"I pray God!" St. Georges replied. "He has wronged many; surely justice will yet be done."
CHAPTER XIV.
"I MUST SPEAK!"
The Epiphany—called in old France, under the Bourbons, la Fête des Rois—was drawing to a close, as St. Georges, his handsome face looking very dejected and his heart heavy as lead within him, rode into Paris by the Charenton gate.
Not so entirely over, however, but that the streets were still crowded with holiday makers of all kinds, with those who were there solely to enjoy and amuse themselves, and also with those who sought to make profit out of the others. Moreover, still from all the towers and steeples the bells rang in honour of those who had died during the past year, so that, as Boileau sneeringly remarked, "Pour honorer les morts ils font mourir les vivants," while from the dark, sombre-looking houses—of which the same writer observed that they must have been built by philosophers instead of architects, so filthy were they without and so brilliant within—were still hung paper lanterns, flags, banners, and all kinds of devices and decorations.
St. Georges had found it difficult to pick his way through the many obstacles with which the streets were encumbered from the time he left the Bastille and the Rue St. Antoine, and began to approach the more fashionable part of Paris, the vicinity of the Pont Neuf. Richly gilt carriages of the noblesse and the nouveaux riches passed each other frequently, the inmates of the former disdaining to notice the inmates of the other—human nature was the same then as now—and threw the January mud upon an extraordinary crowd of foot passengers—a crowd composed of ladies with mirrors in their hands; men with huge blonde or white wigs, who would stop suddenly to take a comb from their servants' hands and arrange their false locks; others of the commoner sort selling coffee and chocolate on the footway, another drawing teeth in the open street, two men fighting a duel with short swords, a woman and a child picking pockets.[5]
[5] See engravings of Della Bella, done at the time and representing such scenes.
Because it was the Epiphany—the King's Fête—Louis and the court were at the Louvre this year, occupying the vast and stately palace on which the Grande Monarque had spent since 1664 the sum of ten million seven hundred thousand francs; and high festival was being kept. All the court had come with him, including the wife who was still suspected by some of being the mistress; the duchesses and countesses who had been mistresses if they were so no longer; the bishops who were not in disgrace and under the displeasure of De Maintenon; the numerous offspring by various mothers; the ministers and officials—including Louvois. And it was to present himself to the latter first, and afterward to seek audience with Louis, that St. Georges now rode toward the palace.
"Surely," he thought to himself as he directed his course through the heterogeneous mass in the streets, "surely when I relate my tale, tell of the terrible blow that has fallen upon me, I shall be forgiven for having halted on my route. I am more than a week behind, have lagged on my road, yet for what a cause—what a cause! Oh, my child, my little Dorine, that I should have had to come away and leave you behind! My child! My child!"