Angelique - Part 6. The Inn of the Red Mask Chapter 3 - Read online

FOR SEVERAL DAYS Angelique divided her talents between Maitre Bourjus’s pots and pans and Mere Marjolaine’s flowers. The florist had asked her to help her out, for the birth of the royal heir was imminent, and the flower-sellers were flooded with work.
One day in November, as they were sitting on the Pont-Neuf, the palace clock began to strike. The jack-o’-the-clock of the Samaritaine seized his hammer, and in the distance could be heard the booming shots of the cannon of the Bastille.
The entire population of Paris went mad with joy.
“The Queen s given birth! The Queen’s given birth!”
Breathlessly, the crowd counted:
“Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two . . .”
At the twenty-third cannon-shot people began to grab one another’s arms. The bell-ringing, chimes and salvoes continued showering on a delirious Paris. No more doubt: a boy!
“A Dauphin! A Dauphin! Long live the Dauphin! Long live the Queen! Long live the King!”
Everybody embraced and kissed. The Pont-Neuf burst into song. People formed in jubilant throngs. Booths and work-shops put up their shutters. The fountains spouted streams of wine. At long tables, set up in the streets by the King’s footmen, pastries and preserves were served. In the evening there was a great display of fireworks.
When the Queen had returned from Fontainebleau and settled down again at the Louvre with the royal baby, the city guilds made ready to present their compliments to her.
Mere Marjolaine said to Angelique:
“You will come along. It’s not very regular, but I shall select you as the apprentice to carry my flower-baskets. You’ll like that, won’t you, to see the home of Kings, the beautiful Louvre? The rooms there are larger and loftier than churches, it seems!”
Angelique did not dare refuse. The good woman was doing her a great honour. Moreover, though she hardly admitted it to herself, she was eager to find herself once more in a place which had been the scene of so many events and dramas in her life. Would she catch a glimpse of the Grande Mademoiselle, swollcn-eyed with tears of emotion; or the insolent Duchesse de Soissons; the witty Lauzun; the sombre de Guiche; de
Vardes? . . . Who among those great lords and ladies would dream of seeing, amid the stall-keepers, the woman who, not so long ago, used to pass through the corridors of the Louvre, in her court dresses, with burning eyes, followed by her impassive Moor, going from one to the other, perturbed at first, then imploring, begging for an impossible mercy for a husband condemned in advance? . . .
On the appointed day she found herself in the palace courtyard, where the flower and orange sellers of the Pont-Neuf and the fish-wives of the Halles mingled their sonorous voices and their starched petticoats. They were accompanied by their wares, which vied in beauty, if not in aroma.
Baskets of flowers, hampers of fruit and kegs of herrings were to be placed side by side before Monseigneur the Dauphin, whose tiny hand had to touch them all, the soft roses, the sparkling oranges and the beautiful silvery fish.
As the ladies, in a noisy, odoriferous group, were mounting the stairs that led to the royal apartments, they passed the Apostolic Nuncio, who had just presented a layette to the heir-presumptive to the throne of France, the Pope’s traditional gift “in token of his recognition of him as the elder son of the Church”.
In the ante-room where they were told to wait, the good women went into raptures over the wonders extracted from the three red velvet cases with silver fittings.
They were then led into the Queen’s bedroom. The ladies of the merchant guilds knelt down and made their speeches. Kneeling with them on the brightly-coloured carpets, Angelique saw the Queen lying in a sumptuous robe in the semi-darkness of the richly-gilded bed. She still had the same somewhat set expression which she had displayed at Saint- Jean-de-Luz, fresh from the sombre palaces of Madrid, but French fashions and hair-style were less becoming to her than the fantastic attire and the hair-dress puffed up with false locks which had then framed with severe and ample lines the face and figure of the young idol betrothed to the Sun King.
Queen Maria-Theresa, a happy young mother and a loving wife re¬assured by the King’s attentions, deigned to smile at the brash, gaudy group which had succeeded the unctuous company of the apostolic embassy at her bedside. The King was at her side. He was smiling.
Gripped by a cruel emotion at finding herself at the King’s feet amid these humble women, Angelique was as if blind and paralysed. All she saw was the King.
