Angélique

“ The death or the banishment of Caroline were the only alternatives she could contemplate. “'The sweetest eyes that were ever seen'—Bigot's foolish words!” thought she; “and the influence of those eyes must be killed if Angélique des Meloises is ever to mount the lofty chariot of her ambition.”
“Other women,” she thought bitterly, “would abandon greatness for love, and in the arms of a faithful lover like Le Gardeur find a compensation for the slights of the Intendant!”
But Angélique was not like other women: she was born to conquer men—not to yield to them. ”

“ Angélique, radiant in the bloom of youth and beauty, her golden hair floating about her like a cloud of glory round a daughter of the sun, with her womanly perfections which made the world seem brighter for such a revelation of completeness in every external charm ”

“ Always that tossing to and fro, the queer, jumbled talk, the growing thinner—all of the dreadful signs of how he suffers. Angelique, if I could bear it for him. I am so young and strong and worth nothing to this world, while he’s so wise and good. ”

“ Thus soliloquized Angélique for a few moments, looking gloomy and beautiful as Medea, when the step of De Pean sounded up the broad stair.
With a sudden transformation, as if touched by a magic wand, Angélique sprang forward, all smiles and fascinations to greet his entrance.
The Chevalier de Pean had long made distant and timid pretensions to her favor, but he had been overborne by a dozen rivals. He was incapable of love in any honest sense; but he had immense vanity. He had been barely noticed among the crowd of Angélique's admirers. ”

“ Angélique shuddered, and pressed still closer to him, as if in fear.
“Mère Malheur would not tell me the meaning of that star, but bade me, if a saint, to watch and wait; if a sinner, to watch and pray. What means Algol, Le Gardeur?” she half faltered.
“Nothing for you, love. A fig for all the stars in the sky! Your bright eyes outshine them all in radiance, and overpower them in influence. All the music of the spheres is to me discord compared with the voice of Angélique des Meloises, whom alone I love!” ”

“ Amélie looked up inquiringly, but Angélique did not pursue the thought nor explain the meaning of her words.
“Le Gardeur,” continued Angélique, “is not worse, nay, with all his faults, is far better than most young gallants, who have the laudable ambition to make a figure in the world, such as women admire. One cannot hope to find men saints, and we women to be such sinners. Saints would be dull companions. I prefer mere men, Amélie!” ”

“ It is easy to recover affection that is not lost. Angélique knew her power, and was not indisposed to excess in the exercise of it. “Will you do something for me, Le Gardeur?” asked she, tapping his fingers coquettishly with her fan.
“Will I not? Is there anything in earth, heaven, or hell, Angélique, I would not do for you if I only could win what I covet more than life?”
“What is that?” Angélique knew full well what he coveted more than life; her own heart began to beat responsively to the passion she had kindled in his. She nestled up closer to his side. “What is that, Le Gardeur?” ”

“ I said not now but when you please, Angélique! You are worth a man's waiting his life for!”
“No, Le Gardeur!” she replied, “I am not worth your waiting for; it cannot be, as I once hoped it might be; but love you I do and ever shall!” and the false, fair woman kissed him fatuously. “I love you, Le Gardeur, but I will not marry you!”
“You do not surely mean it, Angélique!” exclaimed he; “you will not give me death instead of life? You cannot be so false to your own heart, so cruel to mine? See, Angélique! ”

“ Very unlikely, a man would say at first, second, or third sight of Angélique des Meloises. She was indeed a fair girl to look upon,—tall, and fashioned in nature's most voluptuous mould, perfect in the symmetry of every part, with an ease and beauty of movement not suggestive of spiritual graces, like Amélie's, but of terrestrial witcheries, like those great women of old who drew down the very gods from Olympus, and who in all ages have incited men to the noblest deeds, or tempted them to the greatest crimes. ”

“ That is what I call a triumph!”
“Yes, Angélique, I know. One of the dearest things I can remember is a loved voice singing.”
Only those who have known the hunger of the heart can realise the sweet comfort these innocent words brought to me. They pictured the Hugh I had carried all these years in my heart. How readily I could conceive the gentle consideration and the charm which won the gratitude of this simple girl as they had won my own!
As we settled down to our regular life, Angélique's one distress was that I would not go with her into the society she so dearly loved. ”

