Читать книгу The Presentation - H. De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 4

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IT was the night of the Duc de Choiseul’s ball, that is to say, the night before the expected presentation of the Comtesse Dubarry at Court, and Versailles was in a ferment, the seething of which reached to the meanest streets of Paris.

France had long been accustomed to the rule, not of kings, but of favourites and ministers, and at the present moment in the year of our Lord, 1770, she was under the rule of the most kind-hearted of women since the harmless La Vallière and the most upright minister since Colbert.

The mistress was Dubarry and the minister de Choiseul.

It was a strange government. To-day Dubarry, who hated Choiseul much more than she hated the devil, would be in the ascendant over Louis the Voluptuous. To-morrow Choiseul would have the long ear of the King, who was, in fact, only the table on which these two gamblers played with loaded dice for the realm of France.

Behind the two gamblers stood their backers. Behind Choiseul, when he was winning, nearly the whole Court of Versailles. Behind Dubarry, when she was losing, only her family, the Vicomte Jean, and a few inconsiderable people who had learned to love her for her own sake.

This adherence of the courtiers to Choiseul was caused less by the prescience of self-interest than by hatred of the Comtesse, and this hatred, always smouldering and ready to burst into flame, was one of the strangest features in the Court mind of France.

Why did they hate her, these people? Or, rather, why did they hate her with such intensity—they who had raised few enough murmurs against the rule of the frigid and callous Pompadour?

They hated her, perhaps, because she was an epitome of the virtues and the vices of the people whom they had trampled under foot for centuries. She had that goodness of heart and simplicity of thought rarer even than rectitude in Court circles, and her very vices had a robustness reminiscent of the soil.

Dubarry was, in fact, a charming woman who might have been a good woman but for Fate, the Maison Labille, and Louis of France.

The question of her presentation at Court, an act which would place her on the same social footing as her enemies, had been the main topic of conversation for a month past. The women had closed their ranks and united against the common enemy. Not one of them would act as sponsor. The King, who cared little enough about the business, had, still, interested himself in the matter. The Comtesse, her sister Chon, and the Vicomte Jean Dubarry had ransacked the lists of the most venial of the nobility. Bribes, threats, promises, all had been used in vain; not a woman would stir or raise a finger to further the ambition of the “shop girl,” so that the unfortunate Comtesse was on the point of yielding to despair when a brilliant idea occurred to the Vicomte Jean.

Away down in the provinces, mouldering in a castle on the banks of the Meuse, lived a lady named the Comtesse de Béarn. A lady of the old régime, a litigant with a suit pending before the courts in Paris, poor as Job, proud as Lucifer, and seemingly created by Providence for the purpose of the presentation.

This lady had been brought to Paris by a trick, installed in the town house of Madame Dubarry, and wheedled into consenting to act as sponsor by pure and rank bribery. One can fancy the consternation of the Choiseul party when this news leaked out.

The presentation was assured; nothing, one might fancy, could possibly happen to prevent it, and yet to-night, standing with the Duchess to receive their guests, the face of Choiseul showed nothing of his threatened defeat.

The Rue de Faubourg St. Honoré was alight with the torches of the running footmen and filled with a crowd watching the carriages turning into the courtyard of the Hôtel de Choiseul from the direction of the Rue St. Honoré, the Rue de la Bonne Morue, the Rue d’Anjou, and the Rue de la Madeleine.

It was a great assemblage, for the Court for the moment was in Paris, the King having changed his residence for three days, returning to Versailles on the morrow, and the people, with that passion for display which helped them at times to forget their misery and hunger, watched the passing liveries of the Duc de Richelieu, M. de Duras, M. de Sartines, the Duc de Grammont, and the host of other notabilities, content if by the torchlight they caught a glimpse of some fair face, the glimmer of a jewel, or the ribbon of an order.

The Maréchal de Richelieu’s carriage had drawn away from the steps, having set down its illustrious occupant, when another carriage drew up, from which stepped two young men. The first to alight was short, dark, with a face slightly pitted with smallpox, and so repellent, that at first sight the mind recoiled from him. Yet such was the extraordinary vigour and personality behind that repulsive face that men, and more especially women, forgot the ugliness in the hypnotism of the power. This was the celebrated Comte Camus, a descendant of Nicholas Camus, who had arrived in France penniless in the reign of Louis XIII., married his daughter to Emery, superintendent of finance, and died leaving to his heirs fifteen million francs.

The gentleman with him, tall, fair complexioned, and with a laughing, devil-may-care face, marred somewhat by a sword-cut on the right side reaching from cheek-bone to chin, was the Comte de Rochefort.

Rochefort was only twenty-five, an extraordinary person, absolutely fearless, always fighting, one of those characters that, like opals, seem compounded of cloud and fire. Generous, desperate in his love and hate, a rake-hell and a roué, open-handed when his fist was not clenched, and always laughing, he was fittingly summed up in the words of his cousin, the Abbé du Maurier, “It grieves me to think that such a man should be damned.”

