Angelique Part 7. Versailles Chapter 1
Angelique - Part 7. Versailles Chapter 1 - Read online
ANGELIQUE WALKED ALONG THE BANKS OF THE SEINE, reviewing
the various stages of her journey since that evening when she had been
summoned before Monsieur Colbert in great secrecy.
First, there had come the chocolate-house which had very shortly become the fashionable meeting-place of Paris. The shop-sign read ‘At the Spanish Midget’s*. It had received a visit from the Queen, delighted no longer to be the only one in Paris to drink chocolate. Her Majesty had come escorted by her midget-woman and by her dwarf, the dignified Barcarole.
Spurred by her success, Angelique had set up branch establishments in several small towns in the neighbourhood of Paris: at Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau and Versailles, and even in Lyons and Nantes.
She showed particular acumen in the choice of those whom she put in charge of these new enterprises. She granted them great advantages but demanded honest book-keeping and stipulated in the contract that unless the establishment showed continuous progress in the first six months of its existence, the manager would be replaced. Spurred by this threat, the latter would display a feverish activity to convince the provincials that it was their duty to drink chocolate.
All this enabled her to make a great deal of money.
Lost in her calculations, Angelique became aware that she had left the riverside and had taken the rue du Beautreillis. The busy traffic in this street brought her back to reality. Walking on foot among water-carriers and maids on errands was not in keeping with her new status. No longer wearing the short petticoats of women of the people, she looked woefully at the mud-stained hem of her heavy skirts.
A sudden jostling among the crowd crushed her against the wall of a house. She protested violently. The burly citizen who almost squashed her turned round to shout:
“Patience, pretty lady. It’s the Prince passing by.**
A wide carriage-gate had indeed just opened and a coach-and-six was coming out. Through the window Angelique had just time to glimpse the sullen profile of die Prince de Conde. Some people shouted:
“Long live the Prince !**
Curtly he raised his lace-ruffed sleeve. For the people, he always remained the victor of Rocroi. Unfortunately, the Peace of the Ругёпёев
had forced him into a retirement which was not at all to his liking.
When he had gone, the traffic resumed. Angelique passed in front of the courtyard of the mansion he had just left. She glanced into it. For some time now, her beautiful apartment in the Place des Vosges had no longer satisfied her. She, too, dreamed of owning a mansion with a carriage-drive, a court in which a coach could turn, a stable-yard and kitchens, servants’ quarters and, at the back, a beautiful garden with orange-trees and flower-beds.
The residence she now faced was of comparatively recent construction. Its white, simple facade, with very high windows, wrought-iron bal¬conies, its trim slate-roof with rounded dormer-windows, were in the fashion of only recent years.
The gate closed again slowly. Angelique lingered on. She noticed that the carved coat-of-arms above the gate seemed to have been broken. It wasn’t age or the weather that could thus have effaced the princely arms, but only a workman’s deliberate chisel.
“Whose mansion is this?” she asked a florist who had a shop not far away.
“Why, the Prince’s of course,” said the other, preening herself.
“Why did the Prince remove the coat-of-arms above the gate? It seems a pity, the other sculptures are so beautiful!”
“Oh! that’s another story,” said the good woman, and her face dark¬ened. “They were the arms of the man who built the mansion. An accursed nobleman. He practised witchcraft and summoned the devil. He was sentenced to death at the stake.”
Angelique stood motionless. Then she felt her face slowly drain of blood. So that was why, before this light oak gate brightly gleaming in the sunshine, she had had a feeling of having seen it before. . . .
It was here that she had come when she had first arrived in Paris. This was the gate on which she had seen affixed the seals of the King’s justice. . . .
“They say he was a very rich man,” the woman continued. “The King shared out his wealth. His Highness the Prince received the greater part of it, and this mansion along with it. Before moving into it, he had the sorcerer’s arms scratched out and holy water sprinkled everywhere. You can imagine . . . he wanted to sleep in peace!”
Angelique thanked the flower-woman and walked away.
Angelique had moved into the Place Royalc (or Place des Vosges) a few months after the opening of the chocolate-house. Money w&s already pouring in. In leaving the rue dcs Francs-Bourgeois for the centre of the aristocratic quarter, the young woman was mounting a rung in the social ladder.
In the Place Royale gentlemen would fight duels, and beautiful ladies would converse on philosophy and astronomy or compose verses.
Far from the all-pervading smell of cocoa, Angelique felt reborn and opened eyes full of cordiality on this exclusive and so very Parisian society.
The square, set in the frame of its pink houses with their high slate-roofs and their shady arcades, which housed novelty shops on the ground floor, offered her a refuge where she could relax from her hard work.
Life here was secluded and precious. Scandals took on a false, theatrical air.
Angelique began to savour the pleasures of conversation, that in¬strument of culture which for the last half-century had transformed French society. Unfortunately, she was afraid of showing herself awk¬ward. Her mind had for so long been remote from the problems set by an epigram, a madrigal or a sonnet! Moreover, on account of her origins, which were common, or believed to be so, the best salons remained closed to her. To conquer them required patience. She dressed richly, but with¬out ever being quite sure that her clothes were fashionable.
When her little boys went for a walk under the trees in the square, people would turn round to look at diem, so pretty and well-dressed they were. Florimond and even Cantor now wore real men's suits—in silk, brocade or velvet—with big lace collars, piped stockings, shoes with bows and heels. Plumed hats sat on their pretty curls, and Florimond had a little sword, which delighted him. Under his nervous, fragile appearance, he had a passion for fighting. He would challenge the monkey Piccolo to a duel, or else the peaceful Cantor, who at the age of four still spoke but little. Had it not been for the intelligence lurking in his lovely green eyes, Angelique would have thought he was a little backward. But he was merely taciturn and saw no need to talk, since Florimond understood him anyway and the servants anticipated his slightest desires.
Angelique had a woman cook and a second footman at the Place Royale. With her coachman, and Flipot, promoted to the post of lackey, Madame Morens could cut quite a respectable figure among her neigh¬bours. Barbe and Javotte wore lace caps, golden crosses, Indian shawls.
But Angelique was quite aware that, in the eyes of the others, she was nevertheless a social upstart. She wanted to rise higher, and the drawing-rooms of the Marais quarter were the very places which enabled ambitious women to move up from the bourgeoisie to the aristocracy, for bourgeois women and noble ladies foregathered here under the aegis of wit.
She began by ingratiating herself with an old spinster who occupied the apartment below hers. This lady had known the heyday of prkieuse society and its feminine quarrels. She had met the Marquise de Ram- bouillet, had frequented Mademoiselle de Scudcry. Her jargon was so affected as to be unintelligible.
