Angelique Part 7. Versailles Chapter 3
Angelique - Part 7. Versailles Chapter 3 - Read online
THIS WAS A RED-LBTTER DAY.
For on this very evening the famous коса game took place between
Madame Morens and the Prince de Condc, which was to set the fashion¬able set buzzing, scandalise the strait-laced, delight the libertines and amuse the whole of Paris.
The party started as usual at the hour when the candles were brought in. According to the varying luck of the players, it could last for three or four hours. Afterwards there would be a light supper. Then everybody would go home.
The game of hoca would start with an unlimited number of gamblers. That evening, some fifteen players started out. The stakes were high. The first rounds quickly eliminated half the participants. The pace of the game slowed down.
Suddenly Angelique, who had been absent-minded and thinking of Hortense, noticed with astonishment that she was recklessly engaged in a very close fight with His Highness the Prince, the Marquis de Thianges and President Jomerson. She it was who, for some time now, had been ‘leading* the game. The little Due de Richemont was marking her tablets and, glancing at them, she saw that she had won a small fortune.
“You are in luck tonight, Madame/* the Marquis dc Thianges said to her, pulling a wry face. “You*ve been holding the bank for almost an hour and you don't seem ready to let go of it yet.**
“I’ve never seen a player hold the bank for so long !’* the little Due cried, very excited. “Don’t forget, Madame, that if you lose it you will have to pay each of these gentlemen the same amount that you have won so far. There’s still time to stop. It’s your right.”
Monsieur Jomerson began to shout that onlookers had no right to inter-vene and that, if this continued, he would have the room cleared. People hastened to soothe him and to point out that he wasn’t in the law-courts but at Mademoiselle dc Lenclos’s. Everyone was waiting for Angelique’s decision.
“I continue,” she said.
And she dealt the cards. The judge breathed. He had lost a lot and was hoping that a stroke of luck would, in the very next second, repay him a hundredfold for his recklessness. No one had ever seen a player hold the bank as long as this lady. If Madame Morens held on to it, she was doomed to lose, and so much the better for the others. Wasn’t it just like a woman to hang on so grimly! Luckily, she had no husband to render accounts to.
Thereupon, President Jomerson had to show his hand, which was lamentable, and got out of the game most crestfallen.
A circle formed around Angelique, and people who had been about to leave could not make up their minds to tear themselves away, but re¬mained standing on one foot, craning their necks.
During several rounds the players were equal in points. In that case, the stake bid went to Angelique, but no player was eliminated. Then Monsieur de Thianges lost and left the table, wiping his brow. It had been a rough evening! What was his wife going to say when she learned that they’d have to pay two years of their income to Madame Morens, the chocolate-maker? Provided, of course, that she won. If she didn’t, she would have to pay the Prince de Conde double the amount she had won. It made one dizzy just to think of it! The woman was mad! She was heading straight for her downfall. At the point she had reached, not even the craziest gambler would be foolhardy enough to continue.
“Do stop, my love!” implored the little Due into Angelique’s ear. “You can’t possibly win again.”
Angelique held her hand over the pack of cards. It was a smooth, hard little brick which burned her palm.
She looked with fixed attention at the Prince de Conde. Yet the game did not depend on him alone, but on fate.
Fate was standing before her. It had assumed the face of the Prince de Conde, his fiery eyes, his eagle nose, his white, carnivorous teeth which were bared in a smile. And what he was holding in his hands were not cards any more, but a small casket in which gleamed a green poison phial.
All around him there was only darkness and silence.
Then the silence broke like glass shattered by Angelique’s voice:
I continue.
Once again, the hands were at ‘egalite’. Villarceaux leaned out of the window. He was calling to the passers-by, shouting that they must come up, that there’d never been such a sensational game since the one when his grandsire had staked his wife and his regiment against King Henri IV at the Louvre.
The drawing-room was packed. The footmen themselves had climbed on to the chairs to follow the battle from afar. The candles were smoking. Nobody troubled to trim them.
The heat was stifling.
“I continue,” Angelique repeated.
"EgalM."
“Three more ties and it’ll be ‘the choice of stakes’.”
“The supreme throw in hoca . . . a throw that is only seen once every ten years!”
“Once in twenty, dear fellow.”
“Once in a generation.”
“Remember the financier Tortcmer who demanded Montmorency’s coat-of-arms.”
"Who in turn demanded Tortemer’s entire fleet."
"And Tortemer lost. ...” .
"Do you continue, Madame?”
"I continue.”
The hubbub almost knocked the table over and half crushed the two gamblers on their cards.
"Hell and damnation!” swore the Prince, groping for his stick. "I swear I’ll batter you all if you don’t let us breathe. What the devil! Move aside. . . .”
Perspiration was running from Angelique’s brow. Heat was its sole cause. She felt no anxiety. She was not thinking of her sons, nor of all the efforts she had made and which she was on the point of destroying.
Indeed, it all seemed perfecdy logical to her. For too many years she had been fighting against fate in the fashion of a plodding mole. And now at last she had come face to face with it, on its own ground, in its folly. She was going to grip it by the throat and knife it. She, too, was mad, dangerous and unconscious, like fate itself. They were on equal terms!
"EgaliUr
There was a commotion, then shouts.
"Choice of stakes! Choice of stakes!”
Angelique waited for the hubbub to subside a little before asking, with the voice of a demure schoolgirl, what exactly this final throw of hoca consisted of.
They all began to talk at once. Then the Chevalier de Mere sat down near the players and explained the matter to them in a trembling voice.
During this last hand the players started from scratch. All preceding debts and gains were wiped out. Each player chose the stakes, that is to say not what he offered, but what he laid claim to. And that must be something enormous. Examples were quoted: the financier Tortemer, in the last century, had thus laid claim to a Montmorency’s titles of nobility, and Villarceaux’s grandfather had agreed, if he lost, to yield his wife and his regiment to his opponent.
"Can I still withdraw?” asked Angelique.
"That’s your absolute right, Madame.”
She remained motionless, with a dreamy gaze. One could have heard a pin drop. For several hours Angelique had 'held the bank’. Was iuck going to abandon her at this last bid?
Her eyes seemed to awaken and began to blaze with a fierce intensity. However, she smiled.
I continue.
The Chevalier de Merc swallowed and said:
“For ‘choice of stakes* the rules prescribe the following phrase: ‘Match
accepted. If I win I demand !’ ”
Ang6lique nodded her head obediently and, still smiling, repeated: “Match accepted, Monseigneur. If I win, I demand of you your H6tel de Beautreillis.”
Madame Lamoignan uttered an exclamation, which her husband promptly stifled with a furious hand. All eyes were turned towards the Prince, who wore his look of blazing anger. But he was a straight, un¬swerving player.
He smiled and lifted his haughty brow :
“Match accepted, Madame. If I win, you will be my mistress.”
All the heads, in a single movement, veered towards Angelique this time. She was still smiling. The lights played on her half-open lips. The dampness which oozed on the surface of her golden skin made it gleam, lustrous like petals under the dew of dawn. The fatigue which tinted her eyelids blue gave her a strange expression of sensuality and abandon.
The men who were present quivered. The silence became heavy and charged.
The Chevalier de Mere spoke in an undertone:
“The choice is still yours, Madame. If you refuse: match drawn, and ones goes back to the previous set. If you accept: match agreed.” Angclique’s hand took up the cards.
“Match agreed, Monseigneur.”
She had nothing but knaves, queens and low cards, her worst hand since the beginning of the game. However, after a few exchanges, she managed to compose a hand of some small value. Two solutions remained open to her: show her hand at once and run the risk that the Prince de Cond6’s present hand was stronger than hers, or else try to compose a more im¬portant hand, with the help of the ‘lottery’. In that case, the Prince, perhaps not too well supplied himself, could improve his game and possibly throw a hand of kings and aces before her.
She hesitated, then showed her cards.
A cannon-shot could not have more effectively transfixed the audience. The Prince, with his eyes on her cards, did not stir.
Abruptly he rose, spread out his cards, then bowed deeply:
“The Hotel de Beautreillis is yours, Madame.”
SHE COULD NOT BELIBVB HER BYES. A turn of a card, and the most incredible, the most absurd luck had restored the Hotel de Beautreillis to her!
Holding her two little boys by the hand, she ran through the sumptuous residence. She did not dare tell them:
‘This belonged to your father.*
But she kept telling them:
“Thisis yours! Yours!**
She examined every marvel in detail: the gay decoration of goddesses, children and leaf-work, the wrought-iron balustrades, the wood-panelling in the style of the day, which replaced the old-fashioned heavy tapestries. In the half-light of the staircases and corridors there glittered a profusion of gold and garlands of flowers whose tiny twinkle was broken here and there by the sparkling arm of a statue holding a torch.
The Prince de Conde had not furnished this house, for which he had little liking. He had removed a few pieces of furniture. Those that re¬mained he had left to Angelique with the generosity of a great lord. A good loser, he had withdrawn after handing over the stake of their game. Perhaps he was more wounded than he cared to admit by the young woman’s complete detachment from him. She had eyes only foi the Hotel de Beautreillis, and he wondered with sombre melancholy whether the friendship he thought he had sometimes read in the eyes of his charming conqueror had not been just a scheming stratagem after all.
Moreover, the Prince was a little apprehensive lest the rumour of that sensational game reach the ears of His Majesty. The latter was not much in favour of resounding eccentricities. His Higlmess decided to retire to Chantilly.
Angelique remained alone with her glorious dream. With an un-adulterated pleasure she started to decorate her house with all the latest novelties. Cabinet-makers, goldsmiths and upholsterers were summoned. She ordered Monsieur Boulle to make her furniture of translucent wood, inlaid with ivory, tortoise-shell and gilt bronze. Her carved bed, the chairs and walls of her bedroom were covered with a white-green satin with a big golden flower design. In her boudoir a fine blue enamel adorned the table, the highboy and the wooden seats. The floors of both
these rooms were of inkid wood which was so aromatic that its scent penetrated the clothes of those who walked upon it.
