There was no woman present, and the general appearance of the room and the occupation of its inmates might have led to the supposition that it existed for the sole purpose of gambling. Nevertheless, it was really an apartment in a private house, and, as such, it testified merely to the Comte de Larny’s method of entertaining his friends. Were the monarchy going swiftly to perdition, and its supporters involved in the same downfall, the latter must amuse themselves; and if the host and every one of his guests knew that each card-party might be his last, the knowledge apparently added zest to the game.
The gathering numbered scarcely a score. Amongst it were visible a few black figures, those of the noirs, the aristocrates enragés, who affected to wear mourning for the monarchy which they considered—and very truly—to have breathed its last when its holder was brought from Versailles. The greater number, however, wore a less sombre style of dress, and several were in uniform. This was, like Coblentz, the camp of ultra-Royalism, the last stronghold of a loyalty pushed to the point of fanaticism, where the champions of a lost cause brought to its defence a zeal far more ardent than their leader’s own. Leader, indeed, the King was not; his name served as a rallying-cry, his person as a symbol, but the passive and patient Louis XVI. was neither chief nor divinity to these his most fervent partisans. They were all of them very literally plus royalistes que le roi. For them the King was almost a traitor to himself. He had stripped himself of what he had no right to lay aside, but above him still burnt the throne from which he had been dragged, and it was on the steps of that desecrated altar that their lives were offered up. They were many of them young, and most of them doomed; they were gay with a gaiety which was spontaneous if it was extravagant, and brave with a courage no less real for its utter futility. And if the stake for which they played was the existence and the privileges of their own order as well as those of their King, if they sometimes condemned the sovereign in whose name they held the dice, if they cast the last throws with defiant recklessness, theirs was none the less a tragic and a desperate devotion. But certainly none of the company seemed in the slightest degree conscious of this. They talked, they laughed, they lost or won; and the Comte de Larny, who prided himself on his personal resemblance to the King, went round the room at intervals, exchanging a jest with the talkers and bestowing an occasional word of advice on a player if he overlooked his cards.
The table nearest to the door was unoccupied, but round that beyond it sat four gentlemen playing quadrille. One of them was a noir, whose peculiarly cadaverous appearance was heightened by his black dress. He had on his right a Chevalier de Saint Louis, and on his left a personage, no longer young, whose dark features bore the stamp of mingled sensuality and cynicism.
The fourth player was a young man of exceptional good looks, wearing the somewhat extravagantly cut fashions of 1792, but with no trace of the amazing war of colours by which the young bloods of the Court party usually protested against the levelling tendencies of Jacobinism in sartorial as in other matters. The protest, however, was visible enough in the striped pearl-grey satin which glimmered upon his handsome person, and in his carefully dressed and powdered hair, becoming unmistakable in the silver buttons with the fleur-de-lys, which testified to his political opinions in a manner more courageous than prudent. A half-amused expression seemed habitual to him, and he staked with great nonchalance from a rapidly diminishing heap of coins in front of him. Eyes of the darkest grey, a straight nose neither long nor short, and an unusually well-turned mouth and chin made up a face instinct with life and vivacity. The eyes had that rare setting so full of charm, when the outer corner is at a slightly lower level than the inner—the slope which stamps a face sometimes with hauteur, sometimes with dreaminess, but always with a nameless fascination. In the present case it seemed impossible that melancholy should sit there; the glance was too direct and keen, too little likely to be veiled in introspection—a look at once indolent and daring. Despite their beauty and their delicacy, the features were scarcely effeminate. They were those of a man who could at need both think and act; and yet there were strong indications that the hour for either necessity was never a very welcome one. An inborn airy gaiety, an almost ardent carelessness reigned in them at present, and by too clear a natural tenure ever to be wholly dethroned.
A diamond sparkled on one of his hands as, tilting back his spindle-legged chair, the young man clasped them at the back of his head, looking with a smile and a raising of the eyebrows at his partner, the noir. The smile was a very charming one.
“We have no luck to-night, it seems,” he remarked, as the Chevalier de Saint Louis raked in the gains. “I should advise you to change your partner, Comte.”
The melancholy noir shook his head. “I could not find a better loser to bear me company,” he said with courtesy, “and if you will honour me so far, I should like to continue our alliance.”
“It is I who am honoured,” replied the young man, bringing back his chair to its normal position; “but I hope that our opponents will not object to my making sure that I am still solvent. I confess that I feel somewhat doubtful on the point.” He laughed, plunged a hand into his breeches pocket, and pulled out five louis d’or.
“Then we shall make your pockets as empty as Vergniaud’s last speech,” said the Chevalier de Saint Louis, with the air of one contributing a witty remark.
But his partner was recounting his gains, the noir was dealing very slowly and methodically, and the player in grey, with his hands in his depleted pockets, was looking a little abstractedly round the room.