Angelique - Part 2. Marriage in Toulouse Chapter 3 - Read online

THE FOLLOWING DAY, four carriages and two heavy wagons took the road to Niort. Angelique was at pains to believe that all this display of horses and coachmen, of shouts and creaking axles, was in her honour. So much dust raised for Mademoiselle de Sance, who had never known any escort other than an old mercenary armed with a pike, was hard to believe. The grooms, maids and musicians were piled up in the heavy carts together with the luggage. Along the sunny road amid the flower¬ing orchards passed this procession of brown faces. Laughter, songs and guitar-scraping left in their wake (with a smell of horse-dung) a feeling of carefree joy. The children of the south were returning to their broiling lands, perfumed with wine and garlic.
Amid this gay party, Master Clement Tonnel alone struck a note of stiff formality. Hired merely for the week of the wedding, he had asked to be brought along as far as Niort, so as to save the expense of an escort. But on the evening of the very first stage the steward came to see Angflique. He of fered to remain in her service, either as major-domo or as valet. He explained that he had served several lords in Paris. However, after returning to his native Niort to settle the inheritance of his father—a butcher—he had learned that his last place had been taken by a scheming footman. Since then he had been looking for a respectable house of rank, in order to resume his former functions.
With his discreet and knowledgeable air, Cllment had worked his way into the good graces of Margot the maid, who asserted that a new valet, so well-mannered, would be cordially welcomed at the palace of Toulouse. His lordship the Comte surrounded himself with people of too many types and colours who did not provide proper service. They all lolled in the sunshine, and the laziest of the lot was undoubtedly Alphonso, the steward set up as their overseer.
So Angelique engaged Master Clement. He frightened her, though she could not say why. But she was grateful to him for talking like everyone else, that is to say without that insufferable accent that was beginning to exasperate her. This cold, pliant, almost too obsequious man, this servant who only yesterday was still unknown to her, would at least remind her of her own province.
As soon as Niort, capital of the marshes, had been left behind, with its great dungeon, black as iron, Madame de Peyrac’s equipage hurtled on towards the sunlight. Almost without noticing it, Angelique found herself at grips with an unfamiliar landscape, treeless and striped with vine¬yards in all directions. They passed not far from Bordeaux. Then the green maize alternated with the vines. As they approached the Beam, the travellers were received in the castle of Monsieur Antonin de Caumont, Marquis de Peguilin, Due de Lauzun. Angelique gazed in surprise mingled with amusement at the dapper little man, whose grace and wit, according to Andijos, made him the “most idolised boy at Court”. The King himself, though affecting gravity in his youth, could not resist Peguilin’s sallies, which had made him guffaw even during council meetings. But Peguilin had been exiled to his home lands in punishment for some impudence towards Monsieur de Mazarin. He did not, however, seem particularly depressed and told no end of funny stories.
Still little used to the gallant verbiage that was then fashionable at Court, Angelique understood barely half his stories, but this stage of the journey was a gay and lively one and helped to relax her. The Due de Lauzun grew ecstatic over her beauty and complimented her in verse that he improvised on the spot.
“Ah! my friends,” he cried, “I wonder if the Golden Voice of the Kingdom won’t lose its highest note on her account.”
It was the first time that Angelique had heard mention of the Golden Voice of the Kingdom.
“He is the greatest singer in Toulouse,” they explained to her. “Since the great minstrels of the Middle Ages, the Languedoc has known none like him. You will hear him, Madame; you’ll find you can’t help suc¬cumbing to his spell.”
Angelique tried hard not to disappoint her hosts by a glum face. All these people were pleasant, sometimes a little coarse, but always kindly. The excessively warm air, the tiled roofs and the plane-tree leaves had the sparkle of white wine; and the southerners’ wit had its levity.
But Ang£lique, as they were drawing close to their goal, felt her heart grow heavier.
