"SUZETTE'S CONFESSION.
"I must make what I have to say a sort of history," she said, "in order that you may understand me clearly. In my early life you, of course, would find no manner of interest, and I shall therefore only tell you, as some excuse for much that happened after, that both my parents died young, and left me, before my education had commenced, to the care of a brother, who, though a daring, clever, courageous young man, was wild, obstinate, and headstrong himself, and, therefore, but little fitted to guide or direct me. He served early in various capacities in the navy; but as he never thought of saving anything which might have put us in a better station in life, the best that he could do for me was to fit me for the station of waiting-woman to a lady of high rank, and to obtain for me that situation in the family of Madame de Villardin. I followed my mistress to Paris, where I learnt from other women in the same situation all that is bad and foolish in the character of a Parisian soubrette, and added a vast quantity of conceit and obstinacy of my own. My mistress was gay and light, but in those respects she was not more so than every other woman in Paris, while, at the same time, she differed from all of them in never suffering herself to believe that it was possible to wrong her husband, even by a thought. This purity of mind, however, which should have made me admire and love her, had, I am sorry to say, quite the contrary effect. Almost every other suivante with whom I was acquainted in Paris was the confidante of her mistress, and the depositary of a number of secrets which would not have well suited the public eye. I had learned, too, from the femme-de-chambre of Madame de Montbazon and several others, that a woman was never sure of her place, secure of her perquisites, or, in short, was half so well treated, as when her mistress was engaged in some affair which put her, in a degree, into the power of her soubrette. Thus, those qualities in Madame de Villardin which best entitled her to respect and affection, produced quite a different result with me. I confess, too, that I often did my best, as far as I could, without ruining myself in her opinion, to lead her to follow the example set her by so many of her friends and acquaintances; but though at first this would have appeared an easy task, from her apparent thoughtlessness and great love of admiration, yet I found that the endeavour was in vain, and I soon learned that if I risked any bold counsel of the kind, I should soon be dismissed in disgrace.
"About that time Monsieur de Belleville, the only son of the gentleman to whom this property then belonged, was admitted, as a great favour, amongst the pages of Monsieur de Villardin. He was but fifteen, and I was twenty; he was the son of a gentleman, I of the class bourgeoise; but, notwithstanding all these obstacles, I determined, from the moment that he entered the family, to make it my business so to captivate him, as to relieve myself from a situation that I detested by becoming his wife. To obtain this end there were few things that I would not have done, and I soon found that, thanks to his natural disposition and my own address, I was very likely to succeed, as soon as Monsieur de Villardin obtained for him that commission which it was understood he was to receive at the age of seventeen or eighteen.
"Such was the state of things when you entered the dwelling of Monsieur de Villardin, and some quarrel took place between you and Gaspard, which ended in his conceiving a hatred for you, which never was and never will be quenched. He, of course, communicated his hatred to me, and more than one scheme did we form between us, for the purpose of compelling you to quit the dwelling that we inhabited. This was the extent of our design at first, but it soon spread out to baser and more criminal purposes, which, for motives that I may hereafter explain, I am now about to reveal to you fully. The high estimation in which you were held by Monsieur de Villardin, of course acted upon Gaspard in adding envy to dislike; but, before two months were over, he found an opportunity of gratifying both, which he did not fail to seize. You communicated, one day, it seems, to Monsieur de Villardin in his presence, that you had rescued a man from the gallows, and, without well knowing whether the consequence would be your own death in place of the malefactor, or your imprisonment in the Bastile for life, he found means of informing against you that very night, and had you not been promptly sent from Paris, you would have been arrested the next morning.