Philonide de Parajonc alleged that there were seven different kinds of esteem and divided sighs into five categories. She despised men and detested Moliere. Love, in her eyes, was “the infernal shackle”.
However, she had not always been so disdainful. In her youth, it was whispered, far from contenting herself with the insipid region of Soulful Dalliance, she had not spumed the realm of Coquetry and had often reached its capital, Sensual Rapture. She herself would admit, showing the whites of her eyes: “Love has most frightfully blighted my heart!”
Angelique attended, with Mademoiselle de Parajonc, the lectures at the Precious Palace. Here she met the flower of honest society, that is to say a great many women of the upper middle class, churchmen, young scholars, provincials.
One day Angelique asked Mademoiselle de Parajonc to accompany her to the Tuileries. The latter was her constant companion. She knew every¬body and was able to name each and every one of them for her friend, who was thus becoming acquainted with the new faces at Court. She also served as a foil to Angelique’s beauty. She did so quite unconsciously, for the poor Philonide, plastered with white lead up to her eyes, her eyelids ringed with black like an old owl, still thought she was as irresistible as in the days when she made her beaux sigh interminably.
She taught Angelique the right manner of strolling through the T uileries, miming the necessary gestures with great verve, which made insolent passers-by giggle. But she saw only a homage rendered to her charms.
“In the Tuileries,” she was apt to say, “you must saunter nonchalantly in the main avenue. You must chat all the time without saying anything in particular, so as to appear witty. You must laugh without cause, so as to appear gay . . . pull yourself up every now and then to exhibit your bosom . . . open your eyes wide to make them larger, bite your lips to redden them . . . motion with your head to the one, with your fan to the other. . . . Finally, soften up a little, my dear! Trifle elegantly, gesticulate, simper and stress all this with a drooping air. . . .”
It was not really a bad lesson, and Angelique put it into practice with more restraint, and also with more success, than her companion.
The Tuileries, according to Mademoiselle de Parajonc, were “the lists of high society”, and the Cours-la-Reine the “empire of amoroui glances”. One frequented the Tuileries to await the proper hour for the Cours, and one met there again in the evening after the Cours, alternating the drive in the carriage with promenades on foot.
The wooded groves of the park were favourable to poets and lovers. Abb£s prepared their sermons there, lawyers their speeches. All persons of rank came there for rendezvous, and one sometimes met the King or the Queen, or Monseigneur the Dauphin with his governess.
Angelique pulled her companion over to the Great Flower-bed, where the high-ranking people could generally be found. The Prince de Conde went there almost every evening. She was disappointed not to find him, flew into a temper, stamped her foot.
“I fain would know why you were so avid to see His Highness,” re¬marked Philonide with astonishment.
“I simply had to sec him.”
“Did you wish to hand him a petition? ... If so, stop wailing, my dear, for here he comes.”
The Prince de Conde had indeed just arrived and was approaching across the wide avenue, surrounded by the gentlemen of his household. Angelique realised that there was no possibility of approaching the Prince. Could she say:
'Monseigneur, give me back the mansion of the Rue du Beautreillis which belongs to me and which you have wrongfully received from the King’s hands’?
Or else:
'Monseigneur, I am the wife of the Comte de Peyrac, whose coat-of- arms you had scratched out and whose house you had exorcised’?
The impulse which had led her to the Tuileries to see the Prince de Conde was infantile and stupid. She was just a newly-rich chocolate- maker. Nobody could possibly present her to the great nobleman, and anyhow, what could she have said to him? . . . She reproached herself vehemently: ‘Idiot! If you always behaved so impulsively and un¬reasonably, your business affairs would be in a nice mess! . . .*
“Come along,” she said to the old maid.
And abruptly she turned away from the glittering, gossiping party which was passing near-by.
Despite the radiant evening and the gentle spring sky, Angelique re¬mained sullen during die rest of their walk. Philonide asked her if they should go on to the Cours. She said no. Her carriage was too plain.
An effeminate young dandy approached them:
“Madame,” he said to Angllique, “my friends and I have been asking ourselves questions about you. One wagers that you are a proctor’s wife, the other that you are a spinster lady and a preeicuse. Do resolve our dispute.”
It could have made her laugh. But she was in a bad temper, and she detested these petits-maitres, painted like dolls, whose affectations included wearing the nail of the little finger longer than the others.
“Why don’t you wager that you are a fool?” she retorted. “In that way you’ll never lose.”
And she left him standing there speechless.
Philonide de Parajonc was shocked.
“Your reply did not lack in wit, but it smacked of the shopkeeper from three miles away. You’ll never succeed in the drawing-room if . . .”
“Oh, Philonide!” exclaimed Angelique, stopping suddenly. “Look . . . there!” '
“Where?”
“There,” repeated Angelique in a voice which had dropped to a whisper.
A few steps from her, framed by the tender green of a shrub, a tall young man was standing, casually propped against the base of a marble statue. He was of outstanding beauty, to which the elegance of his clothes added further perfection. His almond-green velvet suit was overlaid with gold embroideries in a pattern of birds and flowers. It was a little ex¬travagant, but as beautiful as the livery of spring. A white hat adorned with green plumes sat on his flowing, fair wig. Set in the frame of those long curls, his pink-and-white face, softly dabbed with powder, sported a blond moustache, finely drawn in a single stroke. His eyes were large, and of a transparent blue which took on a greenish hue in the leafy shade.
The nobleman’s features were impassive and his eyes did not blink. Was he dreaming? Meditating? ... His blue pupils stared vacantly like those of a blind man. In the fixedness of this aimless reverie, they had a snake-like coldness. He did not seem aware of the interest he aroused.
“Well, Angelique,” said Mademoiselle de Parajonc sourly, “you’ve taken leave of your senses, upon my word! This way of staring at a man is dreadfully common.”
“What . . . what is his name?”
“It’s the Marquis du Plcssis-Bcllicrc, of course! What’s there ъо startling about him? He’s waiting for his beau, no doubt. I really don’t see why you, who don’t care for petits-maitres, are standing there as if rooted to the ground.”
“Forgive me,” stammered Angelique, recovering her wits.
For a second she had become again the wild little girl, sunk in ad¬miration. Philippe! The scornful big cousin. Monteloup, and the smell of the dining-hall where the heat of the soup drew smoke from the damp table-cloth. Medley of pain and sweetness!
The two ladies strolled past him. He seemed to notice them, stirred, and doffing his hat with a gesture of profound boredom, greeted them.
“He is a gentleman of the King's suite, is he not?" asked Angelique, when they were out of earshot.
“Yes, he went to the wars with His Highness the Prince when the latter was still with the Spaniards. Since then, he has been named Grand Master of the Royal Wolf-hunt. He is so handsome and so fond of war that the King calls him Mars. However, dreadful things are being said about him.”