Later, when she was outside again with her companions, they told her that the Queen Mother had been present, as well as Madame d’Orl&ns and Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the Due d’Enghien, the Prince de Conde's son, and a number of young men and women of their households.
She had not seen anyone but the King, who was smiling, standing on the steps by the Queen's big bed. She had felt greatly frightened. He did not resemble the young man who had received her at the Tuileries and whom she had so much wanted to shake by his shirt-frill. On that day they had faced each other like two young creatures endowed with equal strength, fighting each other fiercely, each of them convinced that he deserved victory.
What madness! How could she have failed to grasp at once that there was in this sovereign, under the outward appearance of a still vulnerable sensitivity, an indomitable character which, throughout his life, would never tolerate the least encroachment on his authority! From the start, the King was fated to triumph, and for her failure to understand this Angclique had been broken like a reed.
She followed the group of apprentices on their way to the service quarters to reach the palace gates. The members of the guilds were staying on to attend a big banquet, but the apprentices were not admitted to this feast.
As they passed through the pantries, where elaborate dishes and piles of viands were waiting to be carried into the halls, Angelique heard someone whistling behind her: one long, two short. She recognised the signal of Calembredaine’s gang and thought she was dreaming. Here, at the Louvre? . . .
She turned round. In an open doorway a small silhouette cast its shadow on the stone floor.
“Barcarole!"
She rushed up to him with a surge of genuine pleasure. The dwarf preened himself, proud and full of dignity.
“Come in, sister. Come in, my very dear Marquise. Let's indulge in a little chat.”
She laughed.
“Oh, Barcarole! how handsome you look! And how well you talk!"
“I am the Queen's midget,” said Barcarole, very smugly.
He showed her into a kind of small parlour and made her admire his satin singlet, which was half orange, half yellow and held in at the waist by a belt with many bells. He then went into a series of capers and somersaults so that she might appreciate the jingle-jangle he pro¬duced. With his hair cut at nape-length just above the enormous fluted ruff and his pleasant face carefully shaven, the dwarf seemed happy
and healthy. Angdlique told him that she found him years younger.
“As a matter of fact, that’s rather what I feel like,” Barcarole agreed modestly. “Life does not lack in comfort and I believe that, on the whole, people here are rather fond of me. I am happy to have reached the summit of my career at my age.”
“How old are you, Barcarole?”
“Thirty-five. It’s the height of maturity, the fullness of man’s moral and physical development. Come along, sister. I want to introduce you to a noble lady for whom, I won’t hide it from you, I harbour tender feelings . . . which she reciprocates.”
With the swaggering air of a conquering lover, the dwarf led Angelique very mysteriously through the gloomy maze of the Louvre’s service quarters. He ushered her into a dark room where she saw, sitting behind a table, a woman of about forty years, who was extremely plain and swarthy, and who was in the process of heating something on a small silver-gilt cooker.
“Dona Theresita, I present to you Dona Angelica, the loveliest madonna in Paris,” Barcarole announced pompously.
The woman bored dark, shrewd eyes into Angelique, and spoke a sentence in Spanish, in which the words ‘Marquise of the Angels’ could be distinguished. Barcarole winked at Angflique.
“She is asking whether you are the Marquise of the Angels that I keep telling her about. You see, sister, I don’t forget my friends.”
They had walked round the table and Angelique noticed that Dona Theresita’s tiny feet barely reached over the edge of the stool on which she was perched. This was the Queen’s she-midget.
Angelique seized her petticoat between two fingers and made a little curtsy to show the respect in which she held this high-ranking lady. With a movement of her head, the midget motioned the young woman to sit down on another stool, while she continued to stir her mixture slowly. Barcarole had jumped on to the table. He was cracking and nibbling hazel-nuts and telling stories in Spanish to his companion. A beautiful white greyhound came to sniff Angelique and lay down at her feet.
“This is Pistolet, the King’s greyhound,” said Barcarole, introducing him, “and here are Dorinde and Mignonne, the greyhound bitches.”
