Wymond Carey

“ Can a Parisienne live without Paris? Well, I cannot. London, mon Dieu! Those suffocating English! They make love as they eat beef and drink beer. Their women are prudes, their men heavy as bull-dogs made of lead. London is a ville de province—no wit, no ideas, no life. Here,” she pointed with her fan, “it is far different. Where will you find the like of that for gaiety of heart, and sparkle of the soul? It is the city of breeding, of philosophers, of poets, of chivalry, and of lovers. Why, that grisette over there can be more spirituelle than an Englishman of genius. ”

“ Yet André was as unhappy as she, could she have but known it. Purely by accident on his return from Paris had he stumbled on Denise in the dark, and torturing thoughts made him feel bitter and then reckless. Denise, his Denise! Surely there was nothing to live for now. Love was a mockery and a sham. Women were all alike, faithless, vain, frivolous, worthless. He would do the Pompadour’s work without a twinge of conscience now, he would take what life had to offer of pleasure and revenge. ”

“ Not all the cavalry and infantry of France can mar or shake that glorious red line. And we can do no more. Let them go. Into the smoke and down the blood-stained slopes they glide and vanish. It is enough—enough!
The battle is over. We have won—yes, we have won, for the camp and the entrenchments are once more ours and Tournay will fall. Fontenoy is and will remain a victory for France, but 6000 English dead and wounded and 10,000 French piled on the crest and on these awful ridges bear witness to what a victory it has been. ”

“ André stood hypnotised, half by fear, half by the witchery of her womanhood.
“I have beauty, wealth, power,” she whispered caressingly. “Yes, I am as fair a woman as Mademoiselle Denise; I can make you a greater man than Madame de Pompadour can; I can reveal to you the secret that is worth the ransom of the King’s crown; and I love you. Say yes, André, for your own sake; you will never regret it.”
André looked into her blue eyes, so resplendent against the cream tint of her skin, and at her magnificent [242] black hair. Passion and ambition began to sap his will. ”

“ Ruin is coming on kings and nobles and the people. In ten, twenty, perhaps fifty years there will be a new France, for the greatness of my people and yours no power can crush. Voices are crying out in the streets of Paris to-day, but France will not listen. She is drunk, mad, diseased, corrupt. Yet I know it, it has been revealed to me, that there is a glorious future for our country, and see to it that the sons of what to-day is called Beau Séjour shall be in the hour of that rebirth on the side of the new France. ”

“ Benôit’s arm to mark her anger at the part André had played. But he only shrugged his shoulders in infinite amusement. A week ago, true enough, he had scorned to lend himself to such tactics, but to-night he was insensible to the reproach that his noble blood should have felt. For he, too, was under the spell of fate and of a witchery far more potent than the drug of any magician. It was not in mortal man to resist the sorcery of that fair huntress who played on human and royal passion as a musician on a stringed instrument. ”

“ And as he galloped he knew that in a couple of hours the police of Paris would be sweeping every slum, ransacking every cabaret and tavern, hunting down every suspect, and bribing for information every fille de joie from the Faubourg St. Antoine to the Faubourg St. Germain, from the Barrier of the Hôpital St. Louis to the Barriers of Les Gobelins, and the Palais Bourbon. And it was Denise that he must save. Love—not the sham idol of gallantry—but love can do things that neither the fear of death nor of hell can. ”

“ The spy proved to be George Onslow, as he had guessed, and André studied his able, sleuth-hound face, the dark eyes of slumbering passion, and the sensual lips, with the eery yet joyous shiver of one who feels that here is an opponent with whom reckoning must be made before life is over. The woman, however, was unknown to him. She was certainly not the crystal-gazer. Nothing more unlike the black hair and dark eyebrows, the creamy skin, of that mysterious enchantress could be imagined. ”

“ He glanced at Denise, and the glance went home. She had refused to let him ruin Madame de Pompadour and André with her; he had obeyed because he loved her; and he alone, poor boy, was to pay the penalty. In Denise’s soul, stricken by remorse, surged the wild desire that had been shaping for days. If only by some great act of renunciation, of self-sacrifice, she could repair the terrible harm that her love for André had done to her and their cause.
“We are ruined, beaten,” the Comtesse des Forges said in a hopeless tone. “That woman has won. Fate is against us.” ”

“ It could only be kept at Versailles by the same hateful, sordid scuffling, and he, the man, must daily train himself to keep his place by trading on the weakness of women, from the kitchen wenches to the mistress of the robes, by trafficking in the selfish plans of gamblers as ambitious and unscrupulous as himself. Versailles was there, the King was there; Louis was what he would always be, an impenetrable sensualist and the despot of France. More bitter still, the life of the Court as he and she knew it was what he must ask Denise now to share and to lead. ”

“ André too had risen. Ha! At last he understood. The visitor was no other than the fair huntress of the woods who had driven to see the King, in an azure phaeton, herself clad in rose-coloured satin.
“Ah!” exclaimed Madame d’Étiolles, stretching her arms. “Ah!” Then she turned on the sorceress furiously. “My woman has betrayed me,” she cried.
“Oh, no, Madame”—she curtsied as to a queen—“not your woman but the crystal and yourself.” ”

“ Below and across the roar of the guns, through the dirty smoke blended with the last wisps of the pearly mist, throbs in a glorious challenge the solemn tuck of English drums and the marching call of English trumpets. They are coming on now. Can we not see the flutter of English colours and the flash of light on epaulet and sword?
“A noble sight that!” muttered St. Benôit with a catch in his throat.
“They are fit for gentlemen to cross swords with,” said the generous André. “I hope they’ll last till we can meet them as they deserve.” ”

