Part 38
Chapter CXXVIII — Mission
The next day, or rather the same day, for the events we have just related had only come to an end at three o'clock in the morning, before breakfast, and as the king was setting out for mass with the two queens, as Monsieur, with the Chevalier de Lorraine and some other intimates, mounted on horseback to go to the river, there to take one of those famous baths of which the ladies were so fond, as, in short, there remained at the château only Madame, who, under pretext of indisposition, would not go out, there was seen, or rather there was not seen, Montalais slip out of the chamber of the maids of honor, drawing after her La Vallière, who hid herself as much as possible; and both, stealing away through the gardens, succeeded, all the while looking about them, in reaching the quincunxes.
The weather was cloudy; a fiery wind bent the flowers and shrubs; the burning dust, torn from the paths, rose in whirlwinds among the trees.
Montalais, who during the whole walk had performed the functions of a skilful scout, Montalais took a few steps more, and, turning back to be quite sure that no one was listening or coming:
“Come,” said she, “thank God! we are quite alone. Since yesterday, everyone here is spying, and they form a circle around us as if we were really pestiferous.”
La Vallière lowered her head and sighed.
“At last, it is unheard of,” continued Montalais; “from M. Malicorne to M. de Saint-Aignan, everyone is after our secret. Let us see, Louise, let us recall a little, so that I may know where I stand.”
La Vallière raised toward her companion her beautiful eyes, pure and deep as the azure of a spring sky.
“And I,” said she, “will ask you why we were summoned to Madame's; why we slept with her instead of sleeping, as usual, in our own rooms; why you came in so late, and whence come the measures of surveillance that were taken this morning with regard to us?”
“My dear Louise, you answer my question with a question, or rather with ten questions, which is not answering. I will tell you that later, and, as these are matters of secondary importance, you can wait. What I ask you, for all will flow from it, is whether there is or is not a secret.”
“I know not whether there is a secret,” said La Vallière, “but what I know, on my part at least, is that there has been imprudence since my silly speech and my sillier fainting fit of yesterday; everyone here is making comments upon us.”
“Speak for yourself, my dear,” said Montalais, laughing, “for yourself and for Tonnay-Charente, who each made your declarations to the clouds yesterday, declarations which, unhappily, were intercepted.”
La Vallière lowered her head.
“Truly,” said she, “you overwhelm me.”
“I?”
“Yes, these jests are killing me.”
“Listen, listen, Louise. These are not jests, and nothing is more serious, on the contrary. I did not tear you from the château, I did not miss mass, I did not feign a migraine like Madame, a migraine which Madame no more had than I; I did not, in short, deploy ten times more diplomacy than M. Colbert inherited from M. de Mazarin and practises toward M. Fouquet, in order to succeed in confiding to you my four aches, for the sole end that, when we are alone, when no one hears us, you should come and play the cunning one with me. No, no, be assured, when I question you, it is not merely from curiosity, it is because in truth the situation is critical. They know what you said yesterday, they are gossiping upon that text. Everyone embroiders to the best of his ability and with the flowers of his fancy; you had the honor last night, and you still have the honor this morning, of occupying the whole court, my dear, and the number of tender and witty things they lend you would make Mlle de Scudéry and her brother burst with spite, if they were faithfully reported to them.”
“Ah! my good Montalais,” said the poor child, “you know better than anyone what I said, since it was before you that I said it.”
“Yes, I know it. My God! the question is not there. I have not even forgotten a single one of the words you uttered; but did you think what you were saying?”
Louise grew confused.
“More questions?” cried she. “My God! when I would give the whole world to forget what I said… how does it happen that everyone agrees to remind me of it? Oh! that is a frightful thing.”
“Which? let us see.”
“It is having a friend who should spare me, who could advise me, help me to escape, and who kills me, who assassinates me!”
