Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 6 - Read online

DAWN FOUND HER ON THE EDGE OF THE LATIN QUARTER, near the rue des Bernardins. The sky was beginning to glow with pink tints above the roofs of the black colleges. She could see the reflection from candles lit by early-rising students in the attic windows. She passed others who were returning, yawning and bleary-eyed, from a bawdy-house, where wretched trollops had rocked these seedy youths for a few hours. They brushed by her in their dirty neck-bands, shabby serge clothes, and black stockings that sagged over their meagre calves.
The bells of the chapels began to ring.
Angelique reeled with fatigue. She was walking barefoot, for she had lost both her old shoes. Her face was dazed and vacant.
When she reached the Quai de la Toumelle, the scent of fresh hay was wafted to her—the first hay of spring. The barges were moored in a long line with their light and fragrant cargo. In the Parisian dawn they exhaled a breath of warm incense, the aroma of a thousand dried flowers, the promise of lovely days to come.
She slipped down to the bank. A few steps away, the boatmen were warming themselves around a fire and did not see her. She waded into the water and hoisted herself on to the prow of a barge. She delved voluptuously into the hay. Under the canvas cover the smell was even more intoxicating: moist, hot and charged with thunder like a summer day. Where could this hay have come from? From some silent, rich, fertile countryside, under a warm sun. This hay brought with it the quiet of vast, wind-dried horizons, of lofty skies filled with light.
Angelique lay down with outflung arms. Her eyes were closed. She was submerging, drowning in, the hay. She floated on a cloud of frail and poignant perfumes, and she no longer felt her aching body. Monteloup enveloped her and carried her away. The air had recaptured its flowery fragrance, its taste of dew. The wind caressed her. She floated slowly, drifting towards the sunshine. She was leaving the night and its horrors. The sun caressed her. For a very long time she had not been caressed like this.
She had been the prey of the savage Calembrcdaine. She had been the mate of the wolf who sometimes, during a brief embrace, had managed to wrest from her a cry of animal lust, the groan of a beast possessed. But her body had forgotten the sweetness of caresses. The light touch of flowers on the sensitive skin . . . long shivers that spread and bathe the aban¬doned body with tenderness. . . .
She floated towards Monteloup, finding again the smell of raspberries in the hay. On her burning cheeks, on her dry lips, the water of the brook showered cooling caresses. She opened her mouth and sighed “Again!”
In her sleep, tears rolled down Angelique’s face and trickled into her hair. They were not tears of sorrow, but of a too great sweetness.
She stretched her limbs, yielding herself up to those recaptured caresses ... she let herself drift, cradled by the murmuring voices of the fields and the woods, which whispered into her ear :
‘Don’t cry . . . don’t cry, my darling. . . . It’s nothing. ... No more misery. . . . Don’t cry, poor little thing.’
Angelique opened her eyes. In the false twilight under the canvas she discerned a figure stretched out beside her in the hay. Two laughing eyes gazed at her.
She stammered:
“Who are you?’’
The stranger put a finger to his lips.
“I am the wind. The wind from a little comer of the Berry country¬side. When they mowed the hay, they mowed me flat with it. . . t. Look, it’s quite true, I’m flat.”
He kneeled down and turned his pockets out.
“Not a single coin! Not a so/! Completely flat. Flattened with the hay. They put me into a barge and here I am in Paris. Funny thing to happen to a little country wind.”
“But ” said Angelique. She passed her tongue over her lips, trying
to assemble her thoughts.
The young man was dressed in a shabby black suit, which showed holes here and there. The linen-band around his neck was in shreds, and the belt of his singlet emphasised his leanness. But he had a piquant face, which was almost handsome despite his pale hunger-drawn complexion. His long, thin lips seemed made for ceaseless chatter and for easy laughter about everything and nothing. His features were never in repose. He grimaced, laughed, mimicked. To this quaint physiognomy a shock of flaxen hair, the strands of which fell over his eyes, added something of peasant candour, which was belied by the cunning expression of his eyes.
While she was studying him, he continued his flow of talk.
“What can a little wind like me do in Paris? I who am used to blowing in the hedgerows will be blowing in the petticoats of ladies, and I’ll be slapped for it. . . . I’ll carry off the hats of churchmen and shall get ex¬communicated. They'll put me in jail in the towers of Notre Dame and I'll make the bells ring contrariwise. . . . What a scandal!”
