XLIV
While Hopart and Guicheaux discovered themselves in such excellent fettle over the recovery of their idol, no less a person than Madame Jeanne du Guesclin presented her husband’s pennon before the great gates of La Bellière.
The disgrace at the Oak of Mivoie had sent Madame Jeanne upon a pilgrimage among her friends, for the news of Bertrand’s troth-breaking had challenged her pride, if it had not troubled her affection. Sieur Robert, a fat imbecile, had been left to gormandize at Cancale, while the wife, with sweet Olivier at her side, rode out to play the Roman mother. It was a necessary discretion that Bertrand should be sacrificed, nor did Madame Jeanne fail in the heroism of her indignation.
Sumptuous in red gown, with streamers of gold at the elbows, a short “spencer” of blue cloth open at the hips, a hood of some amber-colored stuff with liripipia of green silk, Madame Jeanne rode her roan horse into the La Bellière court. Olivier, as flushed and splendid as his mother, straight-waisted, full and jagged in the sleeves, smiled at the wide welkin as though his motto were, “By God’s soul, I am the man.” Ten armed servants in red and green, a falconer, two huntsmen with four hounds in leash, followed hard at madame’s heels.
Some people seem designed by nature for the more spacious ways of life, for terraces that touch the sunset, marble stairways, and chairs of gold. This largeness of presence was part of Jeanne du Guesclin’s birthright. Standing in the state solar of La Bellière, with one hand on Olivier’s shoulder, she dwarfed her slim fop of a son, whose mawkish look betrayed the oppression of a youth tired by indiscriminate motherly conceit.
The window of the solar, with its scarlet cushions and carved pillars in the jambs, looked out upon the garden, where Madame Jeanne could see the Vicomte asleep on the bench under the Pucelle de Saintonge. Half an hour had passed since Girard had bowed them into the state solar, and Madame Jeanne was not a lady who could wait in patience. She watched Stephen Raguenel with a slight twitching of her nostrils and the air of a grand seigneuress much upon her dignity.
“It seems that they do things slowly at La Bellière.”
Olivier yawned behind his hand.
“The roads are devilish dry,” he remarked. “I should not quarrel with a cup of wine. The old gentleman there appears to have eaten a big dinner.”
“The servants must be fools.”