On the eve of their entrance into Toulouse, they stayed at one of the residences of the Comte de Peyrac, a chateau of white stone in Renaissance style. Angelique was delighted with the comfort of one of the rooms, which contained a mosaic bath. Margot busied herself near-by. She was afraid lest the dust and heat of the journey might have further darkened her mistress’s complexion, of whose warm tint she secredy disapproved.
She rubbed her widi various ointments and ordered her to remain on the divan, while she massaged her with much energy, and then plucked all the hair from her body. Angelique was not shocked by this custom, which, when there had been Roman bath-houses in every town, was common even among the people. Nowadays, only young girls of high birth were subjected to it. It was most improper for a great lady to conserve any superfluous down upon her. While everything was being done to make her body perfect, Angelique could not repress a feeling of horror.
‘He will not touch me,’ she told herself again, ‘I’d rather throw myself out of the window.’
But nothing impeded the dizzy course, the whirlwind that swept her along.
Next morning, sick with apprehension, she climbed for the last time into the carriage that was to take her to Toulouse. The Marquis d’Andijos sat down beside her. He was jubilant, he sang and babbled. But she was not listening. She had been noticing for some minutes that the coachman was holding back his horses. A little ahead of the carriage, a crowd of people and riders were barring the road. When the carriage had come to a stop, she could hear more distinctly the songs and shouts, which were punctuated by the rhythmical beat of the drums.
“By Saint S6verin,” cried the Marquis, jumping up, “I believe this is your husband coming to meet us.”
“Already!”
Angelique felt herself go pale. The pages opened the carriage-doors. She had to step down to the sandy road under the implacable sun. The sky was a deep azure blue. A torrid breath rose from the yellow maize fields on both sides of the road. A scintillating farandole was approaching. A swarm of children, dressed in quaint costumes with big green and red diamond patches, was bouncing, somersaulting and finally stumbling amid the horses and riders, who were themselves dressed in extravagant liveries of pink satin with white plumes.
“The princes of love! The Italian comedians!” exulted the Marquis» spreading his arms in an enthusiastic gesture that spelt danger for his neighbours. “Ah! Toulouse! Toulouse!”
The crowd had opened to make a passage-way. A tall, loose-limbed, swaying figure appeared, dressed in crimson velvet and leaning on an ebony cane.
As the limping figure approached, one could distinguish, framed by an abundant black wig, a face as displeasing to the eye as was his gait. Two deep scars ran from his temple to his left cheek and across one half-closed eyelid. The Ups were strong and clean-shaven, which was not the fashion and added to the strangeness of this weird scarecrow.
‘It isn’t he,’ prayed Angehque. ‘Please God, don’t let it be he!’
“Your husband, the Comte de Peyrac, Madame,” said the Marquis d’Andijos.
She dropped into a well-learned curtsy. Her mind at bay recorded absurd details: the diamond bows on the Comte’s shoes, the fact that one of them had a higher heel than the other to lessen his limp; the pleated stockings with stitched silk pipings, the sumptuous costume, the sword, the huge, white lace collar.
Someone spoke to her; she answered she knew not what. The drum¬beats mingUng with the blaring trumpets dazed her.
As she sat down in the carriage again, a bunch of roses and posies of violets landed on her knees.
“Flowers are the principal joys,” said a voice. “They rule over Toulouse.”
Angelique became aware that it was not the Marquis d’Andijos who sat at her side. In order not to see the horrible face, she bent over the flowers.
Soon after, the city appeared, bristling with towers and red steeples. The procession drove through the narrow lanes, deep shadowy corridors in which lingered a crimson light. At the palace of the Comte de Peyrac, AngeUque was quickly clothed in a magnificent white velvet dress, adorned with white satin. The clasps and bows were studded with diamonds. While the girls were dressing her, they served her iced drinks, for she was dying of thirst. At noon, amid the jingle of bells, the pro¬cession moved of f towards the cathedral, where the Archbishop was awaiting the couple in the square outside.
