At first he thought this courtyard had been constructed in imitation of some tropical garden or hothouse, so oppressive was the heat caused in it by the total exclusion of all air--a heat so great that here rich exotics grew in tubs as they might have grown in the soil of those far distant lands, notably Siam, from which they had been brought by missionaries as presents to their all-powerful mistress. Then he remembered that among other things peculiar to this woman was her love of warmth and her hatred of fresh air--perhaps the only subject on which she was at variance with Louis. And sitting there in the warm, sickly atmosphere, waiting to know what reception, if any, might be accorded him, he wondered how the king, whose love of open windows and of the cool breezes which blew across the woods and forests of his various palaces and châteaux was proverbial, could ever contrive to pass as much of his life as he did in the confined and vaporous air which perpetually surrounded his wife.
As thus he reflected there came toward him an elderly lady, preceded by the servitor who had received him--a woman dressed in total black, whom at first he thought might be Madame de Maintenon herself, would have felt sure that it was she had not the newcomer, bowed--nay, courtesied to him--as she drew; near, while she spoke in a tone of civil deference which he scarcely thought one so highly placed as the king's unacknowledged wife would have used.
"Madame will receive monsieur," this lady said very quietly, in a soft, almost toneless voice, "if he will follow me. Also she will be pleased if he will join her at her déjeûner."
"It is Mademoiselle Balbien," the servitor said, by way of introduction of this ancient dame, "Madame's most cherished attendant." Whereon Martin bowed to the other with a grace which she, "attendant" though she might be, returned with as much ease as though her life had been passed in courts from the days of her long-forgotten infancy.
"Monsieur may have heard of me," the old lady chirped pleasantly as now she motioned Martin to follow her, smiling, too, while she spoke. "The Princesse de Rochebazon knew me very well indeed--alas, poor lady, and she is dead!"
Yes, Martin had heard of her, and from his aunt, too, as well as others. Had heard of her deep devotion to the woman who now ruled not only France but France's king--had heard, in truth, that the De Maintenon might have been dead long years ago of starvation, of bitter, pinching want, had it not been for this faithful creature. Had heard his aunt tell, when inclined to gossip, of how Nanon Balbien had taken Scarron's widow to her garret after the death of the bankrupt and poverty-stricken poet; had shared her bed and her daily meal--generally a salted herring and some bread--with the woman now omnipotent in France; had preserved her life thereby and prevented her succumbing to cold and destitution and starvation. Knew, too, that there were those in France who said that in so doing Nanon Balbien had unwittingly perpetrated the greatest sin, the greatest evil, against the land that was possible. That it would have been better had she left the object of her charity to die in the gutters of the street than to preserve her life, and thereby raise up and nourish the snake which sucked the life blood from France and all within it.
Still following this old woman, through corridors from which all air was as equally excluded as from the glass-roofed courtyard they had left--corridors, too, in which there stood in niches alabaster busts of saints, and one, with above it a sacred light, of the Figure itself--Martin Ashurst went on, until at last he and his conductor neared a huge ebony door the handle of which was of massive silver and representing an angel's head--a door outside which there stood four ladies in waiting, all dressed in black, none of them young, and one only passably good-looking, yet whom he divined to be women of the oldest and best blood in France, and divined rightly, too. Three of them were high-born noblemen's daughters, one the daughter of a prince--De Rohan.
"Mademoiselle de Rochechouart," said Martin's guide, "this is the gentleman. Will you conduct him to Madame?" and she drew back now, resigning the visitor to the lady whom she addressed.
"Come, monsieur," that lady said, her voice soft and low, "follow me."
A moment later and he stood before the marvellous woman, the Protestant woman born in a prison, now a bigoted papist and a king's wife. Yet Martin remembered only at the moment the words of his dead kinswoman, "Madame knows it." Remembered, too, how she had said of her that she was one who would never tell.