THE THREE ROSES.
I.
It was at precisely half-past ten, as he satisfied himself by looking at his watch, on the morning of the 17th of June, in the year 1743, that a young gentleman got up from a chair in front of the Café Procope (just then opening with that air of stretching itself, rubbing its eyes, and yawning which marks a café in the ante-meridian hours). He stood for a moment twirling his cane and his moustache alternately, and then, as if suddenly reminded by the look of the café of a great moral duty omitted, stretched himself slightly and yawned prodigiously. It was, to be sure, rather early in the day to begin yawning, except for cafés; but then this young chronologer had his own way of dividing time, and, believing with the poet that the best of all ways to lengthen our days is to snatch a few hours from the night, what was early in the morning for most men was only somewhat late at night for him. It is to be noted, too, since the most trifling incidents in the life of a hero are worthy of record, that he yawned with such admirable self-possession, with such a mingling of good-will and graceful languor; he had so much the air of giving his whole mind to it, and at the same time of being so used to yawning that he really didn’t care so much for it after all, that you saw at once he was a man of distinction, to whom a yawn was not, as to most of us, a rare luxury, but a daily, nay, an hourly, a half-hourly, necessary of life.
Much might here be said, if space permitted, of a highly instructive nature, on the philosophy of yawning and its many varieties: the go-to-bed yawn; the get-up yawn; the tired yawn, the yawn of simple lassitude; the good-humored yawn, which takes itself as an excellent joke; the peevish yawn, which denies itself acridly as if it were a crime; the writer’s yawn and the reader’s yawn (quod Jupiter omen avertat!); the chronic yawn and the fixed yawn which merges into the drawl; the imitative yawn, into which unwary grandmothers are seduced by wicked little boys with slowly-flapping palm; the bored yawn, which is a protest against the world in general; the well-bred yawn, which is a protest against the immediate company, and is practised only in solitude. (It is, of course, the last-named sort in which our hero indulges.) There is a great deal of character, too, in a yawn, from your timid little lady’s yawn, shrinking away and hiding behind fan or handkerchief, or with hypocritical feminine art so moulding itself that, like Lucy Fountain’s, “it glides into society a smile,” to your open, hearty, man’s yawn, showing all its grinders shamelessly, as if it were a fine natural prospect one ought to be grateful for. Napoleon judged men, as he led them, by their noses;[[166]] a true philosopher would classify them by their yawns.
Meantime, however, we are leaving our hero yawning at the risk of dislocating his jaw and of setting the reader to keep him company. Let us, therefore, resume. Having indulged himself sufficiently in this refreshment, and recomposed his features again with some care, the young gentleman stood for a moment irresolute, tapping his boot with his cane, and then, as if his mind were made up, set off at a brisk pace in the direction of Notre Dame. As he stepped out it did not need his showy uniform, which was that of the famous corps of Mousquetaires, his jingling spurs, or his long rapier, of a heavier make than the dress-sword then worn by every gentleman, to show him for a soldier. You saw it in his measured stride, in every movement of a lithe and graceful yet strong and well-knit figure, in the gay recklessness of his manner, and especially in the ardent and somewhat imperious glance of his dark gray eye. A trace of superciliousness and vanity on his bold, handsome face you would have pardoned to his years and comeliness. Women smiled kindly on the gay young mousquetaire as he passed them, and were not ill-pleased at the kisses he flung them in promiscuous homage from the tips of his gloved fingers. Male glances not so kind, instinct, indeed, with smouldering scorn and hatred, were shot at him covertly too—glances such as a half-century later gloated openly with savage ferocity over the death-struggles of other hapless young mousquetaires dying hopelessly and gallantly, sword in hand, for a king who knew how to make locks but not laws, and a queen who could win all hearts but those of her people.
But right little recked our young mousquetaire of glances, hostile or kindly, from those he looked upon but as a rabble of the gutter, to be kicked or beaten like other animals out of his lordly path. The young summer in his blood all unconscious of that slumbering storm, he strode along, dispensing musk and kisses, and gaily humming a madrigal of Benserade, to the Rue des Poulies, and along that street, picking his way daintily over the wretched pavement till he came in front of a certain bric-à-brac shop. There he paused, hesitated a moment, and, pulling off his plumed hat and putting on his most fascinating smile, bowed low to two persons standing in the doorway.