She called Gontran in to paint the ceiling of the big salon. She bought a thousand objects, knick-knacks from China, paintings, linen, gold and crystal-plate. The cabinet which also served her as a writing-desk was considered a rare piece of the Italian school and was almost the only antique piece of furniture in the house. It was of ebony, studded with pink and cherry-red rubies, garnets and amethysts.
In her fever of expenditure, she also purchased a small white palfrey for Florimond, so that he might gallop through the avenues of the park, which she had adorned with tubs of orange-trees. Cantor received two stern but gentle mastiffs whom he could harness to a small gilded wood dog-cart, in which he could ride.
She herself followed the season’s fashion by buying herself one of those long-haired little lap-dogs which were just then all the rage. She called it Chrysanthemum. Florimond and Cantor, who had a taste for big, fierce animals, openly despised this tousled mhriature.
Finally, to celebrate the house-warming, she decided to give a great supper followed by a ball. This fete was to'Consecrate the new status of Madame Morens, no longer a chocolate-merchant of the Faubourg Saint- Honorc, but now one of the ladies of quality of the Marais.
The ball given by Madame Morens at her Hotel de Beautreillis was a great success.
The highest-ranking people in Paris appeared. Madame Morens danced with Philippe du Plessis-Bclliere, dazzling in a suit of periwinkle-blue satin. Angelique’s dress, of royal blue velvet, braided with gold, matched her partner’s outfit perfeedy. They were the most magnificent couple at the whole gathering. Angehque had the surprise of seeing the cold face stirred by a smile as he led her, with her hand held high, for a branle across the great hall.
“Today you are no longer the Baroness of the Doleful Dress,” he said.
She treasured diosc words in her heart, with the jealous feeling one has for a precious, infinitely rare gift. The secret of her origins made them accomplices. He was remembering the grey little quail whose hand had trembled in that of die handsome cousin.
4 What a fool I was!’ she said to herself with a smile.
When die house was fully furnished, Angehque had a fit of depression. She was overwhelmed by the sohtude of her princely home. The Hotel de Beautreillis meant too much to her. This abode, which Joffrey had never lived in and which yet seemed impregnated with memories, struck her as having aged with a long-lasting grief.
‘The memories of what should have been,9 she thought.
Sitting, in the mild spring nights, before the fire or at the casements, she watched the hours pass. Her customary interests forsook her. She was the prey of an ailment she could not understand. For her young body was lonely, while her mind and her heart succumbed to a ghostly presence. She would suddenly get up and, holding a candle, go to the doorstep and wait, in the darkness of the passage, for she knew not what. . . .
Was someone coming? . . . No! All was silent. The children were sleeping in their rooms under the care of devoted servants. She had restored to them their father’s house.
One night Angelique was lying in her magnificent bed. She felt cold. She touched her smooth, firm flesh and caressed it with a kind of melan¬choly. No man alive could have sated her longing. She was alone for life!
It was then that, from the depth of the night, there rose a song, a celestial, exquisite song, like that of angels as they float over the country¬side on Christmas Eve.
Angelique at first thought it was a hallucination. But as she approached the corridor, she could distinctly make out a child’s voice singing.
Taking a candlestick, she directed her steps towards the nursery. She gently lifted the door-curtain and stopped, charmed by the picture re¬vealed to her eyes.
A silver-gilt night-lamp softly lit the alcove in which was the bed of the two little boys. Standing in the big bed, Cantor in his white shift, with his two plump little hands folded over his stomach and with upraised eyes, was singing like a little cherub of Paradise. His voice was of extraordinary purity, but his childish lisp stumbled over the words most affcctingly:
“C’est le Zour de la Noel Que Zesus est ne.
Il est ni dans me ctable,
Dessus lapaille; ll est ni dans un coin,
Dessus le Join”1
Florimond, with his elbows propped on his pillow, was listening to him with evident delight. „
1 It's on Christmas Day that Jesus was born. He was bom in a stable, on top of the straw; He was bom in a comer, on top of the hay.
A slight noise pulled Ang£lique out of her contemplation. She saw Barbe at her side, wiping tears from her eyes.
"Madame did not know that our treasure had such a beautiful voice?” the maid whispered. "I wanted it to be a surprise for Madame. He is shy. He only wants to sing for Florimond.”
Once again, joy took the place of pain in Angelique’s heart.
The soul of the troubadours had passed into Cantor. He was singing. Joffrey de Peyrac was not dead, since he lived on in his two sons. One looked like him, the other had his voice. . . .
Very late one evening, as Angelique was strewing sand on a letter to her dear triend Ninon de Lenclos, a footman came to announce that a tonsured cleric was asking for her urgendy. In the entrance the young woman found an abbe, who told her that her brother, Father de Sance, wished to see her.
"At once?”
"At once, Madame!”
Angelique went upstairs for a cloak and a mask. A strange hour for the reunion of a Jesuit with his sister, who was also the widow of a sorcerer burned on the Place de Greve!
The abbe said it was not far to go. After only a few steps, the young woman found herself before a private dwelling-house, a small former hotel of the Middle Ages, which was adjacent to the new Collegiate House of the Jesuits. In the vestibule Angelique’s guide vanished like a black phantom. She walked up the stairs, her eyes raised towards the upper landing where a long silhouette leaned over the banister, holding a candle¬stick.
“Is that you, my sister?"
"It’s I, Raymond.”
"Come up, please.”
She followed him without asking any questions. He showed her into a stone cell which was poorly lit by an oil-lamp. Deep in the alcove Angelique distinguished a pale, delicate face—a woman’s or a child’s— with closed eyes.
"She is ill. She will die perhaps,” said the Jesuit.
"Who is she?”
"Marie-Agncs, our sister.”
After a moment’s silence, he added:
"She’s come to take refuge with me. I made her he down, but in view of the nature of her sickness, I needed the help and advice of a woman. I thought of you.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s losing blood profusely. I believe she must have provoked a miscarriage.”
Angelique scrutinised her young sister. The hemorrhage did not seem violent, but slow and continuous.
“We must stop it as quickly as possible, odierwise she’ll die.”
“I thought of sending for a physician, but ”
“A physician! . . . All he’d do is bleed her, which would be the end of her.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t call in a midwife, who would probably pry and gossip. Our rules are both very free and very strict. I shall not receive any reprimand for having succoured my sister in secret. But I must avoid all scandal. It’s difficult for me to keep her here in this house, which is the annexe of a great seminary, you understand. . . .”
“As soon as we have stopped the bleeding, I’ll have her transported to my house. Meanwhile, we must send for Big Matthicu.”
A quarter of an hour later, Flipot was scampering towards the Pont- Neuf, whistling now and then to make himself known to marauders. Angelique blew that Big Matthieu had an almost miraculous remedy to stop bleeding. On occasions, when it was specially requested, he also had a way of making himself unobtrusive. . . .
He arrived at once and attended to the young patient with the energy and sbll of long experience, while soliloquising as was his habit:
“Ah! little lady, why didn’t you use the electuary of chastity which Big Matthieu sells on the Pont-Neuf ? It is made of camphor, liquorice, vine- seed and water-lily seeds. Take two drams of it morning and evening, followed by a glass of whey in which you’ve dipped a piece of red-hot iron. . . . Believe me, little lady, there’s nothing better to suppress Venus’s excessive ardours, which arc paid for so dearly. . . .”
But poor Marie-Agncs was quite unable to hear these belated recom-mendations. With her diaphanous cheeks, mauve-hued eyelids and the thin, drawn face amid the copious black hair, she looked like a sweet, lifeless wax figure.
At last Angelique noticed that the haemorrhage seemed to be stopping; a pink glow was returning to her young sister’s cheeks. Big Matthieu went away, leaving a herb tea with Angelique which the patient was to drink every hour “to replace the blood she had lost”. He advised waiting a few hours before moving her. #
When he had gone, Angelique sat down near a small table, from which a black crucifix on its pedestal threw a gigantic shadow on the wall. A few
moments later, Raymond returned and sat down at the other side of the table.
“I believe that at daybreak we shall be able to have her moved to my place,” said Angelique, “but it’s advisable to wait a little until she has recovered some strength.”
“We’ll wait,” Raymond agreed.
He inclined his profile, which was perhaps a little less lean than it used to be, in an attitude of meditation. His straight black hair fell on the white neck-band of his cassock. His tonsure had grown a litde wider under the attack of an incipient baldness, but he had scarcely changed.
“Raymond, how did you know that I was at the Hotel de Bcautreillis, living there under the name of Madame Morens?”
The Jesuit made a vague gesture with his beautiful white hand.
“It was easy for me to make inquiries, to recognise you. I admire you, ‘ Angelique. The dreadful case whose victim you have been is now a thing of the remote past.”
“Not so very remote,” she said bitterly, “since I still cannot show myself in full daylight. Many lords of less noble birth than I look down upon me as an enriched chocolate-house keeper, and I shall never be able to return to Court, to go to Versailles.”
He cast a penetrating glance at her.
“Why don’t you marry a great name? You don’t lack admirers, and your wealth, if not your beauty, can tempt more than one nobleman. You will thus acquire a new name and rank.”
Angelique thought suddenly of Philippe, and she felt herself blushing at this new idea. Marry him? The Marquise duPlcssis-Belliere? . . . “Raymond, why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Perhaps because you have not yet realised that you are a widow and free,” he replied firmly. “You now have all the means to accede honour¬ably to a high rank. It’s a position which is not without advantages, and I can help you with all the influence I command.”
“Thank you, Raymond. That would be wonderful,” she said dreamily. “I have come such a long way, you can’t imagine. Of all the family, I am the one who fell lowest, and yet one caimot say that any one of us has known a very brilliant lot. Why have we turned out so badly?”
“I thank you for the ‘we’,” he said with a brief smile.
