Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 14 - Read online

AT THE ABBEY OF SAINT-MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS there was a soup- kitchen for the poor every morning. The fine ladies who had attended early Mass would help the nuns in this pious task of charity.
The paupers who sometimes had had no other place to sleep but the angle of a boundary-post found a moment’s respite in this large refectory. Each one was given a bowl of hot soup and a roll.
That’s where Angelique landed eventually, carrying Florimond, and followed by Rosine, Linot and Flipot. They were, all five of them, covered with mud and filth and their faces were drawn. They lined up with a whole swarm of destitutes and sat down on long benches before wooden tables. Serving-maids appeared, carrying big soup-tureens.
The smell was fairly appetising, but before sating her hunger Angelique wanted Florimond to cat. Gently she raised the bowl to the baby’s lips.
Only then did she see him in the dim daylight that came through a stained-glass window. His eyes were half-closed, his nose was pinched. ... He was breathing very fast, as if his heart, strained by terror, could not find its normal rhythm. Apathetically, he let the broth spill out of his lips. The warmth of the liquid, however, revived him. He gave a hiccup, managed to swallow a sip, then held out his hands towards the bowl and drank greedily.
Angelique gazed at the poor, miserable little face under its dark, tousled shock of hair.
‘So this is what you have done,’ she said to herself, ‘with the son of
Joffrey de Peyrac, the heir of the Comtes de Toulouse, the child of the Floral Games, born for light and gladness, . . .’
She was awakening from a long numbness, contemplating the horror and ruin of her life. A savage fury against herself and against the world flooded her like a tide. At that moment, when she should have been stricken and emptied of all substance after that horrible night, she felt permeated by a stupendous force.
“Never again . . .” she said, “never again will he be hungry ... or cold . . . or afraid. I swear it.”
But weren’t hunger, cold and fear lying in wait for them at the gate of the Abbey?
“I must do something. Immediately.”
Angelique looked around her. She was but one of those wretched mothers, one of those ‘poor* to whom nothing is owed, and over whom those richly-dressed ladies were bending out of charity before returning to their gossiping in the literary alcoves’ or to their Court intrigues. With a mantilla placed over their hair to hide the brilliance of their pearls, an apron pinned to their velvets or silks, they went from one to the other. A maidservant followed them, carrying a basket from which the ladies drew cakes, fruit, sometimes a pie or half a chicken, the scraps of princely tables.
“Oh! my dear,” said one of them, “you are brave, in your condition, to
come here so early in the morning to distribute alms. May God bless »»
you.
“I do indeed hope so, my dear.”
The little laugh that followed seemed familiar to Angelique. She looked up and recognised the Duchesse dc Soissons, to whom the red¬haired Bertille was holding out a prune silk cloak. The Duchesse wrapped herself up in it snugly.
“God didn’t arrange things too well when he obliged women to carry in their womb for nine months the fruit of a moment’s pleasure,” she said to the abbess who was escorting her to the door.
“What would there be left to us nuns, if all the minutes of this worldly life were filled with pleasure?” replied the nun, with a smile.
Angelique rose abruptly and held her son out to Linot.
“Take Florimond.”
But the baby clung to her, uttering piercing cries. She resigned herself to keeping him with her, and told the others:
“Stay there, don’t move.”
A carriage waited in the rue Saint-Martin. As the Duchesse de Soissons was about to climb into it, a shabbily-dressed woman, holding a child in her arms, came up to her and said:
“Madame, my child is dying of hunger and cold. Order one of your lackeys to take, to the address I shall give him, a barrow full of firewood, a basin of soup, bread, blankets and clothes.”
The noble lady stared at the beggar-woman with surprise.
“You are rather bold, my daughter. Did you not receive your bowl of soup this morning?”
“I can’t live on a bowl of soup, Madame. What I am asking for re¬presents little for your great wealth: a barrow full of firewood and food which you will send me until I can manage without it.”
“Incredible!” the Duchesse exclaimed. “Do you hear that, Bertille? The impudence of these beggar-wenches is becoming more incredible every day! Leave me, woman! Don't touch me with your dirty hands, or I’ll have you thrashed by my lackeys.”
“Take care, Madame,” said Angelique under her breath, “take care lest I talk of Kouassi-Ba’s child!”
The Duchesse, who was tucking up her petticoats to step into the carriage, remained with one foot in the air.
Angelique continued:
“I know a house in the Faubourg Saint-Denis where a Moor’s child is being brought up. . . .”
“Talk more sofdy,” Madame de Soissons muttered, enraged. “Now what’s all this about?”
And, to keep herself in countenance, she opened her fan and waved it, which served no useful purpose since a sharp, cold wind was blowing.
“I know of a Moor’s child being raised. . . . He was bom in Fontaine¬bleau on a day I know, to a woman whose name I could give to any¬one who’d be interested. Wouldn’t the Court be amused to learn that Madame de Soissons has been carrying a child in her womb for thirteen months?”