“There! there!” said Montalais, “see how, after saying too little, you now say too much. No one thinks of killing you, not even of robbing you, even of your secret: they wish to have it of your own free will, and not otherwise; for it is not only your affairs that are in question, it is ours; and Tonnay-Charente would tell you as much as I if she were here. For, in short, yesterday evening she had asked me for a talk in our chamber, and I was going there after the Manicampian and Malicornian colloquies, when I learn, on my return, a little late, it is true, that Madame has sequestered the maids of honor, and that we are sleeping with her instead of sleeping in our own rooms. Now, Madame has sequestered the maids of honor so that they should have no time to compare notes, and this morning she shut herself up with Tonnay-Charente for that same purpose. Tell me then, dear friend, what reliance Athénaïs and I can place on you, as we will tell you what reliance you can place on us.”
“I do not understand very well the question you put to me,” said Louise, much agitated.
“Hum! you seem to me, on the contrary, to understand very well. But I wish to make my questions precise, so that you may not have the resource of the slightest evasion. Listen then. Do you love M. de Bragelonne? That is clear, eh?”
At this question, which fell like the first projectile of a besieging army into a besieged place, Louise made a movement.
“Love Raoul!” cried she, “my childhood friend, my brother!”
“Eh! no, no, no! See, there you escape me again, or rather you would escape me. I do not ask you if you love Raoul, your childhood friend and your brother; I ask you if you love the Viscount de Bragelonne, your betrothed?”
“Oh! my God, my dear,” said Louise, “what severity in your words!”
“No remission; I am neither more nor less severe than usual. I put a question to you; answer that question.”
“Assuredly,” said Louise in a strangled voice, “you do not speak to me as a friend, but I will answer you as a sincere friend.”
“Answer.”
“Well! I bear a heart full of scruple and of ridiculous pride regarding all that a woman should keep secret, and no one has ever read, in that respect, to the bottom of my soul.”
“I know it well. If I had read there, I would not question you, I would simply say to you: ‘My good Louise, you have the happiness of knowing M. de Bragelonne, who is a nice fellow and an advantageous match for a girl without fortune. M. de La Fère will leave some fifteen thousand livres of income to his son. You will therefore one day have fifteen thousand livres of income as the wife of that son; it is admirable. Go then neither to the right nor to the left, go frankly to M. de Bragelonne, that is to say, to the altar where he is to lead you. After? Well! after, according to his character, you will be either emancipated or a slave, that is to say that you will have the right to do all the follies that people too free or too enslaved do.’ There then, my dear Louise, is what I would say to you first, if I had read to the bottom of your heart.”
“And I would thank you,” stammered Louise, “though the advice does not seem to me completely good.”
“Wait, wait… But, immediately after giving it to you, I would add: ‘Louise, it is dangerous to pass whole days with the head bent upon the bosom, the hands inert, the eye vague; it is dangerous to seek the dark alleys and to smile no more at the diversions that brighten all young girls' hearts; it is dangerous, Louise, to write with the tip of the foot, as you do, upon the sand, letters which you may efface in vain, but which still appear beneath the heel, especially when those letters resemble L's more than B's; it is dangerous, finally, to put into one's mind a thousand bizarre imaginations, fruits of solitude and of the migraine; these imaginations hollow the cheeks of a poor girl even as they hollow her brain; so that it is not rare, on these occasions, to see the most agreeable person in the world become the most sullen, to see the most witty become the most foolish.’”
“Thanks, my dear Aure,” answered La Vallière gently; “it is in your nature to speak to me thus, and I thank you for speaking according to your nature.”
“And it is for the dreamers that I speak; take then from my words only what you believe you should take. See, I no longer know what tale comes back to my memory of a vaporous or melancholy girl — for M. Dangeau was explaining to me the other day that melancholy should, grammatically, be written *mélancholie*, with an *h*, seeing that the French word is formed of two Greek words, one of which means black and the other bile. I was then dreaming of this young person who died of black bile, having imagined that the prince, the king, or the emperor… faith! whichever you please, was going about adoring her; while the prince, the king, or the emperor… as you will, visibly loved elsewhere, and, a singular thing, a thing of which she did not perceive, while everyone around her perceived it, he took her for a screen of love. You laugh, as I do, at that poor madwoman, do you not, La Vallière?”
