Angelique - Part 5. The Court of Miracles Chapter 9 - Read online

THE COURT WAS AT FONTAINEBLEAU. During the hot summer days there was nothing more delightful than this white chateau, immersed in its verdure, with its pond where the carp disported themselves, their snow-white old grandsirc among them, wearing in his nostrils the ring of Francois the First. Water, flowers, groves . . .
The King worked, the King danced, the King hunted. The King was in love. The sweet Louise de la Valliere, all a-flutter at having aroused the passion of the royal heart, would languorously lift her magnificent blue- brown eyes to him. And in suggestive allegories, in which Diana hunting through woods and forests surrenders at last to Endymion, the whole Court vied in celebrating the ascent of this retiring, fair-haired girl, whose maidenly flower Louis XIV had only recendy plucked.
Seventeen years of age and just emerged from the poverty of a numerous provincial family, isolated among Madame’s maids-of-honour, wasn’t there ample cause for Louise de la Valliere to tremble when all the nymphs and sylvans whispered in the moonlight as she passed: “There goes the favourite?” And all the busdc around her! She no longer knew where to hide the intensity of her love and the shame of her sin! But the courtiers knew the mechanism of their subde profession as parasites. Through the King’s mistress one gained access to the King; one could work up intrigues, obtain positions, favours, pensions. While the Queen, weighed down by her approaching maternity, remained withdrawn in her apartments with her inconsolable midget, the blazing summer days sparkled with an unbroken chain of balls and pleasures.
At informal suppers on the canal, as there was no room in the boats for the King’s personal servants it was fun to sec the Prince de Condc, instead of winning batdes or plotting against the King, taking the dishes that were handed to him from a neighbouring boat and presenting them to the King and his mistress, like a model footman.
On nth August all the ladies went stag-hunting, on the 14th there was a country-ball at which the King, disguised as a shepherd, danced with La Valliere. On the 18 th there was a banquet in the forest, with small

On the 25th a torchlight ball . . . love leading the dance. . . .

Sitting on the banks of the Seine, in the sweltering stench of Paris,
Angelique watched the dusk descend on Notre Dame. Above the high square towers and the bulging hulk of the apse, the sky was yellow, specked with swallows. From time to time, a bird would flit past Angelique, grazing the bank with a shrill cry.
On the other side of the river, below the chapter-houses of the canons of Notre Dame, a long slope of clay marked the largest watering-point in Paris. At this hour a crowd of horses clambered down it, led by carters or coachmen. Their neighing concert rose in the pure evening sky.
Suddenly Angelique got up.
Tm going to see my children/ she thought.
For twenty sols, a ferryman landed her at the port of Saint-Landry. Angelique walked down the rue de l’Enfcr and stopped a few steps from the house of the proctor Fallot de Sance. She had no intention of present¬ing herself at her sister’s in the state she was in, with her petticoat in shreds, her unkempt hair tied with a kerchief, her down-at-heel shoes. But it had occurred to her that by taking up her stand near-by she might perhaps catch a glimpse of her two sons. For some time this desire had become an obsession with her, a need that grew more urgent with every passing day and that filled all her thoughts. Florimond’s little face emerged from the well of dazed oblivion in which she had been plunged. She visualised him with his curly black hair under his little red hood. She heard him babble. How old was he now? Just over two years. And Cantor? Seven months. She could not visualise him. He had been so tiny when she left him!
Leaning against the wall, near a cobbler’s shop, Angelique kept an eye on the front of the house where she had lived when she was still rich and respected. A year ago, her equipage had cluttered up the narrow lane. From here she had set out for the King’s entry, sumptuously dressed. And One-Eyed Kate had made her proposals from Fouquet, the Con¬troller-General: “Accept them, my dear. . . . Isn’t that better than losing your life?”
She had refused. And so she had lost everything, and she wondered she had not lost her life as well, for she no longer had a name nor the right to exist, she was dead in the eyes of all.
Time passed, and still nothing moved behind the facade of the house. However, behind the grimy window-panes of the solicitor’s study the busy figures of the clerks could be perceived dimly. One of them came out to light the lantern.
Angelique went up to him.
“Is Maitre Fallot de Sance at home or has he gone to the country for the summer?”
The clerk took his time to inspect her suspiciously.
“Maitre Fallot hasn’t been living here for quite some time,” he said. “He sold his office, his study, everything. He had some trouble over a witchcraft trial in which his family was involved. That did him harm in his profession. He’s gone to set up in another district.”
“And . . . you don’t know in which district?”
“I don’t,” said the other haughtily. “And if I did I wouldn’t tell you. You are no client for him.”