“Dreadful things? . . . Whatever can they be?”
Mademoiselle dc Parajonc gave a little resigned snigger.
“There you are, quite shocked to hear aspersions cast on the handsome young lord. But all the women are like you. They run after him and swoon at the sight of his fair hair, his fresh complexion, his elegance. They wont rest till they've slipped into his bed. But then they change their tune. Yes, yes, Armande de Circe and Mademoiselle Jacari have told me in confidence . . . The handsome Philippe seems gentle and polite. He is as absent-minded as an old scholar. But in love, it appears he is an appalling brute: an ostler has more consideration for his wife than he has for his mistresses. All the women whom he's taken in his arms detest him. . . .”
Angelique was only half listening. The sight of Philippe, leaning against the marble statue, motionless and almost as unreal as an apparition, would not fade from her mind. He had taken her hand, in the old days, to dance with her. That was in Plcssis, in the white chateau in the great forest of Nieul.
“It seems that he has a most cruel imagination for torturing his mis-tresses,” Philonide continued. “He beat Madame de Circe so horribly for a mere trifle that she practically could not move for a week, which was very embarrassing on account of her husband. And on his campaigns the way he behaves when he’s victorious is an outright scandal. His troops arc more feared than those of the notorious Jean de Wcrth. They pursue the women even into the churches and do them violence without a thought. At Norgcn lie summoned the daughters of the persons of note, half killed them because they offered resistance and, after a night of orgy with his officers, handed them over to the troops. Several of them died as a result, or else went mad. If His Highness the Prince had not intervened on his behalf, Philippe du Plcssis would certainly have been sent into disgrace.”
“Philonide, you arc a jealous old maid!” cried Angflique, gripped by a sudden anger. “This young man is not, can’t be, the ogre you describe. You are just wilfully exaggerating all the gossip you have gleaned about him.” -
Mademoiselle de Parajonc stopped short, choking with indignation.
“I!... Gossip!... You know how I loathe this sort of thing, all the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood and everything that smacks ofchatty visits to a woman in childbed. I indulging in gossip! . . • When I keep so utterly aloof from all vulgar things! If I talk to you like this, it’s because it’s true!”
“Well, if it is, it’s not entirely his fault,” Angelique declared. “He’s like that because women have hurt him on account of his beauty.”
“How . . . how do you know? Are you acquainted with him?”
“N . . . no.”
“You are mad, then!” shouted Mademoiselle de Parajonc, flushing crimson with rage. “I’d never have thought you capable of letting a whipper-snapper like that turn your head. Farewell. . . .”
She left her standing there and strode off towards the park-gate. Angelique had no alternative but to follow her, for she did not wish to fall out with Mademoiselle de Parajonc, of whom she was fond.
If Angelique and the old blue-stocking had not quarrelled, that day in the Tuileries, on account of Philippe du Plessis-Befliere, they would not have left the park so early. And if they had not left the park at that very moment, they would not have been the victims of a vulgar bet in which the lackeys massed outside the gates had just indulged. Monsieur de Lauzun and Monsieur de Montcspan would not have fought a duel for the lovely green eyes of Madame Morens. And Angelique would probably have had to wait for a long while before frequenting again the great ones of this world. Which shows that it is a good thing sometimes to be sharp- tongued and hot-tempered.
Since admittance to the garden was forbidden by a notice on the gate ‘to lackeys and the rabble’, there always stood, outside the fence, a noisy swarm of footmen, flunkeys and coachmen, who would while away the long hours of waiting with games of cards or ninepins, when they weren’t fighting or drinking at the tavern on the comer. That night, the lackeys of the Due de Lauzun had made a wager. They’d stand a drink to the one among them who would be bold enough to lift up the skirt of the first lady coming out of the Tuileries.
It so happened that the lady was Angelique, who had caught up with Philonide and was endeavouring to calm her.
Before she had had time to foresee the insolent gesture, she found her¬self gripped by a tall, lanky lout who stank of wine, and her skirts were turned up most impudently. Almost instantly, her hand struck the oaf's face. Mademoiselle de Parajonc uttered parrot-like screams.
A gentleman who was about to mount into his carriage, and who had witnessed the scene, motioned to his men, who, overjoyed at the chance, rushed at Monsieur de Lauzuns footmen. There followed a violent scuffle amid horse-droppings and an interested circle of onlookers. The gentleman’s forces carried the day. He himself applauded noisily.
He walked up to Angelique and saluted her.
“Thank you, Monsieur, for your intervention,” she said.
She was furious and humiliated, but above all badly scared, for she had been on the verge of chastising the drunkard herself in the well-tried manner of the tavern of ‘The Red Mask’, seasoning the lesson with some forceful terms drawn straight from Polack’s vocabulary. All the care Angelique had taken to become a great lady again would have been instantly set at nought. The next day, the ladies of the Marais would have gloated over the incident.
White with apprehension at this thought, the young woman decided to swoon a little, in the true tradition of good breeding.
“Ah! Monsieur . . . what infamy! It’s dreadful! To be thus exposed to the outrage of low reprobates!”
“Calm yourself, Madame,” he said, supporting her with a zealous and vigorous arm.
He was a handsome, bright-eyed young man, whose singsong accent was unmistakable. Yet another Gascon, without a shadow of a doubt! He introduced himself:
“Louis Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Sieur de Pardaillan and other places, Marquis de Montespan.”
The name was familiar to Angelique. The newcomer belonged to the oldest nobility of the province of Guyennc. She smiled alluringly, and the Marquis, visibly delighted with this encounter, insisted on knowing where and when he might take news of her health. She did not wish to give her name, but answered:
“Come to the Tuileries tomorrow at the same time. I hope that the cir-cumstances will be more favourable and enable us to converse pleasantly.”
“Where shall I wait for you?”
“Near the Echo.”
It was a promising spot. The Echo was the trysting-place for gallant encounters. Enchanted, the Marquis kissed the hand held out to him.
“Have you a sedan-chair? May I take you home?”
“My carriage is not far,” Angelique assured him, unwilling to display her modest equipage.
“Till tomorrow, then, mysterious beauty.”
This time, he swifdy kissed her cheek, and gaily capered away to his coach.
“You lacked modesty . . .” Mademoiselle de Parajonc began.
But the Due de Lauzun was just appearing at the park gate. Seeing the state in which his footmen were—one spitting out his teeth, another bleeding from his nose, and all of them tom and grimy—he began to rage in a falsetto voice. When it was explained to him that the mischief had been done by the flunkeys of a noble lord, he shouted:
“Those varlets and their master deserve to be belaboured with sticks. Their sort isn’t worthy to be touched with a sword.”
