Читать книгу The False Chevalier or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette - W. D. Lighthall - Страница 9

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MONSIEUR DE RÉPENTIGNY

For several days he revelled in exploring Eaux Tranquilles. He became familiar with the paths of the gardens, the different statues and fountains. Sweet odours continually seemed to fill his breathing. He sat dreaming in the trellised vineries, or wandered with his host along the walks overhung by carefully trimmed shade-trees. Sometimes he would ramble in the park, which occupied about a mile of hill across the mere; sometimes he strolled curiously about in the old castle, along devious passages and from chamber to chamber, wondering at its heavily tapestried walls, its gloomy dungeons with the water lapping just beneath, its small windows painted with little coats of arms, and its walls ten feet thick.

One of his strong recommendations in the eyes of de Bailleul was that he knew a fine horse and how to ride him. The Chevalier, being lord of a large extent of country, and a very conscientious man who sympathised energetically with the broad-minded schemes of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld for bettering the peasants, they did much visiting of curés and cottagers.

"Parsangbleu," he exclaimed to Germain. "What is more simple than that every one of the people is a man like any of the rest of us."

That was then new doctrine to society.

Just when they were starting off one day together, the Chevalier's groom handed him a note.

While they cantered outward he perused it and commented.

"Our visitors arrive from the Palace this afternoon. One is my very amiable friend, the Prince de Poix, of the family of the Noailles, colonel of bodyguards to his Majesty. With him of course comes his Princess. Make yourself agreeable to her, Germain, which is very easily done. She is the key of the situation for you. In her charge will be some ladies. Don't be afraid of the crinoline, my boy. There will also be some officers of the Prince's command, the Noailles company, namely, Baron de Grancey, Viscount Aymer d'Estaing, the Count de Bellecour, the Marquis d'Amoreau, and the Chevalier de Blair. They lead a famous corps, for every private in the bodyguard is a noble, and has the rank of captain. They have come to Fontainebleau with the hunt."

The news brought Germain a shock. Since his experiences at the "Holy Ghost" he had progressively arrived at the conviction that the only parallel to the distinction of caste between the hereditary gentry and all other persons as then drawn in France was the distinction between the heavens above and the earth beneath; the distance between was considered simply immeasurable and impassable except by the transmigration of souls. We cannot understand the extent of it in our day. No aristocrat is now so blind, no plebeian so humble, as to sincerely believe the doctrine. But in that age France was steeped in it. High refinement of manners had grown to really differentiate the Court from the masses, and the members of the governing order were jealous of the privileges of their circle to a degree which has no parallel now. To be suspected of being a farmer or a merchant, no matter how cultivated or wealthy, was to be written "ignoble." The higher noblesse, making up in their own society, by the acquisitions of descent and leisure, a delightful sphere of all that was most fascinating in art, music, dress, and blazonry, as well as power and fame, moved as very gods, flattered with the tenet that other classes were an inferior species actually made out of a different clay. Genealogy and heraldry formed a great part of education. The members of the privileged families all wore territorial titles as their badge. The most beggarly individual who wore the sword claimed precedence of the most substantial citizen. Whatever name was plain, to them was base.

Now Germain's name was plain, and he knew his class was held by these people as base. His Elysian gardens, thought he, were about to be snatched away.

About two o'clock in the day he saw with beating heart a courier gallop up to the staircase of the main entrance, dismount, and wait.

The Chevalier's maître d'hôtel hastily caused the doors to be thrown wide open, and the hall swarmed full of servants. De Bailleul, donning his Grand Cross of St. Louis, placed Germain at his side, and stood at the foot of the steps.

The Princess arrived in a sedan-chair at the head of a procession of carriages, the first of which contained her chief servants and an abbé, who was her reader; those following held her husband and the other guests.

Germain blanched when he saw the latter descend. They wore that bearing which marked their class, and the dress of each seemed to him like the petals of some rich flower. The Canadian youth looked at them, fascinated. At his age the soul watches eagerly from its tower (what is a man but the tower of a soul?); each new turn of the kaleidoscope, each new figure crossing the landscape, is bathed in the rosy glow of morning. Yet he thought of them with a sense of imprisonment and sadness.

"I have not known till now what I desire; alas! I am nothing."

The Chevalier assisted the Princess to alight, and, kissing her hand, turned and said—

"Permit me, Madame, to present to your Excellency Monsieur Lecour, of Répentigny, in Canada."

