From the Memoirs of a Minister of France
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Stanley Weyman >> From the Memoirs of a Minister of France
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"And you!" she cried, "who speak so slow, and look so solemn,
and all the time do his dirty work, like the meanest cook he has
ennobled! It is well you are here! ENFIN, you are found out--
you and your provisions! Your provisions, of which you talked in
the wood!"
"MON DIEU!" the King groaned; "give me patience!"
"He has given me patience these ten years, sire!" she retorted
passionately. "Patience to see myself flouted by your
favourites, insulted and displaced, and set aside! But this is
too much! It was enough that you made yourself the laughing-
stock of France once with this madame! I will not have it again
--no: though twenty of your counsellors frown at me!"
"Your Majesty seems displeased," I said. "But as I am quite in
the dark--"
"Liar!" she cried, giving way to her fury. "When you were with
her this morning! When you saw her! When you stooped to--"
"Madame!" he King said sternly, "if you forget yourself, be good
enough to remember that you are speaking to French gentlemen, not
to traders of Florence!"
She sneered. "You think to wound me by that!" she cried,
breathing quickly. "But I have my grandfather's blood in me,
sire; and no King of France--"
"One King of France will presently make your uncle of that blood
sing small!" the King answered viciously. "So much for that;
and for the rest, sweetheart, softly, softly!"
"Oh!" she cried, "I will go: I will not stay to be outraged by
that woman's presence!"
I had now an inkling what was the matter; and discerning that the
quarrel was a more serious matter than their every-day
bickerings, and threatened to go to lengths that might end in
disaster, I ignored the insult her Majesty had flung at me, and
entreated her to be calm. "if I understand aright, madame," I
said, "you have some grievance against his Majesty. Of that I
know nothing. But I also understand that you allege something
against me; and it is to speak to that, I presume, that I am
summoned. If you will deign to put the matter into words--"
"Words!" she cried. "You have words enough! But get out of
this, Master Grave-Airs, if you can! Did you, or did you not,
tell me this morning that the Princess of Conde was in Brussels?"
"I did, madame."
"Although half an hour before you had seen her, you had talked
with her, you had been with her in the forest?"
"But I had not, madame!"
"What?" she cried, staring at me, surprised doubtless that I
manifested no confusion. "Do you say that you did not see her?"
"I did not."
"Nor the King?"
"The King, Madame, cannot have seen her this morning," I said,
"because he is here and she is in Brussels."
"You persist in that?"
"Certainly!" I said. "Besides, madame," I continued, "I have no
doubt that the King has given you his word--"
"His word is good for everyone but his wife!" she answered
bitterly. "And for yours, M. le Duc, I will show you what it is
worth. Mademoiselle, call--"
"Nay, madame!" I said, interrupting her with spirit, "if you are
going to call your household to contradict me--"
"But I am not!" she cried in a voice of triumph that, for the
moment, disconcerted me. "Mademoiselle, send to M. de
Bassompierre's lodgings, and bid him come to me!"
The King whistled softly, while I, who knew Bassompierre to be
devoted to him, and to be, in spite of the levity to which his
endless gallantries bore witness, a man of sense and judgment,
prepared myself for a serious struggle; judging that we were in
the meshes of an intrigue, wherein it was impossible to say
whether the Queen figured as actor or dupe. The passion she
evinced as she walked to and fro with clenched hands, or turned
now and again to dart a fiery glance at the Cordovan curtain that
hid the door, was so natural to her character that I found myself
leaning to the latter supposition. Still, in grave doubt what
part Bassompierre was to play, I looked for his coming as
anxiously as anyone. And probably the King shared this feeling;
but he affected indifference, and continued to sit over the fire
with an air of mingled scorn and peevishness.
At length Bassompierre entered, and, seeing the King, advanced
with an open brow that persuaded me, at least, of his innocence.
Attacked on the instant, however, by the Queen, and taken by
surprise, as it were, between two fires--though the King kept
silence, and merely shrugged his shoulders--his countenance fell.
He was at that time one of the handsomest gallants about the
Court, thirty years old, and the darling of women; but at this
his APLOMB failed him, and with it my heart sank also.
"Answer, sir! answer!" the Queen cried. "And without
subterfuge! Who was it, sir, whom you saw come from the forest
this morning?"
"Madame?"
"In one word!"
"If your Majesty will--"
"I will permit you to answer," the Queen exclaimed.