This simple act of courtesy had a singular effect on the two persons in question, a young man and a young woman. This effect was apparently the same on both: they first colored violently, then frowned, then turned pale. But to an observer in the attic window over the way it seemed that the internal emotions indicated by these facial changes were very unlike in each. The young man seemed—to this observer—to be moved by displeasure rising even to intense rage; the girl’s uppermost feeling seemed to be embarrassment, and displeasure, if any, only at being caused embarrassment. But the observer could not quite decide that she was displeased at all by this act of politeness, and he inclined rather to think that her blush was caused by pleasure at seeing the young mousquetaire, while her frown was directed at her companion for his inopportune presence.
“Yes, that is it,” said this acute analyst to himself: “the blush was for the mousquetaire, whom she is glad to see, the frown for M. De Trop, who is in the way, and the pallor for herself, whom she heartily wishes out of the way in the row she foresees coming.”
While this thoughtful philosopher of the attic was thus moralizing a curious incident took place. The girl, who held some roses in her hand, dropped one of them, no doubt from agitation. The mousquetaire sprang forward to seize it. As he stooped over the flower the young man of the doorway, with an angry exclamation, thrust him back with such good-will that he reeled into the roadway and came near falling. Recovering himself in an instant, he whipped out his sword and rushed upon the other, crying:
“Baseborn scullion! darest thou raise thy hand to a gentleman? Thy life shall pay it.”
This was not, perhaps, his exact language, but it is so much nicer than what he really did say that we will let it stand in despite of history. At all events the young man understood him very clearly to express an intention of skewering him upon the spot; so, with a natural reluctance to being skewered, he armed himself with an iron bar used for fastening the door of the bric-à-brac shop, and resolutely awaited the onset.
At sight of these warlike overtures the girl screamed and the neighbors came flocking to doors and windows in pleasurable anticipation. The philosopher in the attic appeared to await the issue with composure.
Suddenly she who was the lovely cause of strife between the heroes stepped forward.
“Forbear, gentlemen,” she cried. “For shame! Would you shed blood for a paltry flower? If ’tis but a rose you want, here is one for each of you.”
And with a charming mixture of shyness and coquetry-the coquetry of a pretty woman who feels herself to be the object of contention between brave men—she proffered to each of the champions a rose.
The mousquetaire sheathed his sword at once, seized his flower with rapture, pressed it to his lips and to his heart, and looked altogether so languishing and sheepish that the young girl had to bite her lips to control a smile. She could not so easily hide the laugh that sparkled in her dancing eyes and made them still more dazzling.
The young man of the doorway received his rose with reluctance, seemed half disposed to reject it, and more than half disposed to throw it away after taking it, and fell back with so sullen and sulky an air that the Helen of this Iliad could forbear no longer, but laughed outright and merrily.
At that electric stroke of happy ridicule the clouds passed and the air cleared; the storm was over. The neighbors withdrew discontentedly to their shops, while the mousquetaire, with another bow and smile, departed. But he did not kiss his finger-tips to this young girl, as he had to the others.
The philosopher of the attic surveyed these events with conflicting emotions.
“Humph!” said he, rather ruefully, “the roses I spent my last sou for, the price of my breakfast, in fact, to lay upon her window-sill this morning. The one in the gutter, I suppose, is for me; was it by accident or design she dropped it? I wonder which of them she likes best?”
Gentle reader—for in these days it is only a gentle reader will deign to cast an eye over a simple love-tale like this—go with us but a little way, and we will try to unravel the philosopher’s problem.
II.
Had you chanced, then, miss or madam, to be your great-great-grandmother—as, Heaven be praised! you did not—and had you happened to be in the neighborhood of the Rue des Poulies in the year of grace 1743, and had it occurred to you to ask for the richest man in the quarter, public opinion would have answered unhesitatingly, “Papa Lamouracq, who keeps the bric-à-brac shop.” And had you further inquired who was the finest fellow and the best match in the neighborhood, the vote would still have been nearly unanimous for Raoul Berthier, the well-to-do ironmonger of the Quai de la Ferraille. And had you once more sought to know who was the prettiest girl—well, here there might have been some dissent, for the other prettiest girls and their mammas would no doubt have cast a scattering vote or so; but, counting the blind beggars for whom her hand was ever open, and the babies she was always ready to romp with, not to speak of the shrewd old fathers of families, who saw her beauty, as shrewd old fathers will, in the light of her imagined expectations, a decided majority would still have been given for Pauline Lamouracq, the old brocanteur’s young and only daughter.