“But ” Angelique said again, trying to sit up.
He promptly pushed her down again.
“Don'tmove . . . hush!”
‘He is a mad student,' she said to herself.
He stretched out again, and, raising his hand, he caressed her cheek, murmuring:
“Don't cry any more.”
“I am not crying,” said Angelique, but she noticed that her face was wet with tears.
“I too like to sleep in the hay,” the other went on. “When I slipped into the barge, I found you here. You were crying in your sleep. So I caressed you to comfort you and you said: ‘Again!' ”
“I did?”
“You did. I wiped your face and saw that you were very beautiful. Your nose has the delicacy of certain shells one finds on the beach. They are white and so delicate that they are almost translucent. Your lips are like the petals of clematis. Your neck is round and smooth. ...” .
Angelique was listening in a half-dream. Yes, it was really a very long time since any mouth had spoken such words to her. It seemed to be coming from far away and she was almost afraid that he was making fun of her. How could he say that she was beautiful when she felt crushed, tarnished, for ever sullied by this dreadful night when she had realised that she could no longer look the witnesses of her past in the face!
He continued to whisper:
“Your shoulders are two ivory balls. Your breasts cannot be compared to anything but themselves, so lovely are they. They are made to be held in the cupped hand of a man, and they have delicious little buds of rose¬wood colour, like the ones you see growing everywhere when spring comes. Your thighs are silky and slender. Your belly is a white satin cushion, bulging and firm, on which it is good to rest one’s cheek.”
“Well really, I should like to know how you can judge all that,” said Angelique, taking offence.
“While you were asleep, I looked you over.”
Angelique sat up abruptly in the hay.
“You insolent lout! Lewd oaf of a schoolboy! Devil’s brood!” “Hush! Not so loud. Do you want the lightermen to throw us over¬board . . . ? Why are you so cross, gentle lady? When one finds a jewel on one’s road, isn’t it only right to examine it? One likes to know if it is of pure gold, if it’s really as beautiful as it looks, in short, if it suits you or if it’s wiser to leave it where it is. Rem passionis suae bene eligere princeps debet, mundum examinandum”1
“And are you, by any chance, the prince whom the world is looking at?” Angelique inquired sarcastically.
He screwed up his eyelids with sudden surprise.
“You understand Latin, beggar wench?”
“For a beggar, you speak it well. . . .”
The student was chewing his lower lip in perplexity.
“Who are you?” he said softly. “Your feet are bleeding. You must have been running for a long while. What frightened you so?”
And as she did not reply:
“You have got a knife, there, which isn’t at all like you. A terrible weapon, an Egyptian’s dagger. Do you know how to handle it?” Angelique looked at him maliciously from under her eyelashes. “Perhaps.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, with a grimace, drawing away a little.
He pulled a stalk from the hay and began to nibble at it. His pale eyes grew dreamy. Soon she had the impression that he was no longer even thinking of her and that his mind was wandering in far-off regions. Who knows? Perhaps roaming in those towers of Notre Dame where he had said he would be jailed? Thus motionless and distant, his pallid face 1A prince must choose with care the object of his affection, for the world is watching.
seemed less youthful. At the comers of his eyelids she discovered those crumpled marks that poverty or debauchery can imprint on a man’s face in the prime of life.
He was ageless, anyway. His lean body in his too ample clothes seemed ethereal. She was afraid that he might disappear like a vision, and she touched his arm.
“Who are you?” she murmured.
His face came alive again and he turned towards her eyes which did not seem intended for daylight.
“I told you: I am the wind. And you?”
“I am the breeze.”
He started tp laugh and took her by the shoulders.
“What do the wind and the breeze do when they meet?” he mur¬mured.
Gently he pressed against her. She found herself lying in the hay again, with, close above her, that long, sensitive mouth. There was a little fold in the expression of those lips which frightened her, she knew not why. An ironical, slightly cruel wrinkle. But the look in his eyes was tender and gay.
He remained thus until, drawn by his appeal, she was the first to make a movement towards him. Then he half stretched out upon her and kissed her.