“Oh! becoming a Jesuit is also a way of turning out badly. Remember, our father was not delighted. He would have much preferred to see you in charge of a good, sound church living. Jossclin has disappeared in the Americas. Denis, the only soldier of the family, lias the reputation of being a hot-head and a bad loser, which is worse. Gontran? Let’s not talk of him. He has lowered himself for die pleasure of daubing canvas like an artisan. Albert is a page to the Marshal de Rochant. He is the Knight’s paramour, unless he is reserved for the dumpy charms of Madame la Marechale. And Marie-Agnes . .
She stopped, listened to the almost imperceptible breathing coming from the alcove, and went on in a lower voice:
“At Court, I do believe she had a go at everybody. Has anyone an idea as to who was the father of this child?”
“I don’t think she has herself,” said the Jesuit somewhat crudely. “But what I would like to see you clear up above all, is whether this is a mis¬carriage or a clandestine birth. I shudder at the thought that she may have left a small living creature in the hands of that Catherine Monvoisin.”
“Did she go to see La Voisin?”
“I think so. She mumbled her name.”
“Who doesn’t go to see her?” said Angelique with a shrug. “Recently the Due de Vendome went to see her, disguised as a Savoyard, in order to extract some revelations from this woman about the treasure Monsieur de Turenne is alleged to have hidden. And Monsieur, the King’s brother, made her come to Saint-Cloud to show him the devil. I don’t know if she succeeded, but he paid her as if he’d seen him. Soothsayer, abortionist, poison-dealer, she is a woman of many parts. . . .”
Raymond listened to this gossip without a smile. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
“Angelique, my sister, I am horrified,” he said slowly. “The century in which we live witnesses such infamous morals, such abominable crimes that future eras will shudder at it. In this one year, several hundred women have accused themselves in my confessional of having rid them¬selves of the fruit of their womb. That is nothing: it’s the normal con¬sequence of licentiousness and adultery. But close on half my penitents confess to having poisoned one of their family, to having sought to bring about by demoniac practices the disappearance of someone who stood in their way. Are we, then, still barbarians? Have the heresies, in shaking the barriers of the Faith, revealed to us the abyss of our nature? There is a terrible disharmony between the laws and people’s inclinations. It is the Church’s duty to show the way again through this disorder. . . .” Angelique listened with surprise to the confidences of the great Jesuit. “Why do you speak to me of all this, Raymond? For all you know, I may be one of those women who . . .”
The eyes of the priest returned to her. He seemed to be examining her, then shook his head. • *
“You, you are like a diamond,” he said, “a noble stone, hard and un¬yielding ... but simple and transparent. I do not know what sins you may have committed in the course of the years during which you dis¬appeared, but I am convinced that if you committed them, then it was mostly because you could not do otherwise. You are like the real poor, my sister Angelique, you sin without knowing it, unlike the rich and the mighty. . . .”
A naive gratitude filled Angeliques heart on hearing these surprising words, in which she discerned almost a call of Grace and the expression of a pardon come from Heaven.
The night was peaceful. A smell of incense hovered in the cell, and the shadow of the cross which watched over the bedside of their sister in danger of death seemed to Angelique gentle and reassuring for the first time in many years.
With a spontaneous movement she slid down to her knees on the stone floor.
“Raymond, will you hear my confession?”
Marie-Agnesi convalescence proceeded satisfactorily at the Hotel de Beautreillis. The young girl, however, remained ailing and in low spirits. She seemed to have forgotten her crystalline laughter which had enchanted the Court, and displayed only the demanding and impulsive side of her nature. In the beginning, she evinced no gratitude whatsoever for Angelique*s kindness. But as her sister regained her strength, Angelique availed herself of the first opportunity to box her ears soundly. Thereafter Marie-Agnes declared that Angelique was the only woman with whom she could ever get on. With coaxing grace she would nestle close to her sister on winter evenings when they lingered by the fireside, playing a mandolin or doing some embroidery. They would exchange their im¬pressions of the persons they both knew, and as each had a sharp tongue and a quick wit they sometimes laughed uproariously at their sallies.
Once recovered, Marie-Agnes seemed to have no intention of leaving ‘her friend Madame Morens*. Nobody knew that they were close relatives. That amused them. The Queen inquired after the health of her lady-in-waiting. Marie-Agnes sent word that she was well, but would enter a nunnery. This jesting remark was more serious than it looked. Marie-Agnes obstinately refused to see anyone, and plunged into the Epistles of Saint Paul and went widi Angelique to Mass.
Angelique was very glad that she had had the courage to confess to Raymond. This enabled her to appear before the Lord’s altar without mental reservations or false shame, and to play her part of a lady of the Marais to perfection. She sank with satisfaction into the atmosphere of the
long services redolent with incense and vibrant with the preacher s re-sounding voice and die sonorous organ-music.
It was most soothing thus to have time to pray and think of her soul.
The rumour of their conversion brought a flurry of indignant gende- men to the Hotel de Beautreillis. Whether admirers of Angelique or ex¬lovers of Marie-Agnes, they all protested.
“What is this we hear? You are doing penance? You arc retiring to a nunnery?”
Marie-Agnes met all questions with the mask of a disdainful litde sphinx. Most of the time, she preferred not to show herself, or else ostentatiously opened a prayer-book. Angelique, for her part, forcefully denied the rumour. The moment seemed to her inopportune. Thus, when Madame Scarron had taken her to her confessor, the honest Abbe Godin, Angelique balked at the mere mention of a hair-shirt. At the very moment when she was busily making plans to marry Philippe, she was not going to spoil her skin and die alluring curves of her beautiful body by brisding girdles and other objects of penance.
She would need all her allurements and more to vanquish the in¬difference of this strange young man who, with his fair hair and light satins, seemed cast and clothed in ice.
Yet he was a fairly assiduous visitor at the Hotel de Beautreillis. He would arrive with a nonchalant air and talk little. As Angelique gazed at him in his disdainful beauty, she would recapture the somewhat humble and admiring sensation of bygone days, when she was a little girl over¬awed by her tall, elegant cousin. So much so that, in her recollection, this unpleasant memory acquired a sensuous thrill. She remembered Philippe’s white hands on her thighs, the scratch caused by his rings. . . . Now that she saw him so cold and aloof, she would sometimes feel regret for that contact and for her own flight. Philippe was certainly unaware that she was the woman he had attacked that night at the inn of ‘The Red Mask’.
Whenever his clear eyes dropped on Angelique, she had the depressing feeling that he had never noticed her beauty. He never paid her a com-pliment, not even the tritest one. He was not very amiable, and die children, far from being charmed by his dash, were afraid of him.
“You have a way of gazing at the handsome Plessis diat alarms me,” Marie-Agnes said to her elder sister one evening. “Don’t tell me, Angelique, that you, the most sensible woman I know, let yourself be en¬snared by the charm of that ”
She seemed to be searching for a crushing epithet, failed to find it, and replaced it with a pout of disgust.
“What have you against him?” asked Angelique, astonished.
“What have I against him? Well, just this: that he is so handsome, so attractive, and doesn’t even know how to take a woman in his arms. For you’ll admit it matters, the way a man takes a woman in his arms? . . .”
“Marie-Agnes, this is a very frivolous subject of conversation for a young person who intends to enter a nunnery!”
“Precisely. Let’s make hay while the sun shines. For my part, I first judge a man by the way he embraces me. The gesture of an imperious yet gentle arm, which makes me feel that I cannot struggle out of it and which yet leaves me free. Ah! what a pleasure to be a woman and so frail, at that moment!”
Her finely-chiselled face, with its eyes of a cruel kitten, softened in a dreamy ecstasy, and Angelique smiled at seeing her with the fleeting mask of sensuous pleasure which she showed only to men. Then the girl’s brows contracted.
“I must admit that very few men have this talent. But at least they all try to do their best. Whereas Philippe doesn’t even try. He knows only one kind of behaviour with women: he throws them down and rapes them. He must have learned love on the battlefields. Ninon herself wasn’t able to do anything with him. He probably keeps his pretty graces for his lovers! ... All the women detest him in proportion to their disappointment.”
Angelique, leaning over the fire, on which she was roasting chestnuts, was annoyed at the anger which her sister’s words produced in her.
She had made up her mind to marry Philippe du Plessis. It was the best solution, one that would arrange everything and put the final touch to her ascent and her rehabilitation. But she would have liked to have had some illusions about the man whom she had chosen for her second husband. She would have liked to find him lovable in order to have the right to love him.
In a spurt of sincerity towards herself, she ran to Ninon the next day and broached the subject.
“What do you think of Philippe du Plessis?”
The courtesan pondered, one finger against her cheek.
“I believe that, when one knows him well, one perceives that he is much less nice than he appears. But when one knows him better, one perceives that he is much nicer than he appears.”
“I don’t follow you, Ninon.”
“I mean that he has none of the qualities which his beauty promises, not even the inclination to make himself loved. On the other hand, if you dig deep enough, he inspires esteem because he represents a rare specimen of an almost extinct race: he is the nobleman par excellence. He is in agony over questions of etiquette, he is afraid of having a fnud-stain on his silk stockings. But he is not afraid of death. And when he dies, he’ll be as lonely as a wolf and won’t ask for help from anybody. He belongs only to the King and to himself.”
“I did not expect such greatness in him!”
“But then you don’t see his pettiness either, my dear! The littleness of a true nobleman is congenital. His coat-of-arms has hidden the rest of humanity from him for centuries. Why must one always believe that virtue and its opposite cannot live cheek by jowl within the same person? A nobleman is both great and petty.”
“And what does he think of women?”
“Philippe? . . . My dear, you come and tell me when you’ve found out.”
“Apparently he is a terrible brute with them?”
“So they say. . . .”
“Ninon, you aren’t going to tell me that he hasn’t slept with you.” “Alas, my dear, that’s just what I am going to tell you. I must admit that all my talents have failed with him.”
“Ninon, you frighten me!”
