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FRANCEZKA

BY
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

AUTHOR OF
THE SPRIGHTLY ROMANCE OF MARSAC, THE HISTORY OF THE LADY BETTY STAIR, ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1902

The Bowen-Merrill Company

October

CONTENTS

1

FRANCEZKA

CHAPTER I

IN THE HEART OF PARIS

I maintain that my master, Maurice, Count of Saxe, Marshal-general of France, Duke of Courland and Semigallia, Knight of the Most Noble Order of Merit, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the White Eagle, Knight of St. Louis, Knight of St. Stanislaus, and of many other noble Orders—I maintain him, I say, to be the greatest man, the bravest man, the finest man, the handsomest man, the man most dreaded by his foes, the most loved by his friends, the most incomparable with the ladies, the first soldier of all time—in short, the most superb, the most terrible and the most admirable man who ever lived—and I can prove it.

There are fractious men everywhere who dispute the plainest facts. With these unfortunates I am willing to argue for a time, but if they grow impudent about Alexander the Great, or Julius Cæsar, or any of those men who have made a noise in the world, I bring against them one invincible argument—my sword. I am no great lover of the pistol. My sword is enough, and it never misses fire. I am the most peaceable creature 2 alive, and never but twice did I lose my temper over the matter of Count Saxe’s greatness. Once was when a bragging rascal of a pseudo-nobleman from the marches of Brandenburg dared to call this greatness into question, and with offensive words. I gave him his choice of taking a hundred kicks in the stomach or having his ears cut off. He chose the latter, and I sliced one of them off; he begged so hard for the other one that I let it stay on his head.

The second time was with young Gaston Cheverny, who afterward became a devoted adherent of my master—and whose strange story will be told in these pages. I will say, however, it is pretty generally understood when Babache, captain of Count Saxe’s body-guard of Uhlans, sometimes known as the Clear-the-way-boys, or the Storm-alongs, and also as the Devil’s Own, is in the neighborhood, that Count Saxe is the greatest man that ever lived.

I am supposed to be a Tatar prince, by birth, that is; but in truth the only claim I have to either the race or the title is, that I am very ugly. God could have made an uglier man than I am, because He is omnipotent, but I am sure He never did. I accept my ugliness. I can say as the actor at the Théâtre Français said, when the audience hissed him on account of his ugliness—it will be a great deal easier for people to get used to my face than for me to change it.

As to my birthplace, I was born in the Marais, in the cursed town of Paris, and my father was a notary in a small way. So was the father of Monsieur François Marie Arouet, who now calls himself Voltaire—and Count Saxe always swore I could write tragedies and national 3 epics as well as Arouet had I but tried. Especially, as I ever wrote, with the greatest readiness imaginable, a much better hand than Arouet, or Voltaire, or whatever his name is—we knew the fellow well in Paris. But I never laid claim to more than what the English call mother-wit, the Spanish call freckled grammar, and the French call, being born with one’s shirt on. It was, however, my readiness with the pen that first won for me the highest fortune that could befall a man—the patronage, the friendship and the affection of Maurice, Count of Saxe.

I did not turn my hand to writing for money, and paying my court to the great, as Arouet did; but being left penniless and an orphan at fourteen, and his Majesty’s recruiting officers coming after me, I went to serve as a foot soldier in Flanders. I carried a musket for twelve years. Of those years I like neither to speak nor to think. At the end of that time came what I supposed would be the end of Babache: standing up before a file of soldiers, to be shot down and to die like a dog, for theft. I was innocent—that I swore on the holy Gospels, and call God to witness—but the money, two crowns, was found on me; and I could not tell how it got there, except that I had been carousing in bad company. Count Saxe being very strict against marauding, I was tried and condemned to be shot.

The whole business, trial and all, was over in a day, and on a summer morning I was led out to be shot on a bastion of the walls of Mons. It was a very beautiful morning, I remember, and also that the buglers, playing the dirge, played horribly out of time, as they always do at military executions. As I was on my way 4 to die, Count Saxe, with a half dozen officers galloping after him, met the procession. I raised my dull eyes and looked him in the face—a thing I would not have done, except that a man who has but a quarter of an hour to live need not be bashful about anything. Count Saxe asked about my case, and the officer in charge said I was to die for stealing two crowns—and that I had been a good soldier. Count Saxe rode up close to me.

“What a fool you were to risk your life for a couple of crowns,” he said.

“I risk it every day,” I replied, “for a couple of sous. But I am innocent.”

“Give him his life,” said Count Saxe.

The buglers changed their tune from a dirge to a lively marching air; the drummer beat a couple of ruffles on his drum, and we faced about—I think the honest soldiers who were going to shoot me felt almost as glad as I. Men have to be driven and threatened with punishment to keep them from shirking when it is necessary to shoot a comrade, and there would certainly be a mutiny every time, except that a certain number of muskets have no ball cartridges in them—and every fellow thinks that he has got an empty cartridge.

That same day I wrote a letter to Count Saxe, expressing, as well as I knew how, my thanks for my life. I took it myself to his quarters—and as good luck would have it, while I was begging a pert young aide to give the letter to Count Saxe, the count himself came out of his tent. He read the letter—asked me if I wrote it—and not believing me, told me to come into his tent, 5 sit down at his table, and write at his dictation. I did so, and I have written every line to which his name is signed since, except his love letters. Writing is, in itself, no great accomplishment. Monsieur Voltaire himself has said that a man may have a great deal of esprit and yet write like a cat. Still less important is spelling.

My master would not in his youth give attention to writing and spelling, having more important things to learn, and he had an early quarrel with grammar, which was never made up. Nevertheless, he has written the best book about war yet published—that is to say, he dictated it to me. And the French Academy elected him a member; but he made merry at the expense of the Academicians, saying as he knew not how to spell, much less to write, a seat in the Academy would become him about as well as a ring would become a cat. Also, that if the Academy elected him, it should also elect Marshal Villars, who could neither read nor write; but that I, Babache, was better fitted for an Academician than either.

It is certain, however, that no lady ever refused to accept a love letter from Count Saxe because it was ill spelled and ill written—for that part of his correspondence he attended to strictly himself. I know that certain things concerning the ladies have been urged against him. I know he has been described as “a glorious devil, loving beauty only”—but all I know concerning Count Saxe and the ladies is, the women mobbed him and sent him thousands of love letters. It may be said that I know more than I will admit. Not so. And it may also be said that I could have known all if I had wished. Well, 6 so might I have known astronomy, if I had possessed a taste for the science. But I never liked it. I ever felt small enough anyhow without considering those myriads of suns and worlds which make one feel considerably less than nothing.

One thing I do know about Count Saxe and one lady, in particular; if he had been willing to marry that ugly Duchess of Courland, Anna Iwanowna, now Czarina of Russia, he would have been Duke of Courland de facto as well as de jure; he would have become “cousin” to the Kings of France and Spain; he would have been “most Illustrious” to the Emperor, and “most Illustrious, most Mighty,” to the King of Poland, and what is more, he would have had the right of coining money.

But Count Saxe never put any compulsion on himself in affairs of the heart. And I say this; that with the only two ladies concerning whose relations with him I was familiar—for he was as secretive with me as I could wish about such things—I never knew a man more blameless. And these two ladies were both of them singularly beautiful and charming. One of them was an actress—Mademoiselle Adrienne Lecouvreur, and the other one was Mademoiselle Francezka Capello—that star-like creature whose beauty, whose riches, whose airy high spirit, whose strange, brilliant story, laid her open to peculiar dangers. Yet, toward Mademoiselle Capello, Count Saxe behaved with the most delicate chivalry during the whole of her eventful life. And he forwarded the love of Mademoiselle Capello and Gaston Cheverny with the noblest disinterestedness.

7

Count Saxe had a taste not common among soldiers. He liked to hear sermons read—good sermons, that is, by the great guns of the pulpit, like Bossuet. I often read them to him, and have been compelled to chastise several persons who thought this matter food for mirth.

It seems to me sometimes as if I had never known but one man and one woman in my life—Count Saxe and Francezka Capello; they alone reached the ideal heights, in my mind—for a Tatar prince and the son of a poor notary has his ideals, just the same as a duke and the son of a duke—and the fact that I was a private soldier before I became a Tatar prince and a captain of Uhlans has nothing to do with the matter. It may be that Mademoiselle Capello, who had a combination of Scotch and Spanish pride, won me with the most delicate flattery in the world by honoring me with her regard—and Babache, the Tatar, was often smiled on, when dukes and marquises were scowled at, terribly. Of course, I knew that the very difference in our rank made this possible; and I had a cross eye which stood as a sentinel in my face, to warn Love away.

