I had mountains of writing to do, those devilish Courlanders presenting endless petitions, protests, pieces, justifications, and other rubbish, all of which had to be answered civilly. We kept up a brisk correspondence with France when we could; but the Courlanders have no notion that a courier is a sacred object, so a vast number of our letters never got farther than Mitau.
Our communication from the rest of the world was scant and uncertain. Even Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s letters rarely reached us, although we knew she wrote faithfully and often to Count Saxe. We knew scarce anything that was happening outside, except that Monsieur Voltaire was in England, and Count Saxe hoped he would remain there.
There was one person of whom I thought daily and hourly, but could hear no word of—Mademoiselle Francezka Capello. All I knew was that she and Madame Riano had set forth from Paris, in great state, on their travels. I was not the only person athirst for news of Francezka. Gaston Cheverny was as eager. He wrote continually to his brother Regnard imploring and demanding to know of Mademoiselle Capello’s welfare; but he admitted, with the utmost chagrin, that Regnard, in those of his letters which were received, never so much as mentioned Mademoiselle Capello’s name, which led me to infer that Regnard Cheverny knew all about her.
I have never known a man who early acquired a 77 fortune that was not a calculator and an acute reckoner of his own and other men’s chances. But Gaston Cheverny was not a calculator in the mean sense. The motto of his house well described him. It ran, in the old French—Un Loy, Un Foy, Un Roy. One faith was Gaston Cheverny’s in all things. He was full of youthful spirits, of ridiculous young daring, always wanting to achieve the impossible, and of the sort, when he could not conquer the world, to beat the watch. But those men are to be loved. Gaston Cheverny had great capacity for love and romance. The image of Francezka Capello had been deeply graven on his heart, and I saw what one does not often see in a young man barely one and twenty—a real devotion to an ideal, a faithfulness that can and will endure.
He was not one of the loose-tongued sort, who tell all to everybody. I think he never spoke of Mademoiselle Capello to any one but to me, and occasionally to Count Saxe. At night, when I sat in my room reading by a single candle, before I went to bed, Gaston Cheverny would come in, throw himself on my bed, and begin to rave over Francezka. He would go back to his earliest childhood, and aided by a very active imagination, prove that he had loved her ever since she was born. He explained this to me very ingeniously, saying he was in love with Francezka before he saw her, because he was in love with a dream, of which Francezka was the reality. I listened smiling and with a good heart. Knowing Gaston Cheverny well, I thought him worthy, if any man was, of Francezka Capello. Sometimes he would rave over her beauty, and would threaten to run me through when I ventured 78 to say that it was her wit and charm which made her beautiful. Again, he was full of adoration for her lofty, high spirit; and then bewailed it, as likely to lead her into unnumbered dangers, from which Madame Riano was small protection—for Scotch Peg loved adventures as a cat loves cream.
Gaston Cheverny was of a bookish turn, and was the first one who quoted to me the saying about books: “In winter, you may read them, ad ignem, by the fireside; and in summer, ad umbram, under some shady tree; and therewith pass away the tedious hours.” We passed away some of our tedious hours at Mitau in this manner, but we had few books. Among them luckily was a volume of Bourdaloue’s sermons, of which Count Saxe always made me read one whenever the Courlanders were more devilish than usual in giving us fair words of emptiness for truth; and my master always fitted the preacher’s denunciations to his enemies.
Gaston Cheverny and I made bold to correct Count Saxe’s theology, but he called us a couple of cheek turners, and declared he knew that the Psalmist, as well as Bourdaloue, had the Courlanders in mind when he denounced liars and hypocrites. Next to sermons my master liked the verses and songs of that rogue of rogues, François Villon. Gaston Cheverny sang these songs of Villon’s very agreeably, accompanying himself on the viol, and so whiled away some of our heaviest hours. These diversions, together with our rat-killings, were the sum of our amusements, for I do not reckon the balls at the palace as amusements. Count Saxe would occasionally insist on taking me to the palace, although I objected to going on the ground that 79 the duchess had said I was ugly. But this was reckoned a witticism of mine. Anyhow, as Count Saxe remarked, I could return the compliment to the lady. The entertainments there were dull, and besides, every Russian we saw scowled at us—and there was a Russian at every turn. All the court officials were Russian, and they took good care that we should not find Mitau agreeable.
Ah, it was a dreary, weary time, especially after the winter set in. In the spring it was scarcely more cheerful. Count Saxe’s chances were dwindling, there was no doubt about that. But he bore the gradual fading of his hopes with the gaiety of heart which was his own.
And the Russians grew more numerous. They seemed to be enveloping us; and from day to day we awaited the catastrophe which, I think, all of us expected—but not exactly in the guise in which it came.
In August, things were looking black for my master, and one night, he and I and Gaston Cheverny, being seated at supper, with Beauvais serving us—an honest and devoted fellow, Beauvais is, with a squint almost as bad as my cross eye—I said to Count Saxe: