I glanced toward Francezka while Count Saxe was speaking. There are some inconveniences attached to sharpness of intellect—nothing escapes it. As Count Saxe proceeded with his recital, I saw that Francezka had seen at a glance the mystery in it. I had no apprehension of any show of agitation on her part, she was a woman of too flawless courage and too good an actress, but she would not suffer the less. I saw a shadow come over her eyes as I had seen a black cloud darken the face of the lake at Capello. I saw her hands tremble 405 slightly. She looked steadily at Count Saxe, and avoided the gaze of Gaston Cheverny which became fixed on her. He had taken more wine than usual. His steady glances, although smiling enough, were calculated to draw her gaze toward him.
At last, as if forced against her will, she raised her eyes to his, and in them was doubt and despair. All this went on secretly as it were, amid the talking, the laughing, the singing of a hundred persons at the supper, with a band of more than forty musicians twanging in the music gallery above us. Soon after this, the company arose and went into the grand ball room. The branle was at once formed, and Francezka, as on the night before, led it with Count Saxe. She showed not the slightest tremor or agitation, but I knew of the wild beating of her heart under the lace and jewels.
Gaston Cheverny was the hero of the hour. He danced, too, and the women, who all adore brute courage, wooed him with their smiles and arch glances. I saw him dancing with Madame Fontange, whom both Francezka and I had seen him chasing up the great staircase two days before. Francezka was dancing in the same minuet de la cour. There is a part when, to languorous music, the gentlemen, with their plumed hats, sweeping the ground, bow low to the ladies. As Gaston Cheverny did this, I saw suddenly flash into his eyes that look of Regnard Cheverny’s. Francezka saw it, too. It was the very end of the minuet.
In the confusion that followed the breaking up of the dance Francezka disappeared. In a little while there was a hue and cry raised for Madame Cheverny. Messengers were sent after her. She was in her rooms, and 406 sent word back that she was fatigued with the chase that day, and as she was to rehearse next day as well as act, she begged to be excused. When I heard this message repeated, I left the ball room, and going up the great spiral staircase, open to the moonlight which flooded the earth, stopped opposite Francezka’s window. The sky was studded with glowing stars, and a great silver lamp of a moon made the night radiant. Below, lights were shining from every window, and the swell of the music kept rhythm with the beat of the dancers’ feet. But there, at that lonely height, all was still as death. Francezka’s window opened. It was not four feet from me.
“I knew your step,” she said.
I remained silent and awkward. My heart, aching for her pain, had brought my body thither, but after I had reached her, I knew not what to say. She still wore her splendid gown and all her jewels.
“I know all about that coup de grâce with his right arm,” she said in a voice quiet, though trembling a little. “Do you wonder that I am always in terror of something, I know not what? One thing is certain. I do not know Gaston any longer. He is as strange, even stranger to me than he is to you. Also, he is as kind, as devoted to me as ever he was. I hate and dread mysteries—and I am enveloped in one.”
She continued looking at me for a moment; I still knew not what to say. Then, she softly closed the window. I remained out there on the stairs until the December cold forced me to seek the fire in the great hall below. There sat Gaston Cheverny, among a number of gentlemen. He was the gayest, and might be adjudged 407 the comeliest, gracefullest, most accomplished man there, excepting always Maurice, Count of Saxe.
The next day, the king left Chambord, but the other guests stayed on for a full fortnight.
It often occurred to me, that Chambord in its palmiest days, of Francis the First with his Ronsard, of Louis le Grand with his Molière, never sheltered more wit, beauty and courage, than it did at this time. The wit and courage of Count Saxe are too well-known to need comment, and the same may be said of the Duc de Noailles, Marshal Boufflers, Monsieur d’Argental, and others then at Chambord. As for beauty, combined with wit, Francezka Capello led all the ladies, but there were other gifted ones. Even Madame du Châtelet, in spite of her everlasting algebra and Newton’s Principia, was not an ill-looking woman. Madame Villars and Madame Fontange were charming. The presence of these ladies and others, all remarkable for spirit, was ever after alleged as the reason for the disappearance of the celebrated pane of glass, in one of the windows of the yellow saloon which was used as the theater.