The Marquis de Montespan had not yet sat down in his carriage. He leaped down from the step, ran after Lauzun, seized him by the arm, made him wheel round and, after pushing the other’s hat down over his eyes, called him a scamp and a lout.
A moment later, the flash of two swords gleamed in the air and the two Gascons were fighting a duel under the eyes of the increasingly interested onlookers.
“Gentlemen, for mercy’s sake!” cried Mademoiselle de Parajonc. “Duelling is forbidden. You’ll both sleep in the Bastille tonight.”
But the two lords took no heed of this sensible forecast and crossed their irons with fervour, while the crowd opposed a real passive resistance to the squad of Swiss guards who were trying to force their way through to the two duellists.
Happily, the Marquis de Montespan managed to slash Lauzun’s thigh. Peguilin stumbled and dropped his sword.
“Come away quick, dear fellow!” cried the Marquis, supporting his opponent. “Let’s dodge the Bastille! Help me, ladies!”
The carriage moved off at the very moment when the Swiss guard, amid blows and strokes from their halberds, their ncck-ruffs all awry, forged their way through to it.
As the carriage hurtled along the rue Saint-Honore, Angelique, stanching Pcguilin’s wound with her sash, found herself piled higglcdy- piggledy in the coach with the Marquis dc Montespan, Mademoiselle de Parajonc and even the lackey who had provoked the incident and who had been thrown, half stunned, on the floor. *
“You’ll be sentenced to the stocks and the galleys,” Peguilin told him, kicking him in the stomach with his heel. “And I certainly won’t pay a single livre to buy you off! . . . My dear Pardaillan, thanks to you, my surgeon won’t need to bleed me this season.”
“You must get a dressing,” said the Marquis. “Come to my place. I believe my wife’s at home today with her women-friends.”
The wife of Monsieur de Montespan was, as Angelique discovered, none other than the beautiful Athenais de Mortemart, Hortense’s former school-friend, with whom she had watched the King’s triumphant entry into Paris.
Mademoiselle de Mortemart had married in 1662. She had become even more beautiful. Her rose-like complexion, blue eyes and golden hair, coupled with the famous family wit, made her one of the most widely noticed women at Court. Unfortunately, though both her hus¬band’s and her own family were of ancient lineage, they were both similarly impecunious. Harassed by debts and creditors, poor Athenais could not show off her beauty in all the glamour it deserved, and she would sometimes have to miss Court balls because she could not afford a new dress.
The apartment where the duellists of the Tuileries, accompanied by Angelique and Mademoiselle de Parajonc, eventually arrived, bore the mark of almost shabby poverty side by side with an almost overwhelming show of elegant wearing apparel.
Sumptuous gowns trailed on the dust-covered furniture. There was no fire despite the still cool season, and Athenais, in a taffeta dressing-gown, was fighting like a shrew with a goldsmith’s employee who had come to claim a deposit for an order of a gold and silver necklace which the young woman meant to wear for die first time at Versailles the following week.
Monsieur de Montespan immediately took control and kicked the artisan out of the house. Athenais protested. She wanted her necklace. There followed an argument, while poor Lauzun’s blood kept trickling on to the stone floor. Madame de Montespan became aware of it at last and called her friend, Fran^cise d’Aubignc, who had come to help her tidy up the apartment, for the maidservants had walked out the day before.
The widow of the poet Scarron prompdy appeared, the same as ever, with her shabby dress, her big black eyes and the prim expression on her mouth. Angelique had the impression of having left her at the Temple only yesterday.
‘hi another moment I’ll sec Hortense appear,* she thought.
She helped Fran^oisc to carry the Marquis de Lauzun, who had fainted by now, over to a settee.
“I’ll fetch some water from the kitchens,” said Madame Scarron. “Be good enough to keep the dressing well against the wound . . • Madame.” The imperceptible hesitation showed Ang£lique that Madame Scarron had recognised her. It did not matter. Madame Scarron was one of those people who themselves have to conceal part of their own existence. In any case, sooner or later, Angflique was determined to confront openly the faces from her past.
In the next room the Montespans continued to squabble.
“However could you fail to recognise her? . . . Why, it’s Madame Morens! You’re fighting a duel now for a chocolate-shopkeeper!”
“She is adorable . . . and don’t forget that she has the reputation of being one of the richest women in Paris. If it’s really she, I don’t regret my gesture.”
“You are revolting!”
“My dear, do you want your necklace, or don’t you?”
‘All right,* Angelique said to herself, ‘I see in what way I shall have to show my gratitude to these people of the great nobility. A sumptuous present, perhaps even a weighty purse, provided it’s well coated with discretion and tact.”
The Due de Lauzun raised his eyelids. His eyes rested dimly on Angelique.
“I am dreaming,” he stammered. “Can it be you, my sweet?”
“It can, it is,” she said, smiling at him.
“Damn me, I never expected to see you again, Angelique! I often wondered what could have become of you.”
“You may have wondered, but admit you didn’t try to find out.” “That’s true, my sweet. I am a courtier. All courtiers behave rather like cowards towards those who’ve fallen into disfavour.” He scrutinised the young woman’s dress and jewels.
“Things seem to have turned out well,” he said.
“They had to. My name nowadays is Madame Morens.”
“By Jove, I’ve heard about you! You sell chocolate, don’t you?”
“I amuse myself. Some people busy themselves with astronomy or philosophy. For my part, I sel! chocolate. What about you, Pcguilin? Is your life still as glamorous? Does the King still extend his friendship towards you?”
Plguilin’s face darkened and he seemed to forget his curiosity.
“Oh, my dear, my favour is unsteadily poised. The King imagines that I conspired with Vardes in that Spanish letter affair, you know, that letter someone got to the Queen to inform her of her august husband’s in¬fidelities with La Valliere. ... I cannot dispel this suspicion, and His
Majesty is shockingly rude to meat times! . . . Thank God, the Grande Mademoiselle is in love with me.”
“Mademoiselle de Montpensier?”
“Yes,” whispered Peguilin, rolling the white of his eyes. “I even believe she may propose marriage to me.”
“Oh! Peguilin!” exclaimed Ang£lique, bursting out laughing. “You are incredible, incorrigible. You haven’t changed a bit!”
“You haven’t changed either. And you are as beautiful as a woman come to life again.”
“What do you know about the beauty of such women, Peguilin?” “Why, what the Church tells us! ... A glorious body! . . . Come over here, my sweetheart, so that I can kiss you.”
He took her face into both his hands and pulled her towards him.