Now, however public opinion may have erred with regard to two of the persons named—and, indeed, Papa Lamouracq, whenever the matter was broached, would protest, with many oaths and shrugs and groans, that, so far from being the richest man in the parish, he was in reality the very poorest (but what bric-à-brac dealer was ever otherwise, especially if he be an Auvergnat, as in Paris he generally is when he is not a Jew?)—certainly it made no mistake with regard to Pauline. Pretty beyond a doubt she was, with her trim young figure and her dark brown hair and eyes, lit both with a flash of golden light, and her—but, no; let us not attempt the impossible task of describing the charm and freshness of girlish beauty at eighteen. Do you, miss, look in the glass, or do you, sir—if so be it that stray masculine eyes shall linger over these artless pages—think of her you love best, and let that be our Pauline. Only herself seemed to be unconscious of her great beauty; for, though her mirror must have whispered to her now and again the charming secret, as it will to other young maidens, she fled from that perfidious counsellor, lest she should have a grievous addition to the load of peccadilloes she was wont to carry weekly to the confessional of her good friend and adviser, the old curé of the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.
Indeed, she had fewer incentives to vanity than many girls not half so pretty, inasmuch as she had fewer admirers. Not that there were not many who sighed for her in secret; but Raoul’s temper was known to be as quick as his hand was heavy, and they discreetly held aloof. Raoul and Pauline had been betrothed from a very early age, and the former was not one to brook any rivalry. From the cradle almost he had been wayward and headstrong. Years before, when little more than a child, he had run away to sea, and strange tales were whispered of his doings with Jean Bart, that famous privateer and scourge of perfidious Albion. Now that he had come back a fine, bronzed, athletic fellow of six or seven and thirty to take his place in his dead father’s business, and handle, the gossips said, a very pretty pot of money, he was more violent and self-willed and exacting than ever; and there were not wanting those who, seeing the look that came too often into his dark, handsome face, shook their heads and prophesied that all would not be sunshine in the married life of the pretty Pauline.
If she herself shared any of these misgivings she never showed it, but was as affectionate, and even obedient, to her intended husband as the most jealous swain could ask. On one point only did she go counter to his wishes, and that was in seeing a distant cousin, André Thiriot, who alone of all the young fellows in the neighborhood made her the object of an absorbing devotion that every one but herself laughed at. In truth, poor André was not fitted out by nature for the ideal lover. Lame from a fall in his childhood, small and insignificant in appearance (but for a high white forehead and a pair of large and brilliant eyes), and a beggarly huissier’s clerk to boot, he was a pretty fellow, forsooth, to aspire to the hand of the richest heiress in the quarter. So Papa Lamouracq thought, and, when his poor kinsman first hinted timidly at the idea nearest his heart, bade him begone with bitter rebuke and reviling. “He marry Pauline, indeed! Puny weakling! No man should have his girl who could not protect her with an arm as stout as his own. In these days,” said Papa Lamouracq, very truly, “who knows at what moment his women-kind may need protection from these vile marquises and mousquetaires that go about troubling the peace of honest folks?” And Papa Lamouracq, who had served in the wars, drew himself up to his full five feet nine—which in France, you know, is a colossal stature—squared his broad shoulders, and looked very fierce and resolute. It was, indeed, a time when beauty and innocence of the bourgeois class, where, indeed, very much that there was at Paris of beauty allied to innocence resided, needed stout hearts and strong arms to fence it. The gay courtiers of Louis XV. respected few laws, human or divine, and no woman not of the privileged classes was safe from their insults.