Angelique was flabbergasted. For several days now she had been living entirely in the hope of seeing, were it only for a moment, the two faces of her children. She imagined them returning from their walk, Cantor in Barbe’s arms, Florimond gaily trotting at her side. And now they too had vanished for ever from her sight!
She had to support herself against the wall, suddenly dizzy with grief. The cobbler, who was putting the boards of his shop up for the night and who had overheard the conversation, said to her:
“Were you as keen as all that to see Maitre Fallot de Sance? Was it about a lawsuit?”
“No,” said Angelique, trying to control herself, “but I ... I would have liked to see a girl who was in his employ ... a girl called Barbe. Doesn’t anybody in these parts know the proctor’s new address?”
“As regards Maitre Fallot and his family, I can’t tell you anything, but when it comes to Barbe, I may be able to help. She is no longer with them. The last time she was seen she was working in a cook-shop in the rue de la Vallee-de-Misere, at the sign of‘The Brazen Cock’.”
“Oh, thank you!”
Angelique was already running through the darkening streets. The rue de la Vallee-de-Miserc, behind the prison of the Grand Chatelet, was the centre of the caterers of roast viands. Day and night, the squeals of poultry as their throats were cut and the noise of revolving spits before huge fires never stopped.
The eating-house of‘The Brazen Cock’ was the last in the street and did not present a particularly engaging aspect. On the contrary, looking at it one might have thought that Lent had already started, for that is the only season which extinguishes the caterers’ ovens, closes the butchers’ shops and makes the pastry-cooks yawn.
Angelique walked into a room that was dimly lit by two or three candles. Seated before a pitcher of wine, a burly man, with a grimy cook’s cap on his head, seemed far busier drinking than serving his customers. The latter were not numerous, anyhow, and consisted mainly of crafts¬men and impecunious-looking travellers. A slouching youngster with a
greasy apron round his waist brought them some dishes whose com-position could be guessed only with difficulty.
Angelique turned to the fat cook:
“Have you a servant here called Barbe?”
The man pointed to the kitchen at the back with an indifferent thumb.
Angelique saw Barbe. She was sitting before the fire and plucking a fowl.
“Barbe!”
The other raised her head and wiped her perspiring forehead.
“What do you want, wench?’* she asked in a tired voice.
“Barbe!” repeated Angelique.
The servant’s eyes grew round, then opened wide with amazement, and she uttered a stifled cry:
“Oh! Madame! . . . Will Madame excuse me. . . .”
“You mustn’t call me Madame any more, as you can see,” Angelique said curtly.
She let herself drop on the stone of the hearth. The heat was stifling.
“Barbe, where are my children?”
Barbe’s round cheeks trembled as if she were going to burst out crying. She swallowed and finally managed to answer.
“They’ve been put out to nurse, Madame . . . outside Paris ... in a village near Longchamp.”
“My sister Hortense did not keep them with her?”
“Madame Hortense gave them straightway to a foster-mother. I went to see the woman once to give her the money you left me. Madame Hortense had ordered me to give her that money, but I didn’t give her all of it. I wanted the money to serve the children. Afterwards, I couldn’t return to the foster-mother . . . I had left Madame Hortense. . . . I had several places. . . . It’s hard to earn one’s living.”
She was now talking hurriedly, avoiding Angelique’s gaze. The latter pondered. Longchamp was not a very distant village. The ladies of the Court would sometimes drive out there for a promenade, to attend the nuns’ service at the Abbey. . . . Barbe had nervously resumed plucking the fowl. Angelique had the feeling that someone was staring at her fixedly. Turning round she saw the kitchen-boy gazing at her open¬mouthed, with an expression that left no doubt about the feelings that the sight of this beautiful woman in rags inspired in him. Angelique was accustomed to the lewd glances of men, but this time it annoyed her. She got up quickly.
“Where are you staying, Barbe?” ' ‘
“Here, in a garret.”
At this moment the landlord of‘The Brazen Cock* came in, with his cap awry.
“What the hell are you all doing here?” he demanded in a thick voice. “David, the customers are calling for you. . . . And when will this chicken be ready, Barbe? Upon my word, maybe I’ll have to attend to the work while you are taking your ease! . . . And what is this beggar- woman doing here? Hey, out you go, out! And don’t try and filch a capon. . . .”
“Oh! Monsieur Bourjus!” Barbe exclaimed, appalled.
But Angelique, this evening, was not in a passive mood. She put her fists on her hips and Polack’s entire vocabulary rose to her lips.