Only in my dreams, did I breathe of love to Mademoiselle Capello; and in those soft and splendid visions in the mysterious night and under the earnest stars which seemed then so near and so kind, Francezka often smiled upon me—nay, even kissed me.

But it was only a dream. At all times, though, I was hers, soul and body, with a doglike devotion—and in the end, I was given to her, in a singular manner, by Count Saxe. She lavished upon me, from the beginning, many kind and familiar speeches and acts; and I would have died rather than throw away, by so 8 much as one word of folly, the treasure of her confidence and friendship. I took with thankfulness what she gave me—and was not such a fool as to ask for more.

The very first time I saw Mademoiselle Capello was unforgettable for more reasons than one. It was the first and most serious of those adventures into which her spirit, her talents and her beauty were perpetually leading her—and it might have been her destruction.

One afternoon about six o’clock in the first days of May, 1726, I was passing along the tangle of streets back of the Quai des Theatines, when I noticed in the walled garden of the great Hôtel Kirkpatrick one of those cheap, open-air theaters of which the Parisians of the humbler classes are so fond. The place itself was retired enough, and only accessible from the maze of back streets of which I spoke. There was a wide, grassy space in the garden where the theater was set, with its rude appliances. On one side, quite screening it from the formal gardens of the hôtel, was an ancient lilac hedge, a forest of bloom and perfume, in those first days of May. There were great clumps of guelder-roses on each side, and syringas, which had grown to be trees, and looked like fountains of white blossoms.

It was so very sweet and peaceful—it being quite deserted at the time—that I stood, looking through the open grille of the huge gateway, and felt the scent of the lilacs and syringas getting into my blood, as the earth scents and earth sights will; for we are all the children of Nature, the mighty mother, whether we be born with only the tiles between us and the stars, or whether our cradle be the ground itself, and in our mother’s bosom shall we sleep at last; so that is why 9 the green earth is never strange to us, nor any of its sweetness unfamiliar.

No one would have thought that this old garden—this rich, wild, fair, virginal place—was in the heart of Paris. The sun was well in the west, and the shadows on the velvet grass were long. As I meditated I began to wonder how such a thing as a cheap theater should be set up in the grounds of the chatelaine of this splendid hôtel—who was the renowned, the redoubtable and the indomitable Madame Margarita Riano del Valdozo y Kirkpatrick, Countess of Riano, with many other titles, but who was commonly called Scotch Peg, or Peggy Kirkpatrick, and was as well-known in Paris as the statue of Henri Quatre on the Pont Neuf.

Her history was familiar to all Paris. She was the daughter of a poor Scotch Jacobite, as proud as Lucifer and all hell besides. She had married Count Riano, a Spanish nobleman, five times a grandee of Spain, three times a grandee of Portugal, and God knows what else, with more money than any or all of the Kirkpatricks had ever seen in their lives. He was the meekest, the mildest, the least haughty man on earth, having no more pride in him than the kitchen knife. It was known in every street in Paris that from the day the good man married Peggy Kirkpatrick she never allowed him to forget the enormous honor that a daughter of the penniless, bare-legged clan of Kirkpatrick had done him and the kingdom of Spain, in marrying him. The poor man has long been with the saints in heaven, and few of them deserved the martyr’s crown more than he.

Yet Peggy Kirkpatrick was not a bad woman. On 10 the contrary, she was incapable of a mean action, generous with a Spanish, rather than a Scotch, generosity, and although she undoubtedly hastened Count Riano’s death by harping upon the glories of the Kirkpatrick family, she paid him great attention in his last illness. As for his funeral, never was there anything so grand.

In Madrid, whither she carried him, events are still dated from the Count Riano’s funeral. Madame Riano wished to borrow the catafalque under which Louis le Grand had lain, and was mightily offended when it was refused her. The funeral lasted six weeks from Paris to Madrid. The Spanish Court paid the widow much honor, but not giving due space to the Kirkpatricks in some formal letter of condolence, or matter of that kind, Scotch Peg shook the dust of Spain from her feet and returned to Paris to remain, as she said, until Charles Edward Stuart, the English prince, was restored to the throne of his ancestors.

She was a great, tall woman, as red as a cow, but not unhandsome. She had a stride like an ostrich, and always carried her nose to the wind like a cavalry charger. At her side, in place of a sword, hung a huge fan, which she flourished around very much as if it were the claymore of the Kirkpatricks. Princes of the blood fled before Scotch Peg. Marshals of France turned tail and ran. Cardinals and archbishops quailed at her onslaught. When everybody else in Paris was calling Cardinal Dubois “the devil’s cardinal” behind his back, Peggy Kirkpatrick called him so to his face—and she was of the same religion, too. It was she who stalked up to Count Saxe at the king’s levee at Fontainebleau, and bawled at him:

11

“So you are going on a marauding expedition after the crown of Courland!”

“Madame,” replied my master, turning red with rage, “I am a candidate for election to the crown of Courland. If elected by that august body, the Diet of Courland, I shall accept, and I shall defend my right.”

“August fiddlestick!” cried Peggy. “All of those elective crowns, like that of your father, the King of Poland, are nothing but prey for the strongest highwaymen, and you are not as strong as you think. I predict you will be running back like a drenched hen from Courland before the year is out. However, I will say this of you, Maurice of Saxe, that you are about as good as any of the crown snatchers, or the august Diet, either—and if you would but stop running after the petticoats, you would be a considerable man!”

Count Maurice of Saxe running back from Courland like a drenched hen! And would be a considerable man! Maurice of Saxe!

It must be acknowledged, however, that in spite of Scotch Peg being Scotch Peg, the best company in Paris attended her saloons; she had a natural aptitude for affairs which always provided her with more money than those who laughed at her, and she was never known to desert a friend in distress. She was the aunt and guardian of Mademoiselle Francezka Capello.

Francezka’s father, a handsome, penniless Scotchman, went to Spain with the Duke of Berwick’s army. There, the only daughter of the Marquis Capello fell in love with the Scotch captain. The old marquis fought hard against the marriage, but the Duke of Berwick 12 carried it through. One stipulation was made by the Capellos: that Captain Kirkpatrick should take the name of Capello instead of Kirkpatrick. This he did, much to Scotch Peg’s indignation, but he was rewarded with a splendid fortune. With true Scotch thrift, he increased this fortune, and when his only child, Francezka, was doubly orphaned in her first years, she became one of the greatest heiresses in France and the Low Countries—in both of which she had large possessions.

Her father’s will, making her sole heiress, gave her complete control of her estates when she was eighteen, and likewise counseled her not to marry until she was at least two years beyond her majority. These facts were well known in Paris, and although, in 1726, Mademoiselle Francezka Capello was only in her fourteenth year, the fortune-hunters were already congregating about her. But her aunt, Madame Riano, was as fierce as a dragon when her niece’s marriage was mentioned—although it will be seen, hereafter, that by no means kept she a dragon watch over the young lady.

All these things being of common repute, they naturally came to my mind as I stood, watching the shadows lengthen on the grass of the old garden in the golden afternoon. Presently, from a private entrance, some children and some older persons appeared. The theater was for child actors only, and one of them—a floury baker’s boy,—came to the iron gate, and acted as gate-keeper. To him I paid the few copper coins asked for admittance, and entered.

Others followed me, chiefly working people and serving-men and women, but there were some of a class not 13 often seen at these cheap, open-air performances. One man I recognized—Lafarge, an actor of the Comédie Française, and, I think, the poorest actor who ever played in the House of Molière. Something, I know not what, excited suspicion of this man in my mind—I could but wonder what he was doing there. He had a hang-dog countenance, and was almost as ugly as I.

Presently, whom should I see bustling about, and evidently the manager of the enterprise, but Jacques Haret! I own I was astonished to find him doing anything but eating and drinking and riding at somebody else’s expense—but there he was, actually at work, and that, too, in a very intelligent manner. There was no doubt about his intelligence, although he was known as a scamp of the first water. His intelligence had not kept him from gambling away a fine patrimony in the Low Countries, where his family had once been great.

He was the handsomest dog imaginable, in spite of all the cardinal sins looking out of his eyes—and he retained certain outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual graces which he had never had since I knew him. I will say of him though, that he was not a coward, nor did I ever hear him utter one word of railing against fate—but what a rascal he was!