“I laugh,” stammered Louise, pale as a dead woman; “yes, certainly I laugh.”
“And you are right, for the thing is amusing. The history or the tale, as you will, pleased me; that is why I retained it and tell it to you. Can you picture to yourself, my good Louise, the ravage that *a mélancholie*, with an *h*, of that sort would make in your brain? As for me, I have resolved to tell you the thing; for, if the thing were to happen to one of us, she would need to be well convinced of this truth: today it is a delusion; tomorrow, it will be a jest; the day after, it will be death.”
La Vallière shuddered and grew paler still, if that were possible.
“When a king occupies himself with us,” continued Montalais, “he makes it well seen, and, if we are the good he covets, he knows how to secure his good. You see then, Louise, that in like circumstances, among young girls exposed to such a danger, they must make all confidences to one another, so that the hearts not melancholy may watch over the hearts that may become so.”
“Silence! silence!” cried La Vallière; “someone comes.”
“Someone comes indeed,” said Montalais; “but who can come? Everyone is at mass with the king, or at the bath with Monsieur.”
At the end of the walk, the young girls presently perceived, beneath the green arcade, the graceful gait and rich stature of a young man who, his sword under his arm and a cloak over it, booted and spurred throughout, saluted them from afar with a sweet smile.
“Raoul!” cried Montalais.
“M. de Bragelonne!” murmured Louise.
“It is a perfectly natural judge who comes to us for our difference,” said Montalais.
“Oh! Montalais! Montalais, for pity's sake!” cried La Vallière, “after having been cruel, be not inexorable!”
These words, pronounced with all the ardor of a prayer, effaced from the face, if not from the heart, of Montalais every trace of irony.
“Oh! you are handsome as Amadis, M. de Bragelonne!” she cried to Raoul, “and all armed, all booted like him.”
“A thousand respects, mesdemoiselles,” answered Bragelonne, bowing.
“But finally, why those boots?” repeated Montalais, while La Vallière, though looking at Raoul with an astonishment like that of her companion, nevertheless kept silence.
“Why?” asked Raoul.
“Yes,” ventured La Vallière in her turn.
“Because I am leaving,” said Bragelonne, looking at Louise.
The young girl felt herself struck with a superstitious terror and wavered.
“You are leaving, Raoul!” cried she; “and where are you going?”
“My dear Louise,” said the young man with that placidity which was natural to him, “I am going to England.”
“And what are you going to do in England?”
“The king sends me there.”
“The king!” exclaimed at once Louise and Aure, who involuntarily exchanged a glance, each recalling the conversation that had just been interrupted.
This glance, Raoul intercepted, but he could not understand it. He attributed it then quite naturally to the interest the two young girls bore him.
“His Majesty,” said he, “was pleased to remember that the Count de La Fère is well seen by King Charles II. This morning then, at the departure for mass, the king, seeing me on his way, made me a sign with his head. Then I approached. ‘M. de Bragelonne,’ said he to me, ‘you will call upon M. Fouquet, who has received from me letters for the King of Great Britain; those letters you will carry.’ I bowed. ‘Ah! before departing,’ he added, ‘you will be good enough to take Madame's commissions for the king her brother.’”
“My God!” murmured Louise, at once all nervous and all pensive.
“So soon! they order you to depart so soon?” said Montalais, paralyzed by this strange event.
“To obey well those one respects,” said Raoul, “one must obey quickly. Ten minutes after the order received, I was ready. Madame, advised, writes the letter with which she does me the honor to charge me. During that time, knowing from Mlle de Tonnay-Charente that you were to be on the side of the quincunxes, I came there, and I find you both.”
“And both rather unwell, as you see,” said Montalais, to come to Louise's aid, whose countenance was visibly altering.
“Unwell!” repeated Raoul, pressing with a tender curiosity the hand of Louise de La Vallière. “Oh! indeed, your hand is icy.”