When the blessing had been given, Angelique walked down the aisle alone, according to princely custom. The hobbling lord preceded her, and this tall, red, fidgeting shape suddenly seemed to her as extraordinary as the devil himself under those vaults hazy with incense. Outside, the whole town seemed to have gathered to celebrate. Angelique could not relate all this hubbub to the very personal event which was her marriage to the Comte de Peyrac. She unconsciously sought the spectacle that produced the broad smiles of the crowd and their urge to frolic. But all eyes were turned towards her. It was to her that the fiery-eyed lords, the sump¬tuously dressed ladies, bowed.
To return from the cathedral to the palace, the newly-married couple mounted on two magnificently caparisoned horses. The road along the banks of the Garonne was scattered with flowers and the cavaliers in pink whom the Marquis d’Andijos had called the “princes of love” kept flinging down more baskets full of petals. On the left, the river shone golden, the mariners in their small boats cheered loudly.
Angelique became aware that she was smiling somewhat mechanically. The intensely blue sky and the scent of the flowers they trod on intoxicated her. Suddenly she stifled a cry; she was being escorted by little pages with liquorice-faces which she had at first believed to be masks. But now she understood they really were black-skinned. It was the first time she had seen negroes.
There was definitely something unreal about everything she ex¬perienced. She felt terribly alone, in the heart of an ambiguous dream which she would try to remember, perhaps, on waking. And always at her side, she saw in the sunshine the disfigured profile of the man they called her husband and whom they acclaimed. Gold pieces tinkled on the pebbles. Pages were flinging them among the crowd and people were scuffling for them in the dust.
In the palace gardens long white tables had been set up in the shade. Wine was flowing from the fountains in front of the gates, and the people of the street could drink from them. The gentry and the leading towns¬people were admitted inside.
Angelique, seated between the Archbishop and the man in red, and incapable of swallowing a morsel, saw an incalculable number of courses and dishes parading past. Potted partridges, fillets of duck, pomegranates in blood, fried quail, trout, rabbits, salad, lamb tripes, foie gras. The sweets were innumerable—fried cream garnished with peach fritters, all kinds of jams, honey pastries, and pyramids of fruit as high as the little blackamoors who were carrying them. Wines of all types, from the darkest red to the clearest gold, followed one another.
Angelique noticed at the side of her plate a kind of small golden pitch¬fork. Glancing around, she saw that most people used it to impale their meat and carry it to their mouths. She tried to imitate them, but after a few fruidess efforts preferred to revert to a spoon, which had been placed beside her when they saw that she did not know how to use the odd little instrument. This ridiculous incident added to her confusion.
Frozen with apprehension and resentment, Angelique felt exasperated by so much noise and plenty. Her native pride did not allow her to show this, and so she smiled and found a friendly word for all. The iron discipline of the Ursuline Convent enabled her to sit erect with a regal bearing despite her fatigue. She was, however, quite unable to turn her face towards the Comte de Peyrac and, realising how odd this attitude must seem, she concentrated all her attention on her other neighbour, the Archbishop. The latter was a very handsome man, in the prime of life. He had much eloquence, the graciousness of a man of the world, and very cold blue eyes.
Alone among all those present, he did not seem to share in the general merriment.
“What profusion! What profusion!” he sighed, gazing around him. “When I think of all the paupers who crowd outside the gates of my palace every day, of the uncared-for sick, of the children of the heretical villages that cannot be wrested from their beliefs for lack of money, my heart bleeds. Are you devoted to good works, my daughter?”
“I’ve only just left the convent, Monseigneur. But I should be happy to devote myself to my parish under your guidance.”
He lowered on her his keen glance, and smiled faintly as he puffed him¬self up beneath his rather flabby chin.
“I thank you for your obedience, my daughter. But I know that the life of a youthful mistress of a house is full of novelties that demand her attention. Therefore I shall not divert you from them until you expressly wish it. Isn’t a woman’s greatest work, the one to which she must devote all her care, the influence she must learn to exert over her husband’s mind? A loving, skilful wife, in our day, can be all-powerful over her husband’s mind.” t
He leaned towards her and the cabocbons of his episcopal cross flashed with a mauve sparkle.
