The presentation was assured; nothing, one might fancy, could possibly happen to prevent it, and yet to-night, standing with the Duchess to receive their guests, the face of Choiseul showed nothing of his threatened defeat.
The Rue de Faubourg St. Honoré was alight with the torches of the running footmen and filled with a crowd watching the carriages turning into the courtyard of the Hôtel de Choiseul from the direction of the Rue St. Honoré, the Rue de la Bonne Morue, the Rue d’Anjou, and the Rue de la Madeleine.
It was a great assemblage, for the Court for the moment was in Paris, the King having changed his residence for three days, returning to Versailles on the morrow, and the people, with that passion for display which helped them at times to forget their misery and hunger, watched the passing liveries of the Duc de Richelieu, M. de Duras, M. de Sartines, the Duc de Grammont, and the host of other notabilities, content if by the torchlight they caught a glimpse of some fair face, the glimmer of a jewel, or the ribbon of an order.
The Maréchal de Richelieu’s carriage had drawn away from the steps, having set down its illustrious occupant, when another carriage drew up, from which stepped two young men. The first to alight was short, dark, with a face slightly pitted with smallpox, and so repellent, that at first sight the mind recoiled from him. Yet such was the extraordinary vigour and personality behind that repulsive face that men, and more especially women, forgot the ugliness in the hypnotism of the power. This was the celebrated Comte Camus, a descendant of Nicholas Camus, who had arrived in France penniless in the reign of Louis XIII., married his daughter to Emery, superintendent of finance, and died leaving to his heirs fifteen million francs.
The gentleman with him, tall, fair complexioned, and with a laughing, devil-may-care face, marred somewhat by a sword-cut on the right side reaching from cheek-bone to chin, was the Comte de Rochefort.
Rochefort was only twenty-five, an extraordinary person, absolutely fearless, always fighting, one of those characters that, like opals, seem compounded of cloud and fire. Generous, desperate in his love and hate, a rake-hell and a roué, open-handed when his fist was not clenched, and always laughing, he was fittingly summed up in the words of his cousin, the Abbé du Maurier, “It grieves me to think that such a man should be damned.”
Rochefort, followed by Camus, passed up the steps and through the glass swing-doors to the hall. It was like entering a palace in fairy-land. Flowers everywhere, clinging to the marble pillars, gloated on by the soft yet brilliant lights of a thousand lamps, and banking with colour the balustrades of the great staircase up which was passing a crowd of guests, or, one might better say, a profusion of diamonds, orders, blue ribbons, billowing satin, and the snow of lace and pearls. Over the light laughter and soft voices of women the music of Philidor drifted, faintly heard, from the band of violins in the ball-room, and, clear-cut and hard through the murmur and sigh of violins, voices and volumes of drapery, could be heard the business-like voice of the major-domo announcing the guests.
“Monsieur le Maréchal Duc de Richelieu!”
“Madame la Princesse de Guemenée!”
“Madame de Courcelles!” etc.