Part 24

— Your mother sees further than you do and does not trouble herself to advise you, since you do not listen to her.

— I shall go to the king.

— I was about to suggest it. I am expecting His Majesty here; it is the hour of his visit; explain yourself.

She had not finished speaking when Philippe heard the door of the antechamber open noisily.

Fear seized him. One could distinguish the king’s step, whose soles creaked upon the carpets.

The duke fled through a small door, leaving the queen to face the music.

Anne of Austria began to laugh, and was still laughing when the king entered.

He came, with the greatest affection, to inquire after the health of the queen mother, already failing. He came also to announce to her that all preparations for the journey to Fontainebleau were complete.

Seeing her laugh, he felt his anxiety diminish and questioned her himself, laughing.

Anne of Austria took his hand, and, in a voice full of mirth:

— Do you know, she said, that I am proud to be a Spaniard.

— Why, madame?

— Because Spanish women are at least better than English women.

— Explain yourself.

— Since you have been married, have you not a single reproach to make to the queen?

— No, certainly.

— And yet it is some time since you were married. Your brother, on the contrary, has been married a fortnight…

— Well?

— He is complaining of Madame for the second time.

— What! Buckingham again?

— No, another.

— Who?

— Guiche.

— Come now! is Madame then a flirt?

— I fear so.

— My poor brother! said the king, laughing.

— You excuse flirtation, as I see?

— In Madame, yes; Madame is not a flirt at heart.

— Be it so; but your brother will lose his head over it.

— What does he ask?

— He wants to have Guiche drowned.

— That is violent.

— Do not laugh; he is exasperated. Think of some means.

— Willingly, to save Guiche.

— Oh! if your brother heard you, he would conspire against you as your uncle, Monsieur, did against the king your father.

— No. Philippe loves me too well and I love him too well on my side; we shall live good friends. The sum of the request?

— That you prevent Madame from being a flirt and Guiche from being agreeable.

— Only that? My brother has a high idea of royal power… to correct a woman! That might pass for a man.

— How will you set about it?

— With a word said to Guiche, who is a man of wit, I shall persuade him.

— But Madame?

— That is more difficult; a word will not suffice; I shall compose a homily, I shall preach it.

— This is pressing.

— Oh! I shall use all possible diligence. We have ballet rehearsal this afternoon.

— You will preach while dancing?

— Yes, madame.

— You promise to convert?

— I shall extirpate the heresy by conviction or by fire.

— Very well! Do not involve me in all this, Madame would never forgive me as long as she lived; and, as mother-in-law, I must live with my daughter-in-law.

— Madame, it is the king who will take all upon himself. Come, I am reflecting.

— Upon what?

— It would perhaps be better that I should go to Madame in her own apartments?

— That is a little solemn.

— Yes, but solemnity does not misbecome preachers, and then the violin of the ballet would eat up half my arguments. Besides, it is a question of preventing some violence on the part of my brother… Better a little haste… Is Madame in her rooms?

— I believe so.

— The statement of grievances, if you please.

— In two words, here it is: Perpetual music… Guiche’s attentiveness… suspicions of concealments and plots…

— The proofs?

— None.

— Good; I am going to Madame.

And the king began to look, in the mirrors, at his rich attire and his face which shone like his diamonds.

— Monsieur is kept away, I suppose? he said.

— Oh! fire and water do not flee each other with more fierceness.

— That is enough. My mother, I kiss your hands… the fairest hands in France.

— Succeed, Sire… Be the peacemaker of the household.

— I employ no ambassador, replied Louis. Which is to tell you that I shall succeed.

He went out laughing and brushed himself carefully all along the way.

Chapter CVII — The Mediator

When the king appeared at Madame’s, all the courtiers, whom the news of a conjugal scene had dispersed about the apartments, began to conceive the gravest anxieties.

There was forming on this side also a storm whose elements the Chevalier de Lorraine, amid the groups, analyzed with joy, swelling the weakest and maneuvering, according to his evil designs, the strongest, in order to produce the wickedest possible effects.

As Anne of Austria had announced, the king’s presence gave a solemn character to the event.

It was no small matter, in 1662, the discontent of Monsieur against Madame, and the intervention of the king in Monsieur’s private affairs.

Accordingly, the boldest, who had surrounded the Count de Guiche from the first moment, were seen to draw away from him with a sort of fright; and the count himself, won over by the general panic, withdrew to his own rooms alone.

The king entered Madame’s rooms bowing, as he always had the habit of doing. The ladies of honor were ranged in file along his passage through the gallery.

However much preoccupied His Majesty might be, he cast a master’s glance at those two rows of young and charming women who modestly lowered their eyes.

All were red to feel the king’s gaze upon them. One alone, whose long hair rolled in silky curls upon the fairest skin in the world, one alone was pale and could scarcely support herself, despite the nudges of her companion.

