Читать книгу The Empress of Hearts - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 6

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The two most charming women in France sat in the Queen’s cabinet a few days later, Marie Antoinette and the Superintendent of her Household, her close friend, the young widowed Princesse de Lamballe. They shone sweet as flowers against the rose satin hangings, but by no means the simple flowers which make sweet constellation in April meadows. Each was the product of centuries of race and training inherited from dominant ancestors surrounded by submissive slaves. The power of kings and pride of warriors asserted itself in every line of delicate nose and lip together with the imperial coquetry of long dead women who had swayed courts and camps as the moon swings the tides to her cold changes. If breed tells in the kennels it tells far more surely in the more sensitive human stuff of brain and flesh.

Each was “the last word of a thousand years, fine flower of Europe’s slow civility,” and therefore no garden flowers for the pleasures of lesser men but exotics fenced with glass, fostered in artificial warmth, worshipped at a distance but never made for daily love and household uses.

Yet both were perfectly at ease with their kind and each other, dressed at the moment more carelessly than the wife of many a rich bourgeois in Paris, full of gaiety and simplicity of manner also where they knew themselves on their own ground, yet capable of stiffening in a second into fair frost-pieces of majesty if any hint of familiarity should come between the wind and their nobility. “It would be interesting,” thought a man who waited in the antechamber within sound of their voices though not of their words, “to speculate how either or both would act in a moment of dismay or danger.” Ridiculous thought! he ended with a smile. Such could never confront these darlings of fate. God himself would think twice before damning princesses of their quality whatever their sins. His smile took a tinge of bitterness remembering certain stories which had reached him. But no. Impossible!

A man passed him, preceded by one of the Queen’s ladies, on his way to the cabinet. Lucky dog! Count de Fersen thought, with a movement of surprise, looking up quickly.

After all it was only Boehmer, the King’s Jeweller, and he, of course, was a necessity of majesty. What shining toy tempted the Loveliest now, he wondered. Of all earthly wishes would that he might be the one to offer it and see those proud eyes soften for a moment over the beauty of a stone cold as her own royal heart. He watched Boehmer’s discreet entry with a smile half-melancholy, half-bitter, and returned to his idle talk with the officer on duty outside, for the door was now closed.

As for Boehmer, he was at the moment inaccessible to sentiment. He knew, none better, what was due to majesty, but the necklace filled his universe and on entry, after the necessary obeisances, he saw only two lovely young women who, being what they were, would certainly succumb to the glittering temptation. He congratulated himself on the Princess’s presence, for her amazement and delight would carry the Queen off her feet, if that were needed. Every one knew the influence possessed by the young Mistress of the household and how in matters of taste Marie Antoinette would take her opinion before her own. And who could find a flaw in his necklace where the whole was as super-perfect as every jewel in it? His heart bounded in his breast with certainty and pleasure. The scene was striking. The room had an effect of dim richness and splendour very impressive. There were magnificent commodes, the doors gleaming with the richness of red lacquer and ormolu, and behind the Queen a glorious cabinet with Sèvres medallions of the loves of goddesses and nymphs, roseate, azure, smiling as only loves in porcelain are likely to be. The carpet was in powder-blue and rose from the looms of Aubusson and the gilded chairs glimmered in white brocaded satin, the patterns delicately illuminated in hand-work of flowers and garlands. If one counted the treasures of that room together with the pictures they would outweigh the value of the necklace itself. But these were treasures of the Crown of France, the other, the property of Messieurs Boehmer and Bassauger.

A lady-in-waiting was present in stiff hoops and powdered eminence of hair; she stood erect behind the chair of the young woman in white with straightly falling India muslin with a crossed fichu over her bosom who represented the majesty of France. Thérèse de Lamballe sat beside her on a low seat without arms, but rose on his entry. There must be no familiarity with the Queen of France on a stranger’s arrival. She was on duty at once. Both returned Boehmer’s greeting with friendly grace. He was so far below their sphere as to render any precaution of manner unnecessary.

