The Mesmerist's Victim

CHAPTER XI
THE DOWNFALL AND THE ELEVATION

THE great clock of Versailles Palace was striking eleven when King Louis XV., coming out of his private apartments, crossed the gallery nearest and called out for the Master of Ceremonies, Duke Vrilliere. He was pale and seemed agitated, though he tried to conceal his emotion. An icy silence spread among the courtiers, among whom were included Duke Richelieu and Chevalier Jean Dubarry, a burly coarse bully, but tolerated as brother of the favorite. They were calm, affecting indifference and ignorance of what was going on.

The duke approaching was given a sealed letter for Duke Choiseul which would find him in the palace. The courtiers hung their heads while muttering, like ears of wheat when the squall whistles over them. They surrounded Richelieu while Vrilliere went on his errand, but the old marshal pretended to know no more than they, while smiling to show he was not a dupe.

When the royal messenger returned he was besieged by the inquisitive.

“Well, it was an order of exile,” said he, “for I have read it. Thus it ran,” and he repeated what he had retained by the implacable memory of old courtiers:

COUSIN: My discontent with your services obliges me to exile your grace to Chanteloup, where you should be in twenty-four hours. I should send you farther but for consideration of the duchess’s state of health. Have a care that your conduct does not drive me to a severer measure.

The group murmured for some time.

“What did he say,” queried Richelieu.

“That he was sure I found pleasure in bearing such a message.”

“Rather rough,” remarked Dubarry.

“But a man cannot get such a chimney-brick on his head Without crying out something,” added the marshal-duke. “I wonder if he will obey?”

“Bless us, here he comes, with his official portfolio under his arm!” exclaimed the Master of Ceremonies aghast, while Jean Dubarry had the cold shivers.

Lord Choiseul indeed was crossing the courtyard, with a calm, assured look blasting with his clear glance his enemies and those who had declared against him after his disgrace. Such a step was not foreseen and his entrance into the royal privy chambers was not opposed.

“Hang it! will he coax the King over, again?” muttered Richelieu.

Choiseul presented himself to the King with the letter of exile in his hand.

“Sire, as it was understood that I was to hold no communication from your Majesty as valid without verbal confirmation, I come for that.”

“This time it holds good,” rejoined the King.

“Such an offensive letter holds good against a devoted servitor?”

“Against the servitor – you who received a letter in your house here, from Lady Grammont, by courier – ”

“Surely brother and sister may correspond?”

“Not with such letters – ” And the monarch held out a copy of the letter dictated by Balsamo’s Voice – this time made by the King’s own hand. “Deny not – you have the original locked up in the iron safe in your bedroom.”

Pale as a spectre the duke listened to the sovereign continuing pitilessly.

“This is not all. You have an answer for Lady Grammont in your pocketbook only waiting for its postscript to be added when you leave my presence. You see I am well informed.”

The duke bowed without saying a word and staggered out of the room as though he were struck by apoplexy. But for the open air coming on his face he would have dropped backwards; but he was a man of powerful will and recovering composure, he passed through the courtiers to enter his rooms where he burnt certain papers. A quarter of an hour following he left the palace in his coach.

The disgrace of Choiseul was a thunderbolt which set fire to France.

The Parliament which his tolerance had upheld, proclaimed that the State had lost its strongest prop. The nobility sustained him as one of their order. The clergy felt fostered by a man whose severe style made his post almost sacerdotal. The philosophical party, very numerous by this time and potent, because the most active, intelligent and learned formed it, shouted aloud when “their” Government escaped from the hands of the protector of Voltaire, the pensioner of the Encyclopedist writers and the preserver of the traditions of Lady Pompadour playing the Maccenas-in-petticoats for the newspaper writers and pamphleteers.

The masses also complained and with more reason than the others. Without deep insight they knew where the shoe pinched.

From the general point of view Choiseul was a bad minister and a bad citizen, but he was a paragon of patriotism and morality compared with the sycophants, mistresses and their parasites – particularly Lady Dubarry whom a lampoonist qualified as less to be respected than a charcoal-man’s wife. To see the reins pass into the hands of the pet of a favorite made the future blacker than before.

Hence nearly everybody flocked on the road to cheer the Minister as he went away in exile.

There was a block to the traffic at the Enfer Tollbar, on the Touraine Road. A hundred carriages escorted the duke after he had got through here.