It was La Vallière, whom Montalais thus upheld, whispering to her the courage of which she herself was so abundantly possessed.

The king could not help turning around. All the foreheads, which had already risen, lowered again; but the single blonde head remained motionless, as if it had exhausted all that remained to it of strength and intelligence.

On entering Madame’s rooms, Louis found his sister-in-law half reclining upon the cushions of her cabinet. She raised herself and made a deep reverence, stammering some thanks for the honor she received.

Then she sat down again, overcome by a weakness, affected no doubt, for a charming color animated her cheeks, and her eyes, still red from a few tears lately shed, had only the more fire.

When the king was seated and had remarked, with that sureness of observation which characterized him, the disorder of the chamber and that, no less great, of Madame’s face, he assumed a playful air.

— My sister, said he, at what hour does it please you that we rehearse the ballet today?

Madame, slowly and languidly shaking her charming head:

— Ah! Sire, said she, be pleased to excuse me for this rehearsal; I was about to send word to Your Majesty that I could not today.

— How! said the king with moderate surprise; my sister, would you be indisposed?

— Yes, Sire.

— I shall have your physicians called then.

— No, for physicians can do nothing for my ill.

— You frighten me!

— Sire, I wish to ask Your Majesty for permission to return to England.

The king made a movement.

— To England! Do you well know what you are saying, madame?

— I say it with reluctance, Sire, replied the granddaughter of Henri IV with resolution.

And she made her beautiful black eyes flash.

— Yes, I regret making confidences of this sort to Your Majesty; but I find myself too unhappy at the court of Your Majesty; I wish to return to my family.

— Madame! Madame!

And the king drew near.

— Listen, Sire, continued the young woman, gradually gaining over her interlocutor the ascendancy given her by her beauty, her nervous nature; I am accustomed to suffering. Still young, I was humiliated, I was scorned. Oh! do not contradict me, Sire, said she with a smile.

The king blushed.

— Then, said I, I could believe that God had made me to be born for that, I, daughter of a powerful king; but, since He had struck life into my father, He could well strike pride into me. I have suffered much, I have made my mother suffer much; but I have sworn that, if ever God restored to me an independent position, were it that of the laboring woman of the people who earns her bread with her toil, I would suffer no further humiliation. That day has come; I have recovered the fortune due to my rank, to my birth; I have remounted even to the steps of the throne; I believed that, allying myself to a French prince, I should find in him a kinsman, a friend, an equal; but I perceive that I have found only a master, and I rebel, Sire. My mother shall know nothing of it; you whom I respect and whom… I love…

The king trembled; no voice had thus tickled his ear.

— You, said I, Sire, who know all, since you come here, you will perhaps understand me. If you had not come, I was coming to you. It is the permission to depart freely that I want. I abandon to your delicacy, to you, the man par excellence, the task of excusing and protecting me.

— My sister! my sister! stammered the king, bowed by this rude attack, have you well reflected upon the enormous difficulty of the plan you form?

— Sire, I do not reflect, I feel. Attacked, I instinctively repel the attack; that is all.

— But what has been done to you? Come now.

The princess came, as one sees, by this maneuver particular to women, to avoid all reproach and to formulate a graver one; from accused she became accuser. It is an infallible sign of guilt; but from this evident ill, women, even the least adroit, always know how to profit in order to conquer.

The king did not perceive that he had come to her to say: “What have you done to my brother?”

And that he reduced himself to saying:

— What has been done to you?

— What has been done to me? replied Madame. Oh! one must be a woman to understand it, Sire: I have been made to weep.

And with a finger that had no equal in fineness and pearly whiteness, she showed her bright eyes drowned in moisture, and she began to weep again.

— My sister, I beseech you, said the king, advancing to take a hand which she abandoned to him moist and palpitating.

— Sire, I was first deprived of the presence of a friend of my brother. Milord de Buckingham was for me an agreeable guest, playful, a compatriot who knew my habits, I should almost say a companion, so many days have we passed together with our other friends upon my fair waters of Saint-James.

— But, my sister, Villiers was in love with you?

— Pretext! What matters it, said she seriously, whether M. de Buckingham was or was not in love with me? Is a man in love with me then dangerous?… Ah! Sire, it is not enough that a man love you.

And she smiled so tenderly, so subtly, that the king felt his heart beat and fail within his breast.

— In short, if my brother were jealous? interrupted the king.

— Well, I consent to that, there is a reason; and M. de Buckingham was sent away.

— Sent away!… Oh! no.

— Expelled, ousted, dismissed, if you prefer, Sire; one of the first gentlemen of Europe saw himself forced to quit the court of the king of France, of Louis XIV, like a churl, on account of a glance or a nosegay. That is little worthy of the most gallant court… Pardon, Sire, I forgot that in speaking thus I attack your sovereign power.