It was warm and quiet in this part of the palace where the two midgets indulged in sweet dalliance between capers. Angelique’s nose quivered with curiosity at the scent wafted to her from the saucepan. It was a pleasant, indefinable smell, dominated by a tang of cinnamon and red pepper. She examined the ingredients spread on the table: hazel-nuts and almonds, a spray of red pepper, a pot of honey, a half-crushed sugar-loaf, cups filled with aniseeds and pepper-corns, boxes of cinnamon powder. And lastly, a kind of bean which she did not know.
Absorbed in the operation she was performing, the she-midget seemed little inclined to engage in conversation with the newcomer. However, Barcarole’s voluble speeches eventually wrested a smile from her.
“I told her,” he explained to Angelique, “that you found me years younger and that I owed this to the happiness which she gives me. My dear, I really am in clover here! To tell the truth, I’m getting too staid and settled. It sometimes worries me. The Queen is a most kindly woman. When she is too sad, she calls me to her and pats my cheeks, saying: ‘Ah! my poor boy! My poor boy!’ I am not used to such manners. They bring tears to my eyes—can you imagine, me, Barcarole!”
“Why is the Queen sad?”
“Well, she’s beginning to suspect that her husband is cuckolding her!” “It is true, then, what they say about the King having a favourite?”
“Of course! He’s hiding her, his La Valliere. But the Queen is bound to find out eventually. Poor litde woman! She isn’t very subtle and she knows nothing about life. You see, sister, the life of princes, when you look at it closely, isn’t so different from that of their humble subjects. They play each other dirty tricks and quarrel in their homes, just like brigands and hussies. You ought to see her, the Queen of France, when she’s waiting at night for her husband to come, while he is having sport in another woman’s arms. If there’s one thing we French can be proud of, it’s our master’s amorous capacity. Poor little Queen of France!”
There was no doubt that Barcarole the cynic had now become a com-passionate philosopher. He saw Angelique smile and winked at her.
“Makes you feel good, doesn’t it, Marquise of the Angels, to indulge in fine sentiments at times, to feel you are honest, brave, and earning your living by good hard work?”
She did not answer, for the dwarf’s cloying tone was not to her liking. To change the subject, she inquired:
“Can you tell me what Dona Theresita is brewing so painstakingly? This dish has an odd smell that I can’t put a name to.”
“Why, it’s the Queen’s chocolate.”
Angelique promptly rose and went to have a look in die saucepan. She saw a thick, blackish product in it which did not look very appetising. Through the intermediary of Barcarole she engaged in a conversation with the midget-woman, who told her that the completion of the master¬piece which she was about to concoct required a hundred cocoa beans, two corns of chili or Mexican pepper, a handful of aniseed, six roses of
Alexandria, a clove of campeachy, two drams of cinnamon, twelve almonds, twelve hazel-nuts and half a sugar-loaf.
“That seems to me awfully complicated,” said Angelique, disappointed. “Is it good? Could I taste it?”
“Taste the Queen’s chocolate! An impious beggar-wench like you! What a heresy!” cried the dwarf with mock indignation.
Although the midget-woman also considered this a rather bold request, she condescended to hold out to Angelique a little of the pasty mixture on a golden spoon. The paste was so highly-seasoned that it burnt her mouth, and it was also inordinately sweet. Angelique said out of polite¬ness:
“It’s excellent.”
“The Queen couldn’t do without it,” commented Barcarole. “She has several cups a day, but they are brought to her secretly, for the King and the whole Court are making fun of her passion for it. At the Louvre there is none but Her Majesty the Queen Mother, who is Spanish too, who also drinks it.”
“Where can one obtain these cocoa beans?”
“The Queen has them brought specially from Spain, through the intermediary of the ambassador. They must be roasted, pounded and cleansed.”
He added under his breath:
“I can’t understand anyone making such a fuss about this horror!”
Just then, a little girl came rushing in and asked in hurried Spanish for Her Majesty’s chocolate. Angelique recognised Philippa. It was alleged that the child was a bastard offspring of King Philip IV of Spain and that the Infanta Maria-Theresa, finding her abandoned in the corridors of the Escorial, had had her brought up. She had been among the Spanish suite which had crossed the Bidassoa.