“Oh! the swine!” cried the beautiful Olympe, whose southern tem¬perament always got the better of her.
She stared hard at Angflique, trying to recognise her, but the young woman lowered her eyes, convinced that in her present sorry state nobody would dream of identifying her with the radiant Madame de Peyrac.
“Enough of this!” the Duchesse de Soissons said, infuriated. And she strode hurriedly to her carriage. “You deserve to be caned. I’ll have you know that I don’t like to be made a fool of.”
“The King doesn’t like to be made a fool of either,” murmured Angelique, who was following her.
The noble lady went crimson and threw herself back against the velvet cushions, patting her skirts with much agitation.
“The King! . . . The King! ... To hear a shiftless beggar-wench talk of the King! It’s intolerable! Well, then? . . . What do you want? . . .”
“I told you, Madame. Very little: a barrow full of firewood, warm clothes for myself, my baby and my little boys aged eight and ten, a little food. . . .”
“Oh! how humiliating to be spoken to in this way!” said Madame de Soissons, biting into her lace handkerchief. “And to think that that fool of a police lieutenant is congratulating himself that the operation of the Saint- Germain Fair has made those overwhelming bandits draw in their horns. . . . What are you waiting for to close the carriage-doors?” she cried to her flunkeys.
One of them jostled Angelique to carry out his mistress’s order, but she did not accept defeat and again approached the carriage.
“May I present myself at your hotel in the rue Saint-Honore?”
“Present yourself,” the Duchesse said curtly.
So it happened that Maitre Bougus, caterer in viands in the rue de la Vallee-de-Miserc, saw a strange procession arrive in his courtyard, as he was starting on his first pint of wine and thinking sadly of the gay ditties which Madame Bourjus used to hum at this hour.
A family of tatterdemalions, made up of two young women and three children, preceded a footman in the cherry-red livery of a great house¬hold, who was pulling a cartload of firewood and clothes. To complete the picture, a little monkey, perched on top of the cart, seemed delighted to be taken for a ride and was making faces at the passers-by. One of the little boys held a hurdy-gurdy, whose strings he was gaily strumming.
Maitre Bourjus jumped up, swore, hit his fist on the table and arrived in the kitchen just as Angelique was handing Florimond into Barbe’s arms.
“What . . . what’s this? . . .” he stuttered, beside himself. “Are you going to tell me that this one is yours, too? And I who took you for a decent, respectable girl, Barbe?”
“Maitre Bourjus, listen to me. . . .”
“I’ll listen no more to anything! You are making my cook-shop into a foundling asylum! I am disgraced. . . .”
He flung his chef’s cap down on the ground and ran out to call for the watch.
“Keep the two babies warm,” Angelique advised Barbe. “I’ll go and light the fire in your room.”
Madame de Soissons’s dumbfounded and indignant lackey had to carry the logs up to the seventh floor by a rickety staircase, and put them down in a small room which was not even furnished with a curtained bed.
“And mind you tell Madame de Soissons to have the same things brought to me every day,” Angelique told him.
“Look here, wench, if you want my advice . . .”
“I don’t want your advice, peasant, and I forbid you to address me familiarly,” Angelique cut him short in a tone which accorded ill with her tom bodice and her cropped head. The lackey walked down the stairs, feeling—like Master Bourjus—that he was disgraced.
A little later, Barbe climbed the stairs, carrying Florimond and Cantor in her arms. She found Linot and Flipot lustily blowing upon a magni¬ficent log-fire. The heat was suffocating, and they all had flushed checks. Barbe related that the landlord was still incensed and that his tantrums were frightening Florimond.
“Leave them with us now that it’s warm up here,” said Angelique, “and go and attend to your duties, Barbe. You aren’t cross that I’ve come to you with my babies?”
“Oh! Madame, it’s a great joy for me.”
“And those poor children, we must put them up too,” said Angelique, pointing to Rosine and the two little boys. “If you knew where they come from!”
“Madame, my poor litde room is yours.”
“Ba-a-arbe! . . .”
Maitre Bourjus was roaring in the courtyard. The entire neighbour¬hood echoed with his screams. Not only had his house been invaded by beggars, blit his servant was losing her head. She had let a spit-load of six capons burn. . . . And what was that shower of sparks issuing from the chimney-stack—a chimney in which no fire had been made for five years? Everything would go up in flames! . . . This was his final ruin. Ah, why had Madame Bourjus died! . . .
The cooking-pot sent by Madame de Soissons contained meat-stock, soup and fine vegetables. There were also two loaves of bread and a jug of milk. Rosine went down to fetch a pail of water from the well in the courtyard, and they heated the water on the andirons. Angelique washed her two children, wrapped them in fresh clothes and warm blankets. Never again would they be hungry, never again cold! . . .