“To tell the truth, this hard-eyed Adonis did rather tempt me. He was said to be ill-bred in matters of love, but I am not averse to a certain clumsy ardour and like to tame it. So I arranged to lure him into my alcove. . . .”
“And then?”
“Then, nothing. I would have had more luck with a snow-man picked up in the yard. He finally confessed to me that I did not inspire him in any way, because he felt friendship towards me. I believe he needs hatred and violence to put him in the right mood.”
“He is mad!”
“Maybe . . . no, I’d say he’s merely behind the times. He should have been born fifty years sooner. When I see him, he moves me strangely, for he reminds me of my youth.”
“Your youth, Ninon? . . .” said Angelique, looking at the courtesan’s delicate, unwrinkled complexion. “But you are younger than I am!” “No, my sweet. People sometimes say, to console certain wgmen: ‘The body ages, but the soul remains young.* With me, it’s just the opposite: my body remains young—and the gods be thanked for it!—but my soul
has aged all the same. The days of my youth were during the dose of the last reign and at the beginning of the present one. Men were different then. There was fighting everywhere: Huguenots, Swedes, the insurgents of Monsieur Gaston d* Orleans. Young men knew how to fight but not how to love. They were big savages in lace collars. . . . As for Philippe —do you know whom he reminds me of ? Of Cinq-Mars, who was the favourite of Louis ХШ. Poor Cinq-Mars! He had fallen in love with Marion Ddorme. But the King was jealous. And Cardinal Richelieu had little trouble in predpitating his downfall. Cinq-Mars laid his beautiful fair head on the block. There were many tragic fates in those days!”
“Ninon, don’t talk to me like a grandmother. It doesn’t suit you in the least.”
“But I am obliged to adopt a grandmother’s tone to scold you a little, Angelique. For I am much afraid that you are straying from your path.
. . . Angelique, my pretty child, you who have known a great love, don’t tell me that you’ve fallen headlong in love with Philippe. He is too far from you. He would disappoint you even more than he does other women.”
Angelique blushed, and the comers of her mouth trembled like those of a child.
“Why do you say that I’ve known a great love?”
“Because it can be seen in your eyes. They are so rare, women who bear deep in their eyes this sad and wonderful trace. Yes, I know—it's over for you now. In what way? . . . Nevermind. Perhaps you found out that he was married, perhaps he deceived you, perhaps he is dead. . . .”
“He is dead, Ninon!”
“It’s better so. Your great wound is free of poison. But ”
Angelique straightened her back proudly.
“Let’s talk no more of it, Ninon, please! I want to marry Philippe. I must marry Philippe. You cannot understand why. I don't love him, it's true, but he attracts me. He always has. And I’ve always thought that he’d be mine some day. Don't say any more. . . .”
Returning home, Angelique found the same enigmatic Philippe in her drawing-room. He was a frequent caller, but her plans made no progress.
Angelique got to the point of asking herself if he did not come to see Marie-Agnes; however, when her young sister had retired to the Car¬melites of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques to prepare her Easter, he con¬tinued to be a regular visitor. She heard one day that he had boasted of drinking the best rosolio in Paris at her house. Perhaps he came merely to savour this exquisite cordial which she herself prepared with quantities of
fennel, aniseed, coriander, camomile and sugar macerated in brandy.
Angelique was proud of her domestic talents, and she saw no reason to disdain any bait. But the thought wounded her pride. Didn’t either her beauty or her conversation hold any attraction for Philippe?
With the coming of the first days of spring, she felt desperate, all the more so as a drastic Lenten fast had weakened her. She had secretly cherished the idea of marrying Philippe with too much enthusiasm to have the courage to give it up. For, once set up as the Marquise du Plessis, she would be presented at Court, she would find again her native soil and her family, and would reign over the beautiful white chateau which had delighted her youth.
Her nerves frayed by these alternatives of hope and discouragement, she was dying to consult La Voisin to have a confirmation of her future. An opportunity was supplied by Madame Scarron, who called on her one afternoon.
“Angelique, I’ve come to fetch you, for you simply must accompany me. That madcap Athenai's has got it into her head to ask advice about I don’t know what of some diabolical soothsayer, a woman called Catherine Monvoisin. It seems to me that the presence of two devout women will be more than needed to pray and fight against the evil spell that may be cast on this reckless girl.”
“You are perfectly right, Fran<;oisc,” Angelique hastened to agree.
Flanked by her two guardian angels, Athenai’s dc Montespan, bristling with impatience and not at all frightened, entered the witch’s lair. It was a fine house in the Faubourg du Temple, the newly rich sorceress having moved from the sinister hovel where, for a long time, the dwarf Barcarole had ushered in her furtive visitors. Nowadays people called on her almost overtly.
Generally she received her clients on a kind of throne, draped in a cloak embroidered with golden bees, but on that particular day Catherine Monvoisin, whose unpleasant habits had not been changed by contact with high society, was dead-drunk.
No sooner had they stepped over die threshold of the parlour into which they were shown than the three women realised that nodiing could be got out of the fortune-teller.
After gazing at them with dim eyes for a long while, the witch descended from her dais, reeling unsteadily, and dashing up to the horrified Fran^oise Scarron she seized her hand.
“You now,” she said, “now you have a most uncommon destiny. I sec the Ocean, and then the Night, and then the Sun above all. Night, that’s poverty. We know what that’s like! There’s nothing blacker! Just like the Night! But the Sun, that’s the King. There, my dear, the King will love you, and he’ll even marry you.”
“But you are mistaken!” cried Athcnai's furiously. “I’m the one who’ve come to see you to ask whether the King will love me. You are all mixed
UP” , „
“Don’t get annoyed, little lady,” the other protested in a thick voice. “I am not drunk enough to confuse the destinies of two persons. To each his own, isn’t that right? Give me your hand. The Sun is in yours too. And then, there is Luck. Yes, the King will love you, too. But he won’t marry you.”
“A plague upon the fuddled hag!” muttered Athcnais, drawing her hand away, enraged.
But La Voisin was determined to give each her full measure. She peremptorily took hold of Angcliquc’s hand, rolled her eyes, nodded her head.
“A fabulous destiny! Night, but also Fire, a Fire that dominates all.”
“I would like to blow if I shall marry a Marquis.”
“I can’t tell you if he’s a Marquis, but I see two marriages. There, those two small strokes. And then six children. . .
“Merciful Lord! . . .”
“And also . . . love affairs!—one, two, three, four, five. . . .”
“Don’t bother,” protested Angclique, trying to withdraw her hand.
“No, wait! . . . The Fire is what’s so surprising. It bums right across your whole life . . . to the very end. It blazes so fiercely that it hides the Sun. The King will love you, but you won’t love him on account of that Fire. . . .”
In the carriage that was taking them back, Athenais raged.
“That woman isn’t worth the tiniest sou of all the money people give her. I’ve never heard such a collection of rubbish. The King will love you! . . . the King will love you! . . . She says the same thing to everybody!”
Angelique learned the news from Mademoiselle de Parajonc. She was not expecting it and took a certain amount of time to unravel the truth from the old blue-stocking’s impossiblejargon. The latter called upon her towards supper-time, emerging from die foggy night like a gloomy owl, rumpled with a variety of ribbons, her eyes fixed and watchful. Angclique offered her some griddlc-cakes by the fireside. Philonidc talked at length about dieir neighbour, Madame de Gauffray, who had just “felt the after¬effects of permitted love”, meaning that after ten months of marriage she had given birth to a little boy. Then she expatiated on her trouble with her “dear ailing ones”; Angdlique thought she was referring to her aged parents, but in fact she was referring to her own feet, which suffered from corns. Finally, after much splitting of hairs and dissecting of sentiments and declaring, after watching the rain lash against the window-panes for a while: “The third dementis falling”, Philonide, full of glee at announdng a piece of news, dedded to express herself like common mortals:
“Do you know that Madame de Lamoignon is going to marry her daughter?”
“She does well! The girl isn’t pretty but she has money enough to make a brilhant match.”
“You are most perceptive, as usual, my dear. Actually it’s only the dowry of that mousy little thing that could possibly tempt such a hand¬some gentleman as Philippe du Plessis.”
“Philippe?” “
“You’ve heard no rumour of it?” inquired Philonide, blinking her watchful eyes.
Angelique had recovered herself. She said with a shrug:
“Perhaps I have . . . but I didn’t give it any credence. Philippe du Plessis cannot lower himself by marrying the daughter of a judge who, though occupying a high position, is of common extraction.”
The old maid sneered.
“A peasant on my estates often used to say: ‘Money is found only on the ground and you must stoop to pick it up.’ It’s common knowledge that young du Plessis is always in financial straits. He gambles heavily at Versailles and he spent a fortune on equipment for his last campaign; he had a train of ten mules trailing behind him, carrying his gold-plate and goodness knows what else. The silk of his tent was so richly embroidered that the Spaniards spotted it from their trenches and used it as a target. . . . I do grant you, though, that this insensitive charmer is furiously handsome. . . .”
Angelique let her go on soliloquising. After her first feeling of in¬credulity, she now felt discouraged. The last threshold to cross in order to bask at last in the light of the Sun King—the marriage with Philippe—was crumbling. For that matter, she had always known that it would be too difficult and that she would not have strength enough. She was worn out, used up. . . . She was but a chocolate-manufacturer and would not be able to maintain herself much longer on the level of the nobility, which would never welcome her. She was being received, but not welcomed. . . . Versailles! . . . Versailles! The glamour of the Court, the radiance of the Sun King! Philippe 1 Beautiful, unattainable god Mars! . . . She would drop back to the level of a petite bourgeoise. And her children would never be gentlemen. . . .
Absorbed in her thoughts, she did not realise that time was passing. The fire was dying in the hearth, the candle smoked.
Angelique heard Philonide summon sharply Flipot, who was standing watch near the door:
“Idler, remove the excess of this glimmerer.”
As Flipot stood open-mouthed, Angelique translated wearily:
“Lackey, trim the candle.”