As soon as his eye fell upon me he came across the grass and greeted me by clapping me on the back. He wore a shabby old laced coat, woolen stockings, broken shoes, and a splendid velvet hat and feathers; this last probably picked up at random—which some people call stealing. Now, I have never known a specimen of rascal-gentleman like Jacques Haret who could not always 14 stand and sit at ease with all men. I, Babache, an honest fellow, often feel abashed in the presence of the great. I am thinking, if I am too friendly they will remember my origin and think me impudent—and if I be not friendly enough, I fear I am thought to forget whence I sprang. But Jacques Haret and men like him are at their ease with kings and beggars alike. There is certainly something in being born to ride in a coach, even if the coach be gambled away or drunk up.

Jacques Haret greeted me cordially, as I say, but with good-natured condescension. He began to tell me that he had the finest child actress in his troupe he had ever seen. “So tragic, so moving, so graceful, so droll, so natural; she could, in two years more, wrest the laurels from the brow of Mademoiselle Lecouvreur herself!” So he declared, again whacking me on the back.

I was not much interested in his child actress, but bluntly asked him how he got the use of Madame Riano’s garden.

“The easiest thing in the world,” he said, laughing. “I went to her—proved that in 1456 one Jacques Haret, my ancestor, had married into the noble family of Kirkpatrick, and on the strength of that relationship asked to set up my theater here. She agreed promptly, only stipulating that she should see and hear nothing of it. I told her she could not see without looking, nor hear without listening, and she screeched out laughing and told me to go my ways and try to be respectable.”

“I hope you have taken Madame Riano’s advice,” I said dryly.

“In truth I have been obliged to. There are too 15 many fellows like me in Paris now. I can no longer get clothes and food and wine by telling a merry tale and singing a ribald song. And, besides, I got a hint from Cardinal Fleury, that old busybody, who manages a good deal more than the king’s conscience.”

“What do you call a hint?” I asked.

“Oh, well, old Fleury sent me word if I did not find some respectable employment he would have me cool my heels a while in the prison of the Châtelet—not the Bastille, mind you, where Voltaire and all the wits and dandies are sent—but to the Châtelet, the prison of the common malefactors. The cardinal’s message is what I call a delicate hint. However, I may make my fortune yet. The Duc de Lauzun was a mere provincial like me, and was often in straits—yet he married the king’s niece, and made her pull his boots off for him.”

I looked at the fellow in admiration. His evil life had not dimmed his eye or his smile, his courage or his impudence.

The crowd was still increasing, and there must have been a hundred persons present by that time. Lafarge, the bad actor from the Comédie Française was hanging about, and I was the more convinced he was bent on mischief. Jacques Haret had gone off—the performance was about beginning. A white cloth, fastened to two poles was let down upon the stage, just as they do with those songs which the actors at the theaters are forbidden to sing; the orchestra plays the air, and the audience sings the verses which are painted upon these white cloths. In this case, though, the inscription in huge red letters was this:

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“The part of Mariamne, in Madame Mariamne and Monsieur Herod, will be played by

Mademoiselle Adrienne,

the most wonderful child actress in the world, who will one day continue the glory of the name of Adrienne!”

The people shouted with delight at this. Mademoiselle Adrienne Lecouvreur was then the idol of the Parisians, and she was moving all Paris to tears in Monsieur Arouet’s—or Voltaire’s, for I continually forget—tragedy of Mariamne. The present performance, I then knew, was to be a burlesque on the play of the notary’s son.

17

CHAPTER II

THE LITTLE ACTRESS

Just at that moment, a coach came lumbering through the narrow streets and stopped before the gate, where two persons alighted—Mademoiselle Lecouvreur herself and Monsieur Voltaire. I was surprised to see Monsieur Voltaire, because I supposed he was locked up in the Bastille, and would not be let out except to go to England. This man has friends, but I am not one of them. He had a way of sharpening his wit on Count Saxe, behind Count Saxe’s back—and besides, Mademoiselle Lecouvreur liked him too well. But that was because he wrote the part of Mariamne for her. Nevertheless, I did not make the mistake of belittling him.

Jacques Haret, who knew everybody in Paris, recognized the pair as they entered the garden. He ran forward, refused to let them pay, and escorted mademoiselle to a bench under the purple blooming lilac hedge where she could both see and hear well.

“It is a very great honor, Mademoiselle,” said Jacques Haret, “to entertain you in my theater.”

Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, with that smile which won all hearts, replied:

“I thank you very much, Monsieur. I can not be indifferent 18 to the actress who is to continue, and probably surpass, the Adrienne of to-day.”

She glanced my way, and I bowed to her, and she gave me one of those same sweet smiles. Twenty years before, my father, the notary, and her father, the hatter, lived next each other—and the notary’s son and the hatter’s daughter often played in the streets together. Now, she was a great actress, and I was a Tatar prince in command of Count Saxe’s body-guard. She had graciously remembered our early acquaintance when Count Saxe took me to her house—for he took me everywhere he went—and she treated me with the greatest kindness always; for which I love and thank her forever.

I was sorry to see she looked pale and weary in the strong afternoon light—she was ever frail, and adorned the world only too short a time. She wore neither rouge nor patches, nor was she ever remarkable for beauty; but she was charming as only Adrienne Lecouvreur was charming. As for Monsieur Voltaire, he looked both prosperous and impudent—and when Jacques Haret paid him a compliment he replied with a wink:

“Dear sir, I am not Monsieur Voltaire. That fellow is in the Bastille. I, as you see, am tall and thin and not ill-looking, while Voltaire, it is well known, is short and stout and red of hair—and is the worst poet in France besides.”

Jacques Haret winked back.

“Truly,” said he, “I was mistaken. As you say, Monsieur Voltaire is a short, red-haired man—but he is not the worst poet in France. The creature has written some things that are not so bad—the Henriade, for 19 example—it could not be better if I had done it myself. And I have made a little play after his Mariamne, which is not so bad either—my actors will now have pleasure in giving it. What a pity you are not Monsieur Voltaire!”

At this, Monsieur Voltaire laughed—he had a huge laugh and a loud and rich voice, and eyes that glowed like coals of fire. Nobody having once seen this man could forget him, or mistake him for another.

Then, amid a stormy clapping of hands, Jacques Haret gave three great thumps with a stick on the floor of the stage, in imitation of the House of Molière, the curtain was pulled apart and the little play began.

In a few minutes, the child actress advertised as Mademoiselle Adrienne came upon the stage, and was greeted with uproarious applause.

She was no child, but a young girl of thirteen or possibly fourteen, and taller than the cobbler’s boy, who played opposite to her. She was not strictly beautiful, but she had a spark of Heaven’s own light in her deep, dark eyes—and she had the most eloquent red mouth I ever saw, with a little, bewitching curve in it, that made a faint dimple in her cheek. The blond wig she wore evidently disguised hair of satin blackness. She was slight and unformed, but graceful beyond words. Jacques Haret’s version of Mariamne was a very good one—what a multiplicity of gifts the fellow had, and his dishonesty made each and all of no avail! But in this young girl whom he called Mademoiselle Adrienne, he had an actress worthy of better work than even he could do.

The part of Mariamne—Jacques Haret’s Mariamne—was 20 a very comic one, especially at the last, which was a burlesque on Mariamne’s parting from Herod. Up to that point, the young actress played with the true spirit of comedy. Her audience shouted with laughter. Even Mademoiselle Lecouvreur laughed as I have never known her to before or since. Monsieur Voltaire, however, sat grave and thoughtful, his chin in his hand. I, too, was serious, and felt little inclination to laugh in spite of the drollness of the young girl’s acting. I saw at the first glance she was of a grade entirely different from the cobbler’s boy and the other children, and I was troubled at seeing her in that company. Such was the effect produced on me by the first sight I had of Francezka Capello—for it was she and no other.

When she came to the last of all—the burlesque parting—she suddenly transposed it into the key of tragedy. She changed the words into those of Monsieur Voltaire’s Mariamne, which she spoke with vast force and pathos and passion. She laid her hand on the shoulder of the cobbler’s boy, with a gesture so full of love and longing and delicacy and despair, that the boy, seeing a mystery, but not understanding it, was dazed, and forgot his part, which was to seize her around the waist and whirl her off her feet. The laughter had suddenly subsided—the audience, like the boy, was stunned and confused and touched. Francezka, then, with a cry of despair that rang through the still, soft May evening, thrust the cobbler’s boy away and leaned sobbing against the cloth wall of the theater; and the people, after a full minute of delighted amazement, broke into thunders of applause.