“ Behind a camp-fire in the entrenchments of Fontenoy André warmed himself, one of the many camp-fires which flared into the dusk on that plain which for two centuries has been the cock-pit of Europe; and as he stared out absently into the swiftly falling night an answering gleam scarcely a mile and a half away yonder to the south-east at Maubray told him that there lay the headquarters of the allied forces of the foe, English, Dutch, and Austrians, commanded by an English prince of the blood-royal, the Duke of Cumberland. ”

“ She stared at the money incredulously.
“There, girl,” he urged, for a woman’s distress, even though she were only a peasant, hurt him, “be happy and buy a fat and spotted cow.”
She kneeled to kiss his hand. “Monseigneur,” she sobbed, “is kind to a poor wench. Surely the good God has sent him to me,” and she poured her hot tears of gratitude on the ruffles of his sleeve.
“I am happy again,” she murmured. “Yes, I will buy a cow and be happy,” and she began to sing, flinging the coarse matted hair out of her eyes.
André watched her contentedly; it was pleasant to see her joy. ”

“ How she looked Nattier and La Tour, who painted her in the heyday of her womanhood and of her beauty, have left on immortal record. And anger could not prevent André’s heart, so susceptible to feminine loveliness, from a swift thrill of homage. That dainty head, the exquisite shape and pose of her neck, those wonderful eyes, now black, now blue, now grey, that bust called by a poet les parfaits plaisirs, the harmony of her heliotrope robe, lace-edged with cunning artlessness—every line, every detail, witnessed to a woman’s magic insight into the handiwork of God. ”

“ Needless to say, perhaps, that afternoon saw André at the tavern called “The Cock with the Spurs of Gold,” which, save for a brand-new sign-board, had all the appearance of a farmhouse hastily turned into an inn. Buried in the woods between Paris and Versailles it was exactly suited for a rendezvous to which all might repair without the world being any the wiser. André had carefully disguised himself, and as he rapped on the door his appearance suggested rather the comfortable bourgeois than the noble Capitaine-Lieutenant des Chevau-légers de la Garde. ”

“ He fears my influence, he is an adventurer, a parvenu. When he has destroyed me the hand of Mademoiselle Denise will wipe out his antecedents, will by a stroke of the King’s pen make him ruler of France and one of its greatest nobles. But,” she rose, “he shall not, he shall not.”
“No,” said André in a low voice, “by God he shall not!”
Madame smiled. “It is your task and mine,” she added, “to defeat, to crush, the Chevalier de St. Amant.”
“Yes,” said André simply.
“We are engaged on a perilous task. There is a plot, more than one, on foot to drive me from Versailles. ”

“ André was not the only person at Versailles who, tortured with perplexity and fear, must now choose between loyalty to a cause or loyalty to the dictates of the heart. Poor Denise, whose womanhood, nobility, and devotion to her neglected and insulted Queen made her so bitter a foe of Madame de Pompadour, whose sensitive self-respect and self-reverence, whose ideal of purity so strange in the world of Versailles, whose indignation at André’s desertion to the side of the ambitious mistress, had combined to make her despise and twice reject the hero of her girlhood ”

“ Hard by André here the men are taking their evening meal, chattering, laughing, singing, dancing. Such women as can live in camps are drinking too, [98] singing when they cannot thieve. There are wounded to be cared for, or robbed; throats there are beyond the lines to be cut, purses and gold lace to be won from the fallen. Make love while you can. To-morrow’s eve may never come. Have your season of pleasure, Messieurs; to-morrow the wench whom you kiss to-night will strip you in the dusk of the victory and leave you to the mercy of the dogs, the spring frosts, and of God—the God of battles. ”

“ Denise took her hand.
“If that were only all.” She paused for a moment, overcome. “In London André came into my life. Till that fatal day I have inspired many men with the passion they call love. I thought I alone of women knew not what love could be, but another dream came to haunt me. It could not be. You did not love François. André did not love me. Some day he will tell you the story; the truth he must never know.” ”

“ There is only one thing that a poor Vicomte and a soldier of France can desire—your heart, Denise; your love, Denise; the heart and the love of the most beautiful and loyal woman in France, the heart of the Marquise de Beau Séjour. And André de Nérac loves the Marquise as he loves France. ”

“ Denise started, but she said nothing, though her great grey eyes were eloquent with half a dozen questions.
“The letter has served its purpose,” André said. “Adieu, Marquise!”
“What does this—this trickery mean?” she demanded, hotly.
“You must forgive one who loves you,” was the calm reply, “for love laughs at tricks. The Comte des Forges is alive and well: he has a wound in his shoulder which is only a scratch, for the poor Comte is always believing that some one is betraying his honour and Madame the Comtesse has a fickle heart. ”

“ André gave her a look. Had she been a man she might have lived twenty-four hours, certainly no more.
“Has Monsieur le Vicomte any further observations to offer? No? Then—” she made the pretence of a curtsey. He, André de Nérac, a Croix of St. Louis and a Cordon Bleu, was dismissed.
An icy bow; he was striding to the door.
“Monsieur le Vicomte leaves the Cordon Bleu on the table,” she remarked, but André in his rage paid no heed.
“Mon Dieu!” a caressing laugh caused him to halt with a shiver. “Mon Dieu! so you have forgotten the little vivandière at Fontenoy? Ah, well, it is no matter.” ”

“ But neither I nor you can settle that, nor the King, for kings and men alone,” she laughed gently, “cannot make a man’s fate.”
“I thank you, Madame. His Majesty, I hope, will know that I am his servant always, but my decision is already taken, and from to-day I shall not live at Versailles nor Paris; De Nérac is to be my home, and perhaps some day Beau Séjour.”
Madame had dropped the roll of paper in an astonishment she failed to master. Her lips parted as she looked him in the face.
“Yes,” André repeated. “The Marquise de Beau Séjour and I have decided. Nothing can alter that decision.” ”