Philonide de Parajonc got up, satisfied:
“My dear, you seem pensive. I leave you to your muses. . . .”
For on this very evening the famous коса game took place between
Madame Morens and the Prince de Condc, which was to set the fashion¬able set buzzing, scandalise the strait-laced, delight the libertines and amuse the whole of Paris.
The party started as usual at the hour when the candles were brought in. According to the varying luck of the players, it could last for three or four hours. Afterwards there would be a light supper. Then everybody would go home.
The game of hoca would start with an unlimited number of gamblers. That evening, some fifteen players started out. The stakes were high. The first rounds quickly eliminated half the participants. The pace of the game slowed down.
Suddenly Angelique, who had been absent-minded and thinking of Hortense, noticed with astonishment that she was recklessly engaged in a very close fight with His Highness the Prince, the Marquis de Thianges and President Jomerson. She it was who, for some time now, had been ‘leading* the game. The little Due de Richemont was marking her tablets and, glancing at them, she saw that she had won a small fortune.
“You are in luck tonight, Madame/* the Marquis dc Thianges said to her, pulling a wry face. “You*ve been holding the bank for almost an hour and you don't seem ready to let go of it yet.**
“I’ve never seen a player hold the bank for so long !’* the little Due cried, very excited. “Don’t forget, Madame, that if you lose it you will have to pay each of these gentlemen the same amount that you have won so far. There’s still time to stop. It’s your right.”
Monsieur Jomerson began to shout that onlookers had no right to inter-vene and that, if this continued, he would have the room cleared. People hastened to soothe him and to point out that he wasn’t in the law-courts but at Mademoiselle dc Lenclos’s. Everyone was waiting for Angelique’s decision.
“I continue,” she said.
And she dealt the cards. The judge breathed. He had lost a lot and was hoping that a stroke of luck would, in the very next second, repay him a hundredfold for his recklessness. No one had ever seen a player hold the bank as long as this lady. If Madame Morens held on to it, she was doomed to lose, and so much the better for the others. Wasn’t it just like a woman to hang on so grimly! Luckily, she had no husband to render accounts to.
Thereupon, President Jomerson had to show his hand, which was lamentable, and got out of the game most crestfallen.
A circle formed around Angelique, and people who had been about to leave could not make up their minds to tear themselves away, but re¬mained standing on one foot, craning their necks.
During several rounds the players were equal in points. In that case, the stake bid went to Angelique, but no player was eliminated. Then Monsieur de Thianges lost and left the table, wiping his brow. It had been a rough evening! What was his wife going to say when she learned that they’d have to pay two years of their income to Madame Morens, the chocolate-maker? Provided, of course, that she won. If she didn’t, she would have to pay the Prince de Conde double the amount she had won. It made one dizzy just to think of it! The woman was mad! She was heading straight for her downfall. At the point she had reached, not even the craziest gambler would be foolhardy enough to continue.
“Do stop, my love!” implored the little Due into Angelique’s ear. “You can’t possibly win again.”
Angelique held her hand over the pack of cards. It was a smooth, hard little brick which burned her palm.
She looked with fixed attention at the Prince de Conde. Yet the game did not depend on him alone, but on fate.
Fate was standing before her. It had assumed the face of the Prince de Conde, his fiery eyes, his eagle nose, his white, carnivorous teeth which were bared in a smile. And what he was holding in his hands were not cards any more, but a small casket in which gleamed a green poison phial.
All around him there was only darkness and silence.
Then the silence broke like glass shattered by Angelique’s voice:
I continue.
Once again, the hands were at ‘egalite’. Villarceaux leaned out of the window. He was calling to the passers-by, shouting that they must come up, that there’d never been such a sensational game since the one when his grandsire had staked his wife and his regiment against King Henri IV at the Louvre.
The drawing-room was packed. The footmen themselves had climbed on to the chairs to follow the battle from afar. The candles were smoking. Nobody troubled to trim them.
The heat was stifling.
“I continue,” Angelique repeated.
"EgalM."
“Three more ties and it’ll be ‘the choice of stakes’.”
“The supreme throw in hoca . . . a throw that is only seen once every ten years!”
“Once in twenty, dear fellow.”
“Once in a generation.”
“Remember the financier Tortcmer who demanded Montmorency’s coat-of-arms.”
"Who in turn demanded Tortemer’s entire fleet."
"And Tortemer lost. ...” .
"Do you continue, Madame?”
"I continue.”
The hubbub almost knocked the table over and half crushed the two gamblers on their cards.
"Hell and damnation!” swore the Prince, groping for his stick. "I swear I’ll batter you all if you don’t let us breathe. What the devil! Move aside. . . .”
Perspiration was running from Angelique’s brow. Heat was its sole cause. She felt no anxiety. She was not thinking of her sons, nor of all the efforts she had made and which she was on the point of destroying.
Indeed, it all seemed perfecdy logical to her. For too many years she had been fighting against fate in the fashion of a plodding mole. And now at last she had come face to face with it, on its own ground, in its folly. She was going to grip it by the throat and knife it. She, too, was mad, dangerous and unconscious, like fate itself. They were on equal terms!
"EgaliUr
There was a commotion, then shouts.
"Choice of stakes! Choice of stakes!”
Angelique waited for the hubbub to subside a little before asking, with the voice of a demure schoolgirl, what exactly this final throw of hoca consisted of.
They all began to talk at once. Then the Chevalier de Mere sat down near the players and explained the matter to them in a trembling voice.
During this last hand the players started from scratch. All preceding debts and gains were wiped out. Each player chose the stakes, that is to say not what he offered, but what he laid claim to. And that must be something enormous. Examples were quoted: the financier Tortemer, in the last century, had thus laid claim to a Montmorency’s titles of nobility, and Villarceaux’s grandfather had agreed, if he lost, to yield his wife and his regiment to his opponent.
"Can I still withdraw?” asked Angelique.
"That’s your absolute right, Madame.”
She remained motionless, with a dreamy gaze. One could have heard a pin drop. For several hours Angelique had 'held the bank’. Was iuck going to abandon her at this last bid?
Her eyes seemed to awaken and began to blaze with a fierce intensity. However, she smiled.
I continue.
The Chevalier de Merc swallowed and said:
“For ‘choice of stakes* the rules prescribe the following phrase: ‘Match
accepted. If I win I demand !’ ”
Ang6lique nodded her head obediently and, still smiling, repeated: “Match accepted, Monseigneur. If I win, I demand of you your H6tel de Beautreillis.”
Madame Lamoignan uttered an exclamation, which her husband promptly stifled with a furious hand. All eyes were turned towards the Prince, who wore his look of blazing anger. But he was a straight, un¬swerving player.
He smiled and lifted his haughty brow :
“Match accepted, Madame. If I win, you will be my mistress.”
All the heads, in a single movement, veered towards Angelique this time. She was still smiling. The lights played on her half-open lips. The dampness which oozed on the surface of her golden skin made it gleam, lustrous like petals under the dew of dawn. The fatigue which tinted her eyelids blue gave her a strange expression of sensuality and abandon.
The men who were present quivered. The silence became heavy and charged.
The Chevalier de Mere spoke in an undertone:
“The choice is still yours, Madame. If you refuse: match drawn, and ones goes back to the previous set. If you accept: match agreed.” Angclique’s hand took up the cards.
“Match agreed, Monseigneur.”
She had nothing but knaves, queens and low cards, her worst hand since the beginning of the game. However, after a few exchanges, she managed to compose a hand of some small value. Two solutions remained open to her: show her hand at once and run the risk that the Prince de Cond6’s present hand was stronger than hers, or else try to compose a more im¬portant hand, with the help of the ‘lottery’. In that case, the Prince, perhaps not too well supplied himself, could improve his game and possibly throw a hand of kings and aces before her.
She hesitated, then showed her cards.
A cannon-shot could not have more effectively transfixed the audience. The Prince, with his eyes on her cards, did not stir.
Abruptly he rose, spread out his cards, then bowed deeply:
“The Hotel de Beautreillis is yours, Madame.”
SHE COULD NOT BELIBVB HER BYES. A turn of a card, and the most incredible, the most absurd luck had restored the Hotel de Beautreillis to her!
Holding her two little boys by the hand, she ran through the sumptuous residence. She did not dare tell them:
‘This belonged to your father.*
But she kept telling them:
“Thisis yours! Yours!**
She examined every marvel in detail: the gay decoration of goddesses, children and leaf-work, the wrought-iron balustrades, the wood-panelling in the style of the day, which replaced the old-fashioned heavy tapestries. In the half-light of the staircases and corridors there glittered a profusion of gold and garlands of flowers whose tiny twinkle was broken here and there by the sparkling arm of a statue holding a torch.
The Prince de Conde had not furnished this house, for which he had little liking. He had removed a few pieces of furniture. Those that re¬mained he had left to Angelique with the generosity of a great lord. A good loser, he had withdrawn after handing over the stake of their game. Perhaps he was more wounded than he cared to admit by the young woman’s complete detachment from him. She had eyes only foi the Hotel de Beautreillis, and he wondered with sombre melancholy whether the friendship he thought he had sometimes read in the eyes of his charming conqueror had not been just a scheming stratagem after all.
Moreover, the Prince was a little apprehensive lest the rumour of that sensational game reach the ears of His Majesty. The latter was not much in favour of resounding eccentricities. His Higlmess decided to retire to Chantilly.
Angelique remained alone with her glorious dream. With an un-adulterated pleasure she started to decorate her house with all the latest novelties. Cabinet-makers, goldsmiths and upholsterers were summoned. She ordered Monsieur Boulle to make her furniture of translucent wood, inlaid with ivory, tortoise-shell and gilt bronze. Her carved bed, the chairs and walls of her bedroom were covered with a white-green satin with a big golden flower design. In her boudoir a fine blue enamel adorned the table, the highboy and the wooden seats. The floors of both
these rooms were of inkid wood which was so aromatic that its scent penetrated the clothes of those who walked upon it.