“It is nothing.”
“That cold does not reach the heart, does it, Louise?” asked the young man with a sweet smile.
Louise raised her head quickly, as if that question had been inspired by a suspicion and had provoked a remorse.
“Oh! you know,” said she with effort, “that never will my heart be cold for a friend such as you, M. de Bragelonne.”
“Thanks, Louise. I know your heart and your soul, and it is not by the touch of the hand, I know, that one judges a tenderness like yours. Louise, you know how much I love you, with what confidence and what abandon I have given you my life; you will pardon me then, will you not, for speaking to you a little as a child?”
“Speak, M. Raoul,” said Louise, all trembling; “I listen to you.”
“I cannot withdraw from you bearing a torment, absurd, I know, but which nevertheless tears me. “
“Do you then withdraw for long?” asked La Vallière in an oppressed voice, while Montalais turned away her head.
“No, and I shall probably not even be absent fifteen days.”
La Vallière pressed a hand to her heart, which was breaking.
“It is strange,” pursued Raoul, looking melancholy at the young girl; “often have I left you to go to perilous encounters, I departed then joyous, the heart free, the mind all intoxicated with joys to come, with future hopes, and yet then it was a question for me of braving the balls of the Spaniards or the hard halberds of the Walloons. Today, I go, without any danger, without any uneasiness, to seek by the easiest road in the world a fair reward which this favor of the king promises me, I go perhaps to win you; for what other more precious favor than yourself could the king grant me? Well! Louise, I know not truly how it comes about, but all that happiness, all that future flies before my eyes like a vain smoke, like a chimerical dream, and I have there, I have there at the bottom of my heart, see you, a great sorrow, an inexpressible dejection, something of the mournful, the inert, and the dead, like a corpse. Oh! I know well why, Louise; it is because I have never loved you so much as I do at this moment. Oh! my God! my God!”
At this last exclamation issuing from a broken heart, Louise melted into tears and fell back into Montalais's arms.
She, who nevertheless was not among the tenderest, felt her eyes grow moist and her heart squeezed in an iron circle.
Raoul saw his betrothed's tears. His gaze did not penetrate, sought not even to penetrate beyond her tears. He bent a knee before her and tenderly kissed her hand.
One saw that, in that kiss, he put all his heart.
“Rise, rise,” said Montalais to him, near to weeping herself, “for here is Athénaïs who comes to us.”
Raoul wiped his knee with the back of his sleeve, smiled once more at Louise, who no longer looked at him, and, having pressed Montalais's hand with effusion, he turned to salute Mlle de Tonnay-Charente, whose silken robe began to be heard brushing the sand of the walks.
“Has Madame finished her letter?” he asked her when the young girl was within reach of his voice.
“Yes, M. le Vicomte, the letter is finished, sealed, and Her Royal Highness awaits you.”
At this word, Raoul scarcely took time to salute Athénaïs, threw a last look at Louise, made a last sign to Montalais, and withdrew in the direction of the château.
But, even as he withdrew, he turned again.
At last, at the turn of the great walk, turn as he might, he saw nothing more.
For their part, the three young girls, with very diverse feelings, had watched him disappear.
“At last,” said Athénaïs, breaking the silence first, “at last, we are alone, free to talk of the great affair of yesterday, and to explain ourselves upon the conduct it behooves us to follow. Now, if you will pay me attention,” continued she, looking all about, “I am going to explain to you, as briefly as possible, first our duty as I understand it, and, if you do not understand me at half a word, the will of Madame.”
And Mlle de Tonnay-Charente laid stress upon these last words, in a manner to leave no doubt in her companions as to the official character with which she was invested.
“The will of Madame!” cried at once Montalais and Louise.
“Ultimatum!” replied Mlle de Tonnay-Charente diplomatically.
“But, my God! mademoiselle,” murmured La Vallière, “Madame knows then?…”
“Madame knows more than we have said,” articulated Athénaïs distinctly. “Thus, mesdemoiselles, let us compose ourselves.”
