“You have served me,” she added, “as no man has ever done or ever will. I was ungrateful and false and cruel and unjust. Let me atone now.” She had held out a hand.
A third time André felt that he did not know Madame de Pompadour; he was learning as some men can that the heart and thoughts of a woman of genius, born to conquer a king and subjugate a court, are not to be fathomed in a few weeks, even by one to whom many other women have laid bare the mysterious workings of a woman’s heart.
“I have brought you your despatch, Madame,” he said, choosing his words slowly, and conscious of his clumsiness before the ease and tact of this bourgeoise adventuress.
“Yes,” she took it almost indifferently, but the flash that turned her eyes from grey to blue, the quick movement of the locket on her breast, would have revealed much to another woman. She placed it on the table beside a tiny heap of torn papers. André recognised these fragments. They had once been the lettre de cachet for Denise, which Madame had destroyed before he came. “Yes,” she said, “though the despatch is useless now, none the less I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Useless,” André stammered.
“For two reasons,” she smiled. “The agent from whom you forced that despatch at the peril of your life took poison an hour after he was lodged at the Bastille. You had not heard? Well, the dead tell no embarrassing tales. Secondly,” she pulled out her watch, “the Jacobites have already been informed in the King’s own handwriting that they might have a forgery in my writing imposed on them, and that information has already been privately conveyed to the English Government. The English would not give a sou for the secret despatch to-day.”
So that was how Madame had spent her night, and it had left her radiant as Aphrodite rising from the foam, while he, André, was oppressed by the weariness of the defeated.
“Yes, the Marquise de Beau Séjour is safe, you are safe, Vicomte, and I am safe, and the King is happy and well. The only persons who are not safe and happy,” she smiled with the daintiest irony, “are or will be some of your enemies and mine. My hour has come. I shall not ask them to forgive, nor will they forget.”
Had Denise been in the room she would have recalled the words of the girl whom André had conducted to the Barrier of St. Louis. This woman was the destiny of France, against whom men fought in vain. As it was, Mont Rouge’s letter in his breast pocket seemed to cry out, and André shivered. Madame de Pompadour’s triumph was complete.
“No, they will not forget,” Madame continued, “because they conspired to ruin you, my friend, you to whom Antoinette de Pompadour will always be grateful, for when you might have deserted her and saved yourself you refused. You may not forgive me, but I can punish them, and I will.”