Mademoiselle Lecouvreur and Monsieur Voltaire led 21 the hand clapping. The little actress, perfect mistress of herself, turned toward the bench where Mademoiselle Lecouvreur and Monsieur Voltaire sat. Her countenance had changed as if by magic—she showed a mouthful of beautiful teeth in a joyous smile. Then, the exigency of the play requiring her to turn again, instantly she resumed her touching and tragic air, and picking up her part, carried it through triumphantly. Her fellow actor, the cobbler’s boy, was disconcerted by the miraculous transformation she had made, and could only stand awkwardly about the stage, and act as a dummy for her to hang her emotions on. Nevertheless, she managed it perfectly, and when the end of the little play came, instead of the two galloping off the stage hand in hand, the young girl bade farewell to the cobbler’s boy in an improvised speech which made the cobbler himself, who was in the audience, and several other persons, to weep profusely.

The applause was sharp and loud; the young girl, as if disdaining it, had walked into the little booth used for a dressing room. Then Monsieur Voltaire said in Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s ear:

“I am certain now who it is. She is the young niece of Peggy Kirkpatrick. I have often seen her in Peggy’s coach.”

“And in such company!” cried Mademoiselle Lecouvreur. “Surely Madame Riano can not know it.”

“Certainly she does not know it,” replied Monsieur Voltaire, “but this scoundrel of a Jacques Haret knows it. Come here, Jacques Haret.”

Jacques advanced, all smiles and holding his fine hat and feathers in front of him to hide his broken linen.

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“It is a great pity,” said Monsieur Voltaire to him sternly, “that you are such an unmitigated rogue. You have great talents for this sort of thing, and if you had a rag of respectability, you would be capable of managing the Théâtre Français itself.”

Jacques Haret grinned, and went cut and thrust at Monsieur Voltaire.

“I beg to differ with you, Monsieur,” replied Jacques. “I did not inherit any talent for affairs, my family not having been in trade, nor have I any gift for running after the great, of which the only reward is sometimes a good caning, the dukes and princes pretending to be very sympathetic and meanwhile laughing in their sleeves. Do you suppose, Monsieur, that the oxen did not laugh when the poor toad swelled and burst?”

Now, as all this was a perfectly open reference to Monsieur Voltaire’s history and adventures, it bit deep. Monsieur Voltaire turned pale and glared with those wonderful eyes of his at Jacques Haret—but Jacques was no whit abashed. As I said before, those gentlemen-rascals are hard to abash.

There were several persons standing about, listening and understanding, and a smile went around at Monsieur Voltaire’s expense. Mademoiselle Lecouvreur looked distressed. Jacques Haret, seeing his advantage, assumed a patronizing tone to Monsieur Voltaire and said:

“I have always admired your plays and verses very much, Monsieur Voltaire, and your rise in the world has been as remarkable as my fall; but you were born luckier than I—you had no estate to lose. I hope your triumphant career will continue, and that you will be 23 pointed out as a man who was not kept down by want of birth, of fortune, of breeding, of looks—for I always thought you were devilish ugly, Voltaire—but who, by being in love with himself, and admitting no rival, rose to a first place among third rate poets!”

I swear it is humiliating to humanity to know that the Jacques Harets of this world always get the better of the François Marie Voltaires. Jacques Haret had no blushes for his fall, and Voltaire blushed for his rise! But such is the curious way of the world.

And what is quite as curious, the crowd was on the side of the pseudo-gentleman, and was rather pleased that he got the better of the notary’s son, who supped with dukes.

“Tell me this,” cried Monsieur Voltaire in his loud voice and very angrily, “how comes it that this young girl, whom I know to be the niece of Madame the Countess Riano, should be acting in your trumpery plays?”

He had taken out his snuff-box and opened it to appear calm, and Jacques Haret, before answering, coolly helped himself to the snuff—at which the crowd was lost in admiration.

“Monsieur,” answered Jacques Haret, “do you think if Mademoiselle Lecouvreur came sneaking to the manager of the Théâtre Français and asked to act without pay, for the love of the thing, she would be turned away? Well, Monsieur, this young lady is the Adrienne Lecouvreur of her age and class. She is the best child actress I ever saw, and she came to me—not begging, if you please, but haughtily demanding that she be allowed to take, when it pleased her ladyship, the leading parts in the plays I give. I allowed her to try once. 24 Since then, whenever I can get her, she is welcome on the stage of my theater. She asks no pay, but I would give her more than all the child actors in my company get, if I could always command her services.”

“And when Madame Riano finds it out?” asked Monsieur Voltaire.

“Then, God be my help!”

“But, Monsieur Haret,” said Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, “truly, it is not right that a young girl of her condition should be allowed to mix with the class of children you have here.”

“Mademoiselle, she does not mix with them. She is the haughtiest little lady you ever saw. Besides, old Peter, the servant who comes with her, watches her with the eye of a hawk.”

“It is but this, Haret,” continued Monsieur Voltaire, with impatience; “you have got an admirable little actress for nothing. Whether she comes to ruin, you care not; whether it lands you in prison, you are willing to take the chances; you are, in short, a scoundrel. Come, Mademoiselle Lecouvreur.”

“Sir,” replied Jacques Haret, following them to the gate, “I am in this business for my living, not for my health, which is admirable, thank you. There are risks in all trades—a wit is always liable to get in prison in these days, especially if he cracks his wit on his betters. I believe you have had two sojourns in the Bastille yourself, Monsieur Voltaire. Well, you survive and smile, and I may be as fortunate. Good evening, Monsieur; good evening, Mademoiselle.”

Neither Mademoiselle Lecouvreur nor Monsieur Voltaire replied to him, but getting into the coach in which 25 they came, were driven away under a narrow archway and were out of sight in a minute.

Jacques Haret’s mention of a serving-man directed my attention to an elderly man in the well-known purple and canary livery of Madame Riano, who stood close to the stage, never budging from his place. He was a respectable looking creature, with faithfulness writ large all over him. Homely, as well as elderly, he had the most speaking and pathetic eyes I have ever seen in any head. Just now, his expression of anxiety would have melted a heart of stone. And if he were in any way responsible for his young mistress’s being in that place, he did well to be anxious.

There was still another piece to be given, and the audience was awaiting it impatiently. The rays of the declining sun were level then, and the sweet, green, retired place looked sweeter and greener and more retired than ever. In the midst of the hush the stage was thwacked and the curtain parted. I happened to glance toward Lafarge, the actor. He stealthily raised his hands and brought them noiselessly together. All at once, the garden seemed full of soldiers. Lafarge pointed out Jacques Haret to an officer, who laid a heavy hand on him, saying:

“I arrest you for giving a theatrical performance without a license.”

Jacques Haret began to bluster. It was no use. He grew sarcastic.

“This, I presume, is at the instigation of that rascal Lafarge,” he cried. “The people passing by here stop and pay a few pence, and see a better performance than can be seen at the Comédie Française, around the corner. 26 So the audiences have been falling off. I hear there is scarcely any one in the house the nights Mademoiselle Lecouvreur does not play.”

Nothing availed. The thunder of carts resounded in the narrow streets.

“Come,” said the officer. “No matter where the information came from—get you and all your company into the carts outside—and you can sleep on a plank to-night in the prison of the Temple, and to-morrow morning you can give an account of yourself to the Grand Prieur de Vendôme.”

There was, of course, a frightful uproar. The soldiers seized the children and carried them toward the carts, the youngsters screaming with terror, especially the cobbler’s boy, who was the biggest boy, and yelled the loudest—the parents shouting, crying and protesting. There was a terrible scene.

As soon as the commotion began, I walked toward the old serving-man. The confusion was great, but in the midst of it I heard a calm, imperious little voice saying:

“Peter, come and take me home at once.”

It was the young Mademoiselle Capello, standing on the edge of the stage platform. She was very white, but perfectly composed.

Old Peter took her arm respectfully, when up stepped a brawny soldier—one of those stout fellows from Normandy—and catching Mademoiselle Capello by the other arm, said rudely:

“She must go, too!”

I thought old Peter would have dropped dead. As for the young girl, she fixed her eyes intrepidly upon the soldier, but she was trembling in every limb.

27

I could have felled the man with a single blow, but I saw that to make a brawl with a common soldier about Mademoiselle Capello would be fatal. Old Peter then managed to gasp out:

“This young lady is Mademoiselle Francezka Capello del Medina y Kirkpatrick, niece of the Countess Margarita Riano del Valdozo y Kirkpatrick, and she must be instantly released.”

“Well, then,” replied the soldier, laughing, “why doesn’t the Countess Margarita Riano del Valdozo y Kirkpatrick keep an eye on her niece, Mademoiselle Francezka Capello del Medina y Kirkpatrick, instead of letting her play with these little vagabonds of actors? But, my old cock, I think you are lying—so here goes!”