So poor André was sent to the right-about with a very large sized flea in his ear, and could only see his fair cousin thereafter by stealth. Raoul swore that if he ever caught him prowling about her he would break every bone in his body. For that threat, indeed, André cared little, for he had a brave spirit in his little body; but he loved his cousin too well to cause her needless annoyance, and he had perforce to content himself with the stolen interviews she could give him at such odd times as her father was away with Raoul at the cabaret, which, indeed, was only too often. Nor was Pauline loath to profit by these chances to see her cousin. That everybody repulsed and derided him was to her woman’s nature of course only an additional reason for liking him. Then, too, he had been her mother’s favorite, almost as a child to her on the death of his own parents, and, lastly, he talked very differently from the others about her. Pauline, thanks to the watchful care of her good friend and godfather, the curé of St. Germain, had had a better education than most girls of her class, and André was a genius and a poet—at least, they both thought so; which, for them, came to much the same thing. He rhymed about as well as the rest of the rhyming crew, in an age when in France and England there were many rhymers and few poets, and those few not always greatly cared for; when Voltaire passed sentence on Homer Shakspere; when Dorat’s perfumed nothings fluttered in every boudoir, while Gilbert starved in a garret. To the taste of one simple maiden André’s madrigals and sonnets and what-not were as good as the best, and she never tired of hearing them. Even when she could not see him she could still hear them; for our poet had a very pretty turn for music as well, and from his window opposite hers would sing her his chansons, set to his own music, with such ardor and perseverance as quite enchanted his pretty cousin, and won for the performer a singular degree of unpopularity among his neighbors.
So the lame bard remained Pauline’s only open admirer until one eventful day when there came spurring through the dull and sombre street, lighting it up like a flash of sunshine, a splendid vision of a mousquetaire. Pauline chanced to be standing in the doorway of her father’s shop, and, as he caught sight of that lovely picture set in the dark frame of the portal, the bold cavalier, riding to her side, straightway proceeded to woo her in the off-hand fashion of the court. But in the soft, half-wondering reproach of the brown eyes lifted for but a moment to his own there was a depth of purity and innocence that baffled this intrepid courtier more than any words; he stammered over his first sentence, hesitated, broke down, and—blushed. Yes, incredible as it may seem, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in the very focus of civilization, a mousquetaire blushed. To be sure he was young. Perhaps it was a reflection from his glowing cheek that brought to Pauline’s pale one a rosier tint; perhaps it was simply wonder at this unprecedented phenomenon; Pauline, too, was young, and the culprit, it must be owned, was very handsome. At all events he could only gasp out a hasty apology before she withdrew and left him to ride away, over head and tingling ears in love.
Raoul heard of this encounter and roared—burst out into a furious passion of rage and jealousy that left Pauline in tears.
André saw the meeting from his eyrie in the attic and—sighed. With one handsome rival he might hope, he might even, with some aid from the muses, hold his own; but with two—? The poor bard took to reading Tibullus; he had no heart for madrigals when life itself was an elegy, and for a night or two the neighbors slept in peace.
III.
One morning a young man presented himself to Papa Lamouracq and asked to be taken as an apprentice to learn the bric-à-brac trade. Papa Lamouracq was a little shy of apprentices; but as he really needed help and the premium offered was large, he could not resist the temptation to his bargaining instinct, and the postulant was accepted.
The new-comer was active, intelligent, and above all good-looking; and these virtues soon won for him a fair place in Pauline’s esteem until she caught him making sheep’s eyes at her with extreme persistency and uncompromising sheepishness. Thereat she reproved him sharply, and, to punish him, set him to washing the dishes—a task he undertook with entire good-humor, but so much more zeal than skill that he broke more than he cleaned and speedily had to be relieved. Then he took to sighing like a bellows, and when his mistress laughed at him this audacious intruder made love to her outright, and of course got properly snubbed for his pains. But fancy Miss Pauline’s amazement when this astonishing apprentice, so far from being abashed by her chilling rebuke, went down upon his marrow-bones, and, revealing himself as the Chevalier d’Aubuisson, plumped her an offer of his heart and hand and a fine old château in Normandy.
The sight of this dashing mousquetaire in a shop-boy’s apron seemed so absurd that the young lady thus tenderly adjured felt more inclined to laugh than ever—indeed, she was a merry little maiden, more given to smiles than tears—but the evident sincerity of the young man’s emotion touched her.
“He has cut off that lovely moustache to be near me,” was her pensive reflection, as she gazed upon his eloquent, upturned face, from which that military embellishment was indeed missing. No doubt, too, she was secretly flattered and pleased; for it was not every day, I promise you, in the Paris of a century ago, that a shopman’s daughter had the chance of refusing to be the wife of a handsome young noble. And then what young girl’s heart could help going out a little to the romantic side of this madcap adventure?
