Part 40

— Well! a good journey to the viscount, whom I love dearly. Come, go and dress, de Guiche, and come back to us. And if you do not come back...

— What will happen, my lord?

— What will happen is that I shall have you thrown into the Bastille.

— Come, decidedly, said de Guiche laughing, His Royal Highness Monsieur is the counterpart of Her Royal Highness Madame. Madame has me exiled because she does not love me enough, Monsieur has me imprisoned because he loves me too much. Thank you, sir! Thank you, madame!

— Come, come, said the prince, you are a charming friend, and you know well that I cannot do without you. Return quickly.

— Very well, but it pleases me to play coy in my turn, my lord.

— Indeed?

— So I shall return to Your Highness only on one condition.

— Which?

— I have a friend of a friend to oblige.

— What is his name?

— Malicorne.

— Ugly name.

— Very well borne, my lord.

— So be it. Well?

— Well! I owe M. Malicorne a place with you, my lord.

— A place as what?

— Any sort of place; a surveillance, for example.

— Pshaw! that falls out well, I dismissed the master of the apartments yesterday.

— Agreed for the master of the apartments, my lord. What has he to do?

— Nothing, save to look and to report.

— Internal police?

— Exactly.

— Oh! how well that suits Malicorne, ventured Manicamp.

— You know the man in question, M. Manicamp? asked the prince.

— Intimately, my lord. He is my friend.

— And your opinion is?

— That Monseigneur will never have a master of the apartments like that one.

— How much does the office bring in? asked the count of the prince.

— I know not; only, I have always been told he can never be paid enough when he is well employed.

— What do you call well employed, prince?

— That goes without saying, when the officer is a man of wit.

— Then I believe Monseigneur will be pleased, for Malicorne has the wit of a devil.

— Good! the office will cost me dear then, replied the prince laughing. You are making me a fine gift there, count.

— I believe so, my lord.

— Well! go then and announce to your M. Mélicorne...

— Malicorne, my lord.

— I shall never get used to that name.

— You say Manicamp well enough, my lord.

— Oh! I should say Manicorne very well too. Habit would help me.

— Say it, say it, my lord, I promise you your inspector of apartments will not be angry; he is of the happiest disposition one could see.

— Well then, my dear de Guiche, announce his appointment to him... But, wait...

— What, my lord?

— I wish to see him beforehand. If he is as ugly as his name, I withdraw.

— Monseigneur knows him.

— I?

— Doubtless. Monseigneur has already seen him at the Palais-Royal; so much so that it was even I who presented him.

— Ah! very well, I recall... Peste! he is a charming fellow!

— I knew Monseigneur must have noticed him.

— Yes, yes, yes! You see, de Guiche, I will not have, neither my wife nor I, ugliness before our eyes. My wife will take for ladies of honor only pretty girls; I shall take, myself, only well-made gentlemen. In this way, you see, de Guiche, if I make children, they will be of a good inspiration, and, if my wife makes any, she will have seen fine models.

— That is powerfully reasoned, my lord, said Manicamp, approving with eye and voice.

As for de Guiche, no doubt he did not find the reasoning so happy, for he merely nodded, and even the gesture retained a marked character of indecision. Manicamp went off to warn Malicorne of the good news he had just learned.

De Guiche appeared to go, with ill grace, to make his court toilette.

Monsieur, singing, laughing and admiring himself, reached the dinner hour in dispositions that would have justified the proverb: "Happy as a prince."

Chapter CXXX — History of a Naiad and a Dryad

Everyone had taken collation at the château, and, after the collation, court toilette.

The collation usually took place at five o'clock.

Let us allow one hour for collation and two hours for toilette. Everyone was therefore ready toward eight o'clock in the evening.

So toward eight o'clock in the evening they began to present themselves at Madame's.

For, as we have said, it was Madame who received that evening.

And at Madame's soirées no one dared to be absent; for the evenings passed at her house with all the charm that the queen, that pious and excellent princess, had not been able, herself, to give to her gatherings. It is, unhappily, one of the advantages of wickedness to amuse more than goodness.