Rochefort, followed by Camus, passed up the steps and through the glass swing-doors to the hall. It was like entering a palace in fairy-land. Flowers everywhere, clinging to the marble pillars, gloated on by the soft yet brilliant lights of a thousand lamps, and banking with colour the balustrades of the great staircase up which was passing a crowd of guests, or, one might better say, a profusion of diamonds, orders, blue ribbons, billowing satin, and the snow of lace and pearls. Over the light laughter and soft voices of women the music of Philidor drifted, faintly heard, from the band of violins in the ball-room, and, clear-cut and hard through the murmur and sigh of violins, voices and volumes of drapery, could be heard the business-like voice of the major-domo announcing the guests.

“Monsieur le Maréchal Duc de Richelieu!”

“Madame la Princesse de Guemenée!”

“Madame de Courcelles!” etc.

Camus and Rochefort, having made their bow to Madame de Choiseul and saluted the minister, lost each other completely. Each had a host of acquaintances, and Rochefort had not made two steps in the direction of the ball-room when a hand was laid on his arm and, turning, he found himself face to face with Monsieur de Sartines, the Lieutenant-General of Police.

“Is this an arrest, monsieur?” said Rochefort, laughing.

“Only of your attention,” replied de Sartines, laughing in his turn. “My dear Rochefort, how well you are looking. And what has brought you here to-night?”

“Just what brought you, my dear Sartines.”

“And that?”

“The invitation of Choiseul.”

“But I thought you were of the other party?”

“Which other party?”

“The Dubarry faction.”

“I—I belong to no faction—only my own, and that includes all the pretty women and pleasant fellows in Paris. Mordieu, Sartines, since when have you imagined me a man of factions and politics? I keep clear of all that simply because I wish to live. Look at Richelieu, he has aged more in the last six months with hungering after Choiseul’s portfolio than he aged in the whole eighty years of his life. Look at Choiseul grinning at Richelieu, whom he expects to devour him; he has no more wrinkles simply because he has no more room for them. Look at yourself. You are as yellow as a louis d’or, and your liver can’t grow any bigger on account of the size of your spleen—politics, all politics.”

“I!” said Sartines. “I have nothing to do with politicians—my business is with criminals.”

“They are the same thing, my dear man,” replied Rochefort. “The criminals stab each other in the front and the politicians in the back; that is all the difference. Ah, here we are in the ball-room. More flowers! Why, Choiseul must have stripped France of roses for this ball of his.”

“Yes, but there is a Rose that he has failed to pluck with all these roses.”

“Dubarry?”

“Precisely.”

Though Rochefort pretended to know nothing of politics, his acute mind told him at once a secret hidden from others. Sartines belonged to the Dubarry faction. He read it at once in the remark and the tone in which it was made.

Sartines moved through the circles of the Court, mysterious, secretive, professing no politics, yet with his thumb in every pie, and sometimes his whole hand.

He was Fouché with the aristocratic particle attached—a policeman and a noble rolled into one. With the genius of Mascarille for intrigue, of Tartuffe for hypocrisy, acting now with the feigned stupidity of a Sganarelle, and always ready to pounce with the pitilessness of a tiger, this extraordinary man exercised a power in the Court of Louis XV., equalled only by the power of the grey cardinal in the time of Richelieu—with this difference—he was feared less, on account of his assumed bonhomie, an attribute that made him even more dangerous than son éminence gris.

He stood now with his hands behind his back, leaning slightly forward, his lips pursed, and his eyes upon the minuet that had just formed like a coloured flower crystallized from the surrounding atmosphere by the strains of Lully.

“Ah,” said the Minister of Police, catching sight of a familiar figure, “so the Comte Camus is among the dancers. He came with you to-night?”

“Yes; we arrived in the same carriage.”

“Then take care,” said Sartines, “that you do not end your life in the same carriage.”

“Pardon!”

“The carriage that takes men to the Place de la Grève.”

“Monsieur!” cried Rochefort.

“It is my joke; yet, all the same, a joke may have a warning in it. Rochefort, beware of that man.”

“Of Comte Camus?”

“Yes.”

“And why?”

“Mordieu, why! He is a poisoner—that’s all.”

“A poisoner!”

“Precisely. He poisoned his uncle with a plate of soup, he poisoned his wife with a pot of rouge, and he would poison me with all his heart if he could get into my kitchen. You ask me how I know all this? I know it. Yet I cannot touch him because my evidence is not as complete as my knowledge. But the rope is ready for him, and he will fall as surely as my name is Sartines, for he is an expert in the art, and my eye is always upon him.”

Rochefort, who had recovered from his shock, laughed. He did not entirely believe Sartines; besides, his attention was distracted from the thought of Camus by a face.

“Who is that lady seated in the alcove beside Madame de Courcelles?” asked he.

De Sartines turned.