Cantor was sucking a chicken-bone picked up in the kitchen. He babbled away as he played with his little feet. Florimond did not yet seem to have recovered fully. He would fall asleep, then wake up crying. He shivered, and she did not know whether it was from fever or
fear. But after his bath he perspired profusely, then fell into a peaceful slumber.
Angelique sent Linot and Flipot out of the room and, in her turn, washed in the tub which normally served for the ablutions of the modest serving-maid.
“How beautiful you are!” Rosine exclaimed. “I don’t know you, but you must surely be one of Pretty Boy’s girls.”
Angelique was scrubbing her head energetically and found that washing one’s hair was really very easy when one hadn’t any left.
“No, I am the Marquise of the Angels.”
“Oh! So it’s you!” cried the young girl, dazzled. “I’ve heard so much about you. Is it true that Calcmbredaine was hanged?”
“I don’t know, Rosine. As you see, we are in a very simple, very decent little room. There’s a crucifix on the wall. You mustn’t talk of all that any more.”
She slipped on her coarse linen shift, a dark-blue serge skirt and bodice, which were part of the cart-load that had been sent. Angclique’s slender figure was lost in these rough, shapeless garments; but they were clean, and she felt a profound relief as she dropped her old tattered rags on the floor.
She took a small mirror from the casket she had gone to retrieve from the rue du Val d’Amour. There were all sorts of interesting things which she cherished in this casket, among them a tortoise-shell comb. She arranged her hair. Her face under the short crop seemed like a stranger’s to her.
“Did the police crop your hair?” Rosine asked.
“Yes . . . oh well! It’ll grow again. But, Rosine! what have I there?” “Where?”
“In my hair. Look!”
Rosine looked.
“It’s a strand of grey hair,” she said.
“Grey hair!” Angelique repeated, horrified. “But it can’t be! I . . . only yesterday I still hadn’t any, I am sure.”
“It’s come just like that. Last night, perhaps?”
“Yes, last night.”
With limp legs, Angelique went to sit down on Barbe’s bed.
“Rosine . . . Have I grown old?”
The young girl, kneeling before her, examined her gravely, then stroked her cheek.
“I don’t think so. You have no wrinkles, and your skin is smooth.” Angelique arranged her hair as best she could, trying to hide the
unfortunate strand underneath the others. Then she tied a black satin scarf around her head.
“How old are you, Rosine?”
“I don t know. Fourteen perhaps, or fifteen.”
“I remember you now. I saw you at the graveyard of the Saints- Innocents one night. You were walking in Great Coesre’s procession, and your breasts were bare. It was winter. Weren’t you dying of cold, naked like that to the waist?”
Rosine raised her big, dark eyes towards Angelique, who could read a vague reproach in them.
“You said yourself, we mustn’t talk of all that any more,” she mur¬mured.
At that moment Linot and Flipot started drumming on the door. They came in gaily. Barbe had slipped them surreptitiously a frying-pan, a piece of fat and ajar of dough. They were going to make pancakes.
There was no gayer place in Paris that evening than the little room in the rue de la Vallee-de-Misere. Angelique tossed the pancakes; Linot strummed on Thibault’s hurdy-gurdy. Polack had found the instrument against a boundary-stone and had given it back to the old musician’s grandson. Nobody knew what had become of the old man in the scuffle.
A little later, Barbe came up with a candlestick. She said that no customer had come to the shop that night and that Maitre Bourjus had locked up in disgust. To top the innkeeper's misfortune, his watch had been stolen. Thus Barbe was free earlier than usual. As she finished talking, her eyes fell on a strange assortment of objects placed on the wooden chest in which she stored her clothes. There were two tobacco- gratcrs, a string-purse with a few kus, buttons, a hook, and right in the middle
“But . . . that’s Maitre Bourjus’s watch!” she exclaimed.
“Flipot!” cried Angelique.
Flipot assumed an air of modesty.
“Yes, I did it. When I went down to the kitchen for the pancake dough.”
Angelique grabbed him by the ears and shook him hard.
“If you start again, you cut-purse sprout, I’ll throw you out and you can go back to Rotten Jean.”
Disconsolately, the boy went to lie down in a comer of the room, where he prompdy fell asleep. Linot did likewise, then Rosine, half sprawled across the pallet. The babies were slumbering again.
Kneeling before the fire, Angelique was the only one who stayed awake with Barbe. She could hear no sound, for the room overlooked a court¬yard and not the street, which at this hour was beginning to fill up with gamblers and revellers.
“There’s nine o’clock striking from the Chatelet,” said Barbe.
She was surprised to see Angflique raise her brow with a drawn ex¬pression on her face, then get up abruptly. For a moment the young woman remained gazing at the sleeping Florimond and Cantor. Then she walked towards the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Barbe,” she whispered.
“Where is Madame going?”
“There remains one more thing for me to do,” said Angelique. “After that, it will be all over. Life can begin again.”