But there was another aspect to the affair which made her grave at once.
“Pray rise, sir,” she said coldly; “this position is unbecoming to you and uncomfortable to me. ’Twas not well done, M. le Chevalier, to steal into my father’s household under false colors; and though I feel the honor you do me, I cannot listen to you further. I am already affianced. If you have any of the regard you profess for me, you will instantly quit this travesty and this house.”
This was reasonable advice, so our impetuous young mousquetaire rejected it at once. He would never leave her, he vowed with vehemence, till she had promised to be his.
This wild proposal plunged poor Pauline into great perplexity. To tell her father or her intended would, she foresaw, precipitate a terrible row and scandal with probable bloodshed; and perhaps it was not wholly tenderness for her relatives which checked her as she glanced furtively at her embarrassingly handsome wooer, revolving the problem of how most easily to get rid of him in an anxious mind. Nor could she go to her cousin; she blushed, she scarce knew why, as she thought of it. So, as usual in all the little difficulties of her life, she betook herself to her friend the curé, who soon found a key to the riddle.
The next day there rode up to the door of Papa Lamouracq’s bric-à-brac shop an orderly with a letter for M. le Chevalier d’Aubuisson, and by noon his majesty’s corps of mousquetaires had received a reluctant and rather mutinous reinforcement of one. And—O bitter and humiliating thought!—the moustache had been sacrificed in vain.
IV.
So matters stood in the Rue des Poulies at the time of that remarkable meeting which opens this eventful history, and apropos of which an observer in the attic asked himself, as you may remember, “Which does she like best?” Raoul’s rage upon this knew no bounds; and Papa Lamouracq, when he came to hear of it, was little better. They both insisted that the wedding-day should be fixed at once, and for no distant date, and poor Pauline was fain to consent. Yet, as the fatal day drew near, she shrank from it more and more. School herself as she would into obedience to her father’s will and love for her future husband, the coming marriage filled her with an invincible repugnance. Was it because she had given her heart to another, or only because Raoul’s brutality had alienated her esteem? I do not know; she did not know herself: it was a question she never dared ask her heart.
In the midst of this moral conflict by which she was so cruelly torn her mind went back often and longingly to the serenity and calm of the convent where she had passed so many of her early years, and to the peaceful, happy faces of the nuns. She yearned with an inexpressible yearning to be among them once more; she had even wild, half-formed thoughts of flying from her wretchedness and trouble and taking refuge in that quiet haven.
Naturally, therefore, when André, to whom she had dropped an intimation of her thought, urged her strongly to act upon it, she turned and rent him.
“How dare you say such things to me!” she cried with more passion than he had ever seen her show. “How dare you advise me to disobey my father! You know very well my first duty is to him. He wishes me to marry Raoul, and—and I wish it. I am not miserable. I love Raoul dearly, and we shall be very hap—hap—happy.”
And to prove the joyful nature of her anticipations she burst forthwith into tears.
The poor poet stood aghast; he was not prepared for this display of feminine consistency. Genius as he was, he had yet to learn that to set a woman against a doubtful project she is coquetting with in her mind, the surest way is to urge her to it. Dearly as he loved his cousin and wished to make her his wife, he loved her happiness more, and would joyfully have seen her take the veil, marry the mousquetaire even, whom he suspected her of favoring, anything to escape this marriage, in what he foresaw for her only wretchedness, if not death. Raoul in his drunken furies, he knew, would stop at nothing, and even as a lover he had threatened her life.
“But,” he stammered, conscience-stricken, “I thought you said you wished to be in the convent.”
“You know I never said anything of the kind,” sobbed the indignant fair. “I forbid you ever to say such things to me again. You are very unkind to tease me so, and it is only your mis—miserable jealousy.”
The poet winced under this poisoned shaft, but was too generous to retaliate. His cousin had the right of suffering to be unjust.
Nevertheless, he could not forego another effort to rescue her, as he called it. It wanted but a day or two of the wedding when he next got a chance to see her, for she was now watched and guarded almost like a prisoner. Drawing a little packet from his pocket, he said with a sad smile:
“Pauline, here is my wedding gift. It is the most precious, indeed, the only precious, thing I have.”
