"And you—also."
It had come, then. The two men stood still on the stairs, facing each other for an unnoted time. Then Richelieu smiled. "You are wet with the rain, Marc. When you leave the King, come to my rooms. There you will find Grachet and some hot rum. I must make my toilet now. I have a party to-night—for the Opéra."
D'Argenson stared. "Mon Dieu!" he muttered to himself, "we diplomats have not such training!"
CHAPTER IX
The Duke Swims
Something over an hour after d'Argenson's return, Richelieu, in full dress, glittering with jewels and orders, left the palace in his coach, bound for the Rue d'Anjou. He was committing the curious faux-pas of being too early. It was barely half past six when he left the Boulevard de la Reine, whence it was less than five minutes to his destination. But Richelieu, under his gayety, his frequent laughs, and his flood of brilliant conversation, so witty that d'Epernon, seeing him in his rooms, fancied that he had been drinking, was desperate. Until a month ago he had not realized how much his life meant to him. He was now forty-eight years old, and, since his fourteenth year, he had never lived out of the atmosphere of the Court. That atmosphere was part of him. It clung about his every gesture and about his speech, punctuated as that still was with the low patois in which he had delighted as a young rake. His garments and his wigs were of set and fashion so inimitable that the Jew to whom he sold them realized a profit equal to their original cost in selling them to members of the haute bourgeoisie with Court ambitions. It was Richelieu who had made Louis XV. and his Court what they were. It was Richelieu who was at all times King of the King's house. To the last inch of what soul he had, he was imbued with Court manners, Court love, Court lordliness. And now—now, at the simple word of a woman of yellow hair and twenty-seven years—his name was struck from the Court list! He had been in straits before, but never one wherein he was so apparently helpless. This was incredible, monstrous, impossible—true. Yes, the great Richelieu was falling. Whom to turn to? Berryer? Machault? The King himself? No. Instinct, with one of its incomprehensible turns, was leading him, unresisted, to that house in the Rue d'Anjou where dwelt a little girl from the American colonies, with her husband, the cousin of the woman who thought to ruin him.
Unable to rid himself of this curious notion, Richelieu alighted from his vehicle in the Rue d'Anjou, was admitted by the porter, and proceeded up the stairs to the de Mailly apartment. Claude was not there. Richelieu knew that from his own statement. Madame alone was within. How much depended on the next few moments the Duke could not surmise. Nevertheless, he gently tried the door from the hall, without knocking. It was open. Noiselessly he entered the antechamber, and, crossing it, would have passed into the salon but for a sight which halted him on its threshold, in the shadow of the hangings.
The room before him was half lighted, and contained one person, who stood motionless, her back towards the antechamber, on the other side of the room. It was Deborah, fully dressed for the evening, if Richelieu judged correctly; but in an attitude which threatened to destroy the elegant simplicity of her coiffeur. She was in front of a little cabinet which stood against the wall beside the mantel-piece, her two elbows, in their cloudy lace ruffles, resting upon one of the shelves. Her powdered head lay upon her arms; and now and again her slight frame could be seen to quiver with the depth of a long-drawn sob. What was the matter? What was she doing? What was it that the cupboard contained? Richelieu wondered and waited. Then he was struck with a welcome notion. Here was she in a sorrowful, therefore tender, mood. He alone was near her. Their growing friendship—why not cement it with a delicate passage, delicately arranged? Who so able to manage this successfully as Richelieu? For Richelieu believed that he knew all women.
Silently, then, though without especial effort to make no sound, he began moving towards her by leisurely degrees. She heard nothing, and seemed to feel no presence near her. Indeed, at that moment she was very far away, among the memories which the bottles had conjured up for her—ghosts of many things and people: home, Virginia, Dr. Carroll, Sir Charles, black Sambo, the warm sunlight, the river, and the free, wild woods that were her own.
"Chère Comtesse!"