From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, Stanley John Weyman [read along books txt] 📗

a cry, the King darted from me, and, in an instant, was racing through the wood at break-neck speed.

I had a glimpse of a woman flying far ahead of us; and now hidden from us by the trunks and now disclosed; and could even see enough to determine that she wore a yellow feather drooping from her hat, and was in figure not unlike the Princess. But that was all; for, once started, the inequalities of the ground drew my eyes from the flying form, and, losing it, I could not again recover it. On the contrary, it was all I could do to keep up with the King; and of the speed at which the woman was riding, could best judge by the fact that in less than five minutes he, too, pulled-up with a gesture of despair, and waited for me to come abreast of him.

"You saw her?" he said, his face grim, and with something of suspicion lurking in it.

"Yes, sire," I answered, "I saw a woman, and a woman with a yellow feather; but whether it was the Princess—"

"It was!" he said. "If not, why should she flee from us?"

To that, again, I had not a word to say, and for a moment we rode in silence. Observing, however, that this last turn had brought us far on the way home, I called the King's attention to this; but he had sunk into a fit of gloomy abstraction, and rode along with his eyes on the ground. We proceeded thus until the slender path we followed brought up into the great road that leads through the forest to the kennels and the new canal.

Here I asked him if he would not return to the chase, as the day was still young.

"Mon Dieu, no!" he answered passionately. "I have other work to do. Hark ye, M. le Duc, do you still think that she is in Brussels?"

"I swear that she was there three days ago, sire!"

"And you are not deceiving me? If it be so, God forgive you, for I shall not!"

"It is no trick of mine, sire," I answered firmly.

"Trick?" he cried, with a flash of his eyes. "A trick, you say? No, VENTRE DE SAINT GRIS! there is no man in France dare trick me so!"

I did not contradict him, the rather as we were now close to the kennels, and I was anxious to allay his excitement; that it might not be detected by the keen eyes that lay in wait for us, and so add to the gossip to which his early return must give rise. I hoped that at that hour he might enter unperceived, by way of the kennels and the little staircase; but in this I was disappointed, the beauty of the day having tempted a number of ladies, and others who had not hunted, to the terrace by the canal; whence, walking up and down, their fans and petticoats fluttering in the sunshine, and their laughter and chatter filling the air, they were able to watch our approach at their leisure.

Unfortunately, Henry had no longer the patience and self-control needful for such a RENCONTRE. He dismounted with a dark and peevish air, and, heedless of the staring, bowing throng, strode up the steps. Two or three, who stood high in favour, put themselves forward to catch a smile or a word, but he vouchsafed neither. He walked through them with a sour air, and entered the chateau with a precipitation that left all tongues wagging.

To add to the misfortune, something—I forget what—detained me a moment, and that cost us dear. Before I could cross the terrace, Concini, the Italian, came up, and, saluting me, said that the Queen desired to speak to me.

"The Queen?" I said, doubtfully, foreseeing trouble.

"She is waiting at the gate of the farther court," he answered politely, his keen black eyes reverting, with eager curiosity, to the door by which the King had disappeared.

I could not refuse, and went to her. "The King has returned early, M. le Duc?" she said.

"Yes, madame," I answered. "He had a fancy to discuss affairs to-day, and we lost the hounds."

"Together?"

"I had the honour, Madame."

"You do not seem to have agreed very well?" she said, smiling.

"Madame," I answered bluntly, "his Majesty has no more faithful servant; but we do not always agree."

She raised her hand, and, with a slight gesture, bade her ladies stand back, while her face lost its expression of good-temper, and grew sharp and dark. "Was it about the Conde?" she said, in a low, grating voice. "No, madame," I answered; "it was about certain provisions. The King's ear had been grossly abused, and his Majesty led to believe—"

"Faugh!" she cried, with a wave of contempt, "that is an old story! I am sick of it. Is she still at Brussels?"

"Still, madame."

"Then see that she stops there!" her Majesty retorted, with a meaning look.

And with that she dismissed me, and went into the chateau. I proposed to rejoin the King; but, to my chagrin, I found, when I reached the closet, that he had already sent for Varennes, and was shut up with him. I went back to my rooms therefore, and, after changing my hunting suit and transacting some necessary business, sat down to dinner with Nicholas, the King's secretary, a man fond of the table, whom I often entertained. He kept me in talk until the afternoon was well advanced, and we were still at table when Maignan appeared and told me that the King had sent for me.

"I will go," I said, rising.

"He is with the Queen, your Excellency," he continued.

This somewhat surprised me, but I thought no evil; and, finding one of the Queen's Italian pages at the door waiting to conduct me, I followed him across the court that lay between my lodgings and her apartments. Two or three of the King's gentlemen were in the anteroom when I arrived, and Varennes, who was standing by one of the fire-places toying with a hound, made me a face of dismay; he could not speak, owing to the company.