And yet, let us hasten to say it, wicked wit was not an epithet that could be applied to Madame.

That wholly choice nature enclosed too much true generosity, too many noble impulses and distinguished reflections for one to call it a wicked nature.

But Madame had the gift of resistance, a gift so often fatal to him who possesses it, for he breaks where another would have bent; the result was that blows were not blunted upon her as upon that padded conscience of Marie-Thérèse.

Her heart rebounded at each attack, and, like the aggressive quintains of the ring games, Madame, if one did not strike her so as to stun her, returned blow for blow upon the imprudent whoever he might be who dared to joust against her.

Was it wickedness? was it simply mischief? We, for our part, hold that rich and powerful natures are those which, like the tree of knowledge, produce at once good and evil, a double branch ever in flower, ever fruitful, of which those who hunger know how to distinguish the good fruit, of which the useless and the parasites die from having eaten too much of the bad — which is not a misfortune.

So Madame, who had her plan of second queen, or even first queen, firmly fixed in her mind, Madame, we say, made her house agreeable by conversation, by encounters, by the perfect liberty she left to each to slip in his word, on the condition, however, that the word be pretty or useful. And, would it be believed, by that very means one perhaps spoke less at Madame's than elsewhere.

Madame hated chatterers and cruelly avenged herself upon them.

She let them talk.

She also hated pretension and did not even pardon that fault in the king.

It was Monsieur's malady, and the princess had undertaken that exorbitant task of curing him of it.

For the rest, poets, men of wit, beautiful women, she welcomed all as a mistress superior to her slaves. Dreamy enough amid all her roguishness to make poets dream; strong enough in her charms to shine even amid the prettiest; witty enough that the most remarkable listened to her with pleasure.

One conceives what such gatherings as those held at Madame's must attract: youth flocked there. When the king is young, all is young at court.

So one saw the old ladies sulk, strong heads of the Regency or of the last reign; but one answered their sulks by laughing at those venerable persons who had pushed the spirit of domination to the point of commanding parties of soldiers in the war of the Fronde, so as, said Madame, not to lose all empire over men.

At eight o'clock striking, Her Royal Highness entered the grand salon with her ladies of honor, and found several courtiers who had already been waiting for more than ten minutes.

Among all these forerunners of the appointed hour, she sought him whom she believed ought to have arrived first of all. She did not find him.

But almost at the same instant that she finished this search, Monsieur was announced.

Monsieur was splendid to behold. All the jewels of Cardinal Mazarin, those namely that the minister could not do otherwise than leave, all the jewels of the queen mother, some even of his wife, Monsieur wore that day. So Monsieur shone like a sun.

Behind him, with slow steps and an air of perfectly feigned compunction, came de Guiche, clad in a suit of pearl-gray velvet, embroidered with silver and with blue ribbons.

De Guiche wore, moreover, malines as beautiful in their kind as Monsieur's jewels were in theirs.

The plume of his hat was red.

Madame had several colors.

She loved red in hangings, gray in garments, blue in flowers.

M. de Guiche, thus dressed, was of a beauty that everyone could remark. A certain interesting pallor, a certain languor of the eyes, hands matte with whiteness beneath great laces, the melancholy mouth; in truth, one needed but to see M. de Guiche to confess that few men at the court of France were worth that one.

It resulted therefrom that Monsieur, who would have had the pretension to eclipse a star, if a star had placed itself in parallel with him, was, on the contrary, completely eclipsed in all imaginations, which are indeed very silent judges, but also very haughty in their judgment.

Madame had looked vaguely at de Guiche; but, vague as that look was, it brought a charming blush upon her brow. Madame, in fact, had found de Guiche so handsome and so elegant, that she was almost ceasing to regret the royal conquest which she felt was on the point of escaping her.

Her heart, despite herself, let all its blood flow back to her cheeks.

Monsieur, assuming his roguish air, approached her. He had not seen the princess's blush, or, if he had seen it, he was far from attributing it to its true cause.

