CHAPTER XXIIITHE KING FAINTS
Thecustomary midday service in the chapel at the palace that morning was unusually crowded. Mansart’s dignified and classical architecture in all its frigid splendour is best viewed to-day by the visitor from the royal tribune, and it is with difficulty that the cold and empty desolation condescends to conjure up for the imagination the historic share of this chapel in the grand age of the French monarchy. For under Louis XV.—sensualist and bigot—the homage of attendance at the rites of the religion of the Sovereign and the national Church was as profitable, nay, as obligatory, as obedience to the inflexible conventions of Court etiquette and the good breeding of the Faubourg St. Germain. So, indeed, it had been under Louis XIV. and the ascetic pietism of Madame de Maintenon; so it continued to be under Louis XV. and the genial culture of Madame de Pompadour and the libertinism of Madame du Barry. But, André, like every one else in the congregation that morning, was not thinking of this curious paradox as his eye scanned thedévotsworshippingbeside the men and women who patronised Voltaire and laughed at miracles in polished epigrams that dissolved the central truths of the Christian faith into a riddle for the vulgar. He saw the King, the Queen, and the crowd of courtiers, he saw Madame de Pompadour, who as yet had not gained, as she did later, the seat she coveted in the grand tribune. He was asking himself, as he mechanically rose from or fell on his knees, where was the Duke of Pontchartrain and what had the King said to him?
André, alike with the foes of his own order, knew that a crisis had been reached. The next forty-eight hours must settle decisively the great battle between the Court and themaîtresse en titre. And the decision rested with the royal figure kneeling devoutly on his crimson faldstool, with that man of the soft, impenetrable, bored eyes, who broke all the Ten Commandments, yet said his prayers with the same absorption as the most fanaticaldévot. Yes; Louis’s worship was watched with feverish interest by every man and woman present.
“He is in a great rage,” the Comtesse des Forges whispered, as she crossed herself; “he never says all the responses unless he is truly angry.”
The Abbé de St. Victor tittered gently, rather because the licentious love story he had had stitched into his service-book had reached an amusingdénoûement. “To be sure,” he whispered back behind his lace handkerchief, “and he never is so polite to the Queenas when he is hopelessly in love with another woman.”
“Poor Pontchartrain,” whispered the Duchess, “always kisses me with passion half an hour before he kisses Françoise. All well-bred men are like the King in that, I suppose. It is the kiss of peace,” she pouted at the High Altar.
The Abbé tittered again with dulcet decorum, but, seeing Denise’s eye on him, prayed for the rest of the service with exemplary fervency and finished his love story at the same time.
When the congregation broke up, the Queen’s antechamber was the general meeting-place of the noble rebels, and Denise, lingering without, marked with surprise Madame de Pompadour’s sedan chair stop in the gallery. Madame de Pompadour had her chair just because it was the privilege of mesdames of the blood-royal, but to return this way was a fresh outrage.
Denise was still more surprised when she was addressed.
“I beg you,” said the lady, “to present my humble duties to her Majesty and to pray her to do me the honour of accepting these flowers.” She tendered a magnificent bouquet.
Denise looked her up and down. “The gentleman-usher of the week, Madame,” she replied, making a motion with her fan, “conveys messages to her Majesty.”
“I am aware of that,” Madame de Pompadour said sweetly, “but I asked a favour, Mademoiselle; may I simply add that I hope if the Marquise de Beau Séjour should so far forget herself as ever to ask a favour of the Marquise de Pompadour she will not be so foolish or so uncharitable as to refer it to her gentleman-usher.”
The two women confronted each other in silence. Then Madame de Pompadour curtsied deferentially, stepped into her chair, and disappeared. Denise walked into the antechamber with two angry red spots in her pale cheeks and her grey eyes blazing.
“Mon Dieu!” cried the Comtesse des Forges. “It is insufferable. What insolence! My consolations, dear Mademoiselle.”