Pauline opened the packet. It held only a withered rose. She looked in perplexity from the gift to the giver.
“Do you know what rose it is, Pauline? ’Tis the one that was trampled in the mire the day the mousquetaire and Raoul fought.”
“Dear André!” said Pauline, pressing his hand. She was greatly touched by his unobtrusive devotion.
“I have often wondered,” she went on musingly, “where those roses came from.” (You see, miss, a posy was more of an event in this simple life than in yours, bouqueted and basketed as it is.) “I have sometimes thought, do you know, it was—” Pauline stopped suddenly and blushed.
“Raoul, of course,” said André quietly.
“No,” said Pauline briefly, and blushed again.
“Not the mousquetaire?” said André in affected amazement.
“Yes, yes,” said Pauline, still very rosy—“that horrid mousquetaire. I’m sure,” she added with a toss of her pretty head, “he had impudence enough for anything.”
This is the way, messieurs, that the ungrateful fair for whom we run all risks characterize our devotion.
“No,” said André gently, “it was not the mousquetaire.”
The girl looked up quickly, a sudden light in her eyes.
“Dear André!” she said again, “you are very good to me.”
They were silent awhile, and then the poet, taking the girl’s hand, said earnestly:
“Listen to me, Pauline. There is a condition to my gift. It is that if at the last moment you should change your mind in regard to—to—” he hesitated—“to what we once spoke of, you will send me back this rose,[[167]] and I will find a way to save you.”
Pauline made no answer; but she no longer scolded, and André was satisfied that she had agreed. We shall see if he was right.
V.
On the night before Pauline’s wedding-day a merry and noisy company of mousquetaires were gathered in the Café Aux Fers Croisés. Some were playing billiards, others baccarat; all were drinking, and nearly all were singing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Only our old friend, the Chevalier d’Aubuisson, sat apart by himself, very woebegone and silent.
A comrade, drawing near, slapped him on the shoulder and said boisterously:
“Come, come, my friend, cheer up. Don’t mope your life away because your light o’ love is false.”
This delicate counsel the mousquetaires greeted with vociferous applause.
D’Aubuisson sprang to his feet with flashing eyes.
“Vicomte de Brissac,” he cried, “hold! The first who breathes a word against that angel dies. I swear it, by this sword!”
The mousquetaires were silent; not that they respected his evident emotion—they respected little enough, not even themselves—but they did respect his sword.
“Why, man!” said De Brissac at length, “you don’t mean to say you are in earnest—that you would marry the girl?”
“To-morrow, if she would have me. God knows how willingly; and to-morrow I lose her for ever.”
With a groan the chevalier sank back into his seat and buried his face in his hands.
“Tut, tut, man!” said De Brissac, who was naturally kind-hearted. “If you love her so, why give her up tamely? She must like you better than this shop-keeper.” Our mousquetaires had a brave contempt for all men who earned their living honestly. “Why not make a bold push for it and carry her off from under his nose? We’ll all stand by you”—“That will we,” in chorus from the rest—“and, take my word for it, the bird will thank you for her rescue from the fowler.”
D’Aubuisson looked up quickly, a gleam of hope in his face. But his brow soon grew dark; he knew Pauline too well to believe that she would sanction or forgive such an act of violence, however much she loved him. And he was more than half persuaded she did love him, in spite of her rejection, conceited young mousquetaire that he was; he was fully persuaded she did not love Raoul, both from his own observation and the statements of Papa Lamouracq’s old housekeeper, Angélique, whom he had won to his interests. If he could but bring her to consent! It was a forlorn hope, but he would make a last appeal.
He wrote a fervent letter to Pauline, proposing, if she agreed, to place her in charge of his aunt, the abbess of the Convent of Pont-aux-Dames, where she would be in safety until he could marry her. Both these lovers, you see, had the same thought, but with very different motives. This letter he despatched to his friend the housekeeper, promising her a royal reward if she got him an answer.
In an hour’s time the answer came: it was only a withered rose.
D’Aubuisson eyed it in blank amazement. Was it a cruel sneer, a mistake, or what?
“Bah!” cried De Brissac after a few moments’ study of the problem. “Love has made you dull, comrade, as it does most men. Don’t you see? Where is that weed I have seen you kissing a hundred times so insanely? This is the mate to it, and the message can have but one meaning: she is yours.”