— Madame, said he, kissing his wife's hand, there is here a disgraced man, a wretched exile whom I take upon myself to recommend to you. Pray take good note that he is one of my best friends, and that your reception will touch me deeply.

— What exile? what disgraced man? asked Madame, looking all around her and stopping no more at the count than at the others.

It was the moment to push forward his protégé. The prince stepped aside and let de Guiche pass, who, with a rather sullen air, approached Madame and made his reverence.

— What! said Madame, as if she felt the liveliest astonishment, is it M. the count de Guiche who is the disgraced man, the exile?

— Yes indeed! replied the duke.

— Eh! said Madame, one sees no one but him here.

— Ah! madame, you are unjust, said the prince.

— I?

— Doubtless. Come, forgive him, poor boy.

— Forgive him what? What have I to forgive M. de Guiche, I?

— But, come, explain yourself, de Guiche. What do you want her to forgive you? asked the prince.

— Alas! Her Royal Highness knows well, replied the latter hypocritically.

— Come, come, give him your hand, Madame, said Philippe.

— If it pleases you, monsieur.

And, with an indescribable movement of the eyes and shoulders, Madame held out her beautiful perfumed hand to the young man, who pressed his lips to it.

One must believe that he pressed them long and that Madame did not withdraw her hand too quickly, for the duke added:

— De Guiche is not wicked, madame, and he certainly will not bite you.

Pretext was taken, in the gallery, from this word, which was perhaps not very laughable, to laugh excessively.

Indeed, the situation was remarkable, and some good souls had remarked it.

Monsieur was therefore still enjoying the effect of his word when the king was announced.

At that moment, the aspect of the salon was that which we shall try to describe.

In the center, before the chimney crowded with flowers, stood Madame, with her ladies of honor formed in two wings, upon the lines of which fluttered the butterflies of the court.

Other groups occupied the window embrasures, as do, in their reciprocal turns, the posts of the same garrison, and, from their respective places, caught the words issuing from the principal group.

From one of these groups, the nearest to the chimney, Malicorne, promoted, then and there, by Manicamp and de Guiche, to the post of master of the apartments; Malicorne, whose officer's suit had been ready this past two months, blazed in his gilding and shone upon Montalais, extreme left of Madame, with all the fire of his eyes and all the reflection of his velvet.

Madame was chatting with Mme de Châtillon and Mme de Créqui, her two neighbors, and sent back a few words to Monsieur, who at once stepped aside when this announcement was made:

— The king!

Mlle de La Vallière was, like Montalais, at the left of Madame, that is to say the next-to-last of the line; to her right, they had placed Mlle de Tonnay-Charente. She thus found herself in the situation of those bodies of troops whose weakness is suspected, and which one places between two tried forces.

Thus flanked by her two companions in adventure, La Vallière, whether she was grieved to see Raoul depart, or whether she was still moved by the recent events which were beginning to popularize her name in the world of courtiers, La Vallière, we say, hid behind her fan her somewhat reddened eyes, and seemed to pay great attention to the words that Montalais and Athénaïs alternately whispered in one and the other ear.

When the king's name resounded, a great movement occurred in the salon.

Madame, as mistress of the house, rose to receive the royal visitor; but, in rising, however preoccupied she must have been, she cast a glance to her right, and this glance, which the presumptuous de Guiche interpreted as sent to him, yet stopped after making the round of the circle upon La Vallière, of whom he could remark the vivid blush and the troubled emotion.

The king entered amid the group, become general by a movement which operated naturally from the circumference to the center.

All brows bowed before His Majesty, the women bending like frail and magnificent lilies before King Aquilo.

His Majesty had nothing ferocious about him, we might even say nothing royal that evening, were it not for his youth and his beauty.

A certain air of lively joy and good disposition put all heads on the alert; and behold each promised himself a charming evening, merely at seeing His Majesty's desire to amuse himself at Madame's.