“Hell and damnation!” shouted Montespan from the threshold. “It’s not enough that I rip your thigh open to stop you from running, you insist on cutting the ground from under my feet in my own house, damned Peguilin! I was a fool not to let you go to the Bastille!”
First, there had come the chocolate-house which had very shortly become the fashionable meeting-place of Paris. The shop-sign read ‘At the Spanish Midget’s*. It had received a visit from the Queen, delighted no longer to be the only one in Paris to drink chocolate. Her Majesty had come escorted by her midget-woman and by her dwarf, the dignified Barcarole.
Spurred by her success, Angelique had set up branch establishments in several small towns in the neighbourhood of Paris: at Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau and Versailles, and even in Lyons and Nantes.
She showed particular acumen in the choice of those whom she put in charge of these new enterprises. She granted them great advantages but demanded honest book-keeping and stipulated in the contract that unless the establishment showed continuous progress in the first six months of its existence, the manager would be replaced. Spurred by this threat, the latter would display a feverish activity to convince the provincials that it was their duty to drink chocolate.
All this enabled her to make a great deal of money.
Lost in her calculations, Angelique became aware that she had left the riverside and had taken the rue du Beautreillis. The busy traffic in this street brought her back to reality. Walking on foot among water-carriers and maids on errands was not in keeping with her new status. No longer wearing the short petticoats of women of the people, she looked woefully at the mud-stained hem of her heavy skirts.
A sudden jostling among the crowd crushed her against the wall of a house. She protested violently. The burly citizen who almost squashed her turned round to shout:
“Patience, pretty lady. It’s the Prince passing by.**
A wide carriage-gate had indeed just opened and a coach-and-six was coming out. Through the window Angelique had just time to glimpse the sullen profile of die Prince de Conde. Some people shouted:
“Long live the Prince !**
Curtly he raised his lace-ruffed sleeve. For the people, he always remained the victor of Rocroi. Unfortunately, the Peace of the Ругёпёев
had forced him into a retirement which was not at all to his liking.
When he had gone, the traffic resumed. Angelique passed in front of the courtyard of the mansion he had just left. She glanced into it. For some time now, her beautiful apartment in the Place des Vosges had no longer satisfied her. She, too, dreamed of owning a mansion with a carriage-drive, a court in which a coach could turn, a stable-yard and kitchens, servants’ quarters and, at the back, a beautiful garden with orange-trees and flower-beds.
The residence she now faced was of comparatively recent construction. Its white, simple facade, with very high windows, wrought-iron bal¬conies, its trim slate-roof with rounded dormer-windows, were in the fashion of only recent years.
The gate closed again slowly. Angelique lingered on. She noticed that the carved coat-of-arms above the gate seemed to have been broken. It wasn’t age or the weather that could thus have effaced the princely arms, but only a workman’s deliberate chisel.
“Whose mansion is this?” she asked a florist who had a shop not far away.
“Why, the Prince’s of course,” said the other, preening herself.
“Why did the Prince remove the coat-of-arms above the gate? It seems a pity, the other sculptures are so beautiful!”
“Oh! that’s another story,” said the good woman, and her face dark¬ened. “They were the arms of the man who built the mansion. An accursed nobleman. He practised witchcraft and summoned the devil. He was sentenced to death at the stake.”
Angelique stood motionless. Then she felt her face slowly drain of blood. So that was why, before this light oak gate brightly gleaming in the sunshine, she had had a feeling of having seen it before. . . .
It was here that she had come when she had first arrived in Paris. This was the gate on which she had seen affixed the seals of the King’s justice. . . .
“They say he was a very rich man,” the woman continued. “The King shared out his wealth. His Highness the Prince received the greater part of it, and this mansion along with it. Before moving into it, he had the sorcerer’s arms scratched out and holy water sprinkled everywhere. You can imagine . . . he wanted to sleep in peace!”
Angelique thanked the flower-woman and walked away.
Angelique had moved into the Place Royalc (or Place des Vosges) a few months after the opening of the chocolate-house. Money w&s already pouring in. In leaving the rue dcs Francs-Bourgeois for the centre of the aristocratic quarter, the young woman was mounting a rung in the social ladder.
In the Place Royale gentlemen would fight duels, and beautiful ladies would converse on philosophy and astronomy or compose verses.
Far from the all-pervading smell of cocoa, Angelique felt reborn and opened eyes full of cordiality on this exclusive and so very Parisian society.
The square, set in the frame of its pink houses with their high slate-roofs and their shady arcades, which housed novelty shops on the ground floor, offered her a refuge where she could relax from her hard work.
Life here was secluded and precious. Scandals took on a false, theatrical air.
Angelique began to savour the pleasures of conversation, that in¬strument of culture which for the last half-century had transformed French society. Unfortunately, she was afraid of showing herself awk¬ward. Her mind had for so long been remote from the problems set by an epigram, a madrigal or a sonnet! Moreover, on account of her origins, which were common, or believed to be so, the best salons remained closed to her. To conquer them required patience. She dressed richly, but with¬out ever being quite sure that her clothes were fashionable.
When her little boys went for a walk under the trees in the square, people would turn round to look at diem, so pretty and well-dressed they were. Florimond and even Cantor now wore real men's suits—in silk, brocade or velvet—with big lace collars, piped stockings, shoes with bows and heels. Plumed hats sat on their pretty curls, and Florimond had a little sword, which delighted him. Under his nervous, fragile appearance, he had a passion for fighting. He would challenge the monkey Piccolo to a duel, or else the peaceful Cantor, who at the age of four still spoke but little. Had it not been for the intelligence lurking in his lovely green eyes, Angelique would have thought he was a little backward. But he was merely taciturn and saw no need to talk, since Florimond understood him anyway and the servants anticipated his slightest desires.
Angelique had a woman cook and a second footman at the Place Royale. With her coachman, and Flipot, promoted to the post of lackey, Madame Morens could cut quite a respectable figure among her neigh¬bours. Barbe and Javotte wore lace caps, golden crosses, Indian shawls.
But Angelique was quite aware that, in the eyes of the others, she was nevertheless a social upstart. She wanted to rise higher, and the drawing-rooms of the Marais quarter were the very places which enabled ambitious women to move up from the bourgeoisie to the aristocracy, for bourgeois women and noble ladies foregathered here under the aegis of wit.
She began by ingratiating herself with an old spinster who occupied the apartment below hers. This lady had known the heyday of prkieuse society and its feminine quarrels. She had met the Marquise de Ram- bouillet, had frequented Mademoiselle de Scudcry. Her jargon was so affected as to be unintelligible.
Philonide de Parajonc alleged that there were seven different kinds of esteem and divided sighs into five categories. She despised men and detested Moliere. Love, in her eyes, was “the infernal shackle”.
