"Pardieu! Madame must be very unusually faithful to her handsome Priest; she has smiled on no other for two months! What unparalleled fidelity!" said the Vicomte de Saint-Elix, with petulant irritation.
"Jealous, Léonce?" laughed the old Duc, whom he spoke to, tapping the medallion portrait on his bonbonnière. "Take comfort: when the weather has been so long fixed, it is always near a change. Ah! M. de Launay overhears! He looks as if he would slay us. Very unchristian in a priest!"
Gaston de Launay overheard, as he stood by a croisée at Petite Forêt, playing with Osmin—he liked even the dog, since the hand he loved so often lay on its slender neck, and toyed with its silver chain. And, sworn as he was to the service of his Church, sole mistress as his Church had been, till Léontine de Rennecourt's eyes had lured him to his desertion of her, apostate in his own eyes as such a thought confessed him to have grown, he now loathed the garb of a priest, that bound his hands from vengeance, and made him powerless before insult as a woman. Fierce, ruthless longing for revenge upon these men seized on him; devilish desires, the germ of which till that hour he never dreamt slumbered within him, woke up into dangerous, vigorous life. Had he lived in the world, its politic reserve, its courtly sneer, its light gallantries, that passed the time and flattered amour-propre, its dissimulated hate that smiled while plotting, and killed with poisoned bonbons, would never have been learnt by him; and having long lived out of it, having been suddenly plunged into its whirl, not guessing its springs, ignorant of its diplomacies, its suave lies, termed good breeding, its légères philosophies, he knew nothing of the wisdom with which its wise men forsook their loves and concealed their hatreds. Both passions now sprung up in him at one birth, both the stronger for the long years in which a chill, artificial, but unbroken calm, had chained his very nature down, and fettered into an iron monotony, an unnatural and colorless tranquillity, a character originally impetuous and vivid, as the frosts of a winter chill into one cold, even, glassy surface, the rapids of a tumultuous river. With the same force and strength with which, in the old days in Languedoc, he had idolized and served his Church, sparing himself no mortification, believing every iota of her creed, carrying out her slightest rule with merciless self-examination, so—the tide once turned the other way—so the priest now loved, so he now hated.
"He is growing exigeant, jealous, presuming; he amuses me no longer—he wearies. I must give him his congé," thought Madame la Marquise. "This play at eternal passion is very amusing for a while, but, like all things, gets tiresome when it has lasted some time. What does not? Poor Gaston, it is his provincial ideas, but he will soon rub such off, and find, like us all, that sincerity is troublesome, ever de trop, and never profitable. He loves me—but bah! so does Saint-Elix, so do they all, and a jealous husband like M. de Nesmond, le drôle! could scarcely be worse than my young De Launay is growing!"
And Madame la Marquise glanced at her face in the mirror, and wished she knew Madame de Maintenon's secret for the Breuvage Indien; wished she had one of the clefs de faveur to admit her to the Grande Salle du Parlement; wished she had the couronne d'Agrippine her friend Athénaïs had just shown her; wished Le Brun were not now occupied on the ceiling of the King's Grande Galerie, and were free to paint the frescoes of her own new-built chapel; wished a thousand unattainable things, as spoilt children of fortune will do, and swept down her château staircase a little out of temper—she could not have told why—to receive her guests at a fête given in honor of the marriage of Mademoiselle de Blois and the Prince de Conti.
There was the young Comte de Vermandois, who would recognize in the Dauphin no superiority save that of his "frère aine;" there was "le petit bossu," Prince Eugene, then soliciting the rochet of a Bishop, and equally ridiculed when he sought a post in the army; there was M. de Louvois, who had just signed the order for the Dragonades; there was the Palatine de Bavière, with her German brusquerie, who had just clumsily tried to insult Madame de Montespan by coming into the salon with a great turnspit, led by a similar ribbon and called by the same name, in ridicule of the pet Montespan poodle; there was La Montespan herself, with her lovely gold hair, her dove's eyes, and her serpent's tongue; there was Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan the Duchesse de Richelieu and the Duchesse de Lesdiguières; there was Bussy Rabutin and Hamilton. Who was there not that was brilliant, that was distinguished, that was high in rank and famed in wit at the fête of Madame la Marquise?—Madame la Marquise, who floated through the crowd that glittered in her salon and gardens, who laughed and smiled, showing her dazzling white teeth, who had a little Cupid gleaming with jewels (emblematic enough of Cupid as he was known at Versailles) to present the Princesse de Conti with a bridal bouquet whose flowers were of pearls and whose leaves were of emeralds; who piqued herself that the magnificence of her fête was scarcely eclipsed by His Majesty himself; who yielded the palm neither to La Vallière's lovely daughter, nor to her friend Athénaïs, nor to any one of the beauties who shone with them, and whose likeness by Mignard laughed down from the wall where it hung, matchless double of her own matchless self.
The Priest of Languedoc watched her, the relentless fangs of passion gnawing his heart, as the wolf the Spartan. For the first time he was forgotten! His idol passed him carelessly, gave him no glance, no smile, but lavished a thousand coquetries on Saint-Elix, on De Rohan-Soubise, on the boy Vermandois,—on any who sought them. Once he addressed her. Madame la Marquise shrugged her snow-white shoulders, and arched her eyebrows with petulant irritation, and turned to laugh gayly at Saint-Elix, who was amusing her, and La Montespan, and Madame de Thianges, with some gay mischievous scandal concerning Madame de Lesdiguières and the Archbishop of Paris; for scandals, if not wholly new are ever diverting when concerning an enemy, especially when dressed and served up with the piquant sauce of wit.
"I no longer then, madame, lead a dog's life in jealousy of this priest?" whispered Saint-Elix, after other whispers, in the ear of Madame la Marquise. The Vicomte adored her, not truly in Languedoc fashion, but very warmly—à la mode de Versailles.
The Marquise laughed.
"Perhaps not! You know I bet Mme. de Montevreau that I would conquer him. I have won now. Hush! He is close. There will be a tragedy, mon ami!"