The Pompadour écossais rose one morning from his bed, which once belonged to Louis Quatorze, in the rue Adolphe Yvon; broke his fast on a bowl of coffee and a roll, and having dressed himself, as he always did, without a valet, with as much fastidiousness as if he were the Duke de Morny, rode for an hour in the wood, and later drove his English coach, with his English horses, English grooms, and English post-horn, out to the garden of St Germain. He was unusually resplendent, from his hat of silk, broad-brimmed, widely banded with bombazine, to high-heeled military shoes which seemed moulded to his feet, and had never known an unguent, but were polished daily to a fine dull lustre by the shin-bone of a deer. Upon his coat lapel was a green carnation that had cost a louis; his secretary sat behind him on the box, a man of undistinguished presence, wearing a sardonic smile; on the seats behind him was a company of guests for whom the lord had sieved the most exclusive salons of the capital—Prevost and Chatran, Chelmonski the Napoleonic painter, Paul Delourade the poet, half a dozen women of the most impeccable repute, and among them Mathilde de Langan with her ponderous mother, who was overjoyed to think that, after years of fruitless strategy, she was like to find an eminently eligible son-in-law in Lord Balgowie.
The girl was altogether lovely, exquisitely moulded, in the delicious gush of health and youthfulness, a miracle of grace with an aspect that recalled the pictures of Italian Madonnas; a brow benign and calm, a little tender mouth designed rather for prayer than for kissing, eyes purple black, profound as wells and prone to an alluring pensiveness.
They reached St Germain; stabled the horses, lunched upon the terrace that looks widely over the plain of Paris; obsequious silent servants hung about the tables; food and banter, wine and laughter, fruit and flowers engaged the company as it sat between the parterres, under awnings; and apart a little, looking on with eyes that gleamed at times with furtive and malicious entertainment, sat the secretary.
“That is a singular man of yours, milord,” remarked Mathilde, who sat beside the Pompadour. “I have never seen him smile but in derision.”
“He is a man with a peculiar sense of humour,” said the Pompadour, regarding her with gravely tender eyes. “I should not be surprised if the whole interior of that apparently saturnine body is at this moment rumbling with laughter.”
“Vraiment? What should he be laughing at?” asked the lady, whose judicious mother with discreet consideration sought a wicker arm-chair, screened herself with a quite unnecessary sunshade, and prepared to nap.
“At what he must think the folly of—of my quest for pleasure. He is, you know, my countryman, and the happy-starred among us find content and joy in the very cheapest, simplest entertainment. The cost of—of those flowers alone, perhaps he calculates at this moment, would suffice to keep his mother a fortnight.”
“Mon Dieu! has he got a mother?” said the lady airily. “To look at that rugged form and the square hard countenance, I would have thought he had been chipped from granite. But I hope the dear mother is not really hungry. Do you know her?”
“I am privileged to read her letters once a week,” said the Pompadour.
“That must be most amusing.”