“Madame, I thank your Majesty with deep humility and gratitude for the favour accorded me of presenting a very wonderful work of art to your gracious notice.”

“But what is it, monsieur? I must beg you not to tempt me, for, as you know, I am still in debt for the diamond earrings. It is true I meant to be economical, but what would you have?”

“Madame, it would not be for the happiness of their people that great queens should be economical. It is known to your Majesty that the people love to see the splendour of courts and realize that money is circulated.”

He addressed her always in the third person so impossible to represent in English. She laughed like a girl.

“True, but yet— Where is it? Have you left it in the antechamber?”

“Madame,” protested Boehmer, “one does not leave jewels worth the City of Paris in the antechamber even of kings. Nor does one carry them visibly. I drove through the streets with terror to-day.”

“Come nearer, Thérèse, and prepare to be astonished. I will wager it is the diamond bracelets the Grand Turk had made for the chief sultana. I had heard they were to be sold in Paris.”

Not a word said Boehmer. With the solemnity of an archbishop officiating at High Mass he put his hand in the deep breast pocket of his soberly handsome brocaded undercoat and drew out a slender case especially made for such conveyance of the treasure. It was not its state receptacle, so to speak, but an incognito though elegant enough for a queen’s handling, and with the intention of suggestion he had had a crown-royal stamped in gold on the purple leather.

Before her Majesty was a small table enamelled in miniatures of shepherds and fashionable shepherdesses in the gardens of the Trianon. On this he laid the case and kneeling on one knee opened it, then rose and drew back.

Heavens! how the light imprisoned sprang to light released. Bright sparkles danced on the very ceiling as it laughed at its lover the sun. The Queen, laughing also, put her hand over dazzled eyes as bright. The Princess opened hers in amazement. The one had known the Austrian crown jewels from her cradle until the happy day when those of France were lavished to illuminate her beauty, and for the other the jewels of the great House of Penthièvre were a fitting setting. But this was a world’s wonder. Such a thing had never been seen before—might never be seen again.

“But, monsieur, impossible! Can they be real?” cried the Queen at last. “Naturally I have seen a few larger, but such an assemblage, never. Thérèse, what do you say?”

“Magnificent!” The Princess was hovering over them like a bee above roses. She showed unashamed, unconscious, the primitive longing of the woman for adornment and glitter. “Can a bride forget her jewels?” asks the Scripture and if not a bride certainly not a queen and her mistress of the household.

They lifted them, fingered them, commented, gloated, and Boehmer stood back delighted, sure at last that his day of happy release was come. Foolish Bassauger who had croaked like a raven of loss and ruin! What news he would carry back to shatter the gloom into triumph.

“Put them on, Thérèse, that I may see the effect!” cried the Queen, alive with curiosity and interest.

“Oh, Madame, your Majesty first. Permit me!” and in a moment her fair fingers loaded with emeralds had clasped the happy jewels about the beautiful throat made, it would seem, for such decoration. In the combination of simplicity and splendour was the most bewitching contrast in the world. Such diamonds with such beauty clad in white muslin were a dish for playful Graces. Thérèse de Lamballe clapped her hands, laughing aloud with gentle pleasure.

“You should make it the fashion, Madame. A white ball at Versailles, with avalanches of diamonds. A winter fête—I have it! White, white everywhere like snow, every head powdered, swan’s-down, white fur, and the glitter of diamonds for frost crystals and your Majesty in these!”

The Queen flew to the wonderful Louis Quatorze mirror in gilt claws which reflected the room, sumptuous casket for the jewel it held. Her figure, startlingly white and slender with rivers of light on shoulders and bosom confronted her. She turned, flushed and lovely to her friend. “Oh, if only I need never wear those abominable hoops again. I look like a woman in these draperies and in the hoops like a painted Queen of Diamonds—no better than the rest of the pack. What figure need a woman have in hoops? One might be knock-kneed and not a soul the wiser.”

She halted, remembering Boehmer’s presence and the Princess released her from the splendid harness, laying it on the table while together they counted the stones and admired the pendants.

