The Place d’Armes was thronged, and the Paris road, a league from the gates; bourgeois and beggar, the hungry and well-fed, the maimed, the halt and the blind, apprentice and shop-girl—all were there, a seething mass attracted to the festivity as moths are attracted by a lamp, and all filled with one idea: the Dubarry.
The news of the friction at Court had gone amongst the people. It was said that the Dubarry had been forbidden at the last moment to attend; that the presentation had been cancelled, that she was ill, that the Vicomte Jean had insulted M. le Duc de Choiseul, that the arrival of the Dauphiness had been hurried, and that she was already at Versailles, and that she had refused to see the favourite. All of which statements, and a hundred others more wild and improbable, were bandied about during the glorious excitement to be got by watching the blazing windows of the palace, the uniformed figures of the Guards, and the steady stream of carriages coming from the direction of Paris.
Rochefort arrived at nine o’clock—that is to say, an hour before the time of the ceremony; his carriage immediately followed that of the Duc de Richelieu. The entrance-hall was crowded, and the Escalier des Ambassadeurs thronged. This great staircase, now removed, led by a broad, unbalustraded flight of eleven marble steps to a landing where, beneath the bust of Louis XV., a fountain played, gushing its waters into a broad basin supported by tritons, dolphins and sea-nymphs; from here a balustraded staircase swept up to right and left, and here, just by the fountain, Rochefort found himself cheek by jowl with de Sartines, who had arrived just before M. de Richelieu.
“Ah!” said de Sartines, recognizing the other, “and when did you arrive?”
“Why, it seems to me an hour ago,” replied the other, “judging by the time I have been getting thus far; to be more precise, I came immediately after M. de Richelieu. And how are your dear thieves and people getting on? I should imagine they are mostly at Versailles to-night, to judge by the crowds on the Paris road.”
“Oh,” replied de Sartines, “I daresay there are enough of them left in Paris to keep my agents busy. And how did you like Lavenne?”
“He was charming. If all your thief-catchers were such perfect gentlemen, I would pray God to turn a few of our gentlemen into thief-catchers. But he was not so charming as your dramatist, Monsieur Ferminard, the gentleman who writes plays with his feet, it seems to me.”
Sartines nudged him to keep silence. They had reached the corridor leading to the Hall of Mirrors, and here the Minister of Police drew his companion into an alcove.
“Do not mention the name Ferminard here; the walls have ears and the statues have tongues. Forget it, my dear Rochefort. Remember M. d’Ombreval’s maxim: ‘Forget so that you may not be forgotten.’”
“In other words, that you may not be put in the Bastille?”