If anyone could, by his joy and good humor, rival the king, it was M. de Saint-Aignan, pink in garments, in complexion and in ribbons, pink above all in ideas, and, that evening, M. de Saint-Aignan had many ideas.

What had given bloom to all these ideas germinating in his laughing mind, was that he had just perceived that Mlle de Tonnay-Charente was, like him, clad in pink; we would not wish to say, however, that the cunning courtier did not know in advance that the beautiful Athénaïs was to wear that color: he knew very well the art of making a tailor or a lady's maid chat about their mistress's plans.

He sent as many murderous glances to Mlle Athénaïs as he had ribbon knots on his hose and doublet, that is to say he launched a furious quantity of them. The king having paid his compliments to Madame, and Madame having been invited to sit, the circle formed at once.

Louis asked Monsieur for news of the bath; he related, all the while looking at the ladies, that poets were busy putting into verse that gallant diversion of the baths of Vulaines, and that one of them, especially, M. Loret, seemed to have received the confidences of a water nymph, so many truths had he told in his rhymes.

More than one lady thought she ought to blush.

The king profited by this moment to look at his ease; Montalais alone did not blush enough not to look at the king, and she saw him devour with his gaze Mlle de La Vallière.

That bold lady of honor, whom they called La Montalais, made the king lower his eyes, and thus saved Louise de La Vallière from a sympathetic fire which might have reached her by that gaze! Louis was taken up by Madame, who overwhelmed him with questions, and no person in the world knew how to question like her.

But he sought to make the conversation general, and to succeed, he redoubled in wit and gallantry.

Madame wanted compliments; she resolved to extract them at any cost, and, addressing the king:

— Sire, said she, Your Majesty, who knows all that passes in his kingdom, must know in advance the verses told to M. Loret by that nymph; will Your Majesty deign to share them with us?

— Madame, replied the king with perfect grace, I dare not... It is certain that, for you personally, there would be some confusion in listening to certain details... But de Saint-Aignan tells things rather well and retains verses perfectly; if he does not retain them, he improvises them. I certify him a reinforced poet.

De Saint-Aignan, brought upon the stage, was constrained to produce himself as little disadvantageously as possible. Unfortunately for Madame, he thought only of his particular affairs, that is to say that instead of returning to Madame the compliments she was making a feast of, he presumed to prance a little himself in his good fortune.

Launching therefore a hundredth glance at the beautiful Athénaïs, who practiced to the full her theory of the eve, that is to say who deigned not to look at her adorer:

— Sire, said he, Your Majesty will doubtless pardon me for having retained too little of the verses dictated to Loret by the nymph; but where the king retained nothing, what should I, wretched, have done?

Madame received with little favor this defeat of courtiers.

— Ah! madame, added de Saint-Aignan, it is that it is no longer today a question of what the fresh-water nymphs say. In truth, one would be tempted to believe nothing interesting any longer happens in the liquid kingdoms. It is on earth, madame, that great events arrive. Ah! on earth, madame, what tales full of...

— Good! said Madame, and what then passes on earth?

— It is of the dryads one must ask it, replied the count; the dryads inhabit the woods, as Your Royal Highness knows.

— I know even that they are naturally talkative, M. de Saint-Aignan.

— True, madame; but, when they report only pretty things, one would be ill-mannered to accuse them of talkativeness.

— They report then pretty things? asked the princess nonchalantly. In truth, M. de Saint-Aignan, you pique my curiosity, and, were I king, I would forthwith summon you to relate to us the pretty things said by the ladies the dryads, since you alone here seem to know their language.

— Oh! for that, madame, I am entirely at the orders of His Majesty, replied the count quickly.

— He understands the language of the dryads? said Monsieur. Is he not lucky, that Saint-Aignan!

— As well as French, my lord.

— Then tell, said Madame.

The king felt embarrassed; no doubt his confidant was going to embark him in a difficult affair.

He felt it well by the universal attention excited by the preamble of Saint-Aignan, excited also by the particular attitude of Madame. The most discreet seemed ready to devour each word the count was about to pronounce.