“Really there is no choice!” Thérèse de Lamballe said at last. “To permit any one else to wear it would be to acknowledge oneself vanquished. It could not be. It is too magnificent for any one but a queen.”

“I feel that too,” the Queen said seriously, “but then—the cost! And times are so bad. Bad harvests, trouble with the English, discontents everywhere. What is the cost, monsieur?”

“The cost, your Majesty, is infinitesimal for such a jewel. You will laugh when you hear it. Roughly, four hundred thousand pounds. And that (as he saw the quick look of alarm) not by any means to be paid at once. Only in instalments and perfectly at his Majesty’s ease. Madame la Princesse is right. For the honour of the royalty of France there is none other who should wear it. So convinced was I of this that I had the crown stamped on the case.”

The Queen sat staring with great blue eyes at the necklace. It had been a bitter winter, delightful for sleighing at Versailles in gilt sleighs, shaped like swans and the last word in luxury. She had leaned back buried in a warm snow of furs, delicate feet slipped into costly muffs heated to protect them, only the sparkle of bright eyes and frost-rosed cheeks emerging from the warmth to meet the gay inspiriting cold. How her children had loved the sight of long white wastes of snow blotting out all the familiar lawns and landmarks, how they had clapped their little hands at sight of the snow statues of the Queen reared in her honour by a loyalty as short-lived as its memorial. Yes, a heavenly winter. She could not remember that she had ever enjoyed one more! But then—the people. Terrible reports came in from the provinces of starvation and death in the biting cold. Versailles itself was in the grip of poverty. As the sleighs glided over the sparkling surface one saw women huddled in rags leading gaunt children, the very ghosts of famine. The snow was not so amusing for them.

Naturally one stopped, one caused the equerry to ray golden louis into hands unused to gold. One received thanks and blessings and glided on conscious of queenly grace in the action. It would be reported far and wide. But a louis here and there did not go far. The King had spent much money on cart-loads of wood to warm wretched homes and one reason why she was delayed in her payments to Boehmer for the diamond earrings was that she had joined him in that gift to poverty.

And still the people died. Ill-fed, ill-clothed, what chance had they? But who could deal with such widespread misery? Who was responsible? Not she—not the King. These things simply happened and were most unfortunate. The way was to forget them if one could and continue sleighing.

That was possible and she had done it. But these diamonds? No doubt it was a moderate price but for what immoderate luxury! Quickly sensitive the tears gathered in her eyes as she sat looking silently at the necklace. That a queen of France whose right to splendour was unquestioned must doubt and hesitate before the purchase of a mere necklace seemed at the moment the cruelest injustice of fate. Her mind wavered to and fro like a flag in a gale, while Thérèse watched her half-smiling, as one watches a pretty child hesitating between its toys, and Boehmer looked on in satisfaction. At that moment he was as sure of his money as man could be.

At last the Queen roused herself from her reverie:

“The King must see it. He has expressed the wish. I know the price is moderate enough for such jewels, but you are aware, monsieur, that there are many poor—poor moreover who do not realize that it is fate and not the King’s Government which stints them. If it were to get abroad that I had made such a purchase there would be pasquinades, satires. In short, it would be misrepresented in every possible way. You could not have chosen a worse time.”

Boehmer bowed and protested without a tinge of fear for the result. The Princess’s first look of doubt reflected her own. Yes, the times were bad, even dangerous, if one considered such things! Boehmer urged that no time could be ill which placed such stones, the collection of patient years, at the foot of the throne. He would be profoundly honoured if his Majesty would condescend to inspect them. The Queen, sighing, despatched a messenger.

“And, I think, Thérèse, that when the King comes we had better see them alone. I want his frank opinion. The necklace is magnificent, but you see well that I must not be rash.”

With gravely lowered eyes and her charming révérence the Princess glided out of a concealed door leading to the inner apartment and at the same moment the King was announced and the royal couple were alone with the happy Boehmer. His Majesty nodded to the jeweller and threw himself into a chair.

