IV
“She will protect me! She will come to my rescue! Ah! how truly the abbé spoke when he said that one look might decide my life. Yes, those eyes, so soft and gentle, that little mouth, both merry and sweet, that little foot almost hidden under the pompon—Yes, here is my good fairy!”
Thus thought the chevalier, almost aloud, as he returned to the inn. Whence came this sudden hope? Did his youth alone speak, or had the eyes of the marquise told a tale?
He passed the greater part of the night writing to Mademoiselle d’Annebault such a letter as we heard read by Madame de Pompadour to her lord.
To reproduce this letter would be a vain task. Excepting idiots, lovers alone find no monotony in repeating the same thing over and over again.
At daybreak the chevalier went out and began roaming about, carrying his dreams through the streets. It did not occur to him to have recourse once more to the protecting abbé, and it would not be easy to tell the reason which prevented his doing so. It was like a blending of timidity and audacity, of false shame and romantic honor. And, indeed, what would the abbé have replied to him, if he had told his story of the night before? “You had the unique good fortune to pick up this fan; did you know how to profit by it? What did the marquise say to you?”
“Nothing.”
“You should have spoken to her.”
“I was confused; I had lost my head.”
“That was wrong; one must know how to seize an opportunity; but this can be repaired. Would you like me to present you to Monsieur So-and-so, one of my friends; or perhaps to Madame Such-a-one? That would be still better. We will try and secure for you access to this marquise who frightened you so, and then”—and so forth.
Now the chevalier little relished anything of this kind. It seemed to him that, in telling his adventure, he would, so to speak, soil and mar it. He said to himself that chance had done for him something unheard of, incredible, and that it should remain a secret between himself and Fortune. To confide this secret to the first comer was, to his thinking, to rob it of its value, and to show himself unworthy of it. “I went alone yesterday to the castle at Versailles,” thought he, “I can surely go alone to Trianon?” This was, at the time, the abode of the favorite.
Such a way of thinking might, and even should, appear extravagant to calculating minds, who neglect no detail, and leave as little as possible to chance; but colder mortals, if they were ever young, and not everybody is so, even in youth, have known that strange sentiment, both weak and bold, dangerous and seductive, which drags us to our fate. One feels one’s self blind, and wishes to be so; one does not know where one is going and yet walks on. The charm of the thing consists in this recklessness and this very ignorance; it is the pleasure of the artist in his dreams, of the lover spending the night beneath the windows of his mistress; it is the instinct of the soldier; it is, above all, that of the gamester.
The chevalier, almost without knowing it, had thus taken his way to Trianon. Without being very paré, as they said in those days, he lacked neither elegance nor that indescribable air which forbids a chance lackey, meeting one, from daring to ask where one is going. It was, therefore, not difficult for him, thanks to information he had obtained at the inn, to reach the gate of the château—if one can so call that marble bonbonnière, which has seen so many pleasures and pains in bygone days. Unfortunately, the gate was closed, and a stout Swiss wearing a plain coat was walking about, his hands behind his back, in the inner avenue, like a person who is not expecting any one.
“The King is here!” said the chevalier to himself, “or else the marquise is away. Evidently, when the doors are closed, and valets stroll about, the masters are either shut in or gone out.”
What was to be done? Full as he had been, a moment earlier, of courage and confidence, he now felt, all at once, confused and disappointed. The mere thought, “The King is here!” alone gave him more alarm than those few words, on the night before: “The King is about to pass!” For then he was but facing the unknown, and now he knew that icy stare, that implacable, impassible majesty.
“Ah! Bon Dieu! What a figure I should cut if I were to be so mad as to try and penetrate this garden, and find myself face to face with this superb monarch, sipping his coffee beside a rivulet.”
At once the sinister shadow of the Bastille seemed to fall before the poor lover; instead of the charming image that he had retained of the marquise and her smile, he saw dungeons, cells, black bread, questionable water; he knew the story of Latude, thirty years an inmate of the Bastille. Little by little his hope seemed to be taking to itself wings.
“And yet,” he again said to himself, “I am doing no harm, nor the King either. I protest against an injustice; but I never wrote or sang scurrilous songs. I was so well received at Versailles yesterday, and the lackeys were so polite! What am I afraid of? Of committing a blunder? I shall make many more which will repair this one.”
He approached the gate and touched it with his finger. It was not quite closed. He opened it, and resolutely entered.
The gatekeeper turned round with a look of annoyance.
“What are you looking for? Where are you going?”
“I am going to Madame de Pompadour.”
“Have you an audience?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your letter?”