— Faith! no, my sister, it was not I who dismissed M. de Buckingham… He pleased me greatly.

— Not you? said Madame skillfully. Ah! so much the better!

And she accented this “so much the better” as if, in place of those words, she had pronounced “so much the worse.”

There was a silence of some minutes.

She resumed:

— M. de Buckingham gone… I know now why and by whom… I thought I had recovered tranquillity… Not at all… Here Monsieur finds another pretext; here…

— Here, said the king with playfulness, another presents himself. And that is natural; you are beautiful, madame; you will always be loved.

— Then, cried the princess, I shall make solitude around me. Oh! that is quite what they wish, that is quite what they prepare for me; but, no, I prefer to return to London. There, I am known, I am appreciated. I shall have my friends without fearing that one dares call them my lovers. Fie! it is an unworthy suspicion on the part of a gentleman! Oh! Monsieur has lost all in my mind since I see him, since he revealed himself to me, as the tyrant of a woman.

— There! there! my brother is guilty only of loving you.

— Love me! Monsieur love me? Ah! Sire…

And she laughed aloud.

— Monsieur will never love a woman, said she; Monsieur loves himself too much; no, unfortunately for me, Monsieur is of the worst sort of jealous: jealous without love.

— Confess nevertheless, said the king, who began to grow animated in this varied, burning interview, confess that Guiche loves you.

— Ah! Sire, I know nothing of it.

— You must see it. A man who loves betrays himself.

— M. de Guiche has not betrayed himself.

— My sister, my sister, you defend M. de Guiche.

— I! for example! I? Oh! Sire, there would be nothing lacking to my misfortune but a suspicion from you.

— No, madame, no, replied the king quickly. Do not distress yourself. Oh! you weep! I entreat you, calm yourself.

She wept nevertheless; great tears fell upon her hands. The king took one of her hands and drank one of her tears.

She looked at him so sadly and so tenderly that he was struck to the heart.

— You have nothing for Guiche? said he, more uneasy than befitted his role of mediator.

— But nothing, nothing.

— Then I can reassure my brother.

— Eh! Sire, nothing will reassure him. Do not believe then that he is jealous. Monsieur has received bad counsel, and Monsieur is of an uneasy character.

— One may be so when it is a question of you.

Madame lowered her eyes and was silent. The king did as she. He still held her hand.

This silence of a minute lasted a century.

Madame gently withdrew her hand. She was sure now of triumph. The field of battle was hers.

— Monsieur complains, said the king timidly, that you prefer, to his conversation, to his society, particular societies.

— Sire, Monsieur passes his life looking at his face in a mirror and plotting spitefulness against women with M. le Chevalier de Lorraine.

— Oh! you go a little far.

— I say what is. Observe, you will see, Sire, if I am right.

— I shall observe. But, meanwhile, what satisfaction to give my brother?

— My departure.

— You repeat that word! cried the king imprudently, as if for ten minutes such a change had taken place that Madame had all her ideas reversed.

— Sire, I can no longer be happy here, said she. M. de Guiche embarrasses Monsieur. Will he also be made to leave?

— If need be, why not? replied Louis XIV smiling.

— Well! after M. de Guiche?… whom I shall regret, by the way, I warn you, Sire.

— Ah! you shall regret him?

— Doubtless; he is agreeable, he has friendship for me, he diverts me.

— Ah! if Monsieur heard you! said the king, piqued. Do you know that I would not undertake to reconcile you and that I should not even attempt it?

— Sire, at this hour, can you prevent Monsieur from being jealous of the first comer? I know well that M. de Guiche is not the first comer.

— Again! I warn you that, as a good brother, I am going to take M. de Guiche in horror.

— Ah! Sire, said Madame, take, I beseech you, neither the sympathies nor the hatreds of Monsieur. Remain the king; it will be better for you and for all.

— You are an adorable railer, madame, and I understand that those even whom you rail at adore you.

— And that is why you, Sire, whom I should have taken for my defender, are going to join those who persecute me, said Madame.

— I, your persecutor? God forbid!

— Then, continued she languidly, grant me my request.

— What do you ask?

— To return to England.

— Oh! that, never! never! cried Louis XIV.

— Am I then a prisoner?

— In France, yes.

— What must I do then?

— Well! my sister, I am going to tell you.

— I listen to Your Majesty as a humble servant.

— Instead of giving yourself up to intimacies a little inconsequential, instead of alarming us by your isolation, show yourself to us always, do not leave us, let us live as a family. Certainly M. de Guiche is agreeable; but, after all, if we have not his wit…

— Oh! Sire, you know well that you are being modest.

— No, I swear to you. One may be king and yet feel oneself that one has less chance to please than such or such gentleman.