Very far from the model of an accomplished gentleman was Louis the Sixteenth, King of France and inheritor of much unfulfilled renown and a descent that most other European kings must envy. Yet let none judge by appearances. No man can increase the stock of intellect with which he is launched in life and there the patron saints of the House of Bourbon had not been lavish. Knowledge a man may acquire if he have the chance and will. Louis had had neither and a deplorable education distracted by Court intrigues for tutorships had left him as ignorant a young man as any in his dominions except for such morsels of statecraft as he could not avoid in the life he was compelled to lead. By way of accomplishments he might be called a fair shot and horseman. By way of tastes a clever mechanic. As an artisan he might have made a decent living and earned his keep honestly. He was a really clever locksmith and if the workmen were busy with repairs about the palace it was his delight, not to look on with a condescending word of encouragement, but to pull and haul paving-stones, toss a plank over his big shoulders and so forth, much to their dismay and contempt. Horrible indeed for delicate-handed courtiers to witness; horrible for a royal bride to endure who expected sugared flatteries, a plumed hat swept to the feet or pressed to the heart in bows and had none of this from her strange uncouth husband. She had curled her lip often to watch him loafing in the courtyard, dully, idly, sometimes lending a hand if he got the slightest encouragement rather than lounging in her perfumed salon.

But the wife was wiser than the bride as wives are likely to be. That had been her first impression. She knew now that under that hulking exterior lay one of the kindest hearts in the world, a heart oppressed with a sense of destiny too great for its powers and therefore condemned to a most misleading reserve. There had come a day when she knew her charms and graces had not blown away like thistledown on a wind as she had supposed but that the rough boy had watched, had learnt that graces as well as conscience are necessary upon a throne and that though he could not shine himself and would never develop more than a dull reserved civility with which to meet his people he could yet delight to see her shine beside him while he toiled with false or inadequate ministers to retrieve the burden of an irretrievable past.

At first she pitied him, as one may pity a spirit prisoned in the rough bark of a cleft tree, and if such pity is not love, it is at least its kin and may one day develop the psyche wings folded in its chrysalis. Difficult and clumsy the elegant courtiers beheld their Dauphin and King and smiled in safe places, but the bright blue eyes of his Austrian wife were clearer—she knew there was a something inarticulate but fine, if one could reach it. Something that spoke of conscience in a conscienceless world ruled by his shameful grandfather and his shameless du Barry. And so it came about that to the shy young man’s consternation one day she rushed into his room and clasped tender arms about him, crying with tears:

“I care for you more every day, my dear, dear husband. Your frank honest character delights me, and the more I compare you with others the more I trust you.”

Was it any wonder that though he could never speak of that moment even to her he was henceforth the lover of the one woman who understood him.

“Everything she does is lovely,” was all he said to a great lady who hoped to catch his attention. His eyes were fixed on his wife. “We must own that she is perfectly charming.”

She was that and more in his eyes, something spiritual, exquisite, from a higher world than his own, a wonder clasped miraculously in his very earthy arms. And what could he deny her? Better if he had done it sometimes and affected an austerity he could never feel. She desired the Trianon, that charming country house by Versailles, the only place where she could be less than the Queen of France—a great lady playing at rusticity—and she had it and the cruel embittered comments of the journalists and pamphleteers who now began to rule France, comments on the frivolities and senseless extravagance of the Austrian. And now she wanted a new jewel— Well, it would be hard if the Empress of Hearts could not be the Queen of Diamonds also. It would be a difficult matter to manage just now, this awful winter; but if she wanted it— That was the mood in which the King entered the room that held his treasure, heavy and clumsy of gait, but a true lover in his heart’s heart.

“Show me the rubbish!” he said with would-be levity and held out the big flat-fingered hand of an artisan from the ruffled lace of his velvet sleeve. The Queen lifted it in almond-white rose-tipped fingers delicately as befitted its worth and laid it in his—those hands of hers were celebrated throughout Europe for their high-bred beauty and the very touch of them sent a light thrill through the coarser hand they brushed in passing.

“Most beautiful!” said the King, and did not mean the necklace.