Part 11

Canolles entered and locked the door behind him. The viscount had fled precipitately.

The baron found himself in almost total darkness, for the last embers of the fire, which was dying out, gave out but a feeble flickering light. The atmosphere was warm and heavy with the perfumes which denote the most assiduous attention to the toilet.

"Ah! thanks, viscount," said Canolles; "in truth, one is much more comfortable here than in the corridor."

"You are anxious to go to sleep, baron?"

"Yes, most assuredly. Tell me which is my bed, or let me light the candle."

"No, no, it's useless!" said the viscount, hastily. "Your bed is here at the left."

As the viscount's left was the baron's right, the baron turned to the left, fell in with a window, near the window a small table, and upon the table the bell which the agitated viscount had sought in vain. To make assurance doubly sure, he put the bell in his pocket.

"What did you say?" he cried. "Are we playing at blind-man's buff? You ought at least to cry _casse-cou._ What the devil are you fumbling for there in the dark?"

"I am looking for the bell, to call Pompée."

"But what the devil do you want of Pompée?"

"I want--I want him to make up a bed beside mine."

"For whom?"

"For himself."

"For himself! What are you talking about, viscount? Servants in our room! Go to! you act like a frightened girl. Fie, fie! we are old enough to defend ourselves. No; just give me your hand and guide me to my bed, which I cannot find--or else let us light the candle."

"No, no, no!" cried the viscount.

"If you won't give me your hand, you ought at least to pass me the end of a thread; for I am in a veritable labyrinth."

He walked, with arms outstretched, in the direction from which the voice came; but he saw something like a shadow flit by him, accompanied by a wave of sweetest perfume; he closed his arms, but, like Virgil's Orpheus, embraced nothing but air.

"There! there!" said the viscount at the other end of the room; "you are close beside your bed, baron."

"Which of the two is mine?"

"It matters little! I shall not go to bed."

"What's that! you won't go to bed?" exclaimed Canolles, turning about at this imprudent speech; "what will you do, pray?"

"I shall pass the night on a chair."

"Nonsense!" said Canolles. "I certainly shall not allow any such child's play; come, viscount, come!"

As the fire on the hearth blazed up for an instant before dying altogether, Canolles caught sight of the viscount crouching in a corner between the window and the commode, wrapped in his cloak.

The blaze was no more than a flash; but it was sufficient to guide the baron and to make the viscount understand that he was lost. Canolles walked straight toward him with arms outstretched, and although the room was dark once more, the poor fellow realized that he could not again elude his pursuer.

"Baron! baron!" he faltered; "come no nearer, I implore you; not a step nearer, if you are a gentleman!"

Canolles stopped; the viscount was so near him that he could hear his heart beat, and could feel his warm breath coming in gasps; at the same time a delicious, intoxicating perfume, a blending of all the perfumes which emanate from youth and beauty, a perfume ten thousand times sweeter than that of the sweetest flowers, seemed to envelop him and make it impossible for him to obey the viscount, even had he desired to do so.

However, he stood for an instant where he was, his hands stretched out toward those other hands, which were ready to repulse him, and with the feeling that he had but to take one step more to touch that charming body, whose suppleness and grace he had so much admired during the last two days.

"Mercy! mercy!" murmured the viscount; "mercy!"

His voice died away upon his lips and Canolles felt his body glide by the curtains of the window and fall at his feet.

His breast dilated; there was a something in the imploring voice that told him that his adversary was half vanquished.

He stepped forward, put out his hands and met the young man's clasped in supplication; he had not the strength to cry out, but heaved a pitiful sigh.

Suddenly the galloping of a horse was heard beneath the window; there was a hurried knocking at the door, followed by a great outcry.

"M. le Baron de Canolles!" a voice shouted.

"Ah! God, I thank thee! I am saved!" murmured the viscount.

"The devil take the beast!" exclaimed Canolles; "couldn't he have waited until to-morrow morning?"

"M. le Baron de Canolles!" cried the voice. "M. le Baron de Canolles! I must speak with him on the instant."

"Well, what's the matter?" said the baron, stepping toward the window.

"Monsieur! Monsieur!" called Castorin at the door; "they are asking for you,--you are wanted."