"I saw his Majesty return," he faltered--"and M. de Sully."
"Before them! before them!"
"I may have been mistaken."
"Pooh, man!" the Queen cried with biting contempt. "You have
told it to half-a-dozen. Discretion comes a little late."
"Well, if you will, madame," he said, striving to assert himself,
but cutting a poor figure, "I fancied that I saw Madame de Conde
--"
"Come out of the wood ten minutes before the King?"
"It may have been twenty," he muttered.
But the Queen cared no more for him. She turned, looking superb
in her wrath, to the King. "Now, sir!" she said. "Am I to bear
this?"
"Sweet!" the King said, governing his temper in a way that
surprised me, "hear reason, and you shall have it in a word. How
near was Bassompierre to the lady he saw?"
"I was not within fifty paces of her!" the favourite cried
eagerly.
"But others saw her!" the Queen rejoined sharply. "Madame
Paleotti, who was with the gentleman, saw her also, and knew
her."
"At a distance of fifty paces?" the King said drily. "I don't
attach much weight to that." And then, rising, with a slight
yawn. "Madame," he continued, with the air of command which he
knew so well how to assume, "for the present, I am tired! If
Madame de Conde is here, it will not be difficult to get further
evidence of her presence. If she is at Brussels, that fact, too,
you can ascertain. Do the one or the other, as you please; but,
for to-day, I beg that you will excuse me."
"And that," the Queen cried shrilly--"that is to be--"
"All, madame!" the King said sternly. "Moreover, let me have no
prating outside this room. Grand-Master, I will trouble you."
And with these words, uttered in a voice and with an air that
silenced even the angry woman before us, he signed to me to
follow him, and went from the room; the first glance of his eye
stilling the crowded ante-chamber, as if the shadow of death
passed with him. I followed him to his closet; but, until he
reached it, had no inkling of what was in his thoughts. Then he
turned to me.
"Where is she?" he said sharply.
I stared at him a moment. "Pardon, said. "Do you think that it
was Madame de Conde?"
"Why not?"
"She is in Brussels."
"I tell you I saw her this morning!" he answered. "Go, learn
all you can! Find her! Find her! If she has returned, I will--
God knows what I will do!" he cried, in a voice shamefully
broken. "Go; and send Varennes to me. I shall sup alone: let no
one wait."
I would have remonstrated with him, but he was in no mood to bear
it; and, sad at heart, I withdrew, feeling the perplexity, which
the situation caused me, a less heavy burden than the pain with
which I viewed the change that had of late come over my master;
converting him from the gayest and most DEBONAIRE of men into
this morose and solitary dreamer. Here, had I felt any
temptation to moralise on the tyranny of passion, was the
occasion; but, as the farther I left the closet behind me the
more instant became the crisis, the present soon reasserted its
power. Reflecting that Henry, in this state of uncertainty, was
capable of the wildest acts, and that not less was to be feared
from his imprudence than from the Queen's resentment, I cudgelled
my brains to explain the RENCONTRE of the morning; but as the
courier, whom I questioned, confirmed the report of my agents,
and asseverated most confidently that he had left Madame in
Brussels, I was flung back on the alternative of an accidental
resemblance. This, however, which stood for a time as the most
probable solution, scarcely accounted for the woman's peculiar
conduct, and quite fell to the ground when La Trape, making
cautious inquiries, ascertained that no lady hunting that day had
worn a yellow feather. Again, therefore, I found myself at a
loss; and the dejection of the King and the Queen's ill-temper
giving rise to the wildest surmises, and threatening each hour to
supply the gossips of the Court with a startling scandal, the
issue of which no one could foresee, I went so far as to take
into my confidence MM. Epernon and Montbazon; but with no result.
Such being my state of mind, and such the suspense I suffered
during two days, it may be imagined that M. Bassompierre was not
more happy. Despairing of the King's favour unless he could
clear up the matter, and by the event justify his indiscretion,
he became for those two days the wonder, and almost the terror,
of the Court. Ignorant of what he wanted, the courtiers found
only insolence in his mysterious questions, and something
prodigious in an activity which carried him in one day to Paris
and back, and on the following to every place in the vicinity
where news of the fleeting beauty might by any possibility be
gained; so that he far outstripped my agents, who were on the
same quest. But though I had no mean opinion of his abilities, I
hoped little from these exertions, and was proportionately
pleased when, on the third day, he came to me with a radiant face
and invited me to attend the Queen that evening.