And he dragged Francezka off toward the carts, in which the rest of the children were being tumbled. Peter turned to me.

“For the love of God—” he began, and could say no more for terror and grief.

“I will follow her,” said I, “and no harm shall come to her unless my right hand loses its cunning. No doubt as soon as her identity is known she will be released. But, it must be kept quiet, you understand? Her absence must be concealed if possible.”

“O God! O God!”

The misery of old Peter was piteous. First, he would run toward the carts, swearing he would follow them on foot; then he would totter back, crying:

“I must tell Madame Riano!”

Meanwhile I had gone out, had engaged the first coach for hire and followed the odd procession as it started toward the Temple. In the first cart sat, besides 28 the soldier driving, the officer, Jacques Haret, and Lafarge, who was to lodge the information. Jacques Haret and Lafarge got to fighting in the cart, but that was speedily stopped. Then Jacques took to sharpening his wit on Lafarge and his bad acting, and the first thing I saw, the officer and the soldier were near tumbling out of the cart with laughter at their prisoner. I thought this boded ill for Lafarge, as the case would be heard before the Grand Prieur de Vendôme, and this Grand Prieur was not the great grandson of Henri Quatre for nothing—he, too, loved wit as well as wine and women. In the next cart were several children including the cobbler’s boy, who continued to yell vociferously and to beg that he should not be hanged. On the plank with the soldier driving sat Francezka Capello.

She wore no hat, and still had on her blond wig, and her fresh cheeks were raddled with paint—she had been unpainted in the first piece. But I could see her pallor under her rouge. She had on a large crimson mantle, which she wrapped around her, and sat perfectly still and silent. After all, she was the only creature in the party who had anything to fear, and yet she was the calmest of them all. The soldier driving, who was a good-natured fellow, began to cheer up the weeping children, and soon had them all smiling except the cobbler’s boy and Francezka.

“Come now,” he said. “This is nothing but a pleasant ride to a nice place, called the Temple, where there will be plenty of bread and cheese for you, and some nice clean straw for you to sleep on—and early to-morrow morning you will be sent home to your fathers and mothers, and you will each have a penny—or 29 perhaps a whole livre, so don’t be crying, but hold on now—”

Then he whipped up the horse so as to give the children a merry jolt, and the youngsters all began to laugh—still excepting the two co-stars of the troupe.

Mademoiselle Capello confessed to me, years afterward, that she fully expected to be executed, although she did not look for the ignominy of hanging, but rather decapitation—and she firmly resolved to die with the courage of the Capellos and the Kirkpatricks. To heighten this, she kept repeating to herself all the names, titles and dignities in her family, and thanked God that she was not as the other children were, or even the cobbler’s boy. And to render her exit more dignified, she wiped the paint from her lips and cheeks and managed to throw away her blond wig as the cart rolled under the dark and forbidding archway of the Temple, between the two peaked towers that had frowned there for five centuries.

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CHAPTER III

THE RESCUE

The prison of the Temple was a huge gloomy building, fronting on two streets. Monsieur, the Grand Prieur de Vendôme, was governor of the prison, and had a whole wing of it fitted up very luxuriously for himself—for the Temple was the very pleasantest quarter of Paris, and the wits, the songs, the plays of the Temple have been celebrated ever since I knew Paris. Mirepoix was the deputy governor—there is always in these places a governor who draws the money and a deputy who does the work. Mirepoix was a great fool—I knew him well.

When the carts rattled under the archway which led into the courtyard on which the great hall of the prison fronted, I had dismissed my coachman and was waiting to see what could be done to screen Mademoiselle Capello. A few minutes after I arrived, old Peter came, breathless and almost speechless. I told him to remain in the courtyard until I should deliver his young mistress into his hands.

The sight of the black archway, the great, silent courtyard dimly lighted with lanterns—for night had fallen by that time—frightened the children. They stopped laughing and some of them began to whimper; the cobbler’s boy had never stopped howling a moment.

31

I stood close and saw Mademoiselle Francezka descend, and I made her a low bow, pointing to old Peter who stood close to me and made her a sign. She understood, and flashed me a tremulous little smile as she led the procession into the vast dark hall of the prison which opens on the courtyard.

I went in too. It was but dimly lighted. Mirepoix was already there—a weak, irresolute man of fifty or thereabouts, completely off his head, listening first to Lafarge, then to Jacques Haret, and seemingly not knowing whether the giving of a theatrical performance without a license was a misdemeanor or high treason. He knew Jacques Haret, however, and his reputation or want of reputation, and was inclined to take Lafarge’s side of the case.

The children were in a row, all shivering and trembling, except Francezka Capello, who stood with the pale beauty and virginal majesty of a Joan of Arc at the stake.

Jacques Haret—commend me to the Jacques Harets of this world for knowing all their rights!—seeing what a muddlehead Mirepoix was, cried stoutly:

“I demand to see the governor of the prison, the Grand Prieur de Vendôme.”

Now, this was his right—but Mirepoix proceeded to argue the point with him. The Grand Prieur was having a supper party. The Grand Prieur must not be disturbed—and much else to the same purpose. But all he could get out of Jacques Haret was:

“I demand to see the Grand Prieur. My great grandfather and his ancestor, Henri Quatre, were boon companions. My ancestor fought at Ivry under his ancestor, 32 and my family now possesses a letter from Henri Quatre to Jacques Haret, asking the loan of fifty crowns and a pair of breeches!”

I could have wrung Jacques Haret’s neck for his persistence, but I could do nothing but stand and watch and fume, with the young girl’s tragic face before me, and old Peter breaking his heart in the courtyard.

A messenger was sent for the Grand Prieur, and Jacques Haret consumed the intervening time in a wordy war with Mirepoix and Lafarge, and he got the better of both of them.

I scarce thought the messenger had got the length of the prison, when the door opened, and the Grand Prieur appeared. He was a very old man, but still handsome and black-browed, very like his brother Marshal, the Duc de Vendôme—but not so dirty, nor did he sleep with dogs in his bed. On the contrary, he was given to luxury, made excellent verses, and was of polished manners.

When he entered the hall I saw that he looked anxious, and peered eagerly into the half darkness that surrounded the company gathered there. Mirepoix plunged into the story, and to justify himself for interrupting the Grand Prieur’s supper party, one would have thought the twenty or so children were twenty malefactors and giving a theatrical performance without a license was the unpardonable sin.

The Grand Prieur heard him through and then cried:

“Good God! I thought it was an attempt on the king’s life! And for these brats you took me away from the supper table!”

33

Jacques Haret now came to the front, gravely reminding the Grand Prieur of the connection between their ancestors and the loan of the breeches. The Grand Prieur tried to scowl, but instead, burst out laughing. Jacques Haret then proceeded to give his account of the affair, including his preliminary interview with Madame Riano—or Peggy Kirkpatrick, as he called her—and he acted Peggy to the life so that even the frightened children laughed without understanding it; all laughed, in fact, except Mademoiselle Capello, who scowled tragically at the game made of her aunt. And not being deficient in sense, Jacques Haret took pretty good care not to hint that his star actress was Madame Riano’s niece. The climax came, however, when he apostrophized Lafarge as being the self-constituted protector of Madame Riano’s property. This brought down the house, and Lafarge stuttered:

“I—I was not thinking of protecting Madame Riano—it was the majesty of the law that was being outraged—the king—”

“Ah! You were protecting the king, then,” cried the Grand Prieur. “Well, I dare say the court and the army and the people and the church, among them, can do that without your help, Lafarge—and Jacques Haret—suppose, since you have spoiled my supper, you recompense me with a performance by this army of young criminals?”

“With the greatest pleasure, Monsieur.”

“And by that time, their parents will all be howling in the courtyard, and we can give the criminals each a coin, and let them go.”

Some of the parents had indeed already arrived, and 34 word was sent to them that the children would be released as soon as they had given their play.

There were some benches and tables against the walls—for here it was that the guard dined and supped—and these were hauled forth, some scenery was improvised with stools and sheets, and torches were procured to light up the vast dark place. The Grand Prieur had gone back to fetch his guests.

“Come, Mademoiselle,” said Jacques Haret to Mademoiselle Capello, “you must act your best, and get us all out of this scrape.”

For the first time I saw a look on Mademoiselle Capello’s face, indicating shame and humiliation at her position. She had not so far spoken a word that I knew of. She glanced toward me as much as to ask if she should agree—and I nodded. My one idea was to prevent a catastrophe before getting her into old Peter’s hands, and I dared not make any disturbance on her account.