"But who is it, varlet?"

"A courier."

"From whom?"

"M. le Duc d'Épernon."

"What does he want with me?"

"The king's service."

At that magic phrase, which it was impossible not to heed, Canolles, still grumbling, opened the door and went downstairs.

Pompée's snoring could be distinctly heard.

The courier had entered the inn, and was waiting below: Canolles joined him, and turned pale as he read Nanon's letter; for, as the reader will have guessed, the courier was Cauvignac himself, who, having started nearly ten hours after Canolles, was unable to overtake him before the second night, ride as hard as he might.

Cauvignac's answers to his questions left Canolles in no doubt as to the necessity of losing no time. He read the letter a second time, and the phrase, _Your loving sister, Nanon_, told him what had happened; that is to say, that Mademoiselle had cleared her skirts by passing him off as her brother.

Canolles had frequently heard Nanon herself speak in most unflattering terms of this brother whose place he had taken. This fact added not a little to the ill grace with which he prepared to obey the duke's behest.

"'T is well," said he to Cauvignac, without opening a credit for him at the inn, or emptying his purse into his hands, which he would have been certain to do under other circumstances; "'t is well; tell your master that you overtook me, and that I obeyed him instantly."

"Shall I say nothing to Mademoiselle de Lartigues?"

"Yes; tell her that her brother appreciates the feeling which dictates her action, and is deeply indebted to her.--Castorin, saddle the horses."

Without another word to the messenger, who was thunderstruck by this ungracious reception, Canolles went up once more to the viscount's room, and found him pale and trembling, and completely dressed.

"You may set your mind at rest, viscount," said Canolles; "you are rid of me for the rest of your journey. I am about to take my leave in the king's service."

"When?" the viscount asked with a vestige of apprehension.

"Instantly; I am going to Mantes, where the court now is."

"Adieu, monsieur."

The young man could hardly utter the words, and sank upon a chair, not daring to meet his companion's eye.

Canolles stepped up to him.

"I shall never see you again in all probability," he said, with deep emotion.

"Who knows?" said the viscount, trying to smile.

"Promise one thing to a man who will never forget you," said Canolles, laying his hand upon his heart; and his tone and his gesture alike indicated absolute sincerity.

"What is it?"

"That you will sometimes think of him."

"I promise."

"Without anger?"

"Yes."

"Will you give me any token in support of your promise?"

The viscount put out his hand.

Canolles took the trembling hand in his own, with no purpose to do aught but press it, but in obedience to an impulse stronger than his will, he put it to his lips and imprinted an ardent kiss upon it, then rushed from the room, murmuring:--

"Ah! Nanon! Nanon! can you ever make up to me what you have caused me to lose?"

XII.

If we now turn aside for a moment and cast a glance at the princesses of the house of Condé in their exile at Chantilly, of which Richon drew such a distressing picture to the viscount, this is what we shall see.

Beneath the spreading chestnuts, powdered with snowy blossoms, on the smooth, velvety lawns sloping down to the peaceful blue ponds, a swarm of laughing, chatting, singing promenaders wandered to and fro. Here and there amid the tall grass could be seen the figure of a solitary reader, lost in waves of verdure, where naught could be distinctly seen save the white page of the book in her hand, which belonged perhaps to M. de la Calprenède's _Cléopâtre_, to M. d'Urfé's _Astrée_, or to Mademoiselle de Scudéry's _Grand Cyrus._ Beneath the arbors of honeysuckle and clematis could be heard the sweet strains of lutes, and invisible voices singing. At intervals a horseman, bearing a despatch, passed like a flash along the main avenue leading to the château.

Meanwhile, upon the terrace, three women, dressed in satin, and followed at a distance by mute and respectful equerries, were walking gravely to and fro with ceremonious, majestic gestures: in the middle, a lady of noble and stately figure, despite her fifty-seven years, was holding forth magisterially upon affairs of state; at her right, a young lady clad in garments of sombre hue, and holding herself stiffly erect, listened with contracted brows to her neighbor's learned views; at her left another older lady, the stiffest and primmest of the three, because she was of less illustrious rank, was talking, listening, and meditating all at once.