“Shut up, you fat hogshead! I wouldn’t take your decrepit cardboard cocks if you gave them to me. As for you, you ogling fledgling, you’d better drop your eyes and close your mouth if you don’t want to get a swipe on the ear.”
“Oh! Madame!” cried Barbe, even more appalled.
Turning to account the two men’s amazement, Angelique whispered to Barbe:
“I’ll wait for you in the courtyard.”
A little later, when Barbe came out, with a candlestick in her hand, Angelique followed her up the rickety stairs to the loft which Maitre Bourjus let to his maid.
“It’s a very poor lodging, Madame,” the poor girl said humbly.
“Don’t apologise. I’m familiar with poverty.”
Angelique took offher shoes to enjoy the coolness of the stone-flags and sat down on the bed, which was a curtainlcss pallet mounted on four legs.
“You must excuse Maitre Bourjus,” Barbe went on. “He isn’t a bad man, but ever since his wife’s death his mind wanders and he does nothing but drink. The kitchen-boy is a nephew of his. He brought him up from the province to help him, but he isn’t very bright. So business isn’t doing too well.”
“If it’s no inconvenience to you, Barbe,” said Angelique, “could I spend the night here? I’ll leave tomorrow at crack of dawn and go to see my children. Can I share the bed with you?”
“Madame is doing me a great honour.”
“Honour!” said Angelique bitterly. “. . . Just look at me and don’t talk like that.”
Barbe burst into sobs.
“Oh! Madame,” she stammered, “your beautiful hair ... so beauti¬ful! Who brushes it these days?”
“I do . . . occasionally. Barbe, don’t cry so much, please!”
“If Madame will allow me,” the maid murmured, “I have a brush here. ... I might perhaps . . . since I happen to be here with Ma¬dame. . . .”
“If you like.”
The maid’s skilful hands disentangled the lovely, warmly gleaming locks. Angelique closed her eyes. The power of everyday gestures is considerable. The careful hands of a maid about her were enough to conjure up an atmosphere that was lost for ever. Barbe was snuffling.
“Don’t cry,” Angelique said again, “all this will be over some day. . . . Yes, I do believe it will. Not yet, I know, but the day will come. You cannot understand, Barbe. It’s like a vicious circle from which one can’t escape, except by death. But I’m beginning to think that I shall be able to escape, all the same. Don’t weep, Barbe, my good girl. . . .”
They slept side by side. Barbe had to start work at the first light of dawn. Angelique followed her into the kitchen of the cook-shop. Barbe made her drink some hot wine and slipped two little pies into her hand.
Angelique walked along the road to Longchamp. She had passed the Gate of Saint-Honore, and after following the long sandy rows of a promenade that was called the Champs-Elysees she reached the hamlet of Neuilly, where Barbe had told her she would find her children. She did not yet know what she was going to do. Watch them from afar, perhaps. And if Florimond happened to come near her in playing, she would try to lure him with the offer of a patty.
She asked someone the way towards the dwelling of Mere Mavaut, and as she approached it she saw children playing in the dust under the care of a girl of about thirteen. The children were rather dirty and uncared-for but they looked healthy. She vainly tried to recognise Florimond among them.
When a big woman in clogs came out of the house, she supposed that this was the foster-mother and decided to walk into the courtyard.
“I would like to see two children whom Madame Fallot de Sance entrusted to you.”
The peasant woman, who was a big, dark-haired, robust sort of woman, stared at her with undisguised distrust.
“Could you be bringing the money?”
“So there are arrears due to you for the months of foster-care?”
“Are there!” the woman exploded. “With what Madame Fallot gave me when I took them and what her maid brought me afterwards, I couldn’t have fed them for more than a month. And ever since—not a sou, not a turnip! I went to Paris to claim my due but they’d moved. Aren’t those just the vulture ways of lawyers!”
“Where are they?” asked Angelique.
“Who?”
“The children.”
“How do I know?” said the foster-mother with a shrug. “I am quite busy enough looking after the brats of those who pay.”
The little girl, who had come closer, said quickly:
“The little one is over there. I’ll show him to you.”
She pulled Angelique along, led her through the main room of the farm-house and brought her to the stable, where there were two cows. Behind the rack she discovered a box in which Angelique could dimly perceive, in the darkness, a child of about six months. He was naked, apart from a dirty rag over his belly, and he was greedily sucking one end of it.
Angelique seized the box and pulled it into the room to get a better look.
“I put him in the stable because it’s warmer than in the cellar at night,” the little girl whispered. “He’s caked with crusts all over but he isn’t skinny. It’s I who milk the cows morning and evening, so I give him some every time.”