However, she had not always been so disdainful. In her youth, it was whispered, far from contenting herself with the insipid region of Soulful Dalliance, she had not spumed the realm of Coquetry and had often reached its capital, Sensual Rapture. She herself would admit, showing the whites of her eyes: “Love has most frightfully blighted my heart!”
Angelique attended, with Mademoiselle de Parajonc, the lectures at the Precious Palace. Here she met the flower of honest society, that is to say a great many women of the upper middle class, churchmen, young scholars, provincials.
One day Angelique asked Mademoiselle de Parajonc to accompany her to the Tuileries. The latter was her constant companion. She knew every¬body and was able to name each and every one of them for her friend, who was thus becoming acquainted with the new faces at Court. She also served as a foil to Angelique’s beauty. She did so quite unconsciously, for the poor Philonide, plastered with white lead up to her eyes, her eyelids ringed with black like an old owl, still thought she was as irresistible as in the days when she made her beaux sigh interminably.
She taught Angelique the right manner of strolling through the T uileries, miming the necessary gestures with great verve, which made insolent passers-by giggle. But she saw only a homage rendered to her charms.
“In the Tuileries,” she was apt to say, “you must saunter nonchalantly in the main avenue. You must chat all the time without saying anything in particular, so as to appear witty. You must laugh without cause, so as to appear gay . . . pull yourself up every now and then to exhibit your bosom . . . open your eyes wide to make them larger, bite your lips to redden them . . . motion with your head to the one, with your fan to the other. . . . Finally, soften up a little, my dear! Trifle elegantly, gesticulate, simper and stress all this with a drooping air. . . .”
It was not really a bad lesson, and Angelique put it into practice with more restraint, and also with more success, than her companion.
The Tuileries, according to Mademoiselle de Parajonc, were “the lists of high society”, and the Cours-la-Reine the “empire of amoroui glances”. One frequented the Tuileries to await the proper hour for the Cours, and one met there again in the evening after the Cours, alternating the drive in the carriage with promenades on foot.
The wooded groves of the park were favourable to poets and lovers. Abb£s prepared their sermons there, lawyers their speeches. All persons of rank came there for rendezvous, and one sometimes met the King or the Queen, or Monseigneur the Dauphin with his governess.
Angelique pulled her companion over to the Great Flower-bed, where the high-ranking people could generally be found. The Prince de Conde went there almost every evening. She was disappointed not to find him, flew into a temper, stamped her foot.
“I fain would know why you were so avid to see His Highness,” re¬marked Philonide with astonishment.
“I simply had to sec him.”
“Did you wish to hand him a petition? ... If so, stop wailing, my dear, for here he comes.”
The Prince de Conde had indeed just arrived and was approaching across the wide avenue, surrounded by the gentlemen of his household. Angelique realised that there was no possibility of approaching the Prince. Could she say:
'Monseigneur, give me back the mansion of the Rue du Beautreillis which belongs to me and which you have wrongfully received from the King’s hands’?
Or else:
'Monseigneur, I am the wife of the Comte de Peyrac, whose coat-of- arms you had scratched out and whose house you had exorcised’?
The impulse which had led her to the Tuileries to see the Prince de Conde was infantile and stupid. She was just a newly-rich chocolate- maker. Nobody could possibly present her to the great nobleman, and anyhow, what could she have said to him? . . . She reproached herself vehemently: ‘Idiot! If you always behaved so impulsively and un¬reasonably, your business affairs would be in a nice mess! . . .*
“Come along,” she said to the old maid.
And abruptly she turned away from the glittering, gossiping party which was passing near-by.
Despite the radiant evening and the gentle spring sky, Angelique re¬mained sullen during die rest of their walk. Philonide asked her if they should go on to the Cours. She said no. Her carriage was too plain.
An effeminate young dandy approached them:
“Madame,” he said to Angllique, “my friends and I have been asking ourselves questions about you. One wagers that you are a proctor’s wife, the other that you are a spinster lady and a preeicuse. Do resolve our dispute.”
It could have made her laugh. But she was in a bad temper, and she detested these petits-maitres, painted like dolls, whose affectations included wearing the nail of the little finger longer than the others.
“Why don’t you wager that you are a fool?” she retorted. “In that way you’ll never lose.”
And she left him standing there speechless.
Philonide de Parajonc was shocked.
“Your reply did not lack in wit, but it smacked of the shopkeeper from three miles away. You’ll never succeed in the drawing-room if . . .”
“Oh, Philonide!” exclaimed Angelique, stopping suddenly. “Look . . . there!” '
“Where?”
“There,” repeated Angelique in a voice which had dropped to a whisper.
A few steps from her, framed by the tender green of a shrub, a tall young man was standing, casually propped against the base of a marble statue. He was of outstanding beauty, to which the elegance of his clothes added further perfection. His almond-green velvet suit was overlaid with gold embroideries in a pattern of birds and flowers. It was a little ex¬travagant, but as beautiful as the livery of spring. A white hat adorned with green plumes sat on his flowing, fair wig. Set in the frame of those long curls, his pink-and-white face, softly dabbed with powder, sported a blond moustache, finely drawn in a single stroke. His eyes were large, and of a transparent blue which took on a greenish hue in the leafy shade.
The nobleman’s features were impassive and his eyes did not blink. Was he dreaming? Meditating? ... His blue pupils stared vacantly like those of a blind man. In the fixedness of this aimless reverie, they had a snake-like coldness. He did not seem aware of the interest he aroused.
“Well, Angelique,” said Mademoiselle de Parajonc sourly, “you’ve taken leave of your senses, upon my word! This way of staring at a man is dreadfully common.”
“What . . . what is his name?”
“It’s the Marquis du Plcssis-Bcllicrc, of course! What’s there ъо startling about him? He’s waiting for his beau, no doubt. I really don’t see why you, who don’t care for petits-maitres, are standing there as if rooted to the ground.”
“Forgive me,” stammered Angelique, recovering her wits.
For a second she had become again the wild little girl, sunk in ad¬miration. Philippe! The scornful big cousin. Monteloup, and the smell of the dining-hall where the heat of the soup drew smoke from the damp table-cloth. Medley of pain and sweetness!
The two ladies strolled past him. He seemed to notice them, stirred, and doffing his hat with a gesture of profound boredom, greeted them.
“He is a gentleman of the King's suite, is he not?" asked Angelique, when they were out of earshot.
“Yes, he went to the wars with His Highness the Prince when the latter was still with the Spaniards. Since then, he has been named Grand Master of the Royal Wolf-hunt. He is so handsome and so fond of war that the King calls him Mars. However, dreadful things are being said about him.”
“Dreadful things? . . . Whatever can they be?”