Cheers and sighs followed him, but he was too sharp not to know that there was less regret over his going than fear about those who would replace him.

On the crowded highway a postchaise came tearing and would have run down the minister but for a violent swerving of the postboy.

A head was stuck out of the chaise window at the same time as the Duke of Choiseul looked out of his.

It was the Duke of Aiguillon, nephew of Richelieu, who would probably have a place in the cabinet which the marshal duke, as the new minister, would form. No doubt he had received the cue and was hurrying to take the berth. He saluted the fallen one very lowly. The latter drew back in the coach, for in this second the sight had withered all the laurels.

At the same time, as compensation up came a carriage with the royal colors, drawn by eight horses on the Sevres branch-road, and crossing with Choiseul’s equipage by chance or the block.

On the back seat was the Dauphiness with her mistress of the Household, Lady Noailles; on the front one was Andrea de Taverney.

Red with glory and delight, Choiseul leaned out and bowed lowly.

“Farewell, princess,” he said in a choking voice.

“Farewell, my lord, till soon we meet again!” was the reply. The Archduchess gave an imperial smile and showed majestic disdain for court etiquet, by replying.

“Choiseul forever!” shouted an enthusiastic voice close upon these words.

Andrea turned rapidly towards the speaker, for she knew the voice.

“Room, make room there,” roared the royal squires, forcing Gilbert, pale and hot with getting to the front to see into the line along the roadside ditch.

It was indeed our hero, who had in a fit of philosophical fervor, shouted for Choiseul.

CHAPTER XII
ANDREA IN FAVOR

AT three in the afternoon Mdlle. de Taverney came out of her rooms dressed to perform her duty as reader to the princess.

On reaching the Trianon Summerhouse she was told that her mistress was in the grounds with her architect and head-gardener. In the upper story could be heard the whizz of the turning-lathe with which the Dauphin was busy making a safety lock for a chest which he thought a great deal of.

To join the Dauphiness, Andrea crossed the garden where, although the season had come on the pale flowers were lifting their heads to catch the fleeting rays of a still paler sun. Dark came at six, and the gardeners were covering the plants from the frost with glass bells.

On the lawn at the end of a walk hedged with trimmed trees and Bengal roses, Andrea suddenly perceived one of these men who, on seeing her, rose from stooping over his spade and saluted her with more grace and politeness than a common man could do. Looking she recognized Gilbert, whom she had seen from a child on her father’s estate. She blushed in spite of herself, for the presence of this ex-retainer seemed a very curious kindness of destiny.

He repeated the salute and she had to return it as she passed on. But she was too courageous and straight-forward a creature to resist a movement of the spirit and leave a question unanswered of her disturbed soul.

She retraced her steps, and Gilbert, who had lost color and was eyeing her ominously, returned to life and made a spring to arrive before her.

“How do you happen to be here, Gilbert?” she began.

“A man must live, and honestly.”

“Well, you ought to be happy in such a position!”

“I am very happy indeed to be here.”

“Who helped you to the place?”

“Dr. Jussieu, a patron of mine. He is a friend of another patron, the great Rousseau.”

“Good luck, Gilbert,” said Andrea, preparing to go.

“I hope you are better – after your accident?” ventured the young man in so quivering a voice that one could see that it came from a vibrating heart.

“Yes, thanks,” she coldly answered. “It did not amount to anything.”

“Why, you came near dying – the danger was dreadful,” said Gilbert, at the hight of emotion.

Andrea perceived by this that it was high time that she cut short this chat in the open with a royal gardener.

“Will you not have a rose?” questioned he, shivering.

“Why, how can you offer what is not yours?” she demanded.

He looked at her surprised and overcome, but as she smiled with superciliousness, he broke off a branch of the finest rose-tree and began to pluck the flowers and cast them down with a noble coolness which impressed even this haughty Patrician girl.

She was too good and fair-dealing not to see that she had wantonly wounded the feelings of an inferior who had only been polite to her. Like all proud ones feeling guilty of a fault, she resumed her stroll without a word, although the excuse was on her lips.

“Gilbert did not speak either; he tossed aside the rose-twig and took up the spade again, bending to work but also to see Andrea go away. At the turning of the walk she could not help looking back – for she was a woman.

