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“Her husband Casimir-August d’Egmont Pignatelli was the most reverential, silent, and most boring of men.
“Thus it came about that Mademoiselle de Richelieu, my very dear friend, became Countess d’Egmont, with all that this means, and that is, as we have the simplicity and good taste to say nowadays, that she had married into a family which was one of the best connected in Europe. In other words she was a Princess de Cleves and of the Empire, Duchess de Gueldres, de Julliers,
d’Agrigente, as well as a Grandee of Spain by the creation of Charles V, and therefore on the same footing as the Duchesses of Alba and Medina-Coeli, who are of course the first ladies in Europe. I could run on for four pages more with the titles belonging to the great and mighty house of d’Egmont, which is descended in a direct line from the Reigning Dukes de Gueldres, and which the great aristocracy in all countries has had the mortification to see die out for want of an heir. And afterwards it was always said that this was Mademoiselle de Richelieu’s fault.
“However Madame d’Egmont got on quite well with her husband. No more than that. And, in the meantime, a marriage was arranged between a Mademoiselle de Nivernais and Monsieur de Gisors. But the young man was killed a few months after the ceremony.
“So the two lovers never had the chance to meet after Septimanie had a husband.
“But Madame d’Egmont could so little forget him that she fainted if his name came up in conversation. This actually happened when the Prince Abbot de Salm purposely named him, and the young woman was taken with appalling convulsions on the spot; after which all decent people shut their doors to that wicked old hunch back.
“Now there was at this time an old man, a member of the well-known family de Lusignan who, if no one knew him by sight, was at least familiar to everyone by name. He was called the Vidame de Poitiers. It was generally understood that he vegetated away in a great house, but he was never seen because he was so extremely eccentric. So you can imagine the Countess d’Egmont’s surprise when one day she had a letter from the Vidame asking her to be so good as to pay him a visit, in order that he might put before her a matter of some importance. He said he could not wait upon her in her own home as he would have wished because, as he put it, he was not ‘transportable’; a phrase which, as things turned out, and if you have the patience
to read your old grandmother to the end, was, as you will come to realize, ever afterwards of significance at the Richelieu’s.
“Madame d’Egmont did not want to go, but rather unexpectedly her father the Marshal insisted, and she had to give in.
“So one afternoon she started off, in her carriage with six horses, only to find the outriders did not know the way because no one went there any more. But she arrived at last and when she was shown in at the door she found, without giving the least idea of it from the outside, that the Vidame’s house was nothing more or less than a kind of dream palace. Used as Madame d’Egmont was to the elegance of her father’s residence, and to the magnificence of her great uncle, the Cardinal’s, mansion which is unequalled, she was amazed at what she now saw. The entrance hall and marble staircase were stately with statues and evergreen shrubs, the antechambers were full of liveried footmen drawn up in two ranks, all the saloons were of an unparalleled grandeur and led to a long, high gallery in the form of a winter garden along which, under a vault of orange, myrtle, and flowering rose trees she was escorted towards nothing less than a sort of rustic retreat raised above floor level. Even the steps up were formed out of the trunks of forest trees, with a handrail of gnarled branches. She was left to climb this alone, and she found herself in a sort of elegant cowshed, in which was an old gentleman fast asleep on a little bed, with his head carefully wrapped up. Madame d’Egmont felt dreadfully embarrassed. Then, while she waited for the Vidame to come out of his sleep, she looked about. The walls were whitewashed, and there actually were five or six cows feeding peacefully in their stalls. A few pieces of simple furniture were between his bed and one wall. She particularly noticed that everything was spotlessly clean. All this affectation of a peasant simplicity in the centre of Paris, and in a palace, began to amuse Madame d’Egmont. She sat down on a little cane-bottomed chair to wait. After a quarter of an hour she coughed, then she coughed louder, until at last she threw modesty to the winds and
coughed as loud as she could, enough to make her spit blood. In the end when she saw it was no use, and that the old gentleman would not wake up, she thought it would be comic to go away without saying anything to the Vidame’s page who was waiting for her below.
“We were all waiting for Madame d’Egmont at the Richelieu’s when she got back. While she was telling us, and we were in shouts of laughter, her father the Marshal unexpectedly came in. All at once he began working his little mouth and shutting his eyes, a sure sign that he was displeased. ‘Countess d’Egmont,’ he brought out in his nastiest voice, which is saying a great deal, ‘in my opinion you should not have behaved as you did before a man of his age, as well born as he, ill as he is as well. I advise you to go back no later than tomorrow morning.’
“‘Alas Monsieur,’ she replied, making her voice, that was always so soft, even softer, and turning on him her eyes which literally enchanted you, and which, on this occasion, were half appealing and half malicious, ‘but how am I to set about waking the gentleman?’