“But, Monsieur,” she said to Jacques Haret, “you must let Peter, my servant, come to me—he followed me on foot all the distance from the garden.”

“I will! I will!”

Jacques Haret ran out and fetched Peter, who was outside the door. Peter dashed in, ran up to Francezka and began to cry:

“Oh, my darling little mistress! Oh, what will madame say to you? What will she do to you?”

I gave him a look of warning, which checked his lamentations. He squeezed himself into a little place back of the improvised stage, and from there I watched his anxious face during what followed.

35

Jacques Haret mustered the children on the stage, gave them such directions as were necessary, and then the sound of voices and laughter was heard, the door opened, and in came the Grand Prieur and his company of guests. There were thirty or forty of them, all gentlemen of the first quality, wearing their swords, and many of them showed their wine. A crowd of servants bearing candles came after them. These, Jacques Haret ranged as torch-bearers in front of the improvised stage. The guests were provided with benches, and the performance began. It was Madame Mariamne and Monsieur Herod.

And then a new and terrible danger presented itself. It was quite possible that among these bewigged and bepowdered gentlemen, with their velvet coats and silk stockings, might be some frequenters of Madame Riano’s saloons—and then!

I watched their faces closely, and soon satisfied myself that none of them recognized Mademoiselle Capello, unless it were a young gentleman, Gaston Cheverny by name, who stood near the stage, close to old Peter. Fate delights in mountebank tricks. On the same day, I saw for the first time those two persons with whose lives my life was henceforth bound—Francezka Capello and Gaston Cheverny.

I noticed that this Cheverny was not more than twenty, and was not regularly handsome, although extremely well built and graceful. I took it that he was a youth of parts, or he would not be found, at his age, in the company of the Grand Prieur, who hated dullards. And as fate would have it, I loved Gaston Cheverny the first instant my eyes rested on him.

36

The performance began, and Mademoiselle Capello came upon the stage, and acted as if inspired. Circumstanced as she was, she was bound to act her best or her worst—and it was her best. She soon had her audience in convulsions of laughter; and when, with ready wit, she took off Lafarge, interjecting some of his foolish remarks into the farcical Mariamne, I thought the floor would have come through with the stamping of feet and pounding of jeweled-headed canes, while the laughter became a veritable tempest. And Francezka enjoyed it; that was plain in her kindling eye, and the color that flooded her late pale cheeks and lips.

Through it all, Gaston Cheverny smiled but little, and his face, which was the most expressive I ever saw, not excepting Monsieur Voltaire’s, showed pity for this young girl. I felt sure he recognized her.

When the part in the little play came of Mariamne’s farewell, Mademoiselle Capello changed it to the real Mariamne, as subtly as she had done in the afternoon in the garden. Her present audience, far more intelligent than any she had ever played to, instantly caught the beauty, the wit, the art, of what she was doing. A deathlike silence fell when Francezka, in her sweet, penetrating voice, was bidding the cobbler’s boy a last, despairing farewell. The Grand Prieur, leaning forward, put his hand to his ear—he was slightly deaf—and I felt my eyes grow hot with tears, when suddenly Mademoiselle Capello caught Gaston Cheverny’s eyes fixed on her. It was as if he had laid a compelling hand upon her. She stopped, hesitated, and walked a few steps toward him. Her rosy face grew pale; she opened her mouth, but was unable to speak a word. 37 Jacques Haret, standing close to her, gave her the cue once—twice—very audibly. Mademoiselle Capello, without heeding him, and moving like a sleep-walker, went still farther toward the edge of the stage where Gaston Cheverny stood—and then covering her face with her mantle she burst into a passion of tears and sobbing.

There was a movement of compassion for her; old Peter on the edge of the crowd was begging,

“For God’s sake, gentlemen, let me go to my child—she is my daughter—I am but a serving-man—” but no one moved to let him through.

The children on the stage were in confusion—Jacques Haret was in despair. Mademoiselle Capello, with her face still wrapped in her mantle, continued her convulsive sobbing. Gaston Cheverny made a lane with his strong arm through the crowd and called to Peter.

“This way, my man. Come and fetch your daughter.”

Peter got through at last, lifted the weeping Francezka down in his arms, and started for the door with her.

I left the hall quickly, in which there was much confusion—the Grand Prieur calling out that the children should have a livre each, except the cobbler’s boy and Francezka, who were to have a gold crown.

Outside in the courtyard under the dark, starlit sky, I found Peter with Mademoiselle Capello and Gaston Cheverny. The young girl had regained her composure, and stood silent, pale as death and like a criminal, before Gaston Cheverny. Like most very young men, he liked to reprove, and to assume authority over others but little younger than himself.

38

“Mademoiselle,” he was saying, “you have, perhaps, forgotten me and my brother, Monsieur Regnard Cheverny—you were too young to remember us. But we had the honor of knowing you in Brabant when you were little more than an infant—and our houses have always been friendly. For that, as well as other reasons, I must exact a promise of you. Never repeat this performance. You are but a child yet, and this indiscretion may well be forgotten. But Mademoiselle, you will soon be a woman—and a woman’s indiscretions are not forgotten.”

All of which would have been very well from a man of forty, but was slightly ridiculous in this peach-faced youth of twenty.

A gleam of spirit—of Madame Riano’s spirit—flashed into Mademoiselle Capello’s face at this assumption on Gaston Cheverny’s part.

“Monsieur Cheverny,” she said, “I remember you perfectly well—also, your brother, Monsieur Regnard Cheverny. I am older than you think, perhaps. I even remember that I hated one of you—I can not now recall which one—except that he or you annoyed me, when I was a child in Brabant, at my château of Capello”—oh, the grand air with which she brought out “my château of Capello!”—“and—and—if I act—it is none of your business.”

“It will be Madame Riano’s business, though,” darkly hinted Gaston Cheverny.

At this veiled threat to tell her aunt, Mademoiselle Capello showed she was but a child after all, for she broke down, crying:

“I will promise, Monsieur.”

39

There was but a single coach in sight, and while Gaston Cheverny was haranguing Mademoiselle Capello, I had engaged it to take her home. The coachman drove up, I opened the door and invited mademoiselle to enter. She recognized me at once, and curtsied deeply.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” she said with the greatest sweetness in the world. It was the first time she ever spoke to me—and can I ever forget it?

“Thank you, Monsieur; I do not know your name, but I know you followed me to this dreadful place to take care of me—and you have treated me with the utmost respect, Monsieur, and have not dared to reprove or threaten me, and I thank you for that, too!”

She gave a sidelong glance out of her eloquent eyes at Gaston Cheverny, that I would not have had her give me for the best horse in the king’s stables. The young man did not relish it, and straightway undertook to make me responsible for his chagrin. He scowled at me when I made my bow to Mademoiselle Capello, and attempted to divide the honor with me of putting her in the coach, which, after all, old Peter did. The door slammed, the coach rattled off, with Peter upon the box, and Mademoiselle Capello sitting in offended majesty within.

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CHAPTER IV

IN BEAUTY’S QUARREL

My young cock-a-hoop and I being left facing each other on the pavement of the court, he said to me, with a terrific scowl in his handsome bright young face:

“Who are you, sir?”

“Babache,” said I. “Captain of Uhlans in the body-guard of Count Saxe.”

“Well, Babache,” continues my young man, twirling his snuff-box as he had probably seen some older man do, “you were infernally in my way just now.”

“Was I?” answered I. “Why did you not tell me at the time? I would have gone and jumped into the Seine—” and as I spoke, I flipped the snuff-box out of his hand. I never saw a youngster in a greater rage. Like Mademoiselle Capello, a minute before, he hated to be treated like a child.

“Sir,” said he, “you shall eat your words.”

“Sir,” I replied, “I have supped already; and besides, I never had any appetite for that dish.”

With that he whipped out his sword, and I said, holding up my hand:

“My lad, I am willing to fight, if that is what you are after; but being much older and wiser than you, I will tell you that our quarrel must not in any way 41 relate to the young lady who has just been rescued from a very painful predicament. Suppose we quarrel about Count Saxe?”

“With all my heart,” responds Gaston Cheverny.

“He is, as you know, the greatest man that ever lived,” said I.

“Monsieur,” replied my young game chick, very politely, “I thought him a great man up to this very moment and felt honored by his notice—for I know him—but since I hear he is a friend and patron of yours, I swear I think he is the veriest poltroon, the ugliest man, the stupidest oaf I ever saw.”

“Thank you,” said I. “Kindly name the place and hour where a meeting between us may be arranged.”