Angelique got up and took leave of Dona Theresita. The dwarf showed her out to the small gate that opened on to the quay.
“You haven’t asked me how I have been getting on,” Angelique said to him.
She suddenly had the impression that the dwarf had changed into a pumpkin, for all she could see of him was his huge orange silk hat. Barcarole was looking down at the ground. Angelique sat down on the doorstep in order to be at the same level as the little fellow; she looked into his eyes.
“Answer me!”
“I know how you’ve been getting on. You have dropped Calcmbrc- daine and are the prey of fine sentiments.”
“You sound as if you were accusing me! Haven't you heard of the battle of the Fair of Saint-Germain? Calembredaine has disappeared. As for me, I managed to escape from the Chatelet. Rodogone is at the Tower of Nesle.”
“You no longer belong to the underworld.”
“Nor do you.”
“Oh yes, I do! I'll always belong to it. It's my kingdom,” said Bar¬carole with a strange solemnity.
“Who told you all this about me?”
“Wood-Bottom.”
“You've seen him again?”
“I went to pay him homage. He is our Great Coesre now. I expect you are not unaware of it?”
“No, indeed.”
“I went to fork out a purse full of louts d’or. Whoo! Whoo! my dear, 1 was the richest toff at the gathering.”
Angelique took the dwarf's hand, a curious, round, podgy little hand, like a child’s.
“Barcarole, are they going to harm me?”
“I believe there’s not a woman in Paris whose pretty skin clings less closely to her body than yours.”
“It can't be helped. I'll die, but I could never turn back. You can tell Wood-Bottom so.”
The Queen's dwarf veiled his eyes with a tragic gesture.
“Ah! what a painful thing to see such a pretty girl with her throat slit!”
As she was going out, he caught her by her petticoat.
“Between you and me, it would be better if you told Wood-Bottom so yourself.”
From the month of December onward, Angelique gave all her time to the business of the cook-shop. The number of customers was increasing. News of the successful feast of the flower-sellers' guild had spread like wildfire. ‘The Brazen Cock' was beginning to specialise in guild banquets. Tradespeople, happy to ‘wet their gills’ and guzzle in good company and for the greater glory of their patron saints, came to feast here under the freshly-varnished rafters, which were invariably adorned with the choicest game and pork-butchery.
Gradually there began to appear at ‘The Brazen Cock' parties of libertines, dissolute and rakish philosophers, who professed the right to all sensual enjoyments, a contempt of women and the denial of G5d. It was not easy to dodge their foraging hands. Moreover, they were extremely fastidious in their choice of food. But Ang£lique, though she was some¬times appalled by their cynicism, counted much on them to give her establishment a justified renown which, in turn, would bring to it customers of higher standing.
With perspiring brow, her cheeks flushed by the kitchen-fire, her fingers stained and greasy, Angelique went about her task without giving a thought to anything but the present. It did not cost her any effort to laugh, exchange banter, slap down a boldly searching hand. And stirring sauces, mincing herbs and garnishing dishes amused her.
She remembered that, when still a little girl at Monteloup, she had loved to lend a hand in the kitchen. But it was in Toulouse above all that she had taken a liking to gastronomy, under the guidance of the fastidious Joffrey de Peyrac, whose table at the Gay Learning was famed throughout the kingdom. To revive certain recipes and recollect certain hallowed principles of the culinary art sometimes caused her a melancholy joy.
When winter came, Florimond fell seriously ill. His nose ran; his ears were suppurating.
Twenty times a day, Angelique would snatch a moment to dash up the seven flights of stairs to the garret where the feverish little body was fighting its lonely battle against death. She trembled every time she approached the litter and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that her son was still breathing. She would gently caress the big, bulging forehead from which pearls of sweat poured.
“My love! My treasure! Let me keep my frail little boy! . . . 1*11 ask nothing else of life, dear God. П1 go to church again, have Masses said. But leave me my little boy. . . .”
On the third day of Florimond’s illness, Maitre Bourjus gruffly ‘ordered* Angelique to move into the big bedroom on the first floor, where he no longer slept since his wife’s death. Could a child be properly nursed in an attic no larger than a wardrobe, where six people including a monkey were crammed at night? These were real gipsy ways, the manners of a heartless beggar-wench! . . .
