“I will,” I interrupted.
“‘And it shall go hard if he be not punished,’ she said.
“When Madame Riano heard of it she was for mounting a-horseback and going in search of Jacques Haret. One thing, however, we may reasonably count on—that Jacques Haret shall one day pay for this.”
“Undoubtedly,” I replied.
We spoke more on this melancholy business, and talked on other things, and then Gaston Cheverny went to pay his respects to Count Saxe in his room; but Count Saxe was out—gone in pursuit of knowledge and virtue, I fancy.
In that month of January began a life of tedium for us which had few mitigations. A young man, like Gaston Cheverny, full of spirit but with little money, was under many disabilities at Paris. His wit and fine person made him to be sought after by those who knew him already, but he was not by nature a carpet knight. No soldier of Hannibal enjoyed Mantua more than Gaston Cheverny would have enjoyed Paris in winter after a summer’s campaigning; but to sit, kicking his heels day after day, was irksome to him. Being a proud man, it did not please him to expose the smallness of his fortune when it could be helped, so he, with me, lived a life which we often compared to that of the monks of La Trappe. We read much—Gaston, in especial I believe, mastered by heart every poem on love printed in the French language and many in the Italian, Spanish and English languages. He likewise achieved a great number of songs, and actually composed some himself; but of these last, I have heard better, I must acknowledge.
The Hôtel Kirkpatrick was unoccupied and closed, the entrances and windows boarded up. There was no talk during all that year of Madame Riano and Mademoiselle Capello returning to Paris. I heard often of them through persons passing from Brussels to Paris. Mademoiselle Capello, out of her abundant kindness, 196 often sent me messages of good-will—nay, even a pair of gloves wrought with her own hand—a favor I never heard of her doing to any gentleman; for she was chary of her favors to the great. She told me, years afterward, that standing so much alone in the world as she was, and the hunted of fortune seekers, from the first she ever relied upon me as one of her truest friends. And she was justified.
Gaston Cheverny kept up a constant correspondence with his brother, for never at any time did their rivalry for Francezka seem to interrupt the brotherly intercourse between the two Chevernys. They were very far from being Mademoiselle Capello’s only suitors, that I knew. Gentlemen went in search of her and her fortune, from Paris, from Brussels, even from London and Vienna; but all came back chopfallen.
So crept away the winter, the spring, the summer, the autumn. And so went another year, and 1730 dawned, a year memorable for the loss of Mademoiselle Lecouvreur. She, too, showed me a condescension beautiful and worthy of her. She did not lack for friends among the greatest during her fading away. Besides my master and Monsieur Voltaire, was my Lord Peterborough, a great, tall devil of an Englishman, with a head on his shoulders and a heart in his bosom, who made some fine campaigns in Spain. Count Saxe and Monsieur Voltaire had a tacit agreement to visit Mademoiselle Lecouvreur on different days, although I believe the sense that she would soon be lost to both of them softened their feelings one to the other. All this time Mademoiselle Lecouvreur could still act, three times a week; but when she was 197 not at the theater she was usually in her bed—and always patient, gentle and smiling. She had not always been so patient. I have been told that, her sister once impudently demanding money of her, Mademoiselle Lecouvreur threw both shoes at her. But as some one has said, “Death lights up a terrible flambeau in which the aspect of all things is changed.”