“There is something coming,” the Abbé de St. Victor said gravely. “The grisette’s speech was a trumpet of war. Before long there will be a new maid of honour—that’s what she——”
“A hundred l-livres to one,” stammered Des Forges, “that it is n-not this week.”
“I’ll take that,” said the Abbé, using the jewelled pencil the Duchess had given him. “I want a hundred livres sorely.”
“Here is the Duchess,” exclaimed Mademoiselle Claire.
“Well? the news—the news?” cried a dozen excited voices.
“Terrible,” said the Duchess, fanning herself languidly,“terrible. Pontchartrain is ordered to his estates; he is forbidden Paris and Versailles.”
“For how long?”
“For ever—for ever. No time was said. The King was dreadfully angry. He swore by St. Louis and refused to believe all Pontchartrain’s falsehoods. Oh, my friends, think of living always in the country, the horrible country, where there are so many rosy-cheeked wenches that milk cows. Pontchartrain will take to drinking milk for breakfast, I am sure, before I am dressed, and Françoise will never consent to live in our château, and I sha’n’t have any one worth a sou to wash my lace and do my hair. Ah! the King is abominably cruel and inconsiderate.”
While the ladies were bewailing her fate, St. Benôit turned to the Abbé. “How could the Duke be such a fool,” he asked savagely, “as to allow André to be attacked—André of all men?”
“The information was explicit,” the Abbé said, in a low voice. “If the attack had succeeded, we should have ruined the grisette.”
St. Benôit made an impatient gesture.
“The folly,” added the Abbé, “lay in employing fellows who could be recognised.”
“With the result,” growled St. Benôit, “that the country will enjoy the ablest head in our party. It’s simply disgusting.”
“Exactly,” commented the Chevalier drily. “Isympathise with the Duke. Only I haven’t a château to retire to, worse luck.”
The remark had been heard by the ladies, and called out a dozen questions.
“Yes, Duchess,” the Chevalier said quietly, “this afternoon I have my last audience with His Majesty. I understand I am to be dismissed—from Versailles, perhaps from France.”
“But who will take your place?” cried Mademoiselle Claire.
“The lady who will shortly take all our places, Madame la Marquise de Pompadour.”
He glanced at Denise, and the glance went home. She had refused to let him ruin Madame de Pompadour and André with her; he had obeyed because he loved her; and he alone, poor boy, was to pay the penalty. In Denise’s soul, stricken by remorse, surged the wild desire that had been shaping for days. If only by some great act of renunciation, of self-sacrifice, she could repair the terrible harm that her love for André had done to her and their cause.
“We are ruined, beaten,” the Comtesse des Forges said in a hopeless tone. “That woman has won. Fate is against us.”
“Yes, nothing but a miracle can save us now,” St. Benôit remarked.
“And even the Abbé will admit that the age of miracles is past.”
“You forget,mon cher. The grisette is herself amiracle—of Satan,” retorted the Abbé, but the company was in no mood for jests. The completeness of Madame de Pompadour’s triumph was too convincing and too galling. And the Duke’s dismissal they knew well would be followed shortly by other blows as cruel, as well directed, and as insulting. The King was in the hands of an able and unscrupulous woman with an abler hero as her ally, and the King was absolute master of France.
“If only His Majesty would fall ill,” murmured the Duchess, “if only he would fall dangerously ill.”
“Ah!” the Comtesse cried, with a splendidly vindictive gleam under her heavy eyelids, “ah, then we could treat that wanton as we treated the Duchess of Châteauroux.”
The company assented in silence. Well did they all remember the memorable events of Metz in 1743, when Louis the Well-Beloved had been smitten down, and the Church and the Court had so skilfully used his fears of death to get themaîtresse en titre, the Duchess of Châteauroux, dismissed.
“And the Duchess died, the miserable sinner,” said Mademoiselle Claire, “very soon. It surely was the judgment of Heaven.”
“The same miracle,” smiled the Abbé, “never happens twice, alas!”
“And the King was never so well as to-day,” added St. Benôit, remorsefully.