“Hurrah!” he said to himself; “she is not so strong as me and I shall master her yet. Overbearing with her beauty, title and fortune now rising, insolent to me because she divines that I love her, she only becomes the more desirable to the poor workingman who still trembles as he looks upon her. Confound this trembling, unworthy of a man! but she shall pay some day for the cowardice she makes me feel. I have done enough this day in making her give in,” he added. “I should have been the weaker as I love her, but I was ten times the stronger.”

He repeated these words with savage delight, struck his spade deep into the ground and started to cut across the lawn to intercept the young lady at another path when he caught sight of a gentleman in the alley up which Andrea was proceeding in hopes to meet her royal mistress.

This gentleman wore a velvet suit under a cloak trimmed deeply with sable; he carried his head high; his hat was under his arm, and his left hand was on his sword. He stuck out his leg, which was well made, and threw up his ankle which was high, like a man of the finest training. On seeing him, Gilbert uttered involuntarily a low exclamation and fled through the sumach bushes like a frightened blackbird.

The nobleman spied Andrea and without quickening his measured gait he manœuvred so as to meet her at the end of a cross-path.

Hearing the steps, she turned a little aside to let the promenader pass her and she glanced at him when he had done so.

He looked at her, and with all his eyes; he stopped to get a better view and turning round, said:

“May I ask why you are running so fast, young lady?”

At this, Andrea saw, thirty paces behind, two royal lifeguards officers, she spied the blue ribbon under the speaker’s mantle, and she faltered, pale and alarmed by this encounter and accosting:

“The King!”

“I have such poor sight that I am obliged to inquire your name?” returned the monarch, approaching as she courtseyed lowly.

“I am Mdlle. de Taverney,” she murmured, so confused and trembling that she hardly made herself understood.

“Oh, yes; are you making a voyage of discovery in the place?”

“I am going to join her Royal Highness, the Dauphiness, whom I am in attendance,” replied Andrea more and more agitated.

“I will see you to her,” said the King, “for I am going to my grand-daughter-in-law to pay her a call like a country neighbor. So, kindly accept my arm.”

Andrea felt her sight dimmed and her blood boiling up in her heart. Like a dream appeared this honor to the impoverished nobleman’s daughter, to be on the arm of the lord overall – a glory despaired of, an incredible favor which the whole court would covet. She made a profound courtesy so religiously shrinking that the King was obliged to return it with a bow. When Louis XV. remembered his sire, he did so in ceremonious matters: it is true that French royal attentions to the fair sex dated back to King Harry Fourth of gallant memory.

Though the King was not fond of walking, he took the longest way round to the Trianon: the two guards officers in attendance saw this as they were not any too warmly clad.

They arrived late as the Dauphiness had started, not to keep her lord and master waiting. They, too, were at the table, with Lady Noailles, nicknamed, “Lady Stickler,” so rigid about etiquet was she, and the Duke of Richelieu in attendance, when the servant’ voices echoed through the house:

“The King!”

At this magic word, Lady Noailles jumped up as if worked by a spring; Richelieu rose leisurely as usual; the Dauphin wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood up in his place, with his face turned to the door.

The Dauphiness moved towards the door to meet the visitor the sooner and do him the honors of the house.

Louis was still holding Andrea by the hand and only at the landing did he release her, saluting her with so long and courteous a bow that Richelieu had time to notice the grace of it, and wonder to what happy mortal it was addressed.

The Dauphiness had seen and recognized Andrea.

“Daughter,” said Louis taking the Austrian’s arm, “I come without ceremony to ask supper. I crossed the park and meeting Mdlle. de Taverney on the road I entreated her to keep me company.”

“The Taverney girl?” muttered Richelieu, almost stunned. “By my faith, this is very lucky, for she is daughter of an old friend of mine.”

“The consequence is that, instead of scolding the young lady for being late, I shall thank her for having brought your Majesty,” said the Dauphiness pleasantly.

Red as the cherries garnishing a dish on the table, Andrea bowed without replying.

“Deuce take me but she is very lovely,” thought Richelieu, “and that old rogue Taverney never sang her up highly enough.”

After receiving the bow of the Dauphin, Louis sat at table, where a place was always reserved for him. Endowed with a good appetite like his ancestors, he did honor to the spread which the steward had ready as if by magic. But while eating, the King, whose back was to the door, fidgetted as though he was looking for somebody or something.

The fact was Mdlle. de Taverney, having no fixed position in the household, had not entered the dining-room but after bowing to the Dauphin and his lady, went into the sitting-room where she was wont to read to her mistress.

The Dauphiness guessed whom her royal relative was looking for.