Angelique gazed at the baby, horror-struck. This couldn’t be Cantor, this hideous little larva covered with scabs and vermin. Anyhow, Cantor was fair-haired when he was bom, and this child had brown curls. At that moment he opened his eyes and showed his bright, magnificent pupils.
“He has green eyes like yours,” said the girl. “Would you be his mother?”
“Yes, I am his mother,” said Angelique tonelessly. “Where is the elder one?”
“He must be in the dog’s kennel.”
“Javotte! Mind your own business!” the peasant woman shouted.
She was watching their doings with hostility but did not interfere, hoping perhaps that this shabby-looking woman might be bringing her money, after all.
The kennel was occupied by a most ferocious-looking mastiff. Javotte had to wheedle him out with all kinds of wiles and promises.
“Flo is always hiding behind Patou, he’s afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
The girl cast a quick glance around.
“Of being beaten.”
She pulled something out of the back of the kennel. A curly black ball appeared.
“Why, it's another dog!” cried Angelique.
“No, that’s his hair.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
To be sure, such a shock of hair could only belong to the son ofJoffrey de Peyrac. But beneath this thick, dark, bristling mane there was a poor grey little body, all skin and bones, covered with rags.
Angelique knelt down and parted the tousled thatch of hair with a trembling hand. She discovered the pale, drawn face, in which there gleamed two gaping black eyes. Although it was very hot, the child was shaken by a ceaseless shiver. His brittle bones protruded like nails and his skin was rough and dirty. Angelique stood up and strode towards the foster-mother.
“You’re letting them starve to death,” she said in a slow, heavy voice. “You’re letting them die of want. . . . These children have had no care, no food for months. Nothing but the dog's left-overs and the morsels this girl saves from her own meagre fare. You are a wicked wretch!”
The peasant woman had gone very red. She crossed her arms over her bodice.
“Ha! That's a good one, that is!” she cried, choking with anger. “They clutter me up with penniless brats, disappear without leaving an address, and on top of that I’ve got to let myself be insulted by a highway tramp, a Bohemian, a gipsy, a . . .”
Without listening, Angelique had returned into the house.
She seized a towel that was hanging in front of the fire-place and grasp¬ing Cantor she set him up on her back, holding him in place with the towel tied over her chest, in the very manner in which gipsies carry their children.
“What are you going to do?” asked the foster-mother, who had followed her. “You aren’t taking them away, are you? If you do, give me the money first.”
Angelique foraged in her pockets and threw a few icus on the floor. The peasant-woman jeered.
“Ten livres! You are joking—they owe me at least three hundred. Come on, pay, or else I call the neighbours and their dogs and have you thrown out.”
Tall and massive, she stood before the door with outstretched arms. А^ё^ие slipped her hand into her bodice and pulled out her dagger. The blade of Rodogone the Egyptian flashed in the semi-darkness with the same glint as her green eyes.
“Out of my way!” said Angelique in a hoarse voice. “Out of my way or 1*11 bleed you.”
The woman shrank back, terrified. Angelique passed in front of her, holding the dagger pointed in the woman’s direction, as Polack had taught her.
“Don’t yell! Don’t send any dogs or farm-hands after me, or you’ll be sorry. Tomorrow your farm-house will go up in flames. . .. And you’ll wake up with a slit throat. . . . Understand?”
When she reached the middle of the yard, she put the dagger back into her belt and, picking Florimond up in her arms, she fled towards Paris.
Panting, she threw herself back on the man-eating capital, where she had no other refuge for her two half-dead children than crumbling ruins and the fearsome kindliness of beggars and bandits.
Passing carriages raised clouds of dust that stuck to her perspiring face, but she did not slow down, oblivious of the weight of her too light double burden.
‘This will end,’ thought Angelique, ‘it’ll just have to end, I’ll have to escape some day and bring them back to the living. . . .*
At sight of the children, Calembredaine displayed neither anger nor jealousy, as she had feared, but a rather horrified expression came over his coarse, swarthy face.
“Are you mad?” he said. “Are you mad to bring your children here? Haven’t you seen what they do to children here? Do you want them hired to go begging? . . . Or devoured by rats? . . . Or Rotten Jean to steal them from you? . . .”
Stricken by his unexpected reproaches, she clung to him.
“Where could I have taken them, Nicholas? Look at what’s become of them—they were starving to death! I didn’t bring them here for any harm to come to them, but to put them under your protection, because you are strong, Nicholas.”
She nestled against him, forlorn, looking up at him in a way she had never done before. But he did not notice and shook his head, repeating:
“I shan’t always be able to protect them . . . these children of noble blood. I just shan’t.”
“Why not? You are strong, you are feared.”