"The King will be there," he said, "and I shall surprise you.
But I will not tell you more. Come! and I promise to satisfy
you."
And that was all he would say; so that, finding my questions
useless, and the man almost frantic with joy, I had to be content
with it; and at the Queen's hour that evening presented myself in
her gallery, which proved to be unusually full.
Making my way towards her in some doubt of my reception, I found
my worst fears confirmed. She greeted me with a sneering face,
and was preparing, I was sure, to put some slight upon me--a
matter wherein she could always count on the applause of her
Italian servants--when the entrance of the King took her by
surprise. He advanced up the gallery with a listless air, and,
after saluting her, stood by one of the fireplaces talking to
Epernon and La Force. The crowd was pretty dense by this time,
and the hum of talk filled the room when, on a sudden, a voice,
which I recognised as Bassompierre's, was lifted above it.
"Very well!" be cried gaily, "then I appeal to her Majesty. She
shall decide, mademoiselle! No, no; I am not satisfied with your
claim!"
The King looked that way with a frown, but the Queen took the
outburst in good part. "What is it, M. de Bassompierre?" she
said. "What am I to decide?"
"To-day, in the forest, I found a ring, madame," he answered,
coming forward." I told Mademoiselle de la Force of my
discovery, and she now claims the ring."
"I once had a ring like it," cried mademoiselle, blushing and
laughing.
"A sapphire ring?" Bassompierre answered, holding his hand
aloft.
"Yes."
"With three stones?"
"Yes,"
"Precisely, mademoiselle!" he answered, bowing. "But the stones
in this ring are not sapphires, nor are there three of them."
There was a great laugh at this, and the Queen said, very
wittily, that as neither of the claimants could prove a right to
the ring it must revert to the judge.
"In one moment your Majesty shall at least see it," he answered.
"But, first, has anyone lost a ring? Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Lost,
in the forest, within the last three days, a ring!"
Two or three, falling in with his humour, set up absurd claims to
it; but none could describe the ring, and in the end he handed it
to the Queen. As he did so his eyes met mine and challenged my
attention. I was prepared, therefore, for the cry of surprise
which broke from the Queen.
"Why, this is Caterina's!" she cried. "Where is the child?"
Someone pushed forward Mademoiselle Paleotti, sister-in-law to
Madame Paleotti, the Queen's first chamberwoman. She was barely
out of her teens, and, ordinarily, was a pretty girl; but the
moment I saw her dead-white face, framed in a circle of
fluttering fans and pitiless, sparkling eyes, I discerned tragedy
in the farce; and that M. de Bassompierre was acting in a drama
to which only he and one other held the key. The contrast
between the girl's blanched face and the beauty and glitter in
the midst of which she stood struck others, so that, before
another word was said, I caught the gasp of surprise that passed
through the room; nor was I the only one who drew nearer.
"Why, girl," the Queen said, "this is the ring I gave you on my
birthday! When did you lose it? And why have you made a secret
of it?"
Mademoiselle stood speechless; but madame her sister-in-law
answered for her. "Doubtless she was afraid that your Majesty
would think her careless," she answered.
"I did not ask you!" the Queen rejoined.
She spoke harshly and suspiciously, looking from the ring to the
trembling girl. The silence was such that the chatter of the
pages in the anteroom could be heard. Still Mademoiselle stood
dumb and confounded.
"Well, what is the mystery?" the Queen said, looking round with
a little wonder. "What is the matter? It IS the ring. Why do
you not own it?"
"Perhaps mademoiselle is wondering where are the other things she
left with it!" Bassompierre said in a silky tone. "The things
she left at Parlot the verderer's, when she dropped the ring.
But she may free her mind; I have them here."
"What do you mean?" the Queen said. "What things, monsieur?
What has the girl been doing?"
"Only what many have done before her," Bassompierre answered,
bowing to his unfortunate victim, who seemed to be paralysed by
terror: "masquerading in other people's clothes. I propose,
madame, that, for punishment, you order her to dress in them,
that we may see what her taste is."
"I do not understand?" the Queen said.
"Your Majesty will, if Mademoiselle Paleotti will consent to
humour us."
