III.
I enlisted into the noble corps of the Royal Auvergne. My training began, and I was promised that, if I behaved well, I should be admitted by-and-by into the first company of Grenadiers. I soon had a powdered queue falling in an imposing fashion over my white vest, but I no longer had Pierrette, or her mother, or the curé of Montreuil, and I made no more music.
One fine day, when I, confined to the barracks, was undergoing some absurd little punishment for having made three errors in the management of my arms, I received a visit from Michel.
"Ah, Mathurin!" he said to me, "you are well punished for having left Montreuil. You enjoy no longer the counsel and instruction of the good curé, and you are fast forgetting the music which you used to love so well."
"No matter," said I; "I have my wish."
"You no longer tend the fruit trees and gather the peaches of Montreuil with your Pierrette, who is as fresh and sweet as they."
"No matter," said I; "I have my wish."
"You will have to work hard for a very long time before you can become even a corporal."
"No matter," said I, again; "when I am a sergeant, I will marry Pierrette."
"Ah, Mathurin!" continued my friend; "believe me, you are unwise. You have too much ambition and pride. Would you not like someone to buy you out, so that you might return to marry Pierrette?"
"BELIEVE ME, YOU ARE UNWISE."
"Michel! Michel!" I cried; "have you not often told me yourself, 'Each one must make his own lot'? I do not choose to marry Pierrette with the money of others, and I am making my own lot, as you see. Besides, it was the Queen who put this idea into my head, and the Queen must know best. She said: 'He will be a soldier, and I will marry you to him.' She did not say, 'He will return after having been a soldier.'"
"But suppose," said Michel, "the Queen were to provide you with the means of marrying, would you not accept her bounty?"
"No, Michel! Even if such an unlikely thing were to happen, I would not take her money."
"And if Pierrette herself earned her dot?"
"Then, Michel, I would marry her at once."
"Well!" returned he, "I will tell that to the Queen."
"Are you crazy?" I said to him, "or are you now a servant in her house?"
"Neither the one nor the other, Mathurin, although I no longer cut stone."
"What do you cut, then?" asked I.
"I cut pieces, out of paper and ink."
"Is it possible?"
"Yes, my boy; I write simple little plays, easy to be understood. Some day, perhaps, you shall see one."
IV.
Meanwhile, my faithful Pierrette did not forget me. And one day a wonderful thing happened to her. She told me all about it afterwards.
It was Easter Monday. Pierrette was sitting before the curé's door, working and singing, when she saw a gorgeous carriage, drawn by six horses, coming through the avenue. It rolled right up to the curé's house, and then stopped. Pierrette now saw that the carriage was empty. As she was gazing with all her eyes, the equerry, taking off his hat with great politeness, begged her to enter the vehicle.
Pierrette had too much good sense to make any needless fuss. She simply slipped off her sabots, put on her shoes with the silver buckles, folded her work, and, assisted by the footman's arm, stepped into the carriage as if to the manner born.
Soon she found herself at Trianon, where she was conducted through gilded apartments into the Queen's presence. With the Queen was Madame de Lamballe, seated in an embrasure of a window, before an easel.
"Ah!" exclaimed the Queen, gaily, "here she is!" And she ran up to Pierrette, and took both her hands in her own. "How pretty she is!" she went on; "what a dear little model she will be for you! Sit there, my child."
With these words, Marie Antoinette gently pushed the bewildered Pierrette into a very high chair, where she sat with her pretty feet dangling.
"SHE SAW A GORGEOUS CARRIAGE."
"Now listen to me, little one," continued the Queen. "Two gentlemen will shortly be coming here. Whether you do or do not recognise one of them is no matter, but whatever they tell you, that you must do. You will have to sing; I know that you can sing. Whenever they tell you to enter or to depart, to go or to come, you will obey them exactly. Do you understand me? All this will be for your good. This lady and I will help the gentlemen to teach you, and all that we ask in return for our pains is that, for one hour every day, you will sit for madame. You will not consider that any great hardship?"
Pierrette was so much more than satisfied with the bargain that she could have embraced the Queen in the exuberance of her gratitude.
As she was posing for Madame de Lamballe two men entered the room. One was stout, the other tall. At sight of the tall one she exclaimed: "Why! it is——" then stopped herself.
"Well, gentlemen," said Marie Antoinette, "what do you think of her? Was I not right?"
"It is Rose herself!" replied Sedaine.
"A single note, madame," said the other, M. Grévey, "and I shall know if she be as perfectly Monsigny's Rose as she is Sedaine's."
Then, turning to Pierrette, he said to her:—
"Sing the scale after me thus: Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol."
The girl repeated his notes.
"She has a divine voice, madame!" was his verdict.
The Queen clapped her hands and jumped for joy, as she exclaimed:—
"She will gain her dot!"