Les grives boivent la rosée.”
—Victor Hugo, Duel en Juin.
It may be a truism, and therefore tiresome, that the night brings counsel, but of the instances of that truism the Marquis de Château-Foix was certainly one as he stood next morning outside his cousin’s door. A few hours of nocturnal reflection had wrought a considerable change in the mental attitude which had been his when he parted from the Vicomte, and a night’s rest had worked a greater still. He had resolved to return once more to the subject on which last night’s discussion had somewhat disastrously split. Proofs he had none, but there was no time even to bewail their absence, for whatever he could do must be done at once. Indeed, the sun was already high in a blue sky, and but for other business, and a belief, based on experience, that it would have found Louis still a-bed—more especially as it was Sunday—he would have paid him an earlier visit.
The correctness of this surmise was attested by the lackey when the door at last swung open. Monsieur le Vicomte had not yet arisen, but if Monsieur were Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix, Monsieur le Vicomte would certainly receive him. The man still wore livery, though that badge of servitude had been legally abolished for a year or more. But Saint-Ermay’s servants were always devoted to him, for no reasons that were at all tangible. The bedroom door was opened by the valet whom Louis had had from a boy, and Gilbert went in.
It was some time since the Marquis had visited his cousin’s apartments, and his never-failing sensation of having strayed by mistake into those of a member of the other sex fell on him more strongly than usual. Yet Madame de Château-Foix, though by no means indifferent to her surroundings, had not, in her spacious bed-chamber at home, a quarter of the silk and satin luxury which reigned in her nephew’s room in Paris. Her toilet-table was not so garnished with costly appurtenances, nor, in the country, was it possible to supply her all the year round with roses. She had indeed recently replaced her huge four-poster, solemn as the tomb and potentially quite as airless, by the more fashionable bed of the time, with its drapery falling from one central point. But—whether inspired by hygienic or æsthetic considerations—her nephew reposed in a couch at once more elegant and more airy than either. The slender fluted pillars which supported the brocaded tester, and whose gilt was now toned down to exactly the requisite paleness, the curtains of thin silk-apple-green and white deftly caught to them by cords which were obviously but rarely untied, the fine lace-bordered sheets and embroidered coverlet—whereon, too, there slumbered at the moment a magnificent Persian cat—might very well have enshrined some much-courted beauty of the last reign. Possibly they had done so, for at the head was stretched a delicate vista of painted silk covered with fluttering trains of doves and laughing Cupids and butterflies, of which the lowest cherub had the effect of balancing himself on the curved rim of the gilded woodwork immediately above the pillows, while from his plump fingers a slow rain of the palest poppies floated down, presumably upon the sleeper’s head. A group of his fellows, sustaining themselves in their downward flight on ludicrously inadequate pinions, tendered him fresh garlands of the flowers. The exquisite handling of this embellishment, more than atoning for the artificiality of its design, might almost have surprised a spectator into an expectation of seeing, somewhere on the bed below it, one or two of the smooth and shining poppy petals.
The present critic, however, saw nothing there beyond his kinsman’s brown curls—which still bore traces of last night’s powder—tossing on a broad pillow edged with Valenciennes. Their owner did not look in the least sleepy, and at once jerked himself with alacrity from his recumbent position on to his right elbow.
“Good-morning!” he exclaimed. “I did not expect you so early. Jasmin, set a chair for Monsieur le Marquis, and bring some chocolate.”
The chair was brought, and set by the bedside, and as Château-Foix took his seat, after being relieved of his hat and cane, the Vicomte relapsed on to his pillows, and looked at his visitor with his brilliant smile. It was evident that the slight cloud under which the two had parted was passed from his mind, and for his part the Marquis was content that it should be so. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling very near akin to a rush of affection. As he lay there, in the midst of these vernal glories, Louis looked extraordinarily innocent and boyish, a very Prince Charming of happy fortunes and gay auguries—yet in what dark mesh of intrigue and fate was he entangled! And Gilbert knew that all his arguments and eloquence might once more beat themselves in vain against that airy tenacity of purpose. But he had braced himself to patience. Last night he had taken the wrong path to bring about the salvation of a person who took things as little seriously as did Louis. That characteristic had always fretted Château-Foix in the past; it was hard now to find it taking on all the appearance of a wrong-headed heroism in place of the more facile flippancy it used to wear.
Meanwhile the Vicomte looked supremely at his ease, lying with his left arm under his head, his right buried in the bedclothes. He was so obviously waiting in expectation of a remark of some sort that Gilbert complied by asking somewhat abruptly:
“Why are you still in bed?”