— I well swear that you do not believe a single word of what you say there, Sire.

The king looked at Madame tenderly.

— Will you promise me one thing? said he.

— Which?

— That of no longer losing, in your cabinet, with strangers, the time you owe us. Will you that we make, against the common enemy, an offensive and defensive alliance?

— An alliance with you, Sire?

— Why not? Are you not a power?

— But you, Sire, are you a very faithful ally?

— You shall see, madame.

— And from what day shall this alliance date?

— From today.

— Shall I draw up the treaty?

— Very well!

— And you will sign it?

— Blindly.

— Oh! then, Sire, I promise you wonders; you are the star of the court, when you shall appear to me…

— Well?

— All will resplend.

— Oh! madame, madame, said Louis XIV, you know well that all light comes from you, and that, if I take the sun for my device, it is but an emblem.

— Sire, you flatter your ally; therefore, you wish to deceive her, said Madame, threatening the king with her roguish finger.

— How! you believe I deceive you, when I assure you of my affection?

— Yes.

— And what makes you doubt?

— One thing.

— Only one?

— Yes.

— Which? I shall be very unhappy if I do not triumph over a single thing.

— This thing is not in your power, Sire, not even in the power of God.

— And what is this thing?

— The past.

— Madame, I do not understand, said the king, precisely because he had too well understood.

The princess took his hand.

— Sire, said she, I had the misfortune to displease you so long, that I have almost the right to ask myself today how you could have accepted me as sister-in-law.

— Displease me! I displeased you?

— Come, do not deny it.

— Permit me.

— No, no, I recall.

— Our alliance dates from today, cried the king with a warmth that was not feigned; you no longer remember the past, nor I either, but I remember the present. I have it before my eyes, here it is; look.

And he led the princess before a mirror, where she saw herself blushing and beautiful enough to make a saint succumb.

— All the same, she murmured, that will be but a poor valiant alliance.

— Must we swear? asked the king, intoxicated by the voluptuous turn all this interview had taken.

— Oh! I refuse not a good oath, said Madame. It is always a semblance of security.

The king knelt upon a cushion and took Madame’s hand.

She, with a smile that a painter could not render and a poet could only imagine, gave him her two hands, in which he hid his burning brow.

Neither one nor the other could find a word.

The king felt that Madame withdrew her hands, grazing his cheeks.

He rose at once and left the apartment.

The courtiers remarked his redness, and concluded that the scene had been stormy.

But the Chevalier de Lorraine hastened to say:

— Oh! no, gentlemen, reassure yourselves. When His Majesty is angry, he is pale.

Chapter CVIII — The Advisers

The king left Madame in a state of agitation that he would have had difficulty explaining to himself.

It is impossible, in fact, to explain the secret play of those strange sympathies which kindle suddenly and without cause after many years passed in the greatest calm, in the greatest indifference of two hearts destined to love each other.

Why had Louis formerly disdained, almost hated Madame? Why now did he find this same woman so beautiful, so desirable, and why not only occupied himself, but was so occupied with her? Why Madame, finally, whose eyes and mind were solicited from another quarter, had for the king, for eight days, a semblance of favor which made one believe in more perfect intimacies?

One must not believe that Louis proposed to himself a plan of seduction: the bond which united Madame to his brother was, or at least seemed to him, an insurmountable barrier; he was even still too far from this barrier to perceive that it existed. But on the slope of those passions whereof the heart rejoices, toward which youth pushes us, none can say where he will stop, not even he who, in advance, has calculated all the chances of success or of fall.

As for Madame, one will easily explain her leaning toward the king: she was young, coquettish, and passionate to inspire admiration.

She was one of those natures of impetuous bursts who, upon a stage, would cross the burning braziers to wrest a cry of applause from the spectators.

It was not then surprising that, proportion kept, after having been adored by Buckingham, by Guiche, who was superior to Buckingham, were it only by that great merit so well appreciated by women, novelty, it was not astonishing, we say, that the princess raised her ambition even to being admired by the king, who was not only the first of the realm, but one of the handsomest and wittiest.

As for the sudden passion of Louis for his sister-in-law, physiology would give the explanation by banalities, and nature by some of its mysterious affinities. Madame had the finest black eyes, Louis the finest blue eyes in the world. Madame was laughing and expansive, Louis melancholy and discreet. Called to meet for the first time upon the ground of a common interest and curiosity, these two opposite natures had inflamed themselves by the contact of their reciprocal asperities. Louis, returned to his rooms, perceived that Madame was the most seductive woman of the court. Madame, left alone, mused, all joyful, that she had produced upon the king a vivid impression.

But this sentiment in her should be passive, while in the king it could not fail to act with all the vehemence natural to the inflammable spirit of a young man, and of a young man who has but to will in order to see his wishes executed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”