One coughed, one drew nearer, one looked askance at certain ladies of honor who themselves, to sustain more decently or with more firmness that inquisitorial gaze so heavy, arranged their fans, and composed for themselves the bearing of a duelist who is about to face the fire of his adversary.

In that time, one had so much the habit of ingenious conversations and thorny tales, that where a whole modern salon would smell scandal, outburst, tragedy, and flee in fright, the salon of Madame settled into its places, so as not to lose a word, a gesture, of the comedy composed for its benefit by M. de Saint-Aignan, and of which the denouement, whatever the style and the plot, must necessarily be perfect in calm and observation.

The count was known for a polite man and a perfect storyteller. He therefore began bravely amid a profound silence, and one redoubtable for anyone but him.

— Madame, the king permits that I address myself first to Your Royal Highness, since she proclaims herself the most curious of her circle; I shall therefore have the honor of saying to Your Royal Highness that the dryad inhabits more particularly the hollow of oaks and, as the dryads are beautiful mythological creatures, they inhabit very beautiful trees, that is to say the largest they can find.

At this exordium, which recalled beneath a transparent veil the famous history of the royal oak, which had played so great a role in the last soirée, so many hearts beat with joy or uneasiness, that, had not de Saint-Aignan had a good and sonorous voice, that beating of hearts would have been heard above his voice.

— There must be dryads at Fontainebleau, said Madame in a perfectly calm tone, for never in my life have I seen finer oaks than in the royal park.

And, in saying these words, she sent straight to de Guiche a glance of which the latter had no cause to complain as of the previous one, which, we have said, had retained a certain nuance of vagueness very painful to a heart so loving.

— Precisely, madame, it is of Fontainebleau I was about to speak to Your Royal Highness, said de Saint-Aignan, for the dryad whose tale occupies us inhabits the park of the château of His Majesty.

The affair was engaged; the action began: auditors and narrator, no one could draw back further.

— Let us listen, said Madame, for the history seems to me to have not only all the charm of a national tale, but also that of a very contemporary chronicle.

— I must begin at the beginning, said the count. So, at Fontainebleau, in a cottage of fair appearance, dwell shepherds.

"One is the shepherd Tircis, to whom belong the richest domains, transmitted by the inheritance of his parents.

Tircis is young and handsome, and his qualities make him the first of the shepherds of the country. One may therefore boldly say that he is the king of them."

A slight murmur of approbation encouraged the narrator, who continued:

— His strength equals his courage; none has more address in the hunt of wild beasts, none has more wisdom in counsel. Does he maneuver a horse in the fair plains of his inheritance, does he lead to games of skill and vigor the shepherds who obey him, one would say the god Mars shaking his lance in the plains of Thrace, or better yet Apollo, god of day, when he rays upon the earth with his flaming darts.

Everyone understands that this allegorical portrait of the king was not the worst exordium the tale-teller could have chosen. So it missed its effect neither upon the assistants, who, by duty and by pleasure, applauded it to pieces; nor upon the king himself, to whom praise was very pleasing when it was delicate, and was not always displeasing even when it was a little overdone. De Saint-Aignan pursued:

— It is not only, mesdames, in the games of glory that the shepherd Tircis acquired that renown which has made him king of the shepherds.

— Of the shepherds of Fontainebleau, said the king smiling at Madame.

— Oh! cried Madame, Fontainebleau is taken arbitrarily by the poet; I say: of the shepherds of the whole world.

The king forgot his role of passive auditor and bowed.

— It is, pursued de Saint-Aignan amid a flattering murmur, it is above all near the fair that the merit of this king of shepherds shines most manifestly. He is a shepherd whose wit is as fine as the heart is pure; he knows how to deliver a compliment with a grace that charms invincibly, he knows how to love with a discretion that promises to his amiable and happy conquests the most enviable lot. Never an outburst, never a lapse. Whoever has seen Tircis and heard him must love him; whoever loves him and is loved by him has met with happiness.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”