“That?” said he. “Why, it is La Fleur de Martinique. How is it possible that you do not know her?”

“I have been away from Paris for two months. She must have bloomed in my absence, this flower of Martinique. Her name, my dear Sartines? I am burning to know her name.”

“Mademoiselle Fontrailles. But beware of her, Rochefort; she is even more dangerous than Camus.”

“Why, does she poison people?”

“No, she only makes eyes at them. It’s the same thing. Now, what can she be doing here to-night—for she is a friend of the Dubarrys?”

“What can she be doing here? Why, where are your eyes? She is making Choiseul’s ball-room more beautiful, of course. Mon Dieu, what a face; it makes every other face look like a platter. Sartines, introduce me.”

“That I will not.”

“Then I will introduce myself.”

“That is as may be.”

Rochefort turned on his heel and walked straight towards Mademoiselle Fontrailles, whilst Sartines looked on in horror. He knew that Rochefort would stick at nothing, but he did not dream that he would dare the act on which he was now evidently bent.

Rochefort walked straight up to Madame de Courcelles, with whom he had a slight acquaintance, and bowed.

“How delightful to find you here, and you, too, Mademoiselle Fontrailles. I was just complaining of the profusion of the flowers—I thought Choiseul must have gathered together a hundred million roses in this room—till, turning to your alcove, I found there were only two.”

He bowed, and Madame de Courcelles laughed as she rose to greet Sartines, with whom she wished a few minutes’ conversation.

“Since you two know each other, I will leave you to talk nonsense together,” said she. “Ah, Sartines, I thought you were eluding me. You looked twice in my direction, and not one sign of recognition.”

“I am growing short-sighted, madame,” replied de Sartines, as she took his arm, “and had it not been for the keen sight of Monsieur de Rochefort, I might altogether have missed you.”

They passed away in the crowd that now thronged the room, leaving Rochefort and Mademoiselle Fontrailles together.

She was very beautiful. Graceful as the fleur d’amour of her native land, dark, yet without a trace of the creole, and with eyes that had been compared to black pansies. Those same eyes when seen by daylight discovered themselves not as pansies, but as two wells of the deepest blue.

The Flower of Martinique looked at Rochefort, and Rochefort looked at the Flower of Martinique.

“Monsieur,” said the Flower, “I have met many surprising things in Paris; but nothing has surprised me more than your impertinence.”

“Not my impertinence, dear Mademoiselle Fontrailles,” replied Rochefort, “but my philosophy. Have you not noticed that when two people get to know each other they generally bore each other? Now in Paris society two people cannot possibly know each other without being introduced; and, since we have never been introduced, it follows logically that we can never bore each other.”

“I am not so sure of that,” replied the lady, looking at her companion critically. “Many people to whom I have never been introduced bore me by the expression of their faces and the tone of their voices. I was noticing that fact even whilst I was watching you talking to Monsieur de Sartines a moment ago.”

“Ah,” said Rochefort, “you noticed that about him! It is true he is a bit heavy.”

She laughed. In her Paris experience she had met no one like Rochefort. Impudence she had met, and daring, laughter, raillery, good looks and ugliness. Yet she had never met them all combined, as in the case of Rochefort. For it seemed to her that he was now almost ugly, now almost good-looking, and she set herself for a moment to try and read this man whose face had so many expressions, and whose mind had, seemingly, so many facets.

She was a keen reader of character, yet Rochefort baffled her. The salient points were easy enough to discern. Courage, daring and sharp intelligence were there; but the retreating angles, what did they contain? She could not tell, but she determined, whatever his character might be, it would be improved by a check.

“I have not weighed Monsieur de Sartines,” she said, rising to rejoin Madame de Courcelles, who was approaching on the arm of the minister, “but I have weighed Monsieur Rochefort, and I find him——” she hesitated with a charming smile upon her lips.

“And you have found him——?”

“Wanting.”

Next moment she was passing away with Madame de Courcelles, and Rochefort found himself face to face with the Minister of Police.

At the word “wanting,” she had swept him from head to foot with her eyes, and the charming smile had turned into an expression of contemptuous indifference worse than a blow in the face. It was the secret of her loveliness that it could burn one up, or freeze one, or entrance one at will. Rochefort had been playing with a terrible thing, and for the first time in his life he felt like a fool. He had often been a fool, but he had never felt like a fool before.

“Well,” said de Sartines, with a cynical smile, “and what have we been talking about to Mademoiselle Fontrailles?”

“Why,” said the young man, recovering himself, “the last subject we were discussing was your weight, Sartines.”

“My weight?”

“She said that you impressed her as being rather heavy.”

He turned away and walked off, mixing with the crowd, trying to stifle his mortification, his fingers clutching his lace ruffles and his eyes glancing hither and thither for someone to pick a quarrel with or say a bitter thing to. He found no one of this sort, but he found Mademoiselle Fontrailles. Twice in the crowd he passed her, and each time her eyes swept over him without betraying the least spark of recognition.