"About that time the Count de Mesnil first began to visit at the hotel of Monsieur de Villardin, and I soon saw that regard for his friend was rapidly giving place to admiration for his friend's wife; and, of course, I had no objection to promote his views, though I perceived from the first that Madame de Villardin looked upon him with, if anything, less complacency than she did upon the other gentlemen who frequented our house. As I knew, however, that the estates of Monsieur de Mesnil were in the immediate vicinity of those belonging to Monsieur de Villardin in Brittany, and as my brother, whom I was very anxious to see, and whom I truly loved, was in that province, I determined to try whether I could not bring about a removal of the whole family thither; and, taking advantage of Monsieur de Villardin's jealousy, which I had long marked as an engine to be made use of in case of necessity, I contrived by a few well directed hints and words to make him quit Paris in haste, and proceed to the Prés Vallée. His jealousy, indeed, went farther than I had intended; and he was foolish enough to give way to a vehement fit of passion with his wife, which inflicted the first deep and painful stroke upon her domestic happiness. Although I had not intended this, I confess it did not give me any great pain, for I sincerely disliked my mistress, while affecting to be very much attached to her. In the meanwhile, the hatred of Gaspard towards you increased rather than diminished, as well as his passion for myself, which had, by this time, become as ardent as I could desire it. Some of our love meetings, however, in the woods of the Prés Vallée had, as it seemed, been observed by some one, who communicated the facts to the Duchess. She immediately spoke to me upon the subject, and that in too severe a manner to be forgotten or forgiven by one of my disposition. On her accusing me of lightness of conduct towards a boy like Gaspard, I replied, 'What, if he choose to marry me?' But this only called down upon me a more severe proof; and she pointed out the difference of age and station in such a tone as made my blood boil, adding, that if ever I were seen walking with him again, she would instantly communicate the whole affair to Monsieur de Villardin, and at once dismiss me from her service. Of all this I, of course, informed Gaspard, and our prejudice against you led us to conclude, though I now know that we did so erroneously, that you had acted as a spy upon our conduct. The consequence was, that we determined upon a plan, the object of which was, at once to revenge ourselves upon you and upon my mistress. I must not paint myself or him, however, in worse colours than we deserve, and I must say that we neither of us contemplated the full extent of evil that was likely to ensue from the very designs that we formed. Neither Gaspard nor myself had ever received any strict or powerful principles, and, therefore, much that was really wrong we did not regard as any evil, while that which we really did know to be improper, our passions induced us to undertake at all risks. The plan which we formed I will now tell you. But you are fatigued," she added; "and the surgeon warned me to keep you from all conversation. I am obliged, indeed, to disobey his directions, for I shall have no other opportunity than that afforded me by to-day, to relate to you events which you must promise me faithfully to recapitulate, word for word, as far as you can remember, to Monsieur de Villardin. However, to-day is still ours, and as you are now fatigued, I will leave you for a couple of hours, and finish my story when I return."
I would fain have persuaded her to conclude it at once, and endeavoured to make her believe that I was really not fatigued; but I rather imagine that my appearance contradicted the assertion, and, adhering to her determination, she left me to repose.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
It may be easily conceived, that every word I had just heard had interested me deeply, and Suzette might certainly have continued her history without agitating me more than my own thoughts did while she was absent. I counted every moment till her return; and when at length she reappeared, I eagerly besought her to proceed with her explanation, which she did at once, in a brief--even abrupt style, that led me to imagine that she was under the constant apprehension of interruption.
"As I had anticipated," she continued, "the Count de Mesnil was not long in following us into Brittany; and, having seen how easily the mind of Monsieur de Villardin was to be worked upon, Gaspard and myself determined, as we could not render the Duchess guilty, to render her husband jealous. Nor did we now seek to do so incompletely, by raising vague suspicions, but we proposed to give him such evidence of the conduct of Madame de Villardin, and of your connivance in the views of the Count de Mesnil, that we should rid ourselves of you for ever, place the Duke entirely in our power, and gain the highest place in the confidence of our lord.
"Monsieur de Mesnil was not at all unaware of the influence of the maid in such pursuits as that in which he was then engaged, and, on his first visit to the Prés Vallée, he found an opportunity of holding a long conference with me, the result of which was no small increase of hope on his part, and considerable profits on mine. Although he was, it is true, one of those men who call themselves men of pleasure, and who make intrigue not only a business, but a toilsome one, in the present instance I found that he had been drawn beyond all cold calculations, and that he was certainly in love as deeply and passionately as any boy. He besought me, eagerly and anxiously, to obtain for him but a lock of my mistress's hair; and of course this was no very difficult undertaking. The lock was easily cut away unperceived, while I was superintending her toilet; and, having enclosed it in the locket which the Count had given me for the purpose, I took the liberty of adding thereto part of a broad blue riband which my mistress had bought just before we quitted Paris, trusting that the ingenuity of Gaspard and myself would easily find some means of bringing these objects under the notice of Monsieur de Villardin. The next thing was, if possible, to make you the bearer of the packet to Monsieur de Mesnil; and Gaspard caused one of the younger pages to give the locket itself, carefully wrapped in numerous envelopes, into your hands, begging you, the first time you passed in hunting near the château of the Count, to deliver it to his intendant. The outer paper was addressed to the intendant, the inner bore the superscription of Monsieur de Mesnil, written in a hand as nearly similar to that of the Duchess as I could make it. The boy who gave it to you was told, in case of after-inquiry on the part of Monsieur de Villardin, to say boldly that Gaspard gave it him; Gaspard was to put it upon me, and I was at once to avow, that I had received the packet from Madame de Villardin, each declaring our ignorance of the contents, but Gaspard vowing that he had heard the Duchess direct me to place it carefully in your hands, as you would know what to do with it. In addition to this, I was to excuse my not having given it to you myself, on the score of my dislike to you; and Gaspard was to make the same apology, adding, that he had seen too much of your cogging with Monsieur de Mesnil to have anything to do with the business. The next part of our plan was to have you so well watched, that we should obtain information of when you were likely to deliver the packet, which we well knew you would do boldly and without concealment; and then to excite the suspicions of the Duke, who, we doubted not, would instantly stop the packet and examine its contents.