“A woman can be all-powerful,” he repeated, “but, between you and me, Madame, you have chosen a rather odd husband.”
‘I have chosen . . .’ thought Angfiique ironically. ‘Did my father even lay eyes on this horrid jumping-jack? I doubt it. My father loves me dearly. On no account would he have wanted to cause me un¬happiness But here we are: he wanted me to be rich; I wanted to be loved. Mother Sainte-Anne would warn me again that one mustn’t be romantic. . . . This Archbishop seems a good man. Could it have been with the men of his entourage that the Comte de Peyrac’s pages had come to blows in the cathedral? . . .’
Meanwhile, the crushing heat had yielded before the oncoming dusk. The ball was about to begin. Angelique uttered a sigh.
‘I shall dance all night,’ she said to herself. ‘Nothing on earth will make me consent to remain alone with him for even a moment. . . .’
She glanced nervously at her husband. Whenever she looked at him, the sight of his scarred face, whose black eyes glowed like coal, made her uneasy. The left eyelid, half-closed by the weal of a scar, gave the Comte de Peyrac an expression of malicious irony.
Leaning back in his tapestry arm-chair, he had just carried to his mouth a sort of small brown stick. A servant hurried forward with a piece of burning coal at the end of tongs, which he held close to the end of the little stick.
“Oh, Monsieur, the example you set is deplorable!” exclaimed the Archbishop, with a frown. “I consider tobacco the dessert of hell. That it be consumed as a powder for the sole purpose of curing the humours of the brain and on doctor’s advice, I grant with difficulty, for it seems to me that snuff-takers take an unhealthy enjoyment in it and too of ten give their health as a pretext for grinding tobacco whenever they please. But pipe-smokers are the scum of our taverns, besotting themselves for hours with this accursed plant. I never knew that a gentleman consumed tobacco in such a vulgar fashion.”
“I have no pipe and I do not take snuff. I smoke the rolled leaf as I saw certain savages of America do. No one can accuse me of a musketeer’s coarseness or a Court fop’s affectation. . . .”
“When there are two ways of doing a thing, you must always choose a third,” said the Archbishop sourly. “I have just noticed another oddity that is peculiar to you. You put neither toadstone nor a piece of unicorn into your glass. Yet everybody knows that these are the best precautions against poison that an enemy hand is always capable of pouring into your wine. Even your young wife employs this prudent custom. For toad- stone and pieces of unicorn do indeed change colour when in contact with dangerous beverages. Yet you never use them. Do you deem yourself invulnerable ... or without enemies?” added the prelate, and there was a flash in his eyes that impressed Angelique.
“No, Monseigneur,” answered the Comte de Реугас. “I merely hold that the best way of preserving oneself against poison is to put nothing into one’s glass and everything into one’s body.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this: absorb every day of your life an infinitesimal dose of some powerful poison.”
“You do that?” exclaimed the Archbishop, horrified.
“Ever since my tenderest childhood. You are not unaware, Mon¬seigneur, that my father succumbed to a Florentine beverage, although the toadstone he had put into his glass was as big as a pigeon’s egg. My mother, who was an unprejudiced woman, sought for some true means of preserving my life. From a Moorish slave she learned the method of protecting yourself against poison by the use of poison.”
“Your arguments always contain some paradox that alarms me,” said the Archbishop, seemingly worried. “It is as if you wished to reform everything, yet nobody can fail to realise how much harm and disorder this word ‘reform’ has brought to the Church and the kingdom. Once again, why employ a method of which you have no guarantee, when other methods have proved their worth? Naturally, you must have genuine toadstones and genuine unicorn horns. Too many charlatans have set up a trade in them and sell you goodness knows what instead of the real article. But my monk Becher, for instance, a very learned Franciscan friar, who does work in alchemy for me, could get you some excellent ones.”
The Comte de Peyrac leaned forward a little to look at the Archbishop, and as his abundant black locks touched Angclique’s hand, she shrank back. She noticed at that moment that her husband was not wearing a wig, but that his great shock of hair was natural.