She called Gontran in to paint the ceiling of the big salon. She bought a thousand objects, knick-knacks from China, paintings, linen, gold and crystal-plate. The cabinet which also served her as a writing-desk was considered a rare piece of the Italian school and was almost the only antique piece of furniture in the house. It was of ebony, studded with pink and cherry-red rubies, garnets and amethysts.
In her fever of expenditure, she also purchased a small white palfrey for Florimond, so that he might gallop through the avenues of the park, which she had adorned with tubs of orange-trees. Cantor received two stern but gentle mastiffs whom he could harness to a small gilded wood dog-cart, in which he could ride.
She herself followed the season’s fashion by buying herself one of those long-haired little lap-dogs which were just then all the rage. She called it Chrysanthemum. Florimond and Cantor, who had a taste for big, fierce animals, openly despised this tousled mhriature.
Finally, to celebrate the house-warming, she decided to give a great supper followed by a ball. This fete was to'Consecrate the new status of Madame Morens, no longer a chocolate-merchant of the Faubourg Saint- Honorc, but now one of the ladies of quality of the Marais.
The ball given by Madame Morens at her Hotel de Beautreillis was a great success.
The highest-ranking people in Paris appeared. Madame Morens danced with Philippe du Plessis-Bclliere, dazzling in a suit of periwinkle-blue satin. Angelique’s dress, of royal blue velvet, braided with gold, matched her partner’s outfit perfeedy. They were the most magnificent couple at the whole gathering. Angehque had the surprise of seeing the cold face stirred by a smile as he led her, with her hand held high, for a branle across the great hall.
“Today you are no longer the Baroness of the Doleful Dress,” he said.
She treasured diosc words in her heart, with the jealous feeling one has for a precious, infinitely rare gift. The secret of her origins made them accomplices. He was remembering the grey little quail whose hand had trembled in that of die handsome cousin.
4 What a fool I was!’ she said to herself with a smile.
When die house was fully furnished, Angehque had a fit of depression. She was overwhelmed by the sohtude of her princely home. The Hotel de Beautreillis meant too much to her. This abode, which Joffrey had never lived in and which yet seemed impregnated with memories, struck her as having aged with a long-lasting grief.
‘The memories of what should have been,9 she thought.
Sitting, in the mild spring nights, before the fire or at the casements, she watched the hours pass. Her customary interests forsook her. She was the prey of an ailment she could not understand. For her young body was lonely, while her mind and her heart succumbed to a ghostly presence. She would suddenly get up and, holding a candle, go to the doorstep and wait, in the darkness of the passage, for she knew not what. . . .
Was someone coming? . . . No! All was silent. The children were sleeping in their rooms under the care of devoted servants. She had restored to them their father’s house.
One night Angelique was lying in her magnificent bed. She felt cold. She touched her smooth, firm flesh and caressed it with a kind of melan¬choly. No man alive could have sated her longing. She was alone for life!
It was then that, from the depth of the night, there rose a song, a celestial, exquisite song, like that of angels as they float over the country¬side on Christmas Eve.
Angelique at first thought it was a hallucination. But as she approached the corridor, she could distinctly make out a child’s voice singing.
Taking a candlestick, she directed her steps towards the nursery. She gently lifted the door-curtain and stopped, charmed by the picture re¬vealed to her eyes.
A silver-gilt night-lamp softly lit the alcove in which was the bed of the two little boys. Standing in the big bed, Cantor in his white shift, with his two plump little hands folded over his stomach and with upraised eyes, was singing like a little cherub of Paradise. His voice was of extraordinary purity, but his childish lisp stumbled over the words most affcctingly:
“C’est le Zour de la Noel Que Zesus est ne.
Il est ni dans me ctable,
Dessus lapaille; ll est ni dans un coin,
Dessus le Join”1
Florimond, with his elbows propped on his pillow, was listening to him with evident delight. „
1 It's on Christmas Day that Jesus was born. He was bom in a stable, on top of the straw; He was bom in a comer, on top of the hay.
A slight noise pulled Ang£lique out of her contemplation. She saw Barbe at her side, wiping tears from her eyes.
"Madame did not know that our treasure had such a beautiful voice?” the maid whispered. "I wanted it to be a surprise for Madame. He is shy. He only wants to sing for Florimond.”
Once again, joy took the place of pain in Angelique’s heart.
The soul of the troubadours had passed into Cantor. He was singing. Joffrey de Peyrac was not dead, since he lived on in his two sons. One looked like him, the other had his voice. . . .
Very late one evening, as Angelique was strewing sand on a letter to her dear triend Ninon de Lenclos, a footman came to announce that a tonsured cleric was asking for her urgendy. In the entrance the young woman found an abbe, who told her that her brother, Father de Sance, wished to see her.
"At once?”
"At once, Madame!”
Angelique went upstairs for a cloak and a mask. A strange hour for the reunion of a Jesuit with his sister, who was also the widow of a sorcerer burned on the Place de Greve!
The abbe said it was not far to go. After only a few steps, the young woman found herself before a private dwelling-house, a small former hotel of the Middle Ages, which was adjacent to the new Collegiate House of the Jesuits. In the vestibule Angelique’s guide vanished like a black phantom. She walked up the stairs, her eyes raised towards the upper landing where a long silhouette leaned over the banister, holding a candle¬stick.
“Is that you, my sister?"
"It’s I, Raymond.”
"Come up, please.”
She followed him without asking any questions. He showed her into a stone cell which was poorly lit by an oil-lamp. Deep in the alcove Angelique distinguished a pale, delicate face—a woman’s or a child’s— with closed eyes.
"She is ill. She will die perhaps,” said the Jesuit.
"Who is she?”
"Marie-Agncs, our sister.”
After a moment’s silence, he added:
"She’s come to take refuge with me. I made her he down, but in view of the nature of her sickness, I needed the help and advice of a woman. I thought of you.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s losing blood profusely. I believe she must have provoked a miscarriage.”
Angelique scrutinised her young sister. The hemorrhage did not seem violent, but slow and continuous.
“We must stop it as quickly as possible, odierwise she’ll die.”
“I thought of sending for a physician, but ”
“A physician! . . . All he’d do is bleed her, which would be the end of her.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t call in a midwife, who would probably pry and gossip. Our rules are both very free and very strict. I shall not receive any reprimand for having succoured my sister in secret. But I must avoid all scandal. It’s difficult for me to keep her here in this house, which is the annexe of a great seminary, you understand. . . .”
“As soon as we have stopped the bleeding, I’ll have her transported to my house. Meanwhile, we must send for Big Matthicu.”
A quarter of an hour later, Flipot was scampering towards the Pont- Neuf, whistling now and then to make himself known to marauders. Angelique blew that Big Matthieu had an almost miraculous remedy to stop bleeding. On occasions, when it was specially requested, he also had a way of making himself unobtrusive. . . .
He arrived at once and attended to the young patient with the energy and sbll of long experience, while soliloquising as was his habit:
“Ah! little lady, why didn’t you use the electuary of chastity which Big Matthieu sells on the Pont-Neuf ? It is made of camphor, liquorice, vine- seed and water-lily seeds. Take two drams of it morning and evening, followed by a glass of whey in which you’ve dipped a piece of red-hot iron. . . . Believe me, little lady, there’s nothing better to suppress Venus’s excessive ardours, which arc paid for so dearly. . . .”
But poor Marie-Agncs was quite unable to hear these belated recom-mendations. With her diaphanous cheeks, mauve-hued eyelids and the thin, drawn face amid the copious black hair, she looked like a sweet, lifeless wax figure.
At last Angelique noticed that the haemorrhage seemed to be stopping; a pink glow was returning to her young sister’s cheeks. Big Matthieu went away, leaving a herb tea with Angelique which the patient was to drink every hour “to replace the blood she had lost”. He advised waiting a few hours before moving her. #
When he had gone, Angelique sat down near a small table, from which a black crucifix on its pedestal threw a gigantic shadow on the wall. A few
moments later, Raymond returned and sat down at the other side of the table.
“I believe that at daybreak we shall be able to have her moved to my place,” said Angelique, “but it’s advisable to wait a little until she has recovered some strength.”
“We’ll wait,” Raymond agreed.
He inclined his profile, which was perhaps a little less lean than it used to be, in an attitude of meditation. His straight black hair fell on the white neck-band of his cassock. His tonsure had grown a litde wider under the attack of an incipient baldness, but he had scarcely changed.
“Raymond, how did you know that I was at the Hotel de Bcautreillis, living there under the name of Madame Morens?”
The Jesuit made a vague gesture with his beautiful white hand.
“It was easy for me to make inquiries, to recognise you. I admire you, ‘ Angelique. The dreadful case whose victim you have been is now a thing of the remote past.”
“Not so very remote,” she said bitterly, “since I still cannot show myself in full daylight. Many lords of less noble birth than I look down upon me as an enriched chocolate-house keeper, and I shall never be able to return to Court, to go to Versailles.”
He cast a penetrating glance at her.
“Why don’t you marry a great name? You don’t lack admirers, and your wealth, if not your beauty, can tempt more than one nobleman. You will thus acquire a new name and rank.”
Angelique thought suddenly of Philippe, and she felt herself blushing at this new idea. Marry him? The Marquise duPlcssis-Belliere? . . . “Raymond, why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Perhaps because you have not yet realised that you are a widow and free,” he replied firmly. “You now have all the means to accede honour¬ably to a high rank. It’s a position which is not without advantages, and I can help you with all the influence I command.”
“Thank you, Raymond. That would be wonderful,” she said dreamily. “I have come such a long way, you can’t imagine. Of all the family, I am the one who fell lowest, and yet one caimot say that any one of us has known a very brilliant lot. Why have we turned out so badly?”
“I thank you for the ‘we’,” he said with a brief smile.