The kiss lasted for a long time, the time of ten kisses slowly parted and found again. For Angelique’s brutalised senses it was like a rebirth. Former delights revived, so different from the coarse pleasures which had been dispensed to her—though with so much ardour!—by the ex-farm¬hand.
‘I was very weary a moment ago,’ she thought, ‘and now I am no longer weary. My body does not seem sad and sullied any more. So I am not quite dead after all. . . /
She fidgeted a little in the hay, happy again to feel deep within her the awakening of a subtle yearning which would soon become a throbbing desire.
The man had sat up and, propped on one elbow, kept looking at her with a half-smile.
She was not impatient, only intent on the warm flow that was spread¬ing within her. Presently he would caress her again. They had plenty of time, the whole long Parisian day of tramps with nothing to do. ,
“It’s funny,” he murmured. “You have the refinements of a great lady, which one would not expect from your tattered petticoat.”
She gave a litde husky laugh.
“Really? Are you familiar with great ladies, Maitre Penpusher?”
“Sometimes.”
He tickled the dp of her nose with a flower and explained:
“When I have too big a hole in my stomach, I hire myself out to Maitre Georges, at the Saint-Nicholas bath-house. That’s where die great ladies go, to add a little spice to their mundane love affairs. Oh, it’s true, I am not a beautiful brute like Pretty Boy, and the favours of my poor under¬nourished carcass are less well paid than those of the husky, hairy stevedores who reek of onions and black wine. But I have other strings to my bow. Yes, my dear. Nobody in Paris has such a hand-picked selection of smutty stories as I have. They have rather a fancy for that to get into the mood. I make those beauties giggle. That’s what women need above all, a good belly-laugh. Do you want me to tell you the story of the hammer and the anvil?”
“Oh no!” Angelique said quickly, “please don’t!”
He seemed touched.
“Litdc sweet! Funny little sweet! Isn’t it odd! I’ve met great ladies who were just like hussies, but I’ve never yet met hussies who were like great ladies. You are the first. . . . You are so beautiful, just like a dream. . . . Listen, do you hear the chime of the Samaritainc on the Pont-Neuf? . . . It’s almost noon. Would you like to go on the Pont- Neuf and pinch a few apples for our dinner? And a bunch of flowers in which to bury your adorable little face? . . . We’ll listen to Big Matthicu doing his patter and the hurdy-gurdy man making his woodchuck dance. . . . And we’ll thumb our noses at the constable who’s looking for me to hang me.”
“Why do they want to hang you?”
“Why, because . . . don’t you know that they’re always out to hang me?” he answered, surprised.
‘He’s definitely a little crack-brained, but he is funny,’ she thought to herself.
She stretched herself. She wanted him to caress her again, but he seemed to be thinking of other things.
“Now I remember,” he said all of a sudden, “I have seen you before on the Pont-Neuf. Don’t you belong to the gang of Calembredaine, the Illustrious Scamp?”
“Yes, that is right. I belong to Calembredaine.”
He recoiled with an air of comic terror.
“Oh dear! Oh dear! What scrape have I got into, incorrigible philanderer that I am! Are you by any chance the Marquise of the Angels whom our Scamp is so madly jealous of?”
“Yes, but ”
“Now, just look at these conscienceless females!” he exclaimed dramatically. “Couldn’t you have said so before, wretch? Do you want to see my ugly turnip blood gush from my veins? Oh dear! Oh dear! Calembredaine! Isn’t that just my luck! I’ve found the woman of my life and she turns out to be Calembredaine’s . . . ! But never mind! The most adorable mistress of them all is life itself. Farewell, my sweet. . . .”
He seized a shabby old conical hat, such as schoolmasters wore, and, pulling it down over his fair shock of hair, he slipped out of the canvas cover.
“Be kind,” he whispered with a smile, “don’t tell your master of my boldness. . . . Yes, I can see you won’t talk. You are a darling, Marquise of the Angels. ... I’ll think of you till the day they hang me . . . and even after. . . . Farewell!”
She heard his splash below the barge, then saw him running along the bank in the sunshine. Dressed entirely in black, with his pointed hat, his skinny legs, his threadbare coat streaming in the wind, he looked like a strange bird.
The boatmen who had seen him slipping out of the barge were throw¬ing stones after him. He turned his pale face towards them and gave a roar of laughter. Then he disappeared suddenly, like a dream.