Angélique confirmed this view, which our mousquetaire was only too willing to accept; so with much clinking of glasses and vowing of vows the rescuing party was made up.
All night long the poet kept lonely vigil in his attic, waiting and longing, and hoping against hope, for the rose which never came. Had it come he would have been puzzled to know what steps to take for Pauline’s deliverance; but somehow he felt he would compass it, if he had to ask the aid of his rival the mousquetaire, and though the price were his cousin’s hand. But the long hours dragged wearily on and no word came. The dawn found him still keeping his weary watch, no longer hoping, but haggard indeed and the picture of despair—a most dismal philosopher, who in all his philosophy could find no comfort.
V.
It was a very gay wedding party that gathered next day at the Mill of Javelle, then a famous resort for the Parisian merrymakers, to do honor to the nuptials of Raoul Berthier and the lovely Pauline, less lovely now, alas! for care and sorrow had worn her almost to a shadow of her former self. With the wedding guests mingled freely an unusual number of masks; but their presence excited little remark and no objection, for it was one of the familiar privileges of the time. And the strangers, whoever they were, made themselves so agreeable to the feminine part of the company that by these, at least, they were voted a welcome addition to the pleasures of the day.[[168]]
It had been arranged that the wedding ceremony should be performed by the curé of St. Germain l’Auxerrois in a little chapel hard by at ten o’clock, and that the wedding breakfast should follow. But ten o’clock passed, and eleven, and still there was no sign of the good priest. Noon was drawing near when Papa Lamouracq swore roundly that they would wait no longer, but sit down to the feast at once, let the marriage take place when it might—a decision hailed with acclamation by his guests. Perhaps, too, a glance at Raoul’s condition—he had been drinking deeply all the morning and through the previous night—may have suggested the wisdom of postponing the ceremony.
At this moment one of the masks drew near Pauline, who stood a little apart, pale and sorrowful, and whispered hurriedly in her ear:
“Dearest, come; it is the time. A post-chaise waits for us in yonder clump. In an hour’s time we shall have you safe behind the convent walls.”
Pauline shrank from him in mingled astonishment and terror. Then he showed her a withered rose; she knew it at once for the same she had sent the night before to André upon receiving D’Aubuisson’s letter. This she had torn to pieces in a transport of indignation and bade Angélique carry the pieces back to the writer. But the very suggestion so terrified her in her nervous state with the idea of an attempted abduction such as was only too common in that lawless time, that her scruples yielded at last, and she resolved to take André’s advice and seek refuge in a convent. With this view she commissioned the housekeeper to carry to her cousin the signal rose. That crafty old person, however, shrewdly surmising that the return of his own torn letter would win her scant esteem or guerdon from her employer, took it upon herself to give him the rose instead—a message on which at need she could put her own construction.
At sight of the flower Pauline hesitated. Surely this could not be her cousin; the figure seemed much too tall, yet, if not, how came he by the signal? In her confusion and incertitude she suffered herself to be half-passively drawn by the unknown in the direction of the thicket he spoke of. As she did so the other masks drew together about them—a movement unnoticed by the rest of the company, whose thoughts and eyes were all intent upon the loaded and steaming tables, to which they were on the point of sitting down under the trees.
Suddenly a wild scream startled them. It was from Pauline, who had just caught sight of André’s pale, reproachful face gazing at her fixedly from the outskirts of the crowd. At her scream the wedding guests, headed by Papa Lamouracq, came hurrying towards the bride with various cries of anger, astonishment, and menace. The situation bade fair to be embarrassing.
But the chevalier was a man of promptness and decision, by no means one to draw back from an undertaking once begun. Besides, to him Pauline was only hysterical; she must be saved in spite of herself. Further disguise was useless; force only would now prevail. So catching the fainting girl in his arms as if she were an infant, and shouting, A moi, mousquetaires! he pressed on to the carriage.
But he was not to reach it unopposed, however. The word mousquetaires made plain the whole design to the dullest-witted in the assembly: the fame of those audacious scamps for similar exploits was wide-spread. Among the wedding company was more than one old privateering comrade of Raoul’s who had swung cutlass and boarding-hatchet by his side; and it so chanced that two other wedding parties had brought to the mill that same day some scores of sturdy blacksmiths and fishermen and stout butchers from the Halles. Armed with stools and benches, with sticks and stones, they flung themselves furiously upon the mousquetaires, some fifty or sixty in number. The latter, casting off mask and domino, and forming a circle about D’Aubuisson and the unconscious Pauline, defended themselves with vigor.