“Oh! becoming a Jesuit is also a way of turning out badly. Remember, our father was not delighted. He would have much preferred to see you in charge of a good, sound church living. Jossclin has disappeared in the Americas. Denis, the only soldier of the family, lias the reputation of being a hot-head and a bad loser, which is worse. Gontran? Let’s not talk of him. He has lowered himself for die pleasure of daubing canvas like an artisan. Albert is a page to the Marshal de Rochant. He is the Knight’s paramour, unless he is reserved for the dumpy charms of Madame la Marechale. And Marie-Agnes . .
She stopped, listened to the almost imperceptible breathing coming from the alcove, and went on in a lower voice:
“At Court, I do believe she had a go at everybody. Has anyone an idea as to who was the father of this child?”
“I don’t think she has herself,” said the Jesuit somewhat crudely. “But what I would like to see you clear up above all, is whether this is a mis¬carriage or a clandestine birth. I shudder at the thought that she may have left a small living creature in the hands of that Catherine Monvoisin.”
“Did she go to see La Voisin?”
“I think so. She mumbled her name.”
“Who doesn’t go to see her?” said Angelique with a shrug. “Recently the Due de Vendome went to see her, disguised as a Savoyard, in order to extract some revelations from this woman about the treasure Monsieur de Turenne is alleged to have hidden. And Monsieur, the King’s brother, made her come to Saint-Cloud to show him the devil. I don’t know if she succeeded, but he paid her as if he’d seen him. Soothsayer, abortionist, poison-dealer, she is a woman of many parts. . . .”
Raymond listened to this gossip without a smile. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
“Angelique, my sister, I am horrified,” he said slowly. “The century in which we live witnesses such infamous morals, such abominable crimes that future eras will shudder at it. In this one year, several hundred women have accused themselves in my confessional of having rid them¬selves of the fruit of their womb. That is nothing: it’s the normal con¬sequence of licentiousness and adultery. But close on half my penitents confess to having poisoned one of their family, to having sought to bring about by demoniac practices the disappearance of someone who stood in their way. Are we, then, still barbarians? Have the heresies, in shaking the barriers of the Faith, revealed to us the abyss of our nature? There is a terrible disharmony between the laws and people’s inclinations. It is the Church’s duty to show the way again through this disorder. . . .” Angelique listened with surprise to the confidences of the great Jesuit. “Why do you speak to me of all this, Raymond? For all you know, I may be one of those women who . . .”
The eyes of the priest returned to her. He seemed to be examining her, then shook his head. • *
“You, you are like a diamond,” he said, “a noble stone, hard and un¬yielding ... but simple and transparent. I do not know what sins you may have committed in the course of the years during which you dis¬appeared, but I am convinced that if you committed them, then it was mostly because you could not do otherwise. You are like the real poor, my sister Angelique, you sin without knowing it, unlike the rich and the mighty. . . .”
A naive gratitude filled Angeliques heart on hearing these surprising words, in which she discerned almost a call of Grace and the expression of a pardon come from Heaven.
The night was peaceful. A smell of incense hovered in the cell, and the shadow of the cross which watched over the bedside of their sister in danger of death seemed to Angelique gentle and reassuring for the first time in many years.
With a spontaneous movement she slid down to her knees on the stone floor.
“Raymond, will you hear my confession?”
Marie-Agnesi convalescence proceeded satisfactorily at the Hotel de Beautreillis. The young girl, however, remained ailing and in low spirits. She seemed to have forgotten her crystalline laughter which had enchanted the Court, and displayed only the demanding and impulsive side of her nature. In the beginning, she evinced no gratitude whatsoever for Angelique*s kindness. But as her sister regained her strength, Angelique availed herself of the first opportunity to box her ears soundly. Thereafter Marie-Agnes declared that Angelique was the only woman with whom she could ever get on. With coaxing grace she would nestle close to her sister on winter evenings when they lingered by the fireside, playing a mandolin or doing some embroidery. They would exchange their im¬pressions of the persons they both knew, and as each had a sharp tongue and a quick wit they sometimes laughed uproariously at their sallies.
Once recovered, Marie-Agnes seemed to have no intention of leaving ‘her friend Madame Morens*. Nobody knew that they were close relatives. That amused them. The Queen inquired after the health of her lady-in-waiting. Marie-Agnes sent word that she was well, but would enter a nunnery. This jesting remark was more serious than it looked. Marie-Agnes obstinately refused to see anyone, and plunged into the Epistles of Saint Paul and went widi Angelique to Mass.
Angelique was very glad that she had had the courage to confess to Raymond. This enabled her to appear before the Lord’s altar without mental reservations or false shame, and to play her part of a lady of the Marais to perfection. She sank with satisfaction into the atmosphere of the
long services redolent with incense and vibrant with the preacher s re-sounding voice and die sonorous organ-music.
It was most soothing thus to have time to pray and think of her soul.
The rumour of their conversion brought a flurry of indignant gende- men to the Hotel de Beautreillis. Whether admirers of Angelique or ex¬lovers of Marie-Agnes, they all protested.
“What is this we hear? You are doing penance? You arc retiring to a nunnery?”
Marie-Agnes met all questions with the mask of a disdainful litde sphinx. Most of the time, she preferred not to show herself, or else ostentatiously opened a prayer-book. Angelique, for her part, forcefully denied the rumour. The moment seemed to her inopportune. Thus, when Madame Scarron had taken her to her confessor, the honest Abbe Godin, Angelique balked at the mere mention of a hair-shirt. At the very moment when she was busily making plans to marry Philippe, she was not going to spoil her skin and die alluring curves of her beautiful body by brisding girdles and other objects of penance.
She would need all her allurements and more to vanquish the in¬difference of this strange young man who, with his fair hair and light satins, seemed cast and clothed in ice.
Yet he was a fairly assiduous visitor at the Hotel de Beautreillis. He would arrive with a nonchalant air and talk little. As Angelique gazed at him in his disdainful beauty, she would recapture the somewhat humble and admiring sensation of bygone days, when she was a little girl over¬awed by her tall, elegant cousin. So much so that, in her recollection, this unpleasant memory acquired a sensuous thrill. She remembered Philippe’s white hands on her thighs, the scratch caused by his rings. . . . Now that she saw him so cold and aloof, she would sometimes feel regret for that contact and for her own flight. Philippe was certainly unaware that she was the woman he had attacked that night at the inn of ‘The Red Mask’.
Whenever his clear eyes dropped on Angelique, she had the depressing feeling that he had never noticed her beauty. He never paid her a com-pliment, not even the tritest one. He was not very amiable, and die children, far from being charmed by his dash, were afraid of him.
“You have a way of gazing at the handsome Plessis diat alarms me,” Marie-Agnes said to her elder sister one evening. “Don’t tell me, Angelique, that you, the most sensible woman I know, let yourself be en¬snared by the charm of that ”
She seemed to be searching for a crushing epithet, failed to find it, and replaced it with a pout of disgust.
“What have you against him?” asked Angelique, astonished.
“What have I against him? Well, just this: that he is so handsome, so attractive, and doesn’t even know how to take a woman in his arms. For you’ll admit it matters, the way a man takes a woman in his arms? . . .”
“Marie-Agnes, this is a very frivolous subject of conversation for a young person who intends to enter a nunnery!”
“Precisely. Let’s make hay while the sun shines. For my part, I first judge a man by the way he embraces me. The gesture of an imperious yet gentle arm, which makes me feel that I cannot struggle out of it and which yet leaves me free. Ah! what a pleasure to be a woman and so frail, at that moment!”
Her finely-chiselled face, with its eyes of a cruel kitten, softened in a dreamy ecstasy, and Angelique smiled at seeing her with the fleeting mask of sensuous pleasure which she showed only to men. Then the girl’s brows contracted.
“I must admit that very few men have this talent. But at least they all try to do their best. Whereas Philippe doesn’t even try. He knows only one kind of behaviour with women: he throws them down and rapes them. He must have learned love on the battlefields. Ninon herself wasn’t able to do anything with him. He probably keeps his pretty graces for his lovers! ... All the women detest him in proportion to their disappointment.”
Angelique, leaning over the fire, on which she was roasting chestnuts, was annoyed at the anger which her sister’s words produced in her.
She had made up her mind to marry Philippe du Plessis. It was the best solution, one that would arrange everything and put the final touch to her ascent and her rehabilitation. But she would have liked to have had some illusions about the man whom she had chosen for her second husband. She would have liked to find him lovable in order to have the right to love him.
In a spurt of sincerity towards herself, she ran to Ninon the next day and broached the subject.
“What do you think of Philippe du Plessis?”
The courtesan pondered, one finger against her cheek.
“I believe that, when one knows him well, one perceives that he is much less nice than he appears. But when one knows him better, one perceives that he is much nicer than he appears.”
“I don’t follow you, Ninon.”
“I mean that he has none of the qualities which his beauty promises, not even the inclination to make himself loved. On the other hand, if you dig deep enough, he inspires esteem because he represents a rare specimen of an almost extinct race: he is the nobleman par excellence. He is in agony over questions of etiquette, he is afraid of having a fnud-stain on his silk stockings. But he is not afraid of death. And when he dies, he’ll be as lonely as a wolf and won’t ask for help from anybody. He belongs only to the King and to himself.”
“I did not expect such greatness in him!”
“But then you don’t see his pettiness either, my dear! The littleness of a true nobleman is congenital. His coat-of-arms has hidden the rest of humanity from him for centuries. Why must one always believe that virtue and its opposite cannot live cheek by jowl within the same person? A nobleman is both great and petty.”
“And what does he think of women?”
“Philippe? . . . My dear, you come and tell me when you’ve found out.”
“Apparently he is a terrible brute with them?”
“So they say. . . .”
“Ninon, you aren’t going to tell me that he hasn’t slept with you.” “Alas, my dear, that’s just what I am going to tell you. I must admit that all my talents have failed with him.”
“Ninon, you frighten me!”
“To tell the truth, this hard-eyed Adonis did rather tempt me. He was said to be ill-bred in matters of love, but I am not averse to a certain clumsy ardour and like to tame it. So I arranged to lure him into my alcove. . . .”