This was the crucial moment in the history of the merchant's son. As he heard his name uttered the thought rushed into his mind how baldly and badly it sounded. There was a second of suspense, soon over. The great lady, arrayed in all the mountainous spread and shimmering magnificence of the Court costume, glanced at him with formal smile and impassive face, drew back, and made the grande révérence of the woman of high society. He noted it breathlessly, and as he returned it, full of quick-summoned grace and courage, he heard an inner music beginning to sound, loud, triumphant, and strange. He became seized of a new-found confidence that he could sustain his part. Every small doing now appeared of importance. The five Life Guards stood near. De Bailleul introduced Germain to Baron de Grancey and went away. Grancey, not having caught the Canadian's name, amiably asked Germain to repeat it.

He stopped, blushed, and faltered—

"Germain—Lecour——"

"De?" the Baron asked, supposing as a matter of course that a territorial title was to follow.

Lecour, in his confusion taking the requested "de" to mean merely "from," proceeded to utter four fatal words—

"De Répentigny en Canada."

The Baron turned to his nearest companion, and again the formula of introduction fell on Germain's ear—

"Chevalier de Blair, I have the honour of presenting you to Monsieur de Répentigny."

"Monsieur, I have the honour of saluting you," said de Blair.

Before Germain could collect his ideas he had bowed to each of the other Guards under the name "de Répentigny."

It cannot be said that, once he had recovered his self-possession after his narrow escape from being announced as a plebeian, any great qualms for the present overtook him. He reasoned that the title just attributed to him was not the result of his own seeking. Though destined to bring on all the serious consequences which form the matter of this story and to change a lighthearted young man into a desperate adventurer, it came in the aspect of a petty accident, which but facilitated his reception at the hands of the companions who crowded around him.

"Have I not seen you at Court? Were you not presented six months ago in the Oeil de Boeuf?" inquired de Blair.

"I am only a provincial," he answered. "I know nothing of the Court."

"When I first came from Dauphiny up to Versailles," laughed the Count de Bellecour, "I spoke such a patois they thought I was a horse."

"You come from Canada? Tell us about the Revolution in the English colonies. It is not a new affair, but we army men are always talking about it."

Germain ventured on an epigram.

"That was simple; it was the coming of age of a continent."

"A war of liberty against oppression?"

"Rather, gentlemen, a war of human nature against human nature. We had experience of the armies of both sides in our Province."

"Would I had been there with Lafayette!" another Guardsman cried.

"You, d'Estaing!" exclaimed Grancey. "You would cry if an Englishman spoiled your ruffles!"

"Sir, my second shall visit you this evening!"

"Pray, you twin imitations of Modesty-in-Person, let us have a real tragediette in steel and blood," put in d'Amoreau, the fifth Life Guard.

D'Estaing and Grancey, drawing swords, lunged at each other. D'Amoreau and the Count de Bellecour each ran behind one of them and acted as a second, the Chevalier de Blair standing umpire, when the Abbé, the Princess's reader, entered. The blades were thrust, mock respectfully, back into their scabbards, and they all bowed low to the ecclesiastic.

A short, spare man of thirty with a cadaverous face, whose sharp, lustreless black eyes, thin projecting nose, and mouth like a sardonic mere line, combined with a jesuitical downwardness of look, made one feel uneasy—such was the Abbé Jude as he appeared to Germain's brief first glance.

"Never mind, gentlemen; one less of you would not be missed," he retorted to their obeisance.

"You would like a death-mass fee, Abbé?"

The Canadian, brought up to other customs, wondered how a priest could be addressed with such contempt by good Catholics.

"Is he a monk or a curé?" he inquired, when the reader had passed on.

"He is nothing," answered d'Estaing, with clear eye and scornful lip. "Paris is devastated by fellows calling themselves abbés. They have no connection with the Church, except a hole in the top of their wigs. This fellow is Jude, the Princess's parasite."

To Germain the Guardsmen made themselves very agreeable. The manners of the Canadian attracted men who held that the highest human quality after rank was to be amiable. The Baron took him violently into his heart. He was a large, well-made fellow of a certain grand kindliness of bearing, and wore his natural hair, which was golden. The rich-laced blue silk tunic of the Bodyguard shone on his shoulders in ample spaces, and he well set off the deep red facings, the gold stripes, big sleeves, and elegant sword, the coveted uniform, loved of the loveliest and proudest of Versailles.