The last equipage had just gone by. "Is it the will of your highness that we follow?" asked the equerry.
The countess inclined her head, and the equerry passed the word to the coachman: "Follow the cortege." But the horses stirred not a foot.
Eugene repeated the order, when the coachman slowly shook his head. "Impossible, gracious prince, impossible!—The countess would never forgive me, and I should be despised by every coachman of distinction, were I so far to forget my duty as to suffer that an equipage bearing the ducal arms of Savoy should follow the carriage of a nobleman so insignificant as the Vicomte de Charlieu. Why, he goes back but ten generations!"
Eugene smiled and delivered the portentous message to his mother.
"He is right," replied she; "and were he wrong, it would avail me nothing to contend with him on a point of etiquette. The coachmen of people of quality are more tenacious of their rights than the noble families they serve. Not long ago, the Duchesses of Chartres and of Luynes waited four hours in the rain, because, having met in a very narrow street, neither one of their coachmen would back out, to give the other an opportunity of passing. I must imitate their patience, and wait for the return of the cortege, to take my proper place."
The decision of the countess being transmitted to the coachman, he nodded approvingly. "I thought her highness would understand," replied he. "Our place is after the Duchess de Bourbon, the sixth carriage from that of his majesty. The coachman of the Duke de Cheneuse knows it as well as I do, and he will yield us precedence as soon as he sees me ready to fall in."
They waited—the countess in perfect composure, her large black eyes cast upward in complete forgetfulness of the actual state of things around her; Eugene, with visible annoyance on his face, darting anxious and uneasy glances down the avenue through which the king was expected to return. And so passed an hour, at the end of which the avenue was still and empty as a desert. It now became apparent that his majesty had selected some other route by which to reach the Louvre, and Olympia, awaking from her golden day-dreams, began to realize the exceeding awkwardness of her position. For the first time her heart faltered, and a cloud passed over her face.
Eugene rode up to the portiere, and addressing the countess in Italian: "Mother," said he, "if we remain here any longer, I shall choke with rage."
"Home," said Olympia to the equerry. "Home! Quick! Urge your horses to their fullest speed!"
On the evening of that eventful day, every reception-room in the Hotel Soissons was thrown open, and the palace front was one blaze of light. But the steward had been obliged to close the gates, and station four armed men within them, to protect the entrance from the rabble who had again begun to assemble, again begun to threaten.