“Why, here and now is the best time to arrange it. The garden of the Temple is retired enough. The moon is now rising—and with two good lanterns we can see to stick at each other—and we can each find an acquaintance within this very building.”

I was astonished at the youth’s temerity—but I saw it was not bloodthirstiness, but rather a youthful longing for a pickle-herring tragedy. It was my lady Francezka over again. Having scolded that young lady with the air of a patriarch, for her venturesomeness, Gaston Cheverny proceeded to hunt up adventures of his own. I saw that the notion of fighting by the light of flickering stable lanterns mightily tickled his fancy. So I said, looking at the great clock in the tower of the Temple:

“It is now ten o’clock. Shall we make it in an hour?”

“We can easily meet in half an hour.”

42

“Certainly,” I answered. “We must each find a friend and a lantern.”

“Done,” he cried—and turned off.

I was much more puzzled to find a friend and a lantern than I was at the prospect of crossing swords with young Cheverny. The only human being I could think of at hand was Jacques Haret—and I loathed the thought of having him in that capacity. Just then, Jacques Haret came out of the door and passed through the courtyard. The time was short, so I stopped him, briefly stated the matter, and he accepted my cause, laughing uproariously the meanwhile. I had told him, of course, that Gaston Cheverny and I had quarreled about the greatness of Count Saxe.

“I know Cheverny well,” he cried. “When I was a gentleman, I, too, had a place in Brabant. Old Peter, you must know, was a retainer of my family, and served with my father under Marshal Villars, and that is how, my estate being gone—bought by Regnard Cheverny, brother of Gaston—and Peter coming to Paris, he took service with Peggy Kirkpatrick. He had known the Capello family in Brabant.”

Jacques Haret commonly told the truth about these things—and so I knew it to be true. He told me he had finally disposed of the children for the night, and proposed to get out of the way as quickly as possible. There was but little money in the theater, he said,—the cobbler’s boy, his best actor, was so frightened at the adventures of the evening that he would never be worth anything as an actor again. Francezka would play no more; so he thought, on the whole, he had better cut the entire business, especially as it was possible the 43 matter might come to Peggy Kirkpatrick’s ears. Like myself, he regarded the meeting with Gaston Cheverny very lightly. I had my sword with me, and did not need to hire one as my adversary did, for he had on merely a dress sword, unfit for work. We could not lay hands on a surgeon, and I told Jacques Haret it mattered not—I would only be amusing myself with my young man, and he was only for saying that he crossed swords at a moment’s warning, about a young lady—and no one was likely to be hurt. We required a lantern, however, and Jacques Haret proposing a wine shop as a place likely to have a lantern for hire, we went in search of one—and speedily found it. And we were also able to secure what I knew would please my young cock mightily—one of those pieces of black cloth which old custom decrees shall be carried to throw over the corpse if either one of the combatants fall. It was no more likely to be used than a babe’s swaddling clothes, but it looked tragic, and I saw that young Cheverny was bent upon being as tragic as possible, under the circumstances.

At the appointed time we were at the rendezvous. The Temple gardens were remote and retired, and at this hour of the night were perfectly deserted, not even a watchman being about.

I found my young friend with another cavalier, some years older than himself—a regular petit-maître, Bellegarde by name, insipid beyond words, and very fretful because Gaston Cheverny had insisted on fighting at such a time.

Jacques Haret went through the affair with the most killing gravity. Monsieur Bellegarde asked if an accommodation was possible. Jacques Haret replied no, 44 except upon the admission that Count Saxe was the greatest man that ever lived. This Bellegarde earnestly besought Gaston Cheverny to agree to, alleging that he knew of several persons who were of that mind, and besides he was then due at a supper party. Cheverny, however, persisted stoutly that Alexander the Great was a more considerable man, and the supper party must wait until after the meeting in question. Then Jacques Haret said there was no time to lose. I never saw a youngster so pleased as Gaston Cheverny was at that. He had come to Paris for adventures and here was one to his exact taste. I think the fighting by the lantern-light filled his boyish soul with rapture.

For myself, I knew I was a good and experienced swordsman; and I meant to use all my skill to give him the right sort and size of cut—not a mere scratch, which would never have satisfied him—but one of those cuts, trifling in themselves, but which produce a good deal of blood, and which enable a fellow to carry his arm in a sling, and so win the sympathy of the ladies. Just as I had loved the youth on first seeing him, so I looked into his soul, and fancied his delight, his swagger, his airs of consequence, at appearing in company with his arm in a sling; and although I felt perfectly sure that he would die rather than reveal the name of the young lady, or rather the child about whom we had fallen out, I felt assured he could not keep to himself that he had fought in beauty’s quarrel. And the amusement Count Saxe would have out of it!

We stripped off our coats, our swords were put into our hands, and I went about to oblige my young friend. 45 I found him a fairly good swordsman for his age, but I could have disarmed him at any moment. However, that would have broken his heart. So I clashed away good-naturedly, making him think he was having a devil of a time, until, beginning to feel a little winded, I thought it time to give him the stroke he wanted.

I have a cut in tierce of which I have always had the mastery, and it was this cut I was giving Cheverny, when suddenly the lantern back of him went out. At the same moment his foot slipped; his guard gave way completely, and my sword’s point went exactly where I had never meant it to go—into his left side. He dropped like a stone.

I was the first to reach him, and turned him over on his back. Bellegarde, a silly popinjay, lost his head completely, and began to howl for one of those new-fangled screw tourniquets which had been invented by Jean Louis Petit, not so long before. But of course nobody had one, or could get one, or knew how to use it, had it dropped from heaven. Jacques Haret, as usual, kept his wits and disappeared in search of a doctor and a coach.

I bound my mantle around Gaston Cheverny’s body, told him to lie still, meanwhile examining him to see if he was about to die. I thought he was. His face was quite green, his extremities grew cold and he was deathly sick. But his eye retained its undimmed brightness; and while he was lying there on the ground, in this sad state, he burst out into a feeble laugh.

“Babache, you are so damned ugly,” he whispered.

Was it strange I loved the boy who was so much himself 46 in such circumstances, and would have given my right arm if that cursed lantern had not gone out? I said to him:

“If you open your mouth again, I swear to leave you lying here on the ground; and you will probably die of that hole I made in you.”

His own sensations by that time must have shown him the seriousness of his wound. He lay still and silent and greenish-gray and sick and gasping; and I—I could not look at him for very anguish.

It was but half a quarter of an hour before Jacques Haret returned with a physician and one of those sedan chairs which can be made into a litter. The physician, an intelligent looking man, examined the rude bandage I had made for the wounded man, and then silently motioned us to lay him on the litter, which we did. His lodgings were close by, so Bellegarde told us—and we bore our gruesome burden through the street.

Gaston Cheverny’s hurt was as much an accident as if it had been a lightning bolt, but no man ever suffered more than I at the thought that I had inflicted it. Arrived at his lodging—an excellent one in the quarter of the Temple—we carried him into his bedchamber, laid him on his bed, got his valet, and, except the valet, we were all ordered to leave by the physician. As I turned away from the bed, Gaston Cheverny managed to hold out his hand to me. I took it, and I am not ashamed to say that, for the second time that night, tears came into my eyes. Outside in the street I watched and waited. The night grew sharp, and the darkness grew dense, and the city’s throbbing pulse grew still. I 47 walked up and down the street, and only the watchman’s distant cry and my own quiet foot-fall, broke the midnight silence. The inevitable thought came to me, whether, after all, there be any such thing as chance in the world—or, whether all is chance. I had paused that afternoon before the grille of an old garden, softly called to stop by the scent of the lilacs—and because I had ever loved the scent of lilacs a man might die that night.

No one came out of the house where Gaston Cheverny battled with death. The lights burned steadily in the saloon which communicated with the bedchamber where we had carried the wounded man, and the room remained empty, so I knew Gaston Cheverny still lived. Some time after midnight the valet came out running. I ran after him to ask how his master fared.

“Very bad,” replied the poor fellow. “I go for another physician now.”

After an hour a coach rumbled up—it was then the first gray and ghastly moment of the dawn. Out of the coach got a court physician whom I knew by sight. He remained a long while within the house, and when he came out looked solemn. I asked him civilly how his patient did, and he gave me the same answer as the valet—“Very bad.” He added, however, that the youth was young and strong, untainted by dissipation, and if he lived twenty-four hours, would probably survive. I was never one to give way to despair, and so I dwelt on these hopeful words. I am not ashamed to say I stepped into the church of the Temple, and made a prayer or two as well as I knew how for the young 48 man. There are, as I heard Madame Riano say some years afterward, such things as praying rogues and swearing saints—but though I prayed, I was not a rogue.