Florimond recovered, but Angelique stayed on in the big first-floor bedroom with her two children, while a second attic was allotted to Flipot and Iinot. Rosine continued to share Barbe’s bed.
“And moreover,” concluded Maitre Bourjus, flushing angrily, “I’d like you to stop insulting me by the daily sight of a rascally footman flinging firewood down in my courtyard under die noses of all my neighbours. If you want to warm yourself, you can help yourself from the wood-pile.”
So Angllique informed the Duchesse de Soissons through her lackey that she required her gifts no longer and thanked her for her charitable help. She tipped the flunkey on his last visit. The latter, who had never recovered from his first day’s bewilderment, nodded his head.
“I’ve been compelled to do all sorts of things in my life, and that’s a fact, but never have I seen a woman like you!”
“That would have been only half a misfortune,” retorted Angelique, “if I hadn’t been obliged to see you too.”
Lately, she had been sharing out parts of the food and clothes sent by Madame de Soissons among the beggars and tramps who, in growing numbers, were gathering at the approaches to ‘The Brazen Cock’. Among them there appeared many a well-known face, scowling and taciturn. She silently entreated these paupers to grant her the right of freedom. But they became more exacting every day. Their swarm of rags and crutches assailed her refuge ever more threateningly. Even the customers of‘The Brazen Cock* protested against this invasion, complain¬ing that the neighbourhood of the inn was more pauper-ridden than the church doors. Their smell and die sight of their running sores did not stimulate one’s appetite.
Maitre Bourjus stormed, with, for once, unfeigned rage.
“You attract them like a civet-cat attracts snakes and wood-lice. Stop giving them alms and rid me of this vermin, or I’ll be obliged to part with you.
She protested hody!
‘‘Why do you imagine that your shop is more besieged by beggars than the other shops? Haven’t you heard the rumours of famine spreading through the country? They say that the starving peasants arc swarming into the cities like armies, and that the destitute are growing in numbers. . .
But she was frightened.
There followed three terrible months.
Cold and famine increased. The beggars became threatening. Angelique made up her mind to go and see Wood-Bottom. She ought to have done so a long time ago; it had been Barcarole’s advice. But she felt faint at the thought of finding herself again before the house of the Great Coesre.
Once more she had to overcome her fears, pass a new stage of her journey, win a new batde. On a black and icy night she made for the Faubourg Saint-Denis. *
She was taken before Wood-Bottom. He squatted deep in his mud- built house, on a kind of throne, amid the smoke and soot of oil-bmps. The copper basin was before him on die ground. She threw a heavy purse into it and presented another gift: a huge roast shoulder of mutton, and a loaf of bread, which were rare delights at that period.
“It’s none too soon,” growled Wood-Bottom. “I have been expecting you, Marquise, for a long time. Do you know that you are playing a dangerous game?”
“I know that I owe it to you that I am still alive.”
She went close up to him. On either side of the cripple’s throne there stood the nightmarish members of his fearsome retinue: the Big and the Litde Eunuch, with their insignia of fools, the broom and the pike with a dead dog impaled on it, and Jean the Greybeard, with his streaming beard and his birches, the emblems of the former master of the college of Navarre.
Wood-Bottom, still wearing an impeccable stock, had a magnificent hat with two rows of red plumes.
Angelique gave pledge that every month she would bring him, or have brought to him, the same amount and promised that his ‘table* would never lack for anything. But in exchange she asked to be left free to lead her new life. She also demanded that the beggars be ordered to evacuate the doorstep of‘her* eating-house.
She saw from Wood-Bottom’s face that she had at last acted in a proper manner; and that he considered himself satisfied.
On leaving him, she gravely dropped a curtsy.
In 1663, Angelique turned to account the enforced leisure of the Lenten fast to carry out three projects that she had set her heart upon.
First of all, she moved house. She had never cared for this tightly- wedged and busy district in the shadow of the Great Chatelet. In the lovely borough of the Marais she found a two-storey lodging comprising three rooms which seemed a palace to her.