The fight was long and uncertain, and many were hurt on both sides. But disciplined valor won the day as usual over brute strength, and in spite of every effort of their antagonists the mousquetaires slowly but surely made their way towards the fatal thicket. Papa Lamouracq, himself wounded more than once, and disabled, could only gnash his teeth and howl impotent curses at the foe; the bridegroom, at his first step towards the scene of conflict, had staggered and fallen, and was lying on the grass in a drunken stupor; the little poet, bleeding already from a ghastly wound in the forehead, had to be forcibly held back from flinging himself like another Winkelried upon the bristling blades of the mousquetaires. All seemed lost.
But despair, too, has its inspirations. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, seeking everywhere for a weapon to annihilate his enemies, fell upon one of the steaming tureens of soup just served for the wedding feast. Instantly he caught it up and hurled it, contents and all, full at the heads of the victorious mousquetaires. Two went down at once before the shock; half a score were scalded by the boiling liquor; double that number—O much more direful and appalling tragedy!—had their splendid uniforms stained by good Mère Leroux’s most savory potage.
Shrewdly did Cæsar bid his veterans strike only at the faces of Pompey’s dandy cavaliers. Thus does history repeat itself. Death and torture our mousquetaires would have faced unflinchingly, and charged a battery as gaily as they would have danced a minuet; but their clothes were dear to them. For most of them they were their only clothes, and what wonder if at the onslaught of this novel and terrific weapon they wavered? So might the bravest knight who first faced the terrors of gunpowder have hesitated without shame to his courage. André’s example was infectious. From all sides was rained upon the hapless mousquetaires a shower of soups, ragouts and entremets, sauces, sausages and salads, omelettes aux fines herbes and omelettes sucrées, until they fairly broke and fled, dripping, not blood, but gravy at every pore, and dragging with them by main force their frantic leader, who wished not to survive the loss of his Pauline.
VI.
Need the sequel be told? Of course the valiant poet was rewarded with the hand of her he had loved so faithfully and rescued so oddly. Papa Lamouracq was loyal to his vow that only to the man who could protect his daughter should she be given, and it was Raoul’s turn to be sent off in disgrace. He sold out his business, disappeared from the Quai de la Ferraille, and betook himself to his old trade of privateering, or, many folks said, something worse. As for André, he became a famous poet, was presented at court, and duly enrolled among the glorious fellowship of wits—the great M. Voltaire deigned to call him confrère, much to Pauline’s indignation, for that great man’s notions were by no means to her taste—and his poems may no doubt still be found by those who look for them in the Bibliothèque Impériale.
What were they, do you ask? Truly I have never heard, but he was a most famous poet.
What was better, he was a most happy husband, and Pauline never regretted the chance which made her his wife instead of Raoul’s. She owned she had always liked him the best, which I dare say was true, though I suspect that in her secret heart she would have liked a more romantic fashion of being won, and was not over and above pleased when André’s friends, in allusion to his valor, called him Marshal Terrine or M. De Bouillon. But she was very happy, especially when, after her father’s death, they found themselves rich enough to fulfil that dream of every good Parisian, a neat little country house with a lovely garden in the suburbs.
And the poor mousquetaire? Ah! miss, you are right. Could we but have had him for our hero, which was indeed the author’s intention at the start, as you may see by looking back to the earlier pages of this veracious history! But fate, alas! is not to be gainsaid, and on the whole, perhaps, Pauline was better off with her poet. The chevalier could not face the ridicule poured upon him for his share in the Battle of the Soup-Kettle, as the wits called it. He got himself exchanged into a regiment at the front, and fell fighting gallantly in the decisive charge which broke the English column at Fontenoy.
I forgot to mention that Pauline’s favorite pastime in her country life was cultivating roses, with which her garden in the season fairly glowed; and on each anniversary of her wedding-day it was her custom to put by her husband’s plate at breakfast a little posy containing exactly three of the flowers in question, which he never failed to receive with an air of the utmost surprise as to where they could possibly come from.