The King's Warrant: A Story of Old and New France

by Alfred H. Engelbach

"What should I care about him?" she would say to Marguerite. "He has become much too grand a personage at court to care about such insignificant creatures as you or I. Why, I am told he is quite the right-hand man of the king's minister, and that he is likely enough some day to rise to be one of the first officers of state; but then he has no money, and as I have not a farthing, perhaps it is no wonder that mamma is in such terrible fear of our meeting, even for one evening, at Beaujardin."

And where was Isidore all this week? If any one asked, the reply was that it was believed he had gone to Paris to pay his respects to the king, though there were some amongst the domestics at Beaujardin who smiled when they heard that, for Monsieur Jasmin was still at the chateau; it was even whispered that Isidore had once or twice been seen at Valricour whilst the baroness was away. If that lady, however, did know anything of these rumours, she took no notice of them, and bided her time.

There had been a large party at Beaujardin, at which the marquis and marchioness, whatever may have been their disquietude at heart, had treated their guests with all their wonted courtesy and attention. Nevertheless it is likely enough that long after the numerous and distinguished visitors had retired to rest, the noble host and hostess, as well as the Baroness de Valricour, who had been present, spent more than one wakeful hour. Besides them, however, there were three other persons in the chateau who sat up till a late period of the night. In a handsomely furnished and well lighted apartment at the rear of the mansion Monsieur Boulederouloue, the steward or maître d'hotel, with his special guests, Monsieur Achille Perigord, the chef de cuisine, and Monsieur Jasmin, the young marquis' valet, yet lingered over a flask of Chateau d'Yquem, such as all the regiments of royal butlers at Versailles could not have set before his most Christian Majesty Louis Quinze himself.

The three men were in every particular about as unlike to each other as any three men could be. The valet, who possessed an unusually good face and figure, whose costume was unexceptionable, and who had acquired to perfection the ultra-courteous manners of the time, might have passed for a nobleman anywhere except alongside of a real one. One might really have been excused for fancying him of a different race of beings from Monsieur Boulederouloue, the shapelessness of whose huge unwieldy frame was happily rendered undistinguishable by an extravagantly full suit of the Louis Quatorze fashion. An enormous full-bottomed wig of the same period surmounted and flanked his full moon face of pasty whiteness, most like the battered and colourless visage of an old wax doll, in which a transverse slit does duty for a mouth, and whose deficiency in the article of nose is counterbalanced by great glassy eyes guiltless of a single atom of expression. Marvellous indeed was Monsieur Boulederouloue's stolidity in all things, and not less notable his stupidity in all but one; that one thing, however, was his business as maître d'hotel, in which he was unsurpassed, unrivalled. If you told him that there had been no kings of France before Louis the Fourteenth, and that his native country was an island in the Pacific, that grass grew on trees in India, and that the stars were old moons chopped up into bits, he would have stared at you and believed it all. What did he know of such things? His father and grandfather had been stewards in the Beaujardin family before he was born; from his infancy he had seen, noted, watched, talked of, cared for only what pertained to the proper regulation of the household that constituted his little world. So he grew up, and on the day on which his father, old Mathieu Boulederouloue, departed this life, young Mathieu put on the Louis Quatorze suit and wig, and not one of the guests at the chateau could have imagined that the one functionary in the place most important to him had bequeathed to new and untried hands the post that he had filled for forty years. What of it? From that day it was with young Mathieu as it had been with old Mathieu. One glance into the brilliant saloon told him how many covers were required for supper, what wines, what viands, suited the occasion. One stately walk round the furnished table was enough for him to detect the minutest error or omission of his myrmidons. Not one of the hundreds of guests that visited the chateau crossed the great hall to whom the maître d'hotel was unable to assign on the spot the chamber he was to occupy, his place at table, and the degree of precedence to which he was entitled. Yes, M. Boulederouloue was assuredly a perfect master of his business; and what is more, the scores of servants under him were all masters of theirs, for he had a most simple and summary mode of dealing with any one that was not perfectly in order. The offending party was at once summoned to the presence of Monsieur Boulederouloue, who presented him with an order on the intendant for the wages due to him, and without a word waved his hand towards the door. Remonstrance and entreaty, or the assurance that it was a first fault, were alike in vain; a stare, a shrug, and just possibly the pithy injunction, "Go!" was the utmost they ever elicited from the maître d'hotel; and as their wages were high and always paid to the day, a practice by no means common in great households in those times, the cases of delinquency were few, and M. Boulederouloue's staff, like himself, did their duty to perfection.

