The Last Duchess of Belgarde

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The turnkey Duval went, and returned after a few minutes to say that not only might the duchess have a bed and a chair and a table, but he would even get an old counterpane and hang it up as a curtain between the cells. This was luxury undreamed of by Trimousette, and she overwhelmed Duval with pretty thanks. The turnkey of his own accord put up the bed and placed the chair and table which all prisoners were allowed, and, having himself a taste for luxury, actually laid a piece of carpet by the side of the bed and put a coarse cover on the table.

This prison supper was the first time the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde had ever supped together alone with each other. They felt a furtive and secret joy at being together, for the duke had been steadily falling in love with his wife ever since she appeared in his cell an hour before. He noticed a new expression in her black eyes, an expression of hope and even of joy. Trimousette, with a woman’s keenness, knew she was on the road to her kingdom—her husband’s heart. It was so odd that it was almost comical, the way the duke examined his wife. She certainly had beautiful eyes, and a slim figure, and although dressed in the simplest manner, as became a lady who traveled alone, Trimousette had not forgotten her solitary piece of coquetry—her delicious little shoes. Also, she had suddenly found her tongue, and talked to her husband so freely and even gayly that he was astounded. Was this the silent, shy, awkward girl he had married so many years ago and who had seemed to be growing shyer, more silent, more awkward every year? He was so surprised, so pleased, so touched, that he scarcely knew what to make of it. The sky was still alight when their supper was over, and Trimousette produced some needlework which she had been allowed to bring into the prison. She was very artful, was this artless Trimousette, and not meaning to thrust her company on her husband, retired to her own little cell. There a charming surprise awaited her. The turnkey, over whom Trimousette had thrown a spell of enchantment, had placed upon her table a pot containing a geranium with ten leaves and two brilliant scarlet blossoms. Trimousette, after admiring her treasure, sat down upon her one chair and began to stitch diligently by the fading light. She was ever a good needlewoman. Most prisoners, as soon as they were incarcerated, begged for pen, ink, and paper, to write to their friends, and to begin their struggle to get out of prison. Not so Trimousette. She had no one to write to, and particularly did not wish to get out of prison.

As she sat sewing, she heard the duke moving restlessly about in the next cell, beyond the ragged curtain. A mysterious smile came into Trimousette’s eyes and upon her lips; her husband was uneasy without her; he must come and seek her—oh, rapturous thought! Presently, the duke knocked quite timidly at the side of the door. It might have been Trimousette herself, the knock was so gentle; and when Trimousette softly bade him enter, he said, quite shamefacedly:

“I have never been lonely in this place before, for my thoughts, although painful enough, always kept me busy. But I have grown very lonely without you in the last five minutes. May I enter?”

In that hour began Trimousette’s long-delayed honeymoon.

Trimousette, being by nature orderly and the duke philosophic, they regulated their lives as if they expected to die of old age in the prison of the Temple. The duke had never before had much leisure for reading, his time having been chiefly taken up with war and the ladies, nor had he felt the need of any proficiency in writing until he became the guest of the Revolution. His newly found accomplishment with the pen revealed to him a gift which neither he nor anyone else ever suspected in him. He could write verses, very pretty verses, all addressed to Trimousette. These she set to music and sang in a sweet little voice. Some of these songs were quite gay and coquettish, and Trimousette sang them gayly and coquettishly. Thus was the kingdom of poetry and song opened to them and they entered it hand in hand. When they sat together at the rude table in the purple April nights, the duke teaching Trimousette his verses and she singing them softly to him, they gazed with rapture into each other’s eyes, and wondered how they could ever have lived apart.

They had no watch or clock and no means of telling the time except by the prison bells, until the duke contrived, with a wooden peg driven into the bare table, a rude sundial. They would not put upon it the motto of the sundial in the old garden where Trimousette had first dreamed of the duke; it was too sad. The duke suggested the old, old one, “Only the happy hours I mark,” but Trimousette shook her head.

“Are not all our hours happy when we are together?” she asked, and her husband for answer caught her to his breast.

“I know another motto,” she whispered; “it is on the sundial on the broken terrace at Boury, ‘’Tis always morning somewhere in the world.’”

The duke therefore etched, with a piece of a nail out of his shoe, this motto upon the table, and Trimousette said it meant that when they made their journey some evening to the Place de la Révolution, they would close their eyes for a few minutes and open them upon the Eternal Morning. She had many sweet superstitions, but behind them lay a noble courage and faith itself.