Clovis had valid reason for his impatience to be off. The prisons were opening their maws to swallow the blue-blooded, who tumbled in by shoals on frivolous and ridiculous charges. Paris was becoming so disagreeably warm, that self-preservation bade all and sundry to depart unless tied by special reasons. Now, as the abbé pointed out (who grew almost as impatient as his brother, in his enforced idleness), there was nothing whatever to detain the provincials from returning to their chateau, since the queen had dismissed the marquise.
Gabrielle agreed that the time was come for a journey, and even made an attempt to induce the aged maréchale to join the party. It would be nice to have her mother with her, and perhaps the suburban residence might be fraught with unknown drawbacks. But at the suggestion, the old lady lifted up her voice in such querulous screechings that her daughter was silenced.
"You should know, but for your innate selfishness," complained the old dame, "that I can't bear the place. Its crepuscular corridors and frowning front give me the shivers. I wonder you can endure it yourself, but you always were so peculiar and inconsiderate. I will visit you for a week or so some day, if I pluck up courage; but, live there? The family vault with a pile of coffins for furniture, would be more cheerful as a dwelling-place."
Then Gabrielle's mind went through a curious and unexpected phase. The queen's reference to their horoscopes had set the marquise thinking. The prophecy regarding her majesty was being fulfilled, slowly but surely, to the letter. A friend informed her with grief and lamentations, that Louise de Savoye, Princesse de Lamballe, had been seized and confined at La Force. At this moment, the least secure refuges in France were the prisons, for the blood-drunken populace had a way of making raids upon the jails, and maltreating incarcerated aristos, out of pure devilry. First, Her Majesty; then Madame de Lamballe. Who was she, Marquise de Gange, that she should hope to escape her doom? She was, like the others, predestined to misfortune. True. She had suffered deeply already, and Heaven had relented for awhile; but there was nothing to justify her in face of the prophecy, in supposing that it was more than a respite. Try to grapple with it as she would, Gabrielle, as the time for moving approached, was oppressed by a growing presentiment of ill. From what quarter it was to come she could not guess, but it was her bounden duty to take such precautions as were possible. Were the darlings to be stricken down and die? Or was the impending misfortune to consist in the sacking of the chateau? It was impossible to foresee and avert the trouble. In contrast to the storm that had blown over, the family outlook was fair enough. Though the domestic sky was cloudflecked, there was no specially black bank of vapour striding up the vault. Clovis was bearish and ill-humoured. That was nothing new. The abbé was all smiles and benevolence, his leisure much occupied in a laudable and Christian endeavour to break the chevalier of tippling. Toinon wrote that, summoned to Blois by his party, Jean Boulot was gone for awhile, and for her part she rejoiced at the riddance, for was it not too bad that he should prefer his vulgar noisy Jacobin clubs and fustian nonsense to the charming society of his betrothed?
Strive as she would to argue with and laugh at herself, Gabrielle could not shake off her gloom. The gamekeeper--who had saved her life--was gone away to Blois, and Toinon hoped that he would stop there? Why should she feel as if a staunch and trusty friend had left her side? The chatelaine had every right to feel angry that a paid servant should throw up his place with such scant ceremony, and yet was not the abruptness of the act strictly in tune with the man's independent principles and the spirit of the time?
He was a rough, honest, warm-hearted, wrong-headed fellow, with whom Toinon was justly annoyed in that she had failed to reform his ways. All this was true enough, but Gabrielle could not shake off a sense of loneliness, of vague uneasy dread, a conviction of impending calamity; and suddenly something whispered that before leaving Paris it would be well to execute a testament.
History is full of strange presentiments which come like warnings, but which have the peculiar property of defeating themselves; for they exercise sometimes a fatal fascination akin to that of the snake over the bird, which paralyses the victim's efforts to escape the threatened peril.
Trying to argue down her fears, she made it the more evident to herself that whatever came of it, duty pointed in the direction of Lorge. The grim chateau was her own now; the fields were her own fields; the peasants her own vassals. In the interests of the darlings she would be very energetic, learn to farm, improve the property, and draw the bonds closer than heretofore between mistress and tenants. But what if the clever abbé's prognostications were to be realized, and the flames which she had seen burning so fiercely in Paris, were indeed to spread dismay and ruin even to remote Touraine? Was he right in the advice which she had resented so warmly--the unwelcome advice to be content with the money-bags at Geneva, and abandon the chateau to the wreckers? No. She had always disapproved the craven conduct of the fugitives. It was not in the nature of things for the present cataclysm to go on for ever. Temporary insanity would give way to reason; the mob, glutted by impunity and gorged by excess, would calm down again, and those who had had presence of mind to hold their own while passively bowing before the storm would reap the reward of their bravery.
The chatelaine knew herself to be a favourite with the people and that her presence at the chateau would go far in the event of a revolutionary wave, to save it from destruction. She could not believe that the shadow she felt approaching could come from that quarter. Whence then? It was probably a bugaboo, born of nervousness, resulting from sympathy with the desperate condition of the queen. Dismissed by Marie Antoinette, her place was at Lorge on the estates, and since flesh is grass, it was only right to make a will.
While revolving these things, Gabrielle's attention was naturally turned upon her husband. It was odd that he should resent so deeply her one act of independence. We know that what the constitutionally weak resent the most, is being openly convicted of their weakness. Could that humiliating quarter of an hour with the family solicitor have left so deep an impression on his easy-going soul? and, while her repulsed affection had faded into indifference, was his unconcern growing into positive aversion? It occurred to her now for the first time, as singular that when he wanted money of late the abbé had always been the spokesman. Did he feel his dependent position so acutely that he could not bring himself to mention the sordid subject, or was it that he had come to dislike his wife so much, that he could not bring himself to speak to her at all? She resolved to open her mind to the abbé about it, for Clovis must be infatuated and purblind indeed, not to feel assured that, though she was resolved to carry out her father's wishes and keep a firm hold of the purse strings, they would not be drawn too tight.