“Lieut. Coigny,” she said to a young officer behind the King: “Will you please request Mdlle. de Taverney to come here. With the leave of Lady Noailles we will derogate from the regulations to-night.”

In another instant, Andrea came in, trembling as she could not understand this accumulation of favors.

“Find a place there, by the Dauphiness,” said the Dauphin.

She went upon the raised platform for the Royalties, and had what seemed the audacity to sit within one step of Lady Noailles. She received such a withering glance from the latter that the poor girl recoiled at least four feet as though she had been shocked by an electrical discharge.

Louis the King smiled as he saw this.

“Why, here are things running along so smoothly,” thought old Richelieu, “that there will hardly be any need of my helping them.”

The King turned on the marshal who was prepared to meet his look.

“How do you do, duke?” he said; “are you still chiming in with Lady Noailles?”

“Sire, the duchess is good enough still to treat me like a whipping-post.”

“I suppose you have been on the road to Chanteloup?”

“I, Sire? I have all the cheering news I desire from your Majesty to my house.”

“What have I done for you?” asked the King, who had not expected this retort and did not like to be jested with when he had wanted to have his fun.

“Sire, your Majesty has given my nephew Aiguillon the command of the Royal Light-horse. To do that for a nobleman who has many foes, all your Majesty’s energy and statecraft were required – it is almost a movement of Royalty itself against all comers.”

This was at the end of the repast; the King just waited an instant before he rose. Conversation might have embarrassed him: but Richelieu did not want to release his prey. While the King was chatting with the others he worked round so dextrously as to have an opening to say:

“Sire, it is well-known that success emboldens a man.”

“Are you bold, then, duke?”

“I make so bold as to ask for another boon after the many I am thanking your Majesty for: it is for an old comrade of mine, a good old friend, and one of your Majesty’s best servitors. He has a son in the army. He is a young man of merit but wants the purse. An august princess has gratified him with the brevet rank of captain but he has no company to command.”

“Is the princess my daughter?” asked the King.

“Yes, Sire, and the young gentleman is the son and heir of Baron Taverney.”

“My father!” Andrea could not help exclaiming, “Philip? do you beg a company for my brother, Philip?”

Ashamed of her breach of etiquet in speaking without the Royals putting a question, she fell back a step, blushing and wringing her hands. The King turned to admire her blushes and emotion; then he gave the wily courtier a glance teaching him how agreeable the request was by reason of its timeliness.

“Really, the young chevalier is charming and I promised to make his fortune,” struck in the Dauphiness; “How unhappy we princes are! When we have the willingness to oblige, heaven bereaves us of memory or reason. Ought I not have thought that the young gentleman might lack lucre and that the rank was a snare without the soldiers to back it?”

“Why, lady, how could your Highness have known?”

“But I did know,” interrupted the Austrian, recalling the glimpse she had at the poverty-stricken abode of the Taverneys on her passing through Touraine; “and I ought to have thought of that when I gave the rank.”

The King looked at the speaker’s noble and open countenances: then his eyes fell on Richelieu’s, also illumined by a ray of their generosity reflected.

“Duke,” he whispered, “I shall be embroiled with La Dubarry. But,” he proceeded aloud, turning to Andrea, “do you tell me that this will afford you pleasure?”

“I entreat it,” she said, clasping her hands.

“It is granted then,” said Louis. “Duke, select a good company for the young hero. I will provide the expenses if it is not fully raised and all paid for.”

This good action rejoiced all the attendants. It earned the donor a heavenly smile from Andrea, and a grateful one from the same to Richelieu.

Some visitors dropped in, among them the Cardinal Prince Rohan who paid assiduous court to the Dauphiness. But the King had attention and sugary words solely for Richelieu that evening. He took the joyous old marshal with him when he left to go home. Andrea was relieved by the Dauphiness who said:

“You will want to send this good piece of news to your parent in town. You can retire.”

Preceded by a lackey carrying a lantern, the young lady crossed the grounds to her part of the palace. Before her, from bush to bush, bounded what seemed a shadow in the foliage; it was Gilbert whose sparkling eyes watched her every movement. When Andrea was left at the doorway, the footman returned. Thereupon Gilbert went up to his room in the stable lofts, where his window overlooked the girl’s at the corner.

He saw her call a strange waiting-woman who let the curtains fall like an impenetrable veil betwixt the beloved object and the young lover’s burning gaze.