And Monsieur Perigord, the chef? Well, if Monsieur Boulederouloue weighed twice as much as M. Jasmin, the latter certainly weighed twice as much as Monsieur Perigord. Diminutive and meagre to a degree, the master of the kitchen possessed a mighty soul, and was endowed with an energy of purpose that must have made him first and foremost in any sphere of life; but fate had ordained that he should only be the first and foremost cook in all the world, though as Beaujardin, and not Versailles, was the scene of his operations, it is only in these humble pages that his name will go down to posterity. Such was his restless vivacity, that in his ever ready denunciations of anything poor and mean, or cowardly, his shrivelled frame would quiver like a marionette on wires; he would rend in shreds his laced frill and ruffles, scattering thorn like snowflakes on the floor, and end by flinging after them his small pig-tailed queue, leaving all bare and bald a head that for colour and size might have been mistaken for an ostrich egg, but for the hawk-like beak and small fiery black eyes, that would have been ridiculous in any face but that of Monsieur Perigord.

That Monsieur Jasmin should look down with sovereign contempt on two such men—on the maître d'hotel for his entire absence of all sensitiveness, and on the chef de cuisine for his unpolished excess of it was only natural. Yet it must not be supposed that with either of them he indulged that air of supercilious patronage with which he was accustomed to treat all not absolutely above him in the social scale; it would have been simply thrown away upon the one, the other would have kicked him for it, even if he had to get upon a chair to do so. Still Monsieur Jasmin managed to maintain some kind of mysterious superiority over both, and, on the present occasion, he took care to let them know that he was the depository of a most important family secret—in fact the counsellor and confidential agent in an affair of the most vital consequence to the powers above. At first he had only dropped vague hints, but what with M. Boulederouloue's dullness in comprehending them, and Monsieur Perigord's sudden and searching comments on them, he gradually began to let out more and more. Perhaps the Chateau d'Yquem loosened M. Jasmin's tongue, for he had latterly been staying much at Valricour, and as the wine allowed that household was of a quality and quantity that gave an additional relish to unstinted measure and a vintage of the choicest class, he became more and more communicative.

"To be sure—to be sure! It is but natural that Monsieur Isidore should marry Mademoiselle Clotilde," exclaimed the voluble little man, as Jasmin with a mysterious smile left some allusion to the subject half unsaid. "It is only what was to be expected—it could hardly be otherwise—any one could guess that. What! Have I not danced them both on my knees when they were babies, and seen them grow up together as it were hand in hand, as if they were destined from their cradles to be husband and wife? He is noble, generous, and handsome; she is witty, virtuous, and beautiful. What do you tell us of a rival—of complications—of difficulties—of a mésalliance?"

Again M. Jasmin smiled mysteriously; M. Boulederouloue, collecting all his energies for the purpose, ejaculated, "Impossible!"

"Our good friend is right; it is impossible," continued Perigord vivaciously. "Who could come between them? Who else could aspire to the hand of monsieur our young marquis? Ah! my good friend, you have been dreaming of something till you have imagined it to be a reality."

Monsieur Jasmin was nettled, but he only smiled again more contemptuously, saying, "Of course, it was doubtless only a dream of mine that there is such a young lady as Mademoiselle Lacroix."