Mademoiselle dc Parajonc gave a little resigned snigger.
“There you are, quite shocked to hear aspersions cast on the handsome young lord. But all the women are like you. They run after him and swoon at the sight of his fair hair, his fresh complexion, his elegance. They wont rest till they've slipped into his bed. But then they change their tune. Yes, yes, Armande de Circe and Mademoiselle Jacari have told me in confidence . . . The handsome Philippe seems gentle and polite. He is as absent-minded as an old scholar. But in love, it appears he is an appalling brute: an ostler has more consideration for his wife than he has for his mistresses. All the women whom he's taken in his arms detest him. . . .”
Angelique was only half listening. The sight of Philippe, leaning against the marble statue, motionless and almost as unreal as an apparition, would not fade from her mind. He had taken her hand, in the old days, to dance with her. That was in Plcssis, in the white chateau in the great forest of Nieul.
“It seems that he has a most cruel imagination for torturing his mis-tresses,” Philonide continued. “He beat Madame de Circe so horribly for a mere trifle that she practically could not move for a week, which was very embarrassing on account of her husband. And on his campaigns the way he behaves when he’s victorious is an outright scandal. His troops arc more feared than those of the notorious Jean de Wcrth. They pursue the women even into the churches and do them violence without a thought. At Norgcn lie summoned the daughters of the persons of note, half killed them because they offered resistance and, after a night of orgy with his officers, handed them over to the troops. Several of them died as a result, or else went mad. If His Highness the Prince had not intervened on his behalf, Philippe du Plcssis would certainly have been sent into disgrace.”
“Philonide, you arc a jealous old maid!” cried Angflique, gripped by a sudden anger. “This young man is not, can’t be, the ogre you describe. You are just wilfully exaggerating all the gossip you have gleaned about him.” -
Mademoiselle de Parajonc stopped short, choking with indignation.
“I!... Gossip!... You know how I loathe this sort of thing, all the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood and everything that smacks ofchatty visits to a woman in childbed. I indulging in gossip! . . • When I keep so utterly aloof from all vulgar things! If I talk to you like this, it’s because it’s true!”
“Well, if it is, it’s not entirely his fault,” Angelique declared. “He’s like that because women have hurt him on account of his beauty.”
“How . . . how do you know? Are you acquainted with him?”
“N . . . no.”
“You are mad, then!” shouted Mademoiselle de Parajonc, flushing crimson with rage. “I’d never have thought you capable of letting a whipper-snapper like that turn your head. Farewell. . . .”
She left her standing there and strode off towards the park-gate. Angelique had no alternative but to follow her, for she did not wish to fall out with Mademoiselle de Parajonc, of whom she was fond.
If Angelique and the old blue-stocking had not quarrelled, that day in the Tuileries, on account of Philippe du Plessis-Befliere, they would not have left the park so early. And if they had not left the park at that very moment, they would not have been the victims of a vulgar bet in which the lackeys massed outside the gates had just indulged. Monsieur de Lauzun and Monsieur de Montcspan would not have fought a duel for the lovely green eyes of Madame Morens. And Angelique would probably have had to wait for a long while before frequenting again the great ones of this world. Which shows that it is a good thing sometimes to be sharp- tongued and hot-tempered.
Since admittance to the garden was forbidden by a notice on the gate ‘to lackeys and the rabble’, there always stood, outside the fence, a noisy swarm of footmen, flunkeys and coachmen, who would while away the long hours of waiting with games of cards or ninepins, when they weren’t fighting or drinking at the tavern on the comer. That night, the lackeys of the Due de Lauzun had made a wager. They’d stand a drink to the one among them who would be bold enough to lift up the skirt of the first lady coming out of the Tuileries.
It so happened that the lady was Angelique, who had caught up with Philonide and was endeavouring to calm her.
Before she had had time to foresee the insolent gesture, she found her¬self gripped by a tall, lanky lout who stank of wine, and her skirts were turned up most impudently. Almost instantly, her hand struck the oaf's face. Mademoiselle de Parajonc uttered parrot-like screams.
A gentleman who was about to mount into his carriage, and who had witnessed the scene, motioned to his men, who, overjoyed at the chance, rushed at Monsieur de Lauzuns footmen. There followed a violent scuffle amid horse-droppings and an interested circle of onlookers. The gentleman’s forces carried the day. He himself applauded noisily.
He walked up to Angelique and saluted her.
“Thank you, Monsieur, for your intervention,” she said.
She was furious and humiliated, but above all badly scared, for she had been on the verge of chastising the drunkard herself in the well-tried manner of the tavern of ‘The Red Mask’, seasoning the lesson with some forceful terms drawn straight from Polack’s vocabulary. All the care Angelique had taken to become a great lady again would have been instantly set at nought. The next day, the ladies of the Marais would have gloated over the incident.
White with apprehension at this thought, the young woman decided to swoon a little, in the true tradition of good breeding.
“Ah! Monsieur . . . what infamy! It’s dreadful! To be thus exposed to the outrage of low reprobates!”
“Calm yourself, Madame,” he said, supporting her with a zealous and vigorous arm.
He was a handsome, bright-eyed young man, whose singsong accent was unmistakable. Yet another Gascon, without a shadow of a doubt! He introduced himself:
“Louis Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Sieur de Pardaillan and other places, Marquis de Montespan.”
The name was familiar to Angelique. The newcomer belonged to the oldest nobility of the province of Guyennc. She smiled alluringly, and the Marquis, visibly delighted with this encounter, insisted on knowing where and when he might take news of her health. She did not wish to give her name, but answered:
“Come to the Tuileries tomorrow at the same time. I hope that the cir-cumstances will be more favourable and enable us to converse pleasantly.”
“Where shall I wait for you?”
“Near the Echo.”
It was a promising spot. The Echo was the trysting-place for gallant encounters. Enchanted, the Marquis kissed the hand held out to him.
“Have you a sedan-chair? May I take you home?”
“My carriage is not far,” Angelique assured him, unwilling to display her modest equipage.
“Till tomorrow, then, mysterious beauty.”
This time, he swifdy kissed her cheek, and gaily capered away to his coach.
“You lacked modesty . . .” Mademoiselle de Parajonc began.
But the Due de Lauzun was just appearing at the park gate. Seeing the state in which his footmen were—one spitting out his teeth, another bleeding from his nose, and all of them tom and grimy—he began to rage in a falsetto voice. When it was explained to him that the mischief had been done by the flunkeys of a noble lord, he shouted:
“Those varlets and their master deserve to be belaboured with sticks. Their sort isn’t worthy to be touched with a sword.”