At that the girl uttered a cry, and looked round the circle as if
for a way of escape; but a Court is a cruel place, in which the
ugly or helpless find scant pity. A dozen voices begged the
Queen to insist; and, amid laughter and loud jests, Bassompierre
hastened to the door, and returned with an armful of women's
gear, surmounted by a wig and a feathered hat.
"If the Queen will command mademoiselle to retire and put these
on," he said, "I will undertake to show her something that will
please her."
"Go!" said the Queen.
But the girl had flung herself on her knees before her, and,
clinging to her skirts, burst, into a flood of tears and prayers;
while her sister-in-law stepped forward as if to second her, and
cried out, in great excitement, that her Majesty would not be so
cruel as to--
"Hoity, toity!" said the Queen, cutting her short, very grimly.
"What is all this? I tell the girl to put on a masquerade--
which it seems that she has been keeping at some cottage--and you
talk as if I were cutting off her head! It seems to me that she
escapes very lightly! Go! go! and see, you, that you are
arrayed in five minutes, or I will deal with you!"
"Perhaps Mademoiselle de la Force will go with her, and see that
nothing is omitted," Bassompierre said with malice.
The laughter and applause with which this proposal was received
took me by surprise; but later I learned that the two young women
were rivals. "Yes, yes," the Queen said. "Go, mademoiselle, and
see that she does not keep us waiting."
Knowing what I did, I had by this time a fair idea of the
discovery which Bassompierre had made; but the mass of courtiers
and ladies round me, who had not this advantage, knew not what to
expect--nor, especially, what part M. Bassompierre had in the
business--but made most diverting suggestions, the majority
favouring the opinion that Mademoiselle Paleotti had repulsed
him, and that this was his way of avenging himself. A few of the
ladies even taxed him with this, and tried, by random reproaches,
to put him at least on his defence; but, merrily refusing to be
inveigled, he made to all the same answer that when Mademoiselle
Paleotti returned they would see. This served only to whet a
curiosity already keen, insomuch that the door was watched by as
many eyes as if a miracle had been promised; and even MM. Epernon
and Vendome, leaving the King's side, pressed into the crowd that
they might see the better. I took the opportunity of going to
him, and, meeting his eyes as I did so, read in them a look of
pain and distress. As I advanced he drew back a pace, and signed
to me to stand before him.
I had scarcely done so when the door opened and Mademoiselle
Paleotti, pale, and supported on one side by her rival, appeared
at it; but so wondrously transformed by a wig, hat, and redingote
that I scarcely knew her. At first, as she stood, looking with
shamed eyes at the staring crowd, the impression made was simply
one of bewilderment, so complete was the disguise. But
Bassompierre did not long suffer her to stand so. Advancing to
her side, his hat under his arm, he offered his hand.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "will you oblige me by walking as far as
the end of the gallery with me?"
She complied involuntarily, being almost unable to stand alone.
But the two had not proceeded half-way down the gallery before a
low murmur began to be heard, that, growing quickly louder,
culminated in an astonished cry of "Madame de Conde! Madame de
Conde!"
M. Bassompierre dropped her hand with a low bow, and turned to
the Queen. "Madame," he said, "this, I find, is the lady whom I
saw on the Terrace when Madame Paleotti was so good as to invite
me to walk on the Bois-le-Roi road. For the rest, your Majesty
may draw your conclusions."
It was easy to see that the Queen had already drawn them; but,
for the moment, the unfortunate girl was saved from her wrath.
With a low cry, Mademoiselle Paleotti did that which she would
have done a little before, had she been wise, and swooned on the
floor.
I turned to look at the King, and found him gone. He had
withdrawn unseen in the first confusion of the surprise; nor did
I dare at once to interrupt him, or intrude on the strange
mixture of regret and relief, wrath and longing, that probably
possessed him in the silence of his closet. It was enough for me
that the Italians' plot had failed, and that the danger of a
rupture between the King and Queen, which these miscreants
desired, and I had felt to be so great and imminent, was, for
this time, overpast.
The Paleottis were punished, being sent home in disgrace, and a
penury, which, doubtless, they felt more keenly. But, alas, the
King could not banish with them all who hated him and France; nor
could I, with every precaution, and by the unsparing use of all
the faculties that, during a score of years, had been at the
service of my master, preserve him for his country and the world.
Before two months had run he perished by a mean hand, leaving the
world the poorer by the greatest and most illustrious sovereign
that ever ruled a nation. And men who loved neither France nor
him entered into his labours, whose end also I have seen.
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