It was situated in the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, not far from where it crossed the rue Vieille-du-Temple. Under Henri IV, a financier had started building there a handsome town-house of brick and ashlar. However, ruined by the wars or perhaps by his crooked dealings, he had had to leave it unfinished. Only the gateway, flanked by two lodges, at the approach to the big inner courtyard, had been completed. A little old woman, who was the owner of the building, lived on one side of the vaulted entrance. She rented the other lodge to Angelique at a reasonable price.
On the ground floor two heavily-barred windows lit a passage that led to a tiny kitchen and to a fairly spacious room which Ang&que took for herself. The large room on the upper floor was reserved for the children, who moved into it with their governess, Barbe, who had left Maitre Bourjus’s employ to enter into that of‘Madame Morens’, which was the name Angflique had decided to adopt. Some day she would perhaps be able to add the nobiliary particle to it. Thus the children would bear their father’s name: de Morens. And later, she would try to claim for them his rank, if not his heritage.
She had wild hopes. Money can do anything. Had she not already a place of her own?
Barbe had left the restaurant without regrets. She did not like the cookery trade and was happy only with ‘her babies’. For some time she had devoted herself entirely to them. To take her place, Angelique had engaged two kitchen-maids and a scullion. What with Rosine, who was growing into a fresh and sprightly serving-maid, Flipot as kitchen-boy, and Linot more particularly in charge of the customers* entertainment and of selling scones and rissoles, the staff of ‘The Brazen Cock’ was becoming impressive.
At the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, Barbe and the children would enjoy the quiet.
On the evening they moved in, Angelique never stopped running upstairs and downstairs in her excitement. There was not much in the way of furniture: a bed in each room, a small cot for the children, two tables, three chairs, square plush cushions to sit on. But the fire danced in the hearth, and the big room was redolent with the aroma of pancakes. That’s how the house-warming was celebrated.
Patou the dog wagged his tail, and the little nursemaid Javotte smiled at Florimond, who smiled back at her.
For Angelique had gone out to Neuilly to fetch Florimond’s and Cantor’s former companions in misfortune. When she decided to settle down in the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, Angelique had thought of their needing a watch-dog. The Narais district was isolated and dangerous at night, with its big empty spaces, its garden patches that separated the dwelling-houses. Angelique was assured of Wood-Bottom’s protection, but in the darkness thieves could make a mistake. And there came back to her mind the memory of the little girl to whom her two children un¬doubtedly owed their lives, and the dog who had sheltered Florimond in his misery.
The foster-mother did not recognise her, for Angelique waS wearing her mask and had come in a hired carriage. For the offered sum of money, the woman was all smiles and gladly parted with the girl, who was her niece, and with the dog. Angelique wondered about Florimond’s possible reaction, but the two newcomers seemed to arouse in him nothing but pleasant memories. It was Angelique herself who felt a twinge as she looked at Javotte and Patou, remembering Florimond in his kennel.
That evening, she had been extravagant. She had bought toys. Not those paper-mills or hobby-horses that could be acquired for a few sous on the Pont-Neuf. But toys which were said to be manufactured in Nurem¬berg: a little gilt-wood carriage with four dolls, three little glass dogs, an ivory whistle and, for Cantor, a painted wooden egg that contained several smaller ones.
Looking at her little family, Angelique said to Barbe:
“Barbe, some day these two young gentlemen will go to the Academy of Mont-Pamasse, and we shall present them at Court.”
And Barbe answered, clasping her hands:
“I do believe it, Madame.”
Just then, the crier of the dead passed through the street.
“Hark, all you who are asleep in bed,
Pray God for the dead . . .”
Angelique rushed furiously to the window and poured a pail of water over his head.
Angelique’s second move was to change the sign over the eating-house of‘The Brazen Cock’, which, in view of her success, became the tavern of ‘The Red Mask’, named after the red mask she wore habitually in her dining-rooms. The young woman had great ambitions, for, apart from a wrought-iron sign hanging over the street which would depict a carnival mask, she wished to have a painted sign placed above the entrance door.
One day, as she was returning from the market, she came to a sudden stop before a gunsmith’s shop. Its sign represented an old soldier with a white beard, about to drink wine out of his helmet, while his pike, leaning near him, was Sparkling with its steely glints.