The Marquis de Montespan had not yet sat down in his carriage. He leaped down from the step, ran after Lauzun, seized him by the arm, made him wheel round and, after pushing the other’s hat down over his eyes, called him a scamp and a lout.
A moment later, the flash of two swords gleamed in the air and the two Gascons were fighting a duel under the eyes of the increasingly interested onlookers.
“Gentlemen, for mercy’s sake!” cried Mademoiselle de Parajonc. “Duelling is forbidden. You’ll both sleep in the Bastille tonight.”
But the two lords took no heed of this sensible forecast and crossed their irons with fervour, while the crowd opposed a real passive resistance to the squad of Swiss guards who were trying to force their way through to the two duellists.
Happily, the Marquis de Montespan managed to slash Lauzun’s thigh. Peguilin stumbled and dropped his sword.
“Come away quick, dear fellow!” cried the Marquis, supporting his opponent. “Let’s dodge the Bastille! Help me, ladies!”
The carriage moved off at the very moment when the Swiss guard, amid blows and strokes from their halberds, their ncck-ruffs all awry, forged their way through to it.
As the carriage hurtled along the rue Saint-Honore, Angelique, stanching Pcguilin’s wound with her sash, found herself piled higglcdy- piggledy in the coach with the Marquis dc Montespan, Mademoiselle de Parajonc and even the lackey who had provoked the incident and who had been thrown, half stunned, on the floor. *
“You’ll be sentenced to the stocks and the galleys,” Peguilin told him, kicking him in the stomach with his heel. “And I certainly won’t pay a single livre to buy you off! . . . My dear Pardaillan, thanks to you, my surgeon won’t need to bleed me this season.”
“You must get a dressing,” said the Marquis. “Come to my place. I believe my wife’s at home today with her women-friends.”
The wife of Monsieur de Montespan was, as Angelique discovered, none other than the beautiful Athenais de Mortemart, Hortense’s former school-friend, with whom she had watched the King’s triumphant entry into Paris.
Mademoiselle de Mortemart had married in 1662. She had become even more beautiful. Her rose-like complexion, blue eyes and golden hair, coupled with the famous family wit, made her one of the most widely noticed women at Court. Unfortunately, though both her hus¬band’s and her own family were of ancient lineage, they were both similarly impecunious. Harassed by debts and creditors, poor Athenais could not show off her beauty in all the glamour it deserved, and she would sometimes have to miss Court balls because she could not afford a new dress.
The apartment where the duellists of the Tuileries, accompanied by Angelique and Mademoiselle de Parajonc, eventually arrived, bore the mark of almost shabby poverty side by side with an almost overwhelming show of elegant wearing apparel.
Sumptuous gowns trailed on the dust-covered furniture. There was no fire despite the still cool season, and Athenais, in a taffeta dressing-gown, was fighting like a shrew with a goldsmith’s employee who had come to claim a deposit for an order of a gold and silver necklace which the young woman meant to wear for die first time at Versailles the following week.
Monsieur de Montespan immediately took control and kicked the artisan out of the house. Athenais protested. She wanted her necklace. There followed an argument, while poor Lauzun’s blood kept trickling on to the stone floor. Madame de Montespan became aware of it at last and called her friend, Fran^cise d’Aubignc, who had come to help her tidy up the apartment, for the maidservants had walked out the day before.
The widow of the poet Scarron prompdy appeared, the same as ever, with her shabby dress, her big black eyes and the prim expression on her mouth. Angelique had the impression of having left her at the Temple only yesterday.
‘hi another moment I’ll sec Hortense appear,* she thought.
She helped Fran^oisc to carry the Marquis de Lauzun, who had fainted by now, over to a settee.
“I’ll fetch some water from the kitchens,” said Madame Scarron. “Be good enough to keep the dressing well against the wound . . • Madame.” The imperceptible hesitation showed Ang£lique that Madame Scarron had recognised her. It did not matter. Madame Scarron was one of those people who themselves have to conceal part of their own existence. In any case, sooner or later, Angflique was determined to confront openly the faces from her past.
In the next room the Montespans continued to squabble.
“However could you fail to recognise her? . . . Why, it’s Madame Morens! You’re fighting a duel now for a chocolate-shopkeeper!”
“She is adorable . . . and don’t forget that she has the reputation of being one of the richest women in Paris. If it’s really she, I don’t regret my gesture.”
“You are revolting!”
“My dear, do you want your necklace, or don’t you?”
‘All right,* Angelique said to herself, ‘I see in what way I shall have to show my gratitude to these people of the great nobility. A sumptuous present, perhaps even a weighty purse, provided it’s well coated with discretion and tact.”
The Due de Lauzun raised his eyelids. His eyes rested dimly on Angelique.
“I am dreaming,” he stammered. “Can it be you, my sweet?”
“It can, it is,” she said, smiling at him.
“Damn me, I never expected to see you again, Angelique! I often wondered what could have become of you.”
“You may have wondered, but admit you didn’t try to find out.” “That’s true, my sweet. I am a courtier. All courtiers behave rather like cowards towards those who’ve fallen into disfavour.” He scrutinised the young woman’s dress and jewels.
“Things seem to have turned out well,” he said.
“They had to. My name nowadays is Madame Morens.”
“By Jove, I’ve heard about you! You sell chocolate, don’t you?”
“I amuse myself. Some people busy themselves with astronomy or philosophy. For my part, I sel! chocolate. What about you, Pcguilin? Is your life still as glamorous? Does the King still extend his friendship towards you?”
Plguilin’s face darkened and he seemed to forget his curiosity.
“Oh, my dear, my favour is unsteadily poised. The King imagines that I conspired with Vardes in that Spanish letter affair, you know, that letter someone got to the Queen to inform her of her august husband’s in¬fidelities with La Valliere. ... I cannot dispel this suspicion, and His
Majesty is shockingly rude to meat times! . . . Thank God, the Grande Mademoiselle is in love with me.”
“Mademoiselle de Montpensier?”
“Yes,” whispered Peguilin, rolling the white of his eyes. “I even believe she may propose marriage to me.”
“Oh! Peguilin!” exclaimed Ang£lique, bursting out laughing. “You are incredible, incorrigible. You haven’t changed a bit!”
“You haven’t changed either. And you are as beautiful as a woman come to life again.”
“What do you know about the beauty of such women, Peguilin?” “Why, what the Church tells us! ... A glorious body! . . . Come over here, my sweetheart, so that I can kiss you.”
He took her face into both his hands and pulled her towards him.
“Hell and damnation!” shouted Montespan from the threshold. “It’s not enough that I rip your thigh open to stop you from running, you insist on cutting the ground from under my feet in my own house, damned Peguilin! I was a fool not to let you go to the Bastille!”
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