“ The spoiled and petted child of the brave, careless Renaud d'Avesne des Meloises, of an ancient family in the Nivernois, Angelique grew up a motherless girl, clever above most of her companions, conscious of superior charms, always admired and flattered, and, since she left the Convent, worshipped as the idol of the gay gallants of the city, and the despair and envy of her own sex. She was a born sovereign of men, and she felt it. ”

“ SCENE V.—ARGAN, ANGÉLIQUE, TOINETTE.
Arg. I say, Angélique, I have a piece of news for yon which, perhaps, you did not expect. You have been asked of me in marriage. Halloa! how is that? You are smiling. It is pleasant, is it not, that word marriage? there is nothing so funny to young girls. Ah! nature! nature! ”

“ La Force, compliant as wax to every caprice of Angélique, was secretly fuming at the trick played upon him by the Mischief of the Convent,—as he called Louise Roy,—for which he resolved to be revenged, even if he had to marry her. He and Angélique rode down the busy streets, receiving salutations on every hand. In the great square of the market-place Angélique pulled up in front of the Cathedral. ”

“ Angelique, a young maiden of seventeen summers, who must have suffered the torments of Tantalus during the night, and who only wishes for a pretext to shew that she has forgiven her sister, turns round, and covering her sister with kisses, confesses that she has not closed her eyes through the night.
"Then forgive likewise, darling Angelique, forgive him who loves me, and whom I adore," says Lucrezia.
Unfathomable power of the god who conquers all human beings! ”

“ And what is needed after all?” thought she, as she brushed her golden hair from her temples with a hand firm as it was beautiful. “It is but to pull down the heart of a man! I have done that many a time for my pleasure; I will now do it for my profit, and for supremacy over my jealous and envious sex!”
Angélique was not one to quail when she entered the battle in pursuit of any object of ambition or fancy. ”

“ The proud beauty had nothing in her heart better than La Corriveau, and the witch of St. Valier, if born in luxury and endowed with beauty and wealth, would have rivalled Angélique in seductiveness, and hardly fallen below her in ambition and power. ”

“ Angélique replied that she prayed her to implore the king's grace to allow a fresh abbess to be chosen every three years, and leave being granted, she and her sister Agnes, who was her coadjutor, instantly resigned. ”

“ When the call goes forth, not wife nor child nor any other can hold the wayfarer back, though he may loiter for an instant on the brink. The poor medicaments which Angelique brings avail not; these soothing hands and healing tones, they pass through clouds of the middle place between heaven and earth to Antoine. It is only when the second midnight comes that, with conscious, but pensive and far-off, eyes, he says to her: "Angelique, my wife." ”

“ The day Angélique had fixed for her flight had almost come when she fell very ill of a sort of nervous fever, chiefly the result of the trouble of mind she had been going through, though the unhealthy marshes round Port Royal may have had something to do with her illness. Monsieur and madame Arnauld at once sent a litter drawn by horses to fetch her to Paris, where the best doctors awaited her. Her mother hardly left her bedside, and for some time Angélique was at rest, feeling nothing except that she was at home, and that the old dismal life of the convent must be a dream. ”

“ She has a rival in her love for the Intendant, and she will lovingly, by my help, feed her with the manna of St. Nicholas! Angélique des Meloises has boldness, craft, and falseness for twenty women, and can keep secrets like a nun. She is rich and ambitious, and would poison half the world rather than miss the thing she sets her mind on. She is a girl after my own heart, and worth the risk I run with her. Her riches would be endless should she succeed in her designs ”

“ He had never risen from it since; nor, in her heart, did Angelique believe he ever would, though she so stoutly asserted to the contrary before Margot.
“We have changed places, Angelique, dear,” the child often said. “It used to be you who was always croaking and looking for trouble. Now you see only brightness.”
“Well, good sooth. ’Tis a long lane has no turnin’, and better late nor never. Sometimes ’tis well to say, ‘Stay, good trouble, lest worser comes,’ eh? But things’ll mend. ”

