An air as mild as milk, a sun almost of May, saluted her on the morning of the fourteenth of February, as Armand helped her from the family coach outside St. Germain l'Auxerrois. She was going into that church, of name ominous to Protestant ears, to hear her first Mass, and that a Requiem—the Requiem for the Duc de Berry, murdered in 1820, and father of the little boy whom all good Legitimists now regarded as their King. The occasion was therefore gloomy, but it was also exciting; though Horatia was clad in black she had no grief in her heart for an assassinated prince whom she had never seen, and though during the drive she had composed her features to a decent melancholy, she was secretly attacked by mirth at the overpoweringly funereal aspect of the Duchesse. It was an event when that lady left the Hôtel; and she had left it now swathed in crape, a-dangle with jet chains, and—unprecedented mark of mourning—devoid of her toupée. A large black rosary depended from her wrist. Armand and the Marquis sat opposite. Emmanuel had his usual air of sad patience; he was in fact the only one of the four who looked perfectly appropriate to the occasion (since the Dowager was merely ludicrous), yet Horatia knew that his Royalist sentiments were the least strong of all his family. Armand, his head thrown back against the brown silk lining of the vehicle, directed from time to time a glance at Horatia between his half-closed lids. He looked very well in black. From time to time also the Duchesse speculated on the likelihood of there being a riot; it was true that nothing of the sort had occurred on the 21st of January, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI, when there had also been a Requiem; moreover the Government was forewarned. However, the fact that the ceremony had been forbidden to take place at St. Roch looked, she said with some unction, suspicious. It was plain that the old lady had no objection to the idea of a tumult, and perhaps even pictured herself as a martyr to the throne and the altar.
There were already two rows of emblazoned carriages on either side the church; a few curious sightseers, the usual beggars. The portals were hung with black. The Duchesse, on Emmanuel's arm, hobbled towards them; the leather door squeaked, Armand caught it from his brother, and they were inside. The Comte dipped his finger in the holy-water stoup and held it out half-smiling to his wife; finding, however, that she had no idea what he intended her to do, he crossed himself carelessly and preceded her up the aisle. The Swiss (whose semi-martial appearance Horatia supposed to be peculiar to this particular ceremony) having found seats for the Dowager and the Marquis, waved them into two chairs just behind.
The church too was hung with black—Horatia had never imagined an effect so gloomy. It was already nearly full of bowed, sable figures. In the middle of the nave was a great black-draped catafalque surrounded by enormous candles; the Bourbon arms glinted on the top, and at the end hung a large wreath of immortelles.
And the Mass began—but Horatia paid small attention to what, after all, she could not follow. Rather she came increasingly to realise that this was history. The old white-haired priest of whom she could catch glimpses at the altar, had, so they said, taken the last consolations of religion forty years ago to the murdered Queen; now he was praying (so she supposed) for the soul of the murdered Prince, her nephew. "Dona ei requiem," sang the choir, and it became impossible for her not to fancy that the Duc de Berry's actual body lay under the pall.
(4)
The Mass was finished, or nearly finished, Horatia conjectured, for people were moving their chairs about, when something was passed from hand to hand along the row in front of her—a paper of some kind. The Duchesse, when it came to her, kissed it; the Marquis Emmanuel glanced at it a moment and then, slightly turning, passed it to his brother behind him. And Horatia, looking at it with her husband (and having imagined it to be some holy relic) saw only a coloured lithograph of a boy about ten years of age, wearing a crown and a royal mantle.
"The Duc de Bordeaux—Henri V," whispered Armand, and he passed it on. Evidently there were other copies going round the congregation, for a moment or two later Horatia saw a young man in the uniform of the National Guard walk up to the catafalque and affix one to the end, just above the wreath of immortelles. A murmur rippled through the congregation then chairs scraped in all directions, and half a dozen ladies heavily veiled, and one or two men, were out of their places detaching the flowers, which, after kissing, they placed in their bosoms or their paroissiens. More came, till the catafalque was the centre of a crowd, and it took Emmanuel a long time to get the flower for which his grandmother asked him. Progress down the church was equally difficult, and Armand and Horatia became separated from their elders, who were in front. At the door there was difficulty in getting out and a sound of loud voices, and when they did at length emerge it was into the midst of a vociferating and hostile crowd.
"Take tight hold of my arm!" said Armand. "No, it is all right—they will not dare to touch us, the canaille!" And indeed they got through to the coach without much difficulty, except for the press of bodies. Threats were flying about, but nothing else, and Horatia was really more thrilled than frightened. Emmanuel was at the door of the coach, and opened it; Horatia, relinquishing Armand's arm, put her foot on the step. A man, slipping at that moment round the horses' heads, shouted something almost in her face; startled, she missed her footing on the high step, slipped and half fell into Emmanuel's arms, and was by him pushed into the coach, but not before she had a glimpse of Armand, white with fury, striking out at the man's face. The man went down; she stumbled into the coach, saw the Marquis catch his brother by the arm, and somehow, in the midst of cries, the two men also were in, the door was banged and the coach started.
It had all happened in a moment, and here was Armand, with blazing blue eyes, leaning forward with her hands in his, beseeching her to tell him that she was not hurt, that the scoundrel had not really touched her.
"No, no," reiterated Horatia. "He did not mean to, I am sure. It was my stupidity ... I slipped."