“But that’s old Guillaume!” she cried.
She dashed into the shop, and the shopkeeper told her that the master-piece above his door was the handiwork of a painter by the name of Gontran Sance who lived in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel.
With throbbing heart, Angelique ran to the address she had been given. On the third floor of a modest-looking house, a small, smiling, pink young woman opened the door. In the studio Angelique found Gontran at his easel amidst his canvases and paints: azure, red-brown, ash-blue, Hungarian green. ... He was smoking his pipe and painting a naked little cherub, whose model was a lovely little baby girl of a few months, lying on a blue velvet carpet.
To begin with, the visitor, who was masked, talked of the gunsmith's sign. Then, lifting her mask with a laugh, she made herself known. She had the feeling that Gontran was sincerely delighted to see her again. He was looking more and more like their father, and had his way of placing his hands on his knees, when listening, like a horse dealer. He told Angllique that he had passed his examinations and married the daughter of his former master, Van Osscl.
“But you’ve married beneath you!” cried Angelique, appalled, the moment the little Dutchwoman had gone out into the kitchen.
“What about you? If I understand correctly, you are the hostess of a tavern and arc pouring out drinks to people some of whom are certainly of a much lower rank than I.”
After a moment’s silence he went on, not without shrewdness:
“And you’ve come rushing to see me, without hesitation or false shame! Would you have hurried in the same way to announce your present state to Raymond, who has just been appointed confessor to the Queen Mother; or to our sister Maric-Agnes, who is maid-of-honour to the Queen, and who plays the whore at the Louvre, according to the rules of that swarm of beauties; or even to young Albert, who is a page to the Marquis de Rochant?”
Angelique admitted that she hadn’t kept very close track of her family. She asked what had become of Denis.
“He is in the army. Father is jubilant. At last a de Sance in the King’s service! Jean-Marie, the last bom, is at college. Raymond may possibly obtain a church living for him, for he is on the best possible terms with the King’s confessor, who has the nomination sheets. We’ll end up having a bishop in the family.”
“Don’t you think that we are a funny lot?” asked Angelique, nodding. “There are de Sances right up and down the ladder.”
“Hortense is hovering somewhere in between, with her solicitor of a husband. They have a great many connections, but live rather meanly. With this business of having to buy back their office, they haven’t been paid a penny by the State for almost four years.”
“Do you see them?”
“Yes. As I do Raymond and the others. They are none of them very proud to see me. But they are all glad to have their portraits painted.”
Angelique hesitated briefly.
“And . . . when you meet . . . do you ever talk of me?”*
“Never!” the painter said harshly. “The memories connected with you are too terrible. It was a catastrophe, a collapse that shattered our hearts. Such as they are. Luckily, few people knew that you were our sister— you, the wife of a sorcerer who was burned on the Place de Greve!” However, while he spoke, he had taken her hand into his, which was stained with paints and scarred by acids. He parted her fingers, touched the small palm that showed traces of blisters and bums from the oven, and he placed his cheek on it with caressing affection, a gesture that he used to make in his early childhood. . . .
Angelique’s throat ached so much that she thought she would start to cry. But she had not cried for too long now! Her last tears had been shed well before Joffrey’s death. She had lost the habit.
She withdrew her hand and said almost curtly, as she looked at the canvases leaning against the wall all around her:
“You make beautiful things, Gontran.”
“Yes. And yet the great noblemen presume to treat me familiarly, and the bourgeois look down on me haughtily, because I make them with my hands, these beautiful things. Would they rather I worked with my feet? And why should the handling of a sword represent a less manual and less contemptible work than the handling of a brush?”
He shook his head and a smile lit his face. Marriage had made him gayer and more talkative.
“Little sister, I am full of confidence. Some day, we’ll go to Court, we’ll both of us go to Versailles. The King calls for artists in great numbers. I shall paint the ceilings of the apartments, the portraits of Princes and Princesses, and the King will say to me: ‘You make beautiful things, sir/ And to you he will say: ‘Madame, you are the most beautiful woman in Versailles.’ ”
They both burst out laughing together.