“Well, vogue la galère!” exclaimed La Corriveau, starting up. “Let it go as it will! I shall walk to Beaumanoir, and I shall fancy I wear golden garters and silver slippers to make the way easy and pleasant. But you must be hungry, Mère, with your long tramp. I have a supper prepared for you, so come and eat in the devil's name, or I shall be tempted to say grace in nomine Domini, and choke you.”
The two women went to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish maidservant had brought to Mère Malheur with the groom's story of the conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angélique have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot to kill the unhappy Caroline.
“I were a fool to tell her that story of the groom's,” muttered La Corriveau to herself, “and spoil the fairest experiment of the aqua tofana ever made, and ruin my own fortune too! I know a trick worth two of that,” and she laughed inwardly to herself a laugh which was repeated in hell and made merry the ghosts of Beatrice Spara, Exili, and La Voisin.
All next day La Corriveau kept closely to the house, but she found means to communicate to Angélique her intention to visit Beaumanoir that night.
The news was grateful, yet strangely moving to Angélique; she trembled and turned pale, not for truth, but for doubt and dread of possible failure or discovery.
She sent by an unknown hand to the house of Mère Malheur a little basket containing a bouquet of roses so beautiful and fragrant that they might have been plucked in the garden of Eden.
La Corriveau carried the basket into an inner chamber, a small room, the window of which never saw the sun, but opened against the close, overhanging rock, which was so near that it might be touched by the hand. The dark, damp wall of the cliff shed a gloomy obscurity in the room even at midday.
The small black eyes of La Corriveau glittered like poniards as she opened the basket, and taking out the bouquet, found attached to it by a ribbon a silken purse containing a number of glittering pieces of gold. She pressed the coins to her cheek, and even put them between her lips to taste their sweetness, for money she loved beyond all things. The passion of her soul was avarice; her wickedness took its direction from the love of money, and scrupled at no iniquity for the sake of it.
She placed the purse carefully in her bosom, and took up the roses, regarding them with a strange look of admiration as she muttered, “They are beautiful and they are sweet! men would call them innocent! they are like her who sent them, fair without as yet; like her who is to receive them, fair within.” She stood reflecting for a few moments, and exclaimed as she laid the bouquet upon the table,—
“Angélique des Meloises, you send your gold and your roses to me because you believe me to be a worse demon than yourself, but you are worthy to be crowned tonight with these roses as queen of hell and mistress of all the witches that ever met in Grand Sabbat at the palace of Galienne, where Satan sits on a throne of gold!”