Still this, in a degree, prepared me for the scene in the chamber, where I found the Queen storming up and down the room, while the King, still in his hunting dress, sat on a low chair by the fire, apparently drying his boots. Mademoiselle Galigai, the Queen's waiting-woman, stood in the background; but more than this I had not time to observe, for, before I had reached the middle of the floor, the Queen turned on me, and began to abuse me with a vehemence which fairly shocked me.

"And you!" she cried, "who speak so slow, and look so solemn, and all the time do his dirty work, like the meanest cook he has ennobled! It is well you are here! ENFIN, you are found out—you and your provisions! Your provisions, of which you talked in the wood!"

"MON DIEU!" the King groaned; "give me patience!"

"He has given me patience these ten years, sire!" she retorted passionately. "Patience to see myself flouted by your favourites, insulted and displaced, and set aside! But this is too much! It was enough that you made yourself the laughing-stock of France once with this madame! I will not have it again—no: though twenty of your counsellors frown at me!"

"Your Majesty seems displeased," I said. "But as I am quite in the dark—"

"Liar!" she cried, giving way to her fury. "When you were with her this morning! When you saw her! When you stooped to—"

"Madame!" the King said sternly, "if you forget yourself, be good enough to remember that you are speaking to French gentlemen, not to traders of Florence!"

She sneered. "You think to wound me by that!" she cried, breathing quickly. "But I have my grandfather's blood in me, sire; and no King of France—"

"One King of France will presently make your uncle of that blood sing small!" the King answered viciously. "So much for that; and for the rest, sweetheart, softly, softly!"

"Oh!" she cried, "I will go: I will not stay to be outraged by that woman's presence!"

I had now an inkling what was the matter; and discerning that the quarrel was a more serious matter than their every-day bickerings, and threatened to go to lengths that might end in disaster, I ignored the insult her Majesty had flung at me, and entreated her to be calm. "If I understand aright, madame," I said, "you have some grievance against his Majesty. Of that I know nothing. But I also understand that you allege something against me; and it is to speak to that, I presume, that I am summoned. If you will deign to put the matter into words—"

"Words!" she cried. "You have words enough! But get out of this, Master Grave-Airs, if you can! Did you, or did you not, tell me this morning that the Princess of Conde was in Brussels?"

"I did, madame."

"Although half an hour before you had seen her, you had talked with her, you had been with her in the forest?"

"But I had not, madame!"

"What?" she cried, staring at me, surprised doubtless that I manifested no confusion. "Do you say that you did not see her?"

"I did not."

"Nor the King?"

"The King, Madame, cannot have seen her this morning," I said, "because he is here and she is in Brussels."

"You persist in that?"

"Certainly!" I said. "Besides, madame," I continued, "I have no doubt that the King has given you his word—"

"His word is good for everyone but his wife!" she answered bitterly. "And for yours, M. le Duc, I will show you what it is worth. Mademoiselle, call—"

"Nay, madame!" I said, interrupting her with spirit, "if you are going to call your household to contradict me—"

"But I am not!" she cried in a voice of triumph that, for the moment, disconcerted me. "Mademoiselle, send to M. de Bassompierre's lodgings, and bid him come to me!"

The King whistled softly, while I, who knew Bassompierre to be devoted to him, and to be, in spite of the levity to which his endless gallantries bore witness, a man of sense and judgment, prepared myself for a serious struggle; judging that we were in the meshes of an intrigue, wherein it was impossible to say whether the Queen figured as actor or dupe. The passion she evinced as she walked to and fro with clenched hands, or turned now and again to dart a fiery glance at the Cordovan curtain that hid the door, was so natural to her character that I found myself leaning to the latter supposition. Still, in grave doubt what part Bassompierre was to play, I looked for his coming as anxiously as anyone. And probably the King shared this feeling; but he affected indifference, and continued to sit over the fire with an air of mingled scorn and peevishness.

At length Bassompierre entered, and, seeing the King, advanced with an open brow that persuaded me, at least, of his innocence. Attacked on the instant, however, by the Queen, and taken by surprise, as it were, between two fires—though the King kept silence, and merely shrugged his shoulders—his countenance fell. He was at that time one of the handsomest gallants about the Court, thirty years old, and the darling of women; but at this his APLOMB failed him, and with it my heart sank also.

"Answer, sir! answer!" the Queen cried. "And without subterfuge! Who was it, sir, whom you saw come from the forest this morning?"

"Madame?"

"In one word!"

"If your Majesty will—"

"I will permit you to answer," the Queen exclaimed.

"I saw his Majesty return," he faltered—"and M. de Sully."

"Before them! before them!"

"I may have been mistaken."

"Pooh, man!" the Queen cried with biting contempt. "You have told it to half-a-dozen. Discretion comes a little late."

"Well, if you will, madame," he said, striving to assert himself, but cutting a poor figure, "I fancied that I saw Madame de Conde—"

"Come out of the wood ten minutes before the King?"

"It may have been twenty," he muttered.

But the Queen cared no more for him. She turned, looking superb in her wrath, to the King. "Now, sir!" she said. "Am I to bear this?"

"Sweet!" the King said, governing his temper in a way that surprised me, "hear reason, and you shall have it in a