“ I—Angelique, you tell me—uncle did not hear, or reply, any way—where is my father buried?”
Angelique was prepared and had her answer ready.
“’Tis not for the servant to reveal what her master hides. No—all will come to you in good time. Tarry the master’s will. But, that silly Pierre! What think you? Is it fifty dollar would be the price of they tame blue herons? Hey?”
“No; nor fifty times fifty. Pierre knows that. Love is more than money.”
“Sometimes, to some folks. Well, what would you? That son will be havin’ even me, his old mother, in his show—why not? ”

“ Angélique was far too sensible for that. She took counsel with her father, and found work for the men, and even the children, in the gardens and lands belonging to the abbey. Their wages were small, but each day good food was prepared in the kitchens—Angélique had no belief in bad cooking—and was wheeled out by the sisters in little carts as far as the garden walls, where the workmen could eat it while it was hot. Then some of the children or women were employed as messengers to carry bowls with dinners to the old and ill. ”

“ All the other countries adopted the feminine, either in the simple form or the diminutive, or most commonly, the derivative, Angelica (angelical) , noted in romance as the faithless lady, for whose sake Orlando lost his heart, and his senses. She was a gratuitous invention of Boiardo and Ariosto; whose character for surpassing beauty made her name popular, and thus Angelica and Angelique have always been favourites.
Angel was most often a man’s name in England. We find it at Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1591, and sometimes likewise in Cornwall. ”

“ She felt the pressure of his hand, the changed and softened inflections of his voice, she knew the words of her fate were trembling on his lips, and yet they did not come! The shadow of that pale hand at Beaumanoir, weak and delicate as it was, seemed to lay itself upon his lips when about to speak to her, and snatch away the words which Angelique, trembling with anticipation, was ready to barter away body and soul to hear spoken. ”

“ Good heavens, her mouth moves imperceptibly; she returns my kiss; a long thrill runs up my spine; at contact of those ardent embers my senses fail. Oh! Sister Angèle, Sister Angèle! a man can not make himself over! And the train roars and rolls onward, without slackening speed; we are flying under full steam toward Mantes; my fears are vain; the track is clear. Reine half shuts her eyes; her head falls on my shoulder; her little waves of hair tangle with my beard and tickle my lips. I put my arm about her waist, which yields, and I rock her. Paris is not far ”

“ He who hath never seen the lightning hath no dread of it. I had not thought there was in the world so much artlessness, with all the power of perfect art. But we live to be wiser. Thou shalt continue in thy tale. Thou hast seen Mary, once Queen of France, now Queen of Scots—answer me fairly; without if, or though, or any sort of doubt, the questions I shall put. Which of us twain, this ruin-starred queen or I, is of higher stature?”
“She hath advantage in little of your Majesty,” bravely answered Angele. ”

“ Angelica decided at this point.
It was a sad face, as high-bred faces often are. You would not have been surprised to hear that his life had been blighted at the outset by some great sorrow or disappointment. But it was a strong face too, the face of a manly man, you would have said, and of one with self-denial, courage, endurance, and devotion enough for a hero and a martyr.
"Angelica," her grandfather broke in upon her reflections with kindly concern. "You look pale. Do you not feel well, my dear child?" ”

“ In a moment he whisked about the different rooms upstairs and down, to get together books, sketches, everything that could please us; and Angelica's drawings—she draws beautifully.
Angelica herself, Mrs. Clarke, is a timid, dark, soft-eyed woman, with a good figure. I am told it is rude to say a person is very clean, but I may praise Angelica for looking elegantly clean, brilliantly white, with a lace Mary Queen of Scots cap, like that which I am sure you remember on Lady Adelaide Forbes. ”

“ And as she went away she said: “Heaven keep your Honor safe! Heaven save your Honor!” Which, when Angelo heard, he said within his heart, “Amen, I would be saved from thee and from thy virtues.” And then, affrighted at his own evil thoughts, he said: “What is this? What is this? Do I love her, that I desire to hear her speak again and feast upon her eyes? What is it I dream on? The cunning enemy of mankind, to catch a saint, with saints does bait the hook. Never could an immodest woman once stir my temper, but this virtuous woman subdues me quite. ”