Denise had already withdrawn. Deep as was herresentment against Madame de Pompadour, strong as was her desire by self-sacrifice, if need be, to atone for what she now felt was a sin, the conversation of her friends never failed to offend her tastes and her conscience. She was working for a cause, they were simply bent on vengeance.
The Chevalier met her in the gallery as he thoughtfully strolled away.
“Courage, Mademoiselle,” he stopped to say. “I cannot win your love; perhaps I may yet be permitted to help to make you happy,” and he glided off before she could ask what he meant or speak a word of all the things she longed to say.
The young man had guessed aright. That afternoon Louis dismissed him in royally curt words, intimating at the same time that he desired to see him no more at Versailles or Paris. The Chevalier simply bowed, and the King now sat alone in his privateCabinet de Travailbusy with his secret correspondence and somewhat troubled in mind. Madame de Pompadour had had her way, but the Chevalier de St. Amant, Louis was aware, left his service with a dangerous store of knowledge. And Louis was in fact penning a secret order to the police for his immediate arrest and detention in the fortress of Vincennes when the rings of the curtain over the door behind him rasped sharply. Some one had unceremoniously entered.
The King turned angrily at this extraordinary defiance of his express command that he was to bedisturbed by no one. One glance, and the pen dropped from his hand.
“You recognise me, Sire?” said the intruder slowly.
“Dead—dead,” the King muttered. His fingers had clenched, his face was ashy grey.
“I was dead, but I have come back as I promised. The dead do not forget.”
Louis stared straight at him as a man stares in fear through the dark. Two great drops of perspiration dripped on to the unsignedlettre de cachet.
“Some day, perhaps soon,” said the man, “your Majesty will answer for your acts, not at the tribunal of men, but at the tribunal of—the devil.”
Louis crouched in his chair. His lips moved, but he could not speak.
“Fifteen years ago we last met, your Majesty and I. My wife was stolen from me, my nobility branded, myself condemned and executed on a false charge, and you, Sire, were the author of all these foul deeds. To-day your Majesty is betrayed by the unknown. The man who steals, and will continue to steal, your papers, Sire, is not ‘No. 101’; it is I—I—” he stepped forward—“I, the dead.”
Louis shrank back, his dry lips moving; his fingers convulsively crept towards the hand-bell.
“Touch that bell,” said the man in a terrible tone, “and I will strangle you, Sire—royal betrayer of women, curse of the orphan and the fatherless.”
Louis’s arm fell paralysed at his side.
“Take warning,” the unknown continued, “take warning in time. If you, Sire, would save yourself from the judgment of God, dismiss at once the woman who betrays you, the woman called the Marquise de Pompadour.” He paused and repeated her name twice, adding with emphasis on each word, “And rememberDieu Le Vengeur! Dieu Le Vengeur!”
The motto seemed to strike an awful chord in the King’s memory. He covered his face with his hands. When at last a long silence gave him courage again to look up, the room was empty. He was alone!
Ah! He had dreamed an evil dream, that was all. With a shudder of relief he stretched his arms as one freed from the mastery of unendurable pain. A dream, thank God! an evil dream. And then his eye fell on his desk. Thelettre de cachetwas torn into bits, and the bits were wet with the perspiration of his agony. The King tottered to his feet, clutched at the hand-bell feverishly, and rang—rang—rang.
The gentleman-usher stared in awe at His Majesty’s ashy grey face and twitching lips.
“Did—did any one pass out?” Louis stammered.
“Sire?”
“Did any one pass out, out from here?” Louis repeated.
“No, Sire.” The man’s face was both puzzled and frightened. His royal master put his hand on a chair to support himself.
“You are sure?”
“I heard voices in the room, Sire, but——”
“You heard voices, ah!”
“But I can swear no one either entered or left since your Majesty gave orders for—ah!Au secours!Holathere!hola! au secours!” the gentleman-usher’s voice had become a shriek. “Au secours! Le Roi, le Roi!”
Louis had fallen in a dead faint on the floor.