He was no longer the “marquis” of the night before, and, this time, there was no Duc d’Aumont. The chevalier lowered his eyes sadly, and noticed that his white stockings and Rhinestone buckles were covered with dust. He had made the mistake of coming on foot, in a region where no one walked. The gatekeeper also bent his eyes, and scanned him, not from head to foot, but from foot to head. The dress seemed neat enough, but the hat was rather askew, and the hair lacked powder.
“You have no letter. What do you wish?”
“I wish to speak to Madame de Pompadour.”
“Really! And you think this is the way it is done?”
“I know nothing about it. Is the King here?”
“Perhaps. Go about your business and leave me alone.”
The chevalier did not wish to lose his temper, but, in spite of himself, this insolence made him turn pale.
“I sometimes have told a lackey to go away,” he replied, “but a lackey never said so to me.”
“Lackey! I a lackey?” exclaimed the enraged gatekeeper.
“Lackey, doorkeeper, valet, or menial, I care not, and it matters little.”
The gatekeeper made a step toward the chevalier with clenched fists and face aflame. The chevalier, brought to himself by the appearance of a threat, lifted the handle of his sword slightly.
“Take care, fellow,” said he, “I am a gentleman, and it would cost me but thirty-six livres to put a boor like you under ground.”
“If you are a nobleman, monsieur, I belong to the King; I am only doing my duty; so do not think—”
At this moment the flourish of a hunting-horn sounding from the Bois de Satory was heard afar, and lost itself in the echo. The chevalier allowed his sword to drop into its scabbard, no longer thinking of the interrupted quarrel.
“I declare,” said he, “it is the King starting for the hunt! Why did you not tell me that before?”
“That has nothing to do with me, nor with you either.”
“Listen to me, my good man. The King is not here; I have no letter, I have no audience. Here is some money for you; let me in.”
He drew from his pocket several pieces of gold. The gatekeeper scanned him anew with a superb contempt.
“What is that?” said he, disdainfully. “Is it thus you seek to penetrate into a royal dwelling? Instead of making you go out, take care I don’t lock you in.”
“You—you valet!” said the chevalier, getting angry again and once more seizing his sword.
“Yes, I,” repeated the big man. But during this conversation, in which the historian regrets to have compromised his hero, thick clouds had darkened the sky; a storm was brewing. A flash of lightning burst forth, followed by a violent peal of thunder, and the rain began to fall heavily. The chevalier, who still held his gold, saw a drop of water on his dusty shoe as large as a crown piece.
“Peste!” said he, “let us find shelter. It would never do to get wet.”
He turned nimbly toward the den of Cerberus, or, if you please, the gatekeeper’s lodge. Once in there, he threw himself unceremoniously into the big armchair of the gatekeeper himself.
“Heavens! How you annoy me!” said he, “and how unfortunate I am! You take me for a conspirator, and you do not understand that I have in my pocket a petition for his Majesty! If I am from the country, you are nothing but a dolt.”
The gatekeeper, for answer, went to a corner to fetch his halberd, and remained standing thus with the weapon in his fist.
“When are you going away?” he cried out in a stentorian voice.
The quarrel, in turn forgotten and taken up again, seemed this time to be becoming quite serious, and already the gatekeeper’s two big hands trembled strangely on his pike;—what was to happen? I do not know. But, suddenly turning his head—“Ah!” said the chevalier, “who comes here?”
A young page mounted on a splendid horse (not an English one;—at that time thin legs were not the fashion) came up at full speed. The road was soaked with rain; the gate was but half open. There was a pause; the keeper advanced and opened the gate. The page spurred his horse, which had stopped for the space of an instant; it tried to resume its gait, but missed its footing, and, slipping on the damp ground, fell.
It is very awkward, almost dangerous, to raise a fallen horse. A riding-whip is of no use. The kicking of the beast, which is doing its best, is extremely disagreeable, especially when one’s own leg is caught under the saddle.
The chevalier, however, came to the rescue without thinking of these inconveniences, and set about it so cleverly that the horse was soon raised and the rider freed. But the latter was covered with mud and could scarcely limp along.
Carried as well as might be to the gatekeeper’s lodge and seated in his turn in the big armchair, “Sir,” said he to the chevalier, “you are certainly a nobleman. You have rendered me a great service, but you can render me a still greater one. Here is a message from the King for Madame la Marquise, and this message is very urgent, as you see, since my horse and I, in order to go faster, almost broke our necks. You understand that, wounded as I am, with a lame leg, I could not deliver this paper. I should have, in order to do so, to be carried myself. Will you go there in my stead?”
At the same time he drew from his pocket a large envelope ornamented with gilt arabesques and fastened with the royal seal.
“Very willingly, sir,” replied the chevalier, taking the envelope.
And, nimble and light as a feather, he set out at a run and on the tips of his toes.