“I am not as strong as all that. You’ve worn my heart out. When the heart gets involved, with people like us, one begins to trip up. Every¬thing goes to pieces. I sometimes wake up at night and say to myself: ‘Take care, Calembredaine—the gallows aren’t such a long way off any
9 II
more. ...
“Don’t talk like that. For once I’m asking you a favour. Nicholas, my Nicholas, help me to save my little ones!”
They were called the little angels. Protected by Calembredaine, they shared Angelique’s sheltered life amidst crime and squalor. They slept in a big leather trunk padded with snug coats and fine sheets. They had fresh milk every morning. For their sake, Gobert or Peony would lie in wait for the milkmaids who were going to market at the Pierre-au-Lait with their copper cans on their heads.
Florimond and Cantor had aroused Angelique’s passionate love. No sooner had she returned from Neuilly than she took them to see Big Matthieu. She wanted a salve for Cantor’s sores, and for Florimond— what could one do to bring this trembling, spent little body back to life? He winced with fright even under her caresses. Broken-hearted, Angelique would hold him on her knees.
“When I left him, he had begun to talk,” she said to Polack, “and now he no longer says anything.”
Polack accompanied her to Big Matthieu. For them he lifted aside the crimson curtain which divided Iris platform in two, and ushered them like noble ladies into his private consulting-room. There could be seen an incredible jumble of dentures, suppositories, lancets, boxes of iris powder, pots and ostrich eggs as well as two stuffed crocodiles.
The master himself, with Iris august hands, applied a pomade of his own composition to Cantor’s skin, and promised that it would be all right in a week. The prediction turned out to be correct: the crusts fell off and revealed a plump, peaceful little boy with white skin, closely curled brown hair, in the pink of health.
For Florimond, Big Matthieu was less encouraging. He picked the child up very cautiously, examined him, tried to make him smile, and handed him back to Angelique. Then he scratched his chin, with perplexity. Angelique was more dead than alive.
“What is the matter with him?”
“Nothing. He must eat; very little to begin with. Later, he must eat as much as he can. Perhaps that’ll put some flesh on his bones. How old was he when you left him?” .
“Twenty months, not quite two years old.”
“It’s a bad age for learning to suffer want and pain,” said Big Matthieu, musingly. “It’s better to get to know it at once, at birth—or else later. But for those little ones who are beginning to take a look at life, suffering shouldn’t jump at them too suddenly with cruel surprise.” ,.
Angelique raised towards Big Matthieu eyes lustrous with unshed tears.
She was wondering how this vulgar, bellowing brute could know such subde things.
“Is he going to die?”
“Maybe not.”
“Do give him a medicine, anyhow,” she begged.
The quack poured a herb-powder into a small paper bag and recom¬mended that the child be made to drink a decoction of it every day.
“It’ll give him strength,” he said. But he, who would talk so volubly of the virtues of his remedies, did not add any boasting patter.
After a moment’s thought, he resumed:
“For a long time to come he should never again know hunger, cold or fear, he should no longer feel abandoned but see the same faces around him all the time. . . . What he needs is a medicine that can’t be found in my jars—he needs to be happy. You understand, wench?”
She nodded her head. She was overwhelmed with amazement. Never had anyone talked to her about children in this way. In the society in which she had lived, it just wasn’t done. But simple people had, perhaps, a deeper, shrewder insight . . .
A client, with a swollen check wrapped in a handkerchief, had clambered on to the platform, and the orchestra burst into a cacophony. Big Matthieu shoved the two women out, giving them a cordial slap on the back.
“Try and make him smile!” he cried after them before seizing his tongs.
Henceforward, in the Tower of Nesle, everybody tried his best to make Florimond smile. Father Hurlurot and Mother Hurlurette would dance for him, swinging their old legs for all they were worth. Black- Bread lent him his pilgrim’s shells to play with. From the Pont-Neuf the men would bring back oranges, pastries, toy mills. A little Auvergnat boy showed him his woodchuck and a mountebank from the fairground of Saint-Germain came to exhibit his eight trained rats which danced the minuet to the sound of his violin.
But Florimond was frightened and hid his eyes. Piccolo the monkey was the only one who managed to interest him. However, despite his grimaces and capers, he did not succeed in making him smile.
The honour of bringing this miracle about came to Thibault the hurdy- gurdy man. One day, the old man began to play the song of‘The Green Mill*. Angelique, who was holding little Florimond on her knees, felt him start with a quiver. He lifted his eyes to her. His mouth trembled, revealed his tiny teeth, as small as rice-corns. And in a small, low, far¬away voice he said:
“Mamant”