The lady in the middle was the dowager princess, mother of the victor of Rocroy, Norlingen and Lens, who was just beginning, since he had become an object of persecution, and the persecution had landed him at Vincennes, to be called the Great Condé, a name which posterity has continued to bestow upon him. This lady, upon whose features could still be detected traces of that beauty which made her the object of the last and maddest of all the passions of Henri IV., had been wounded in her mother love, and in her pride as princess of the blood, by a _facchino Italiano_, who was called Mazarini when he was Cardinal Bentivoglio's servant, but who was now called His Eminence Cardinal Mazarin, since he had become Anne of Austria's lover, and First Minister of the Kingdom of France.

He it was who dared to imprison Condé, and to send the noble prisoner's wife and mother into exile at Chantilly.

The lady at her right was Claire-Clémence de Maillé, Princesse de Condé, who, in accordance with an aristocratic custom of the time, was called Madame la Princesse simply, to signify that the wife of the head of the Condé family was the first princess of the blood, _the_ princess _par excellence_: she was always proud, but her pride had gained in intensity since her persecution, and she had become haughty and supercilious.

It was the fact that her husband's imprisonment raised her to the rank of a heroine, after being compelled to play only a secondary part so long as he was free; her state was more deplorable than widowhood, and her son, the Duc d'Enghien, just completing his seventh year, was more interesting than an orphan. The eyes of the nation were upon her, and without fear of being laughed at, she dressed in mourning. Since the forced exile of these two weeping women by direction of Anne of Austria their piercing shrieks had changed to muttered threats: from being the victims of oppression they had become rebels. Madame la Princesse, Themistocles in a mobcap, had her Miltiades in petticoats, and the laurels of Madame de Longueville, for an instant Queen of Paris, disturbed her slumbers.

The duenna at the left was the Marquise de Tourville, who did not venture to write novels, but exercised her pen upon political subjects: she did not make war in person like the valorous Pompée, nor did she, like him, receive a bullet at the battle of Corbie; but her husband, who was a highly esteemed officer, was wounded at La Rochelle and killed at Fribourg,--the result being that she inherited his fortune, and fancied that she inherited at the same time his genius for war. Since she joined the Princesses de Condé at Chantilly she had sketched three plans of campaign, all of which had successively aroused the enthusiasm of the ladies of the suite, and had been, not abandoned, but postponed until the moment when the sword should be drawn and the scabbard thrown away. She did not dare put on her husband's uniform, although she sometimes longed to do so; but she had his sword hanging in her room over the head of her bed, and now and then, when she was alone, she would draw it from its sheath with an exceedingly martial air.

Chantilly, notwithstanding its holiday aspect, was in reality nothing but a vast barrack, and a diligent search would have discovered powder in the cellars, and bayonets in the hedgerows.

The three ladies, in their lugubrious promenade, bent their steps toward the main door of the château, and seemed to be expecting the arrival of some messenger with important news. Several times the princess dowager had said, shaking her head and sighing:--

"We shall fail, my daughter! we shall be humiliated."

"We must expect to pay something as the price of the great glory we are to win," said Madame de Tourville, without relaxing the stiffness of her demeanor in any respect; "there is no victory without a combat!"

"If we fail, if we are vanquished," said the young princess, "we will avenge ourselves!"

"Madame," said the princess dowager, "if we fail, it will be that God has vanquished Monsieur le Prince. Pray, would you dream of seeking to be revenged on God?"

The younger princess bowed her head before her mother-in-law's superb humility; indeed, these three personages, saluting one another thus and offering incense at one another's shrine, were not unlike a bishop and two deacons, who make God the pretext of their mutual homage.

"Neither Monsieur de Turenne, Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, nor Monsieur de Bouillon," murmured the dowager; "they all fail us at once!"

"And no money!" added Madame de Tourville.

"On whom can we rely," said Madame la Princesse, "if Claire herself has forgotten us?"

"Who tells you, my daughter, that Madame de Cambes has forgotten us?"

"She does not return."

"Perhaps she has been prevented; the roads are watched by Monsieur de Saint-Aignan's army, you know."

"At all events she could write."

"How can you wish that she should put upon paper a reply of such moment,--the adhesion of a city like Bordeaux to the party of the princes? No, that is not the aspect of the affair which disturbs me most by any means."

