“Diane, do you think he ever remembers us? Do you think he will ever send for us?”
And Diane would give a melancholy whine, indicating that she did not believe the duke ever would. Sure enough the duke did not send for either his wife or his dog, and poor Diane, weary of waiting, at last lay down quietly one night by Trimousette’s bed and was found dead next morning.
Trimousette felt more alone than ever in her life when the poor lame dog was dead. Soon after, she got news that Madame de Floramour had died of chagrin at the disasters and irreligion into which France was plunged; and last—ah, cruel stroke!—Victor fell fighting gallantly in La Vendée.
The young duchess bore these blows in patience and silence. The duke managed to contrive a letter of sympathy to his duchess when the soul of Victor de Floramour was called away. The letter was very ill-spelled and ill-written, for the duke’s accomplishments were those of Henry the Fourth—he could drink, he could fight, and he could be gallant to the ladies, but he could not write, although he could think excellently well. Trimousette treasured this rude scrawl. It was the nearest to a love letter she had ever received from any man.
CHAPTER VII
CITIZENESS BELGARDE
IN the long days and months and years Trimousette spent at Boury she was forced to employ herself. She had no great taste for books beyond books of poetry, but she practiced on the cracked harpsichord which had belonged to the duke’s mother, and she developed a pretty little voice in which she sang to herself songs of love and longing. One day, during the winter of 1794, Trimousette got some news from Paris. Queen Marie Antoinette had followed King Louis to the guillotine, and the Duke of Belgarde was once more in the prison of the Temple. He got there by one of the few acts of stupidity he ever committed in his life. He had slipped into Paris after the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette, determined to save the little Dauphin if the wit of man and the sacrifice of many lives could contrive it. Then came in the stupidity. This duke, who could do everything superlatively well except to write and spell, undertook to pass himself off as a schoolmaster! Moreover, he wore a shabby brocade coat, the last remnant of his wardrobe. Robespierre and St. Just then had France by the throat and were wolfishly devouring her children. It did not take them long to discover that this schoolmaster who could not spell was Fernand, Duke of Belgarde, and they promptly clapped him into prison. For those unfortunates imprisoned by these two men there was but one exit and that was in the arms of Madame Guillotine, who held a well-attended court at sunset every day in the Place de la Révolution.
Within a fortnight Trimousette heard this grim news of her husband. It was February, the ground was covered with snow, and for a duchess to go to Paris was like putting one’s head in the lion’s mouth. All this was urged upon Trimousette by her dame de compagnie. It had no more effect upon her than the soft falling snow upon the Breton rocks. Before midnight on the day she heard the heartbreaking news Trimousette was on her way to Paris. She was not in her own ducal traveling chariot, but in the common diligence, for this inexperienced creature seemed gifted with a kind of prescience, nay, a genius of common sense, which stood her in place of actual knowledge of the world. She traveled as Madame Belgarde, wisely dropping the de, and absolutely alone, refusing even to take a maid.
Three days afterwards, on a March morning, Robespierre, the apostle of murder, had just finished arraying himself in the sky-blue coat and cream-colored breeches which he loved, when a lady was announced in the anteroom. Robespierre loved the society of ladies, and one of the privileges of his position as chief murderer was the sight of dainty women prostrate before him, begging and imploring him for the lives of their husbands, fathers, or sons.