“And then?”
“Then, nothing. I would have had more luck with a snow-man picked up in the yard. He finally confessed to me that I did not inspire him in any way, because he felt friendship towards me. I believe he needs hatred and violence to put him in the right mood.”
“He is mad!”
“Maybe . . . no, I’d say he’s merely behind the times. He should have been born fifty years sooner. When I see him, he moves me strangely, for he reminds me of my youth.”
“Your youth, Ninon? . . .” said Angelique, looking at the courtesan’s delicate, unwrinkled complexion. “But you are younger than I am!” “No, my sweet. People sometimes say, to console certain wgmen: ‘The body ages, but the soul remains young.* With me, it’s just the opposite: my body remains young—and the gods be thanked for it!—but my soul
has aged all the same. The days of my youth were during the dose of the last reign and at the beginning of the present one. Men were different then. There was fighting everywhere: Huguenots, Swedes, the insurgents of Monsieur Gaston d* Orleans. Young men knew how to fight but not how to love. They were big savages in lace collars. . . . As for Philippe —do you know whom he reminds me of ? Of Cinq-Mars, who was the favourite of Louis ХШ. Poor Cinq-Mars! He had fallen in love with Marion Ddorme. But the King was jealous. And Cardinal Richelieu had little trouble in predpitating his downfall. Cinq-Mars laid his beautiful fair head on the block. There were many tragic fates in those days!”
“Ninon, don’t talk to me like a grandmother. It doesn’t suit you in the least.”
“But I am obliged to adopt a grandmother’s tone to scold you a little, Angelique. For I am much afraid that you are straying from your path.
. . . Angelique, my pretty child, you who have known a great love, don’t tell me that you’ve fallen headlong in love with Philippe. He is too far from you. He would disappoint you even more than he does other women.”
Angelique blushed, and the comers of her mouth trembled like those of a child.
“Why do you say that I’ve known a great love?”
“Because it can be seen in your eyes. They are so rare, women who bear deep in their eyes this sad and wonderful trace. Yes, I know—it's over for you now. In what way? . . . Nevermind. Perhaps you found out that he was married, perhaps he deceived you, perhaps he is dead. . . .”
“He is dead, Ninon!”
“It’s better so. Your great wound is free of poison. But ”
Angelique straightened her back proudly.
“Let’s talk no more of it, Ninon, please! I want to marry Philippe. I must marry Philippe. You cannot understand why. I don't love him, it's true, but he attracts me. He always has. And I’ve always thought that he’d be mine some day. Don't say any more. . . .”
Returning home, Angelique found the same enigmatic Philippe in her drawing-room. He was a frequent caller, but her plans made no progress.
Angelique got to the point of asking herself if he did not come to see Marie-Agnes; however, when her young sister had retired to the Car¬melites of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques to prepare her Easter, he con¬tinued to be a regular visitor. She heard one day that he had boasted of drinking the best rosolio in Paris at her house. Perhaps he came merely to savour this exquisite cordial which she herself prepared with quantities of
fennel, aniseed, coriander, camomile and sugar macerated in brandy.
Angelique was proud of her domestic talents, and she saw no reason to disdain any bait. But the thought wounded her pride. Didn’t either her beauty or her conversation hold any attraction for Philippe?
With the coming of the first days of spring, she felt desperate, all the more so as a drastic Lenten fast had weakened her. She had secretly cherished the idea of marrying Philippe with too much enthusiasm to have the courage to give it up. For, once set up as the Marquise du Plessis, she would be presented at Court, she would find again her native soil and her family, and would reign over the beautiful white chateau which had delighted her youth.
Her nerves frayed by these alternatives of hope and discouragement, she was dying to consult La Voisin to have a confirmation of her future. An opportunity was supplied by Madame Scarron, who called on her one afternoon.
“Angelique, I’ve come to fetch you, for you simply must accompany me. That madcap Athenai's has got it into her head to ask advice about I don’t know what of some diabolical soothsayer, a woman called Catherine Monvoisin. It seems to me that the presence of two devout women will be more than needed to pray and fight against the evil spell that may be cast on this reckless girl.”
“You are perfectly right, Fran<;oisc,” Angelique hastened to agree.
Flanked by her two guardian angels, Athenai’s dc Montespan, bristling with impatience and not at all frightened, entered the witch’s lair. It was a fine house in the Faubourg du Temple, the newly rich sorceress having moved from the sinister hovel where, for a long time, the dwarf Barcarole had ushered in her furtive visitors. Nowadays people called on her almost overtly.
Generally she received her clients on a kind of throne, draped in a cloak embroidered with golden bees, but on that particular day Catherine Monvoisin, whose unpleasant habits had not been changed by contact with high society, was dead-drunk.
No sooner had they stepped over die threshold of the parlour into which they were shown than the three women realised that nodiing could be got out of the fortune-teller.
After gazing at them with dim eyes for a long while, the witch descended from her dais, reeling unsteadily, and dashing up to the horrified Fran^oise Scarron she seized her hand.
“You now,” she said, “now you have a most uncommon destiny. I sec the Ocean, and then the Night, and then the Sun above all. Night, that’s poverty. We know what that’s like! There’s nothing blacker! Just like the Night! But the Sun, that’s the King. There, my dear, the King will love you, and he’ll even marry you.”
“But you are mistaken!” cried Athcnai's furiously. “I’m the one who’ve come to see you to ask whether the King will love me. You are all mixed
UP” , „
“Don’t get annoyed, little lady,” the other protested in a thick voice. “I am not drunk enough to confuse the destinies of two persons. To each his own, isn’t that right? Give me your hand. The Sun is in yours too. And then, there is Luck. Yes, the King will love you, too. But he won’t marry you.”
“A plague upon the fuddled hag!” muttered Athcnais, drawing her hand away, enraged.
But La Voisin was determined to give each her full measure. She peremptorily took hold of Angcliquc’s hand, rolled her eyes, nodded her head.
“A fabulous destiny! Night, but also Fire, a Fire that dominates all.”
“I would like to blow if I shall marry a Marquis.”
“I can’t tell you if he’s a Marquis, but I see two marriages. There, those two small strokes. And then six children. . .
“Merciful Lord! . . .”
“And also . . . love affairs!—one, two, three, four, five. . . .”
“Don’t bother,” protested Angclique, trying to withdraw her hand.
“No, wait! . . . The Fire is what’s so surprising. It bums right across your whole life . . . to the very end. It blazes so fiercely that it hides the Sun. The King will love you, but you won’t love him on account of that Fire. . . .”
In the carriage that was taking them back, Athenais raged.
“That woman isn’t worth the tiniest sou of all the money people give her. I’ve never heard such a collection of rubbish. The King will love you! . . . the King will love you! . . . She says the same thing to everybody!”
Angelique learned the news from Mademoiselle de Parajonc. She was not expecting it and took a certain amount of time to unravel the truth from the old blue-stocking’s impossiblejargon. The latter called upon her towards supper-time, emerging from die foggy night like a gloomy owl, rumpled with a variety of ribbons, her eyes fixed and watchful. Angclique offered her some griddlc-cakes by the fireside. Philonidc talked at length about dieir neighbour, Madame de Gauffray, who had just “felt the after¬effects of permitted love”, meaning that after ten months of marriage she had given birth to a little boy. Then she expatiated on her trouble with her “dear ailing ones”; Angdlique thought she was referring to her aged parents, but in fact she was referring to her own feet, which suffered from corns. Finally, after much splitting of hairs and dissecting of sentiments and declaring, after watching the rain lash against the window-panes for a while: “The third dementis falling”, Philonide, full of glee at announdng a piece of news, dedded to express herself like common mortals:
“Do you know that Madame de Lamoignon is going to marry her daughter?”
“She does well! The girl isn’t pretty but she has money enough to make a brilhant match.”
“You are most perceptive, as usual, my dear. Actually it’s only the dowry of that mousy little thing that could possibly tempt such a hand¬some gentleman as Philippe du Plessis.”
“Philippe?” “
“You’ve heard no rumour of it?” inquired Philonide, blinking her watchful eyes.
Angelique had recovered herself. She said with a shrug:
“Perhaps I have . . . but I didn’t give it any credence. Philippe du Plessis cannot lower himself by marrying the daughter of a judge who, though occupying a high position, is of common extraction.”
The old maid sneered.
“A peasant on my estates often used to say: ‘Money is found only on the ground and you must stoop to pick it up.’ It’s common knowledge that young du Plessis is always in financial straits. He gambles heavily at Versailles and he spent a fortune on equipment for his last campaign; he had a train of ten mules trailing behind him, carrying his gold-plate and goodness knows what else. The silk of his tent was so richly embroidered that the Spaniards spotted it from their trenches and used it as a target. . . . I do grant you, though, that this insensitive charmer is furiously handsome. . . .”
Angelique let her go on soliloquising. After her first feeling of in¬credulity, she now felt discouraged. The last threshold to cross in order to bask at last in the light of the Sun King—the marriage with Philippe—was crumbling. For that matter, she had always known that it would be too difficult and that she would not have strength enough. She was worn out, used up. . . . She was but a chocolate-manufacturer and would not be able to maintain herself much longer on the level of the nobility, which would never welcome her. She was being received, but not welcomed. . . . Versailles! . . . Versailles! The glamour of the Court, the radiance of the Sun King! Philippe 1 Beautiful, unattainable god Mars! . . . She would drop back to the level of a petite bourgeoise. And her children would never be gentlemen. . . .
Absorbed in her thoughts, she did not realise that time was passing. The fire was dying in the hearth, the candle smoked.
Angelique heard Philonide summon sharply Flipot, who was standing watch near the door:
“Idler, remove the excess of this glimmerer.”
As Flipot stood open-mouthed, Angelique translated wearily:
“Lackey, trim the candle.”
Philonide de Parajonc got up, satisfied:
“My dear, you seem pensive. I leave you to your muses. . . .”
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