"Moreover," suggested Madame de Tourville, "one of the three plans which I had the honor to lay before your Highness proposed an uprising in Guyenne as a certain means of accomplishing an object."

"Yes, yes, and we will recur to it, if necessary," replied Madame la Princesse: "but I agree with Madame my mother, and I begin to think that Claire must have fallen under suspicion; otherwise she would be here before this. Perhaps her farmers have failed to keep their word; a peasant will always seize an opportunity to avoid paying his debts. And who can say what the Guyenne people may or may not have done despite their promises? Gascons!"

"Braggarts!" said Madame de Tourville; "brave individually, it may be, but bad soldiers _en masse._ They do very well to shout, 'Vive Monsieur le Prince!' when they're afraid of the Spaniard; that's all."

"They have a thorough detestation for Monsieur d'Épernon, however," said the princess dowager; "they hanged him in effigy at Agen, and promised to hang him in person at Bordeaux, if he ever returned there."

"He will return there, and hang the braggarts themselves," said Madame la Princesse, indignantly.

"And all this," rejoined Madame de Tourville, "is the fault of Monsieur Lenet--Monsieur Pierre Lenet," she repeated affectedly, "the stubborn adviser whom you persist in keeping by you, and who is good for nothing but to thwart all our plans. If he had not frowned upon my second plan, the purport of which was, you remember, to take by surprise the château de Vayres, Île Saint-Georges, and the fort of Blaye, we should be besieging Bordeaux ere now, and Bordeaux would be obliged to capitulate."

"I prefer, with deference to their Highnesses' opinion, that Bordeaux should open its gates of its own free will," said a voice behind Madame de Tourville, in a tone of respect, not unmixed with a tinge of irony. "A city that capitulates yields to force and incurs no obligation; whereas a city which opens its gates freely, thereby compromises itself, and must needs follow to the end the fortunes of those to whom it has offered itself."

The three ladies turned and saw Pierre Lenet, who, as they were taking one of their turns toward the main door of the château upon which their eyes were constantly fixed, had emerged from a smaller door on a level with the terrace, and approached them from behind.

What Madame de Tourville said was true in part. Pierre Lenet, one of Monsieur le Prince's advisers, a cold, grave, but very shrewd man, was commissioned by the prisoner to keep an eye on his friends and foes alike, and it must be said that he had much more difficulty in preventing the prince's friends from compromising his cause than in foiling the evil designs of his foes. But, being endowed with the cleverness and craft of a lawyer, and accustomed to the sharp practice and jugglery of the tribunals, he usually triumphed, either by some timely counterplot or by passive opposition. It was at Chantilly itself that the battles had to be fought which taxed his powers to the utmost. The self-esteem of Madame de Tourville, the impatience of Madame la Princesse, and the aristocratic inflexibility of the dowager were quite as hard to deal with as the astuteness of Mazarin, the pride of Anne of Austria, and the indecision of the parliament.

Lenet, to whom the princes addressed their correspondence, had established a rule that he would give the princesses no news except at what he himself deemed an opportune time; for, as feminine diplomacy is not always shrouded in mystery, which is the cardinal principle of the masculine variety, many of Lenet's plans had been in this way betrayed by his friends to his enemies.

The two princesses, who, notwithstanding the opposition they encountered at his hands, none the less appreciated Pierre Lenet's devotion, and especially his usefulness, welcomed him with a friendly gesture; there was even the shadow of a smile upon the dowager's lips.

"Well, my dear Lenet," she said, "you heard Madame de Tourville complaining, or rather commiserating us. Everything is going from bad to worse. Ah! my dear Lenet, our affairs! our affairs!"

"Madame," said Lenet, "I am very far from taking so gloomy a view of our affairs as your Highness. I hope much from time, and from a change in the tide of fortune. You know the proverb: 'Everything succeeds with him who knows how to wait.'"

"Time, and a change in the tide of fortune!" exclaimed Madame la Princesse; "that's philosophy, and not politics, Monsieur Lenet!"

Lenet smiled.

"Philosophy is useful in all things, madame, especially in politics; it teaches us not to be over-elated with success, and to be patient in adversity."