It may be imagined that I went not far from Gaston Cheverny’s lodgings during that twenty-four hours. I went to the Luxembourg once or twice, where Count Saxe was lodged by the king’s order, and I, of course, next him, and asked if I was needed, but each time, Beauvais, the valet, who was a fair writer, told me nay; and leaving word where I was to be found, I returned to my vigil at Gaston Cheverny’s door.

On the second sunrise after I had run him through, I heard the welcome news from the physician that the wound was healing with the first intention, that there was no fever, and that he had never known so serious a case progress so well. I returned to the Luxembourg, left word I was not to be called except by Count Saxe, and throwing myself on my bed, slept ten hours without waking. I had dreams in those hours—dreams of Mademoiselle Capello. It was on Friday night that I had come so near giving Gaston Cheverny his death wound—and it was on Sunday evening that I rose, after my sleep and my dreams, shaved, bathed, dressed, and went in search of Count Saxe.

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CHAPTER V

THE ELDER BROTHER

I found my master in a room which had been a favorite one of that dead and gone and wicked Duchesse de Berry, who died of drink and debauchery at twenty-four years of age. Poor woman! I often used to fancy her gliding about that room, her pallid face rouged, her eyes on fire, and she, laughing and anxious, studying the faces of the men and women before her, and wishing she could see those behind her. She showed good taste by preferring that apartment, for it was spacious and airy, with three great windows looking upon the green Luxembourg gardens beneath, where the nightingales sang every night. The walls and ceiling of this room were frescoed with the story of the love of Ulysses and Calypso.

No one had occupied this particular room since the Duchesse de Berry, and it contained the same magnificent hangings, chairs, tables, sofas, consoles, girandoles, and what not, that unfortunate woman had used. Count Saxe’s belongings always seemed to be swearing at those of the dead and gone duchess. Count Saxe called the room his study; but rather, it should have been called his armory, for, instead of books, he had in it all manner of arms and everything pertaining to a soldier’s 50 life. He needed not books, being already instructed by his own mother-wit in all that was of any real value to know. This matter of reading is vastly overrated. There are persons who think it is the mill that makes the water run. It is men like Count Saxe who give occasion for books to be written.

This study, therefore, was a place of arms. On the walls hung all manner of musketoons, fusils, and the like, with drawings of mortars and field and siege artillery, with specimens of horses’ bits and saddles and stirrups, and everything relating to the equipment of a soldier. There were a plenty of maps besides. On the great table in the middle of the room was spread a huge map and many dozens of tin manikins, about as high as my thumb; for anybody who thinks that Count Saxe did not study the science of war, knows not the man.

He was at that moment sitting at the table, on which a dozen candles gleamed. He was dressed in black and silver, a dress that showed off his vivid beauty—for he was the most beautiful man who ever lived. Not Francezka Capello’s eyes were more brilliant, more soft than those of Maurice of Saxe. Was it to be expected that with his beauty, his figure, his voice, his charm, and above all, his genius, he should be an anchorite? The women would not let him alone—that is the whole truth. If I had been a woman I should have died of love for him.

“I thought you had gone back to Tatary, Babache,” he cried, throwing his leg over his chair, pushing away his map, and motioning me to a seat. “Tell me your adventures.”

51

I sat down and told him freely all that had happened from my strolling into Madame Riano’s garden until that moment.

“Peggy Kirkpatrick’s garden,” he said, absently tweaking my ear—a way he had. “That woman is the devil’s grandmother. When she is awake the devil sleeps, knowing all his business is well attended to by her. And Peggy Kirkpatrick’s niece—I know the chit, and knew her father before her. Scotch and Spanish—it is a fiery mixture. And I know that scoundrel, Jacques Haret. So the young man you came near finishing—Gaston Cheverny—laughed when he seemed a-dying. I wish we could have that young man—for Babache, my Tatar prince from the Marais, we ride for Courland within a fortnight.”

I said nothing, it being all one to me where Count Saxe rode so I rode with him. He continued, after a pause:

“It is true, as that devilish old woman Peggy Kirkpatrick says, I go on a marauding expedition, but never must we admit that.” He rose as he spoke, his black eyes flashing. “I go in response to a call from the greatest nobles in Courland, to lay my claims respectfully before the august Diet of Courland. But shoot me, if that Diet doesn’t elect me, it will live to be sorry for it—that I promise. And if Russia and Prussia want war, they can have it. War is the game of the gods. There is none better.” He rose and stood, the picture of a conqueror, smiling at the thought of the great adventures before him.

“It is a large enterprise,” I said. “Our necks will be in jeopardy every hour—but that is a small matter.”

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“A very small matter, my Babache. Do you see yonder stars?” He pointed out of the window where the earnest stars were palpitating in the dark blue heavens. “Look at them but for a moment, and you will see how small a matter it is. But look not at the stars too often or too long—nor look upon graves too much and too deeply—for the contemplation of stars and graves will rob any man of all his ambitions; their silence will drown the shouting of the captains and the rustling of the laurels, through all the ages; the love of glory will die in his breast, and he will curse his doglike fate. Our largest enterprises are so small—so small!”

I perceived he was in one of those reflective moods when a man stops at a certain point in his existence, and, standing upon the lonely peak of the present, surveys the great unfathomed gulfs of the past and future that lie on either side. I have those moments often—but Count Saxe rarely.

He stood thoughtful for a while, then turning to me, said with a bright smile:

“But some things do not diminish even in the light of the stars; one of them is, the pure devotion of a woman. Mademoiselle Adrienne Lecouvreur sent me word this day that if I was resolved on my enterprise for Courland, all she had—her plate and jewels—should be pledged for me. Does not that shine bright even in the light of the stars?”

I answered with something I had once heard old Père Bourdaloue thunder forth from the pulpit in Notre Dame, about good deeds outshining the sun; at which my master laughed, and accused me of wanting to join Monsieur de Rancé in his dumb cloister of 53 La Trappe. Then, as if shaking off the spell cast upon him by the stars, he began to talk of the most trifling things on earth—about Monsieur Voltaire, for example.

“My coach is ordered to take us to Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s,” he said. “I dare say that scoundrel of a Voltaire will be there—as you say you saw him with Mademoiselle Lecouvreur in the Hôtel Kirkpatrick garden. But I know he is under orders for England, and I will tickle him with a bunch of brambles by telling him that I shall mention to Cardinal Fleury that I saw him. Babache, I swear I am a little afraid of that thing of madrigals, as I call Voltaire. Those fellows who can write can always make out a case for themselves. I would as soon have Voltaire in London as in Paris—sooner at Constantinople than either.”

I went then to see if the coach was ready, and soon we were rolling along toward the Marais. My head was busy with our expedition to Courland, but it did not make me forget for one moment the soft splendor of Mademoiselle Capello’s eyes, nor Gaston Cheverny’s hurt. I privately resolved to take Gaston Cheverny with us to Courland if the wit of man could compass it.

Mademoiselle Lecouvreur lived then in one of those tall, old houses, not far from the garden in which we had played together as children. When we reached the place and were mounting the stairs, what should we see but Monsieur Voltaire’s long legs skipping up ahead of us! So he was still skulking in Paris! I knew the sort of persons I should meet with in that saloon—and they were there. First, Mademoiselle Lecouvreur herself, fresh from the theater; the Marshal, Duc de Noailles, who called my master “My Saxe,” and loved 54 him well; old Marshal Villars, the Duc de Richelieu, an actor or two, some fine ladies, a horde of small fry and Monsieur Voltaire.

As he was supposed to be safely locked up in the Bastille until he should leave for England, his presence was a good deal of a surprise, especially to the Duc de Richelieu; but Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s was neutral ground and nobody there would betray Monsieur Voltaire, as he well knew.

I entered the large saloon in the wake of Count Saxe, made my devoirs to Mademoiselle Lecouvreur, and then retired against the wall, as the unimportant do. I was surveying the crowd of the great, and wondering what Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s father, the hatter, and my father, the notary, would say, if they saw the fine company their children kept, when my eyes fell upon my young friend, Gaston Cheverny, who, I supposed, lay in his lodging with a hole in his left side! The sight so staggered me that I felt my head swim. But there he was, as smiling, as debonair as man could be, wearing a handsome embroidered satin coat, white silk stockings and red-heeled shoes, his hair powdered and in a bag. I thought him handsomer than before. And that there was no mistake about it, I heard him addressed as Monsieur Cheverny.