“Oh! yes,” said Montalais. “So I listen with all my ears. Speak, Athénaïs.”
“My God! my God!” murmured Louise, all trembling, “shall I survive this cruel evening?”
“Oh! do not frighten yourself thus,” said Athénaïs, “we have the remedy.”
And, seating herself between her two companions, to each of whom she took a hand which she joined in her own, she began.
At the whispering of her first words, one might have heard the noise of a horse galloping on the pavement of the high road, outside the castle gates.
Chapter CXXIX — Happy as a Prince
At the moment when he was about to enter the château, Bragelonne had met de Guiche.
But, before being met by Raoul, de Guiche had met Manicamp, who had met Malicorne.
How had Malicorne met Manicamp? Nothing simpler: he had awaited him on his return from mass, at which he had been in company with M. de Saint-Aignan.
Reunited, they had congratulated each other on this good fortune, and Manicamp had profited by the circumstance to ask his friend if a few ecus had not remained at the bottom of his pocket.
The latter, without astonishment at the question, which he perhaps expected, had answered that every pocket from which one always draws without ever putting anything in resembles wells, which still furnish water during the winter, but which gardeners end by exhausting in summer; that his pocket, his, Malicorne's, certainly had depth, and that it would be pleasant to draw from it in time of abundance, but that, unhappily, abuse had brought sterility.
Whereto Manicamp, all dreamy, had replied:
“That is just.”
“It would be a question then of filling it,” had added Malicorne.
“Doubtless; but how?”
“Why, nothing easier, dear M. Manicamp.”
“Good! Say on.”
“An office with Monsieur, and the pocket is full.”
“That office, have you it?”
“That is to say I have the title of it.”
“Well?”
“Yes; but the title without the office is the purse without the money.”
“That is just,” had answered a second time Manicamp.
“Let us then pursue the office,” had insisted the title-holder.
“Dear, very dear,” sighed Manicamp, “an office with Monsieur is one of the grave difficulties of our situation.”
“Oh! oh!”
“Doubtless, we can ask nothing of Monsieur at this present moment.”
“Why so?”
“Because we are on cold terms with him.”
“An absurd thing,” articulated distinctly Malicorne.
“Bah! And if we pay court to Madame,” said Manicamp, “frankly, can we be agreeable to Monsieur?”
“Precisely, if we pay court to Madame and are clever, we must be adored by Monsieur.”
“Hum!”
“Or we are fools! Make haste then, M. Manicamp, you who are a great politician, to reconcile M. de Guiche with His Royal Highness.”
“Let us see, what did M. de Saint-Aignan teach you, you, Malicorne?”
“Me? Nothing; he questioned me, that is all.”
“Well! he was less discreet with me.”
“He taught you, you?”
“That the king is madly in love with Mlle de La Vallière.”
“We knew that, pardieu!” replied ironically Malicorne, “and everyone cries it loud enough for all to know it, but, meanwhile, do, I pray you, as I advise you: speak to M. de Guiche, and try to obtain from him that he make a step toward Monsieur. The devil! he owes that much to His Royal Highness.”
“But one would need to see de Guiche.”
“It seems to me there is no great difficulty there. Do to see him what I did to see you; wait for him, you know he is a walker by nature.”
“Yes, but where does he walk?”
“A fine question, faith! He is in love with Madame, is he not?”
“So it is said.”
“Well! he walks on the side of Madame's apartments.”
“Eh! see here, my dear Malicorne, you were not mistaken, there he comes.”
“And why would you have me be mistaken? Have you noticed that to be my habit? Say. Come, there is none like hearing one another out. See, you need money?”
“Ah!” made Manicamp lamentably.
“I, I need my office. Let Malicorne have the office, Malicorne will have money. It is no more difficult than that.”
“Well! then, be easy. I am going to do my best.”
“Do.”
De Guiche advanced; Malicorne drew off on his side, Manicamp caught de Guiche.
The count was dreamy and somber.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”