"I care not!" said Madame de Tourville. "I would give more to see a courier than for all your maxims; don't you say the same, Madame la Princesse?"

"Yes, I confess it," replied Madame de Condé.

"Your Highness will be satisfied in that case, for you will receive three to-day," rejoined Lenet, as coolly as before.

"What, three?"

"Yes, madame. The first has been seen on the Bordeaux road, the second is coming from Stenay, and the third from La Rochefoucauld."

The two princesses uttered an exclamation of joyful surprise. Madame de Tourville bit her lips.

"It seems to me, my dear Monsieur Pierre," she said in a wheedling tone, to conceal her vexation, and wrap in a coating of sugar the bitter remark she was about to make, "it seems to me that a skilful necromancer like yourself ought not to stop short after such a fine start, and that, having announced the arrival of the couriers, you should tell us the contents of their despatches."

"My knowledge, madame, doesn't extend as far as you think," said he, modestly, "it confines itself to being a faithful servitor. I announce, but I do not guess."

At the same moment, as if Lenet were in reality served by a familiar spirit, they spied two horsemen, who came riding through the great gate of the château, and galloped up the avenue. Immediately a swarm of idlers, deserting the lawns and flower-gardens, swooped down to the avenue railings to have their share of the news.

The horsemen dismounted, and one of them, tossing to the other, who seemed to be his servant, the bridle-rein of his foam-covered steed, ran rather than walked toward the princesses who came forward to meet him, and stepped upon the balcony at one end as he stepped upon it at the other.

"Claire!" cried Madame la Princesse.

"Yes, your Highness. Accept my most humble respects, madame."

Kneeling upon one knee, the young man tried to take the princess's hand to imprint a respectful kiss upon it.

"Come to my arms, dear viscountess, to my arms!" cried Madame de Condé, raising her.

Having submitted to Madame la Princesse's embrace with all possible respect, the cavalier turned to the princess dowager, to whom he made a low bow.

"Speak quickly, dear Claire!" said she.

"Yes, speak," added Madame de Condé. "Have you seen Richon?"

"Yes, madame, and he entrusted me with a message for you."

"Good news or bad?"

"I do not know myself; the message consists of two words."

"What are they? Quick! I am dying with impatience."

The keenest anxiety was depicted on the features of both princesses.

"'_Bordeaux--Yes_,'" said Claire, herself anxious as to the effect the two words would produce.

But she was soon reassured, for the princesses received them with a triumphant exclamation, which brought Lenet from the other end of the balcony.

"Lenet! Lenet! come! come!" cried Madame la Princesse, "you do not know the news our good Claire brings us."

"Yes, madame," said Lenet, smiling; "I do know it; that is why I did not hurry to meet her."

"What! you know it?"

"'_Bordeaux--Yes_,'--isn't that it?"

"In truth, my dear Pierre, you must be a sorcerer!" said the dowager.

"If you knew it, Lenet," said Madame la Princesse, reproachfully, "why, seeing our anxiety, did you not relieve it with those two words!"

"Because I wished to allow Madame de Cambes to receive the reward of her fatiguing journey," replied Lenet, with a motion of his head toward Claire, who was deeply moved, "and also because I feared an explosion of joy on the part of your Highnesses, out on the terrace in everybody's sight."

"You are right, Pierre, always right, my good Pierre!" said Madame la Princesse. "Let us say nothing."

"And we owe this to the gallant Richon," said the princess dowager. "Hasn't he done well, Compère Lenet, and aren't you content with him?"

_Compère_ was the princess dowager's pet word; it was a reminiscence of Henri IV., who used it frequently.

"Richon is a man of brain and energy, madame, and I pray your Highness to believe that if I had not been as sure of him as of myself I would not have recommended him."

"What shall we do for him?" said Madame la Princesse.

"We must give him some important post," said the dowager.

"Some important post? Your Highness cannot think of doing so," interposed Madame de Tourville, sourly; "you forget that Monsieur Richon is not of gentle birth!"

"Nor am I, madame," retorted Lenet; "which fact does not prevent Monsieur le Prince from having some confidence in me, I believe. Most assuredly do I admire and respect the nobility of France; but there are circumstances in which a noble heart, I venture to say, is worth more than an ancient coat of arms."