Chapter 20

DESCAMPATIVOS

Winter passed. The company of Noailles returned from its quarters at Troyes to Versailles. Whatever he did, his passion for Cyrène coloured every thought and scene with an artist's imposition of its own interpretations. The world in which she dwelt was to him a vision, a poem, a garden.

A change had, it is true, come over his character; he became more desperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection. The incident of the reprieve of la Tour, which had meanwhile reached him, sank deeper into his heart than the whole round of his pleasures, and made him anxious for the moment when he might again meet her.

The society in which he found himself flying, like one of a tribe of bright-plumaged birds in a grove full of song, centred around the Queen. Marie Antoinette constantly sought refuge with her intimate circle from people and Court at the gardens and dairy of the Little Trianon, in the Park of Versailles, where it was understood that ceremony was banished and the romps and pleasures of country life were in order.

In the month of June Lecour received a command to a private picnic here. It was the highest "honour" he had as yet attained. As a Canadian he had paid his respects in the beginning to the Count de Vaudreuil. The latter was the leader in the pastimes of the Queen's circle, a handsome and accomplished man, and one of social boldness as well as polish. Though in his successes at Court he affected to forget that he was of Canadian extraction, he yet evinced an interest in Lecour on that account and showed courtesy to him. When the Count therefore one day heard the Queen refer with favour to the graceful Guardsman, he added him to the next list of invitations.

The guests, about forty, all approved by Marie Antoinette, included members of both the rival sets at Court. The young Duchess of Polignac, a simple, pleasant woman whom the liking of the Queen had alone raised to importance, was there with several of her connections and friends. The Noailles family, with its haughty alliances, its long-standing greatness, and its contempt for those new people the Polignacs, was to be chiefly represented by the amiable young Duchess of Mouchy, who came late.

No picnic could have been more free and easy. The Queen herself looked a Venus-like dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it was announced that the game of the afternoon should be that called "Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the Little Trianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined to cast a Druid shade upon the lawn. Here Vaudreuil was elected high priest.

Assuming a white robe and mock-heroic solemnity, and standing out in the centre of the grass, he sang forth in a strikingly rich voice--

"Let us raise an altar to Venus the goddess of these groves."

Four attendants, moving quickly forward in response, carrying squares of turf, piled them into an altar as rapidly as possible. The party arranged themselves in a quadrangle around it.

The altar being completed, Pontiff Vaudreuil proceeded with the mystery thus--

"Listen, dryads and demi-gods, to the oracles of the divinity. The decree of Aphrodite hath it that for the space of one hour there shall be fair amity between----" Here he named the company off in pairs, carefully pre-meditated. As pair after pair were called, they stepped forward on the lawn amid a chorus of laughter, and swelled a procession facing the priest and altar.

Lecour wondered as he saw the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his astonishment, he heard the words--

"Madame la Baronne de la Roche-Vernay, and Monsieur de Répentigny."

He looked hastily around.

It was then that two ladies were seen hurrying into the arena from the direction of the Trianon. One was the Duchess de Mouchy; the other, of the same age and dressed in a simple cloud of white tulle, came behind her, and Germain, as if in an apparition, saw his Cyrène. Her obeisances to the Queen and company over, she turned and courtesied very deeply to her lover, who trembled with delight under her smile.

He was quickly recalled by the voice of de Vaudreuil, this time crying--

"Her Majesty of France, and her Majesty's servant and subject the High Priest of the goddess."

It was the invariable custom of the ambitious and confident courtier to appropriate the Queen to himself.

Pausing at the close, he raised his arm ritually towards the trees and rested thus a moment speechless.

"Descampativos!" he suddenly exclaimed in a stentorian tone, throwing off his robe.

At the word, the pairs broke ranks, the ladies screamed with merriment, and all the pairs scampered into the woods in different directions to follow what paths might suit them, bound only by the rule of the game to return in an hour.

Germain and Cyrène strayed from the others into the groves, until the voices grew fainter and fainter and at last died away. They walked on without finding any necessity of speaking, for their glances and the ever sweet pang of love in their breasts sufficed. At last they found a little space with a fountain where the water spurted up in three jets out of the points of a Triton's spear, and there being a seat there, they took it, sat down, and looked in each other's eyes.

"My love," he whispered, kissing her cheek.

"Germain," breathed she slowly, her fair breast heaving, and suddenly threw her arms around his neck and burst into tears. Sweet, sweet, sweet, were the moments of their supreme bliss.