“What intrigues me,” he declared, “is how he himself obtains them. When I was a boy, I took an interest in killing countless toads. Never did I detect in their brains the famous protective stone which is called toad- stone and which apparently should be found there. As to unicorn horns, I may say that I have travelled all over the world and my conviction is unshakeable; the unicorn is a mythological, imaginary animal; in short, it does not exist.”
“You can’t assert things like that. You must allow room for mysteries and not claim to know everything.”
“What is a mystery to me,” said the Comte slowly, “is how a man of your intelligence can seriously believe such . . . fantasies. . . .”
‘Heavens/ thought Angelique, Tve never heard a high-ranking ecclesiastic treated with such insolence !’
She looked from one to the other, as each stared into the other’s eyes. Her husband was the first to notice her emotion. He directed a smile at her that crinkled his face curiously but disclosed very white teeth.
“Forgive us, Madame, for arguing thus before you. Monseigneur and I are intimate foes!”
“No man is my foe!” cried the Archbishop indignantly. “Do you forget the charity that must dwell in the heart of any servant of God? Perhaps you hate me; I do not hate you in the least. But with you I feel the shepherd’s concern for the straying lamb. And if you won’t listen to my words, I shall at least know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
“Ah!” cried the Comte, and his laughter was rather frightening, “you show yourself to be the true heir of Foulques de Neuilly, bishop and right arm of the terrible Simon de Montfort, who burnt the Albigeois at the stake and reduced to ashes the refined civilisation of Aquitania! Langue¬doc still mourns after four centuries its ravaged splendours and trembles to hear the description of those horrible crimes. I who am of the most ancient Toulouse lineage, who bear Ligurian and Visigoth blood in my veins, I quiver when my eyes meet the blue eyes of you northerners. Heirs of Foulques, heirs of the uncouth barbarians who implanted here your sectarianism and your intolerance, that’s what I read in your eyes!”
“My family is one of the oldest in Languedoc,” exclaimed the Arch¬bishop, half rising. And at that moment his southern accent rendered his speech practically unintelligible to Angelique’s ears. “You know very well, insolent monster, that half of Toulouse is mine by heritage. For centuries our lands have been in Toulouse.”
“Four centuries! Four miserable centuries, Monseigneur,” cried Joffrey de Peyrac, rising in his turn. “You came in the chariots of Simon de Montfort, with the hated crusaders. You are the invader! Man of the North! Man of the North! What are you doing at my table? . . .”
Angelique was beginning to wonder, horrified, whether they were not going to fight then and there, when a roar of laughter from the guests punctuated the Comte’s last words. The Archbishop’s smile was less sincere. However, when Joffrey de Peyrac’s tall body twisted itself in a deep bow of apology to the prelate, the latter graciously of fered him his pastoral ring to be kissed.
Angelique was too disconcerted to share in this exuberance. The words these two men had been hurling at each other’s heads were by no means trifling, but for southerners, it is true, laughter is of ten the sparkling prelude to the blackest tragedies.
“Does the tobacco smoke of fend you, Madame?” asked the Comte suddenly, bending towards her and trying to catch her eye.
She shook her head. The subde smell of tobacco stressed her melan¬choly, recalling to her mind the presence of old Guillaume at the fireside in the big kitchen of Monteloup. Old Guillaume, Fantine, all the familiar things had suddenly become remote.
In the wooded groves violins started to play. Though tired to death, Angelique eagerly accepted the Marquis d’Andijos’s invitation to dance. The dancers had gathered in the large tiled courtyard, which was cooled by fountains. Angelique had learned enough fashionable dance-steps at the convent not to feel embarrassed now among the lords and ladies of a very up-to-date province. She was dancing for the first time at a real ball and she was beginning to enjoy it, when there was a sort of commotion. Couples broke apart under the pressure of a crowd that was running towards the tables. The dancers protested, but someone cried: “He’s going to sing.” Others repeated: “The Golden Voice! The Golden Voice of the Kingdom! . . .”