just made.

— At sight it seems perfect to me, M. le Comte; but it would be needful that I mount it to tell you my opinion.

— Well! mount it, M. de Malicorne, and make it go two or three times round the manège.

The court of the hôtel was indeed disposed in a manner to serve as manège in case of need.

Malicorne, without embarrassment, gathered bridle and curb, took the mane with the left hand, placed his foot in the stirrup, raised himself and seated himself. The first time he made the horse go round the court at a walk.

The second time, at a trot.

And the third time, at a gallop.

Then he stopped near the count, dismounted and threw the bridle into the hands of a groom.

— Well! said the count, what think you of it, M. de Malicorne?

— M. le Comte, said Malicorne, this horse is of Mecklenburg breed. Looking whether the bit rested well on the branches, I saw that he is taking seven years. It is the age at which one must prepare the war horse. The forehand is light. A horse with a flat head, it is said, never wearies the rider's hand. The withers are a little low. The slope of the croup would make me doubt the purity of the German breed. He must have English blood. The animal is straight on his legs, but he dishes at the trot; he must interfere. Attention to the shoeing. He is, besides, handily. In the voltes and changes of foot I found him fine in the aids.

— Well judged, M. de Malicorne, said the count. You are a connoisseur.

Then, turning toward the new arrival:

— You have there a charming habit, said de Guiche to Malicorne. It does not come from the provinces, I presume; one does not cut in that taste at Tours or Orleans.

— No, M. le Comte, this habit comes indeed from Paris.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”