“In the end Madame d’Egmont had to agree, after which the Marshal tried to change the conversation without, however, being able to hide his anger. As soon as he left the room, which he did at the first opportunity, Madame d’Egmont complained that she thought he was being most frightfully difficult. She said it would prove to be almost impossible to avoid laughing in the Vidame’s face, and that in any case she would find herself with the old man in the undignified position of a little girl who has played a trick. But then she went on to put her real reason, which was that she had been overcome by a presentiment of evil, that evil must result from a second visit to the Vidame.
“The second time she visited him she found the old gentleman sitting up in bed. But he seemed very poorly, so much so that with a real feeling of horror she realized he could not have long to live. However he did not appear at all embarrassed
by what he had to tell, and set about it at once, and quite methodically.
“After thanking her in the most respectful way for calling on him, without referring to the previous visit which he had slept through, Monsieur de Poitiers handed Madame d’Egmont a bundle of old letters from the late Count de Gisors addressed to himself, and begged her to read them. She found, poor thing it nearly suffocated her, that they were all almost entirely about herself. The Count de Gisors wrote of her so passionately, as she told me afterwards, that she felt as though her heart were in a vice. But there was also mention of an unhappy child his father, the Marshal de Bellisle, had abandoned, and for whom the young man desired the Vidame to do what he could. ‘I shall not come back, I am sure of it, I shall not come back from this war,’ he had written in the last letter, ‘and I call on you to look after Severin, that I may die easy at least on that.’
“Madame d’Egmont cried her heart out for some minutes by the old man’s bed. When she was a little easier the Vidame opened his eyes which he had kept shut all this time.
“‘Madame,’ he said, ‘he for whom you are weeping, and whom we both regret, had no secrets from me. For he left behind him a young fellow, of about his own age, who is his double’. The old gentleman went on that this boy, Monsieur de Guys, was believed to be the natural son of the Marshal de Bellisle. Finally the Vidame said he wished to do something for this young man, because he did not think that he himself had long to live. He desired Madame d’Egmont, appealing to the love they both had for the dead Count de Gisors, to take certain bearer bonds and, as soon as he himself passed on, to hand these over to Monsieur de Guys. He explained that this was the only way to circumvent his creditors and heirs at law, and begged Madame d’Egmont not to say a word to anyone, repeating once more that she was the only person left whom he could trust. Madame d’Egmont reluctantly agreed to do as the Vidame asked, subject to certain
safeguards with which I do not propose to trouble you, and within five or six days the Vidame had died.
“About this time the Queen of Portugal departed this world. There was a Memorial Service for her at Notre Dame. I had to attend in waiting on the Royal Princesses, although I certainly owed no obligation to Louis XV, or his court, for which, if I may do so without seeming too proud, I thank God in His mercy.
“The Queen of Portugal had actually, and even obviously, been put away by poisoning. Nevertheless Madame d’Egmont, as she told me, felt obliged to make an appearance at the ceremony because, through her husband, she was a Grandee of Spain. As such she had the right to take her place in the front rank, with the wives of the Dukes. But, when I came up the aisle with my Princess, the seats reserved for these Duchesses were almost empty. There was only a shapeless bundle, not fully under control, which must have been Madame de Mazarin, then a sort of gatepost, so stiff and immovable it could only have been the Duchess de Brissac, and last, a little bat-like creature in perpetual motion, flinching and fluttering throughout the ceremony, which told us this was no less, or more, of a person than the Countess de Tessé. I could not see a soul in the least like Madame d’Egmont, and I had told my Princess, whose train I was carrying while my aunt de Parabère bore mine, to look out for her, explaining that no one could mistake Madame d’Egmont. It was a real disappointment for the Princess Louise and the rest of us. Because Septimanie curtseying in the full glory of Court dress was unforgettable. I have only seen two women do it to equal her. One was Queen Marie Antoinette, and the other (saving the respect due to a Queen of France), Mlle Clairon of the Comédie Française.
“After the Absolution, at which the Princesses and peeresses are never present, we were told, when we got back to the Archbishop’s, that Madame d’Egmont had been taken ill as she came up the aisle, and that she had cried out as she was falling.
“I found her waiting for me at home. She was deathly pale. She could only just speak. All I could get out of her was that, as she was about to take her place by the catafalque, she thought she had seen the Count de Gisors. ‘You won’t laugh at me will you?’ she begged, ‘I saw him, I know I did, and it almost killed me.’
“I told her that Monsieur de Nivernais had spoken of a young private soldier exactly like Monsieur de Gisors, and that it was probably this man who had been on guard at the catafalque. Septimanie burst into tears. ‘Don’t you see, it must be Severin his younger brother,’ she sobbed, ‘the boy I’m to give the Vidame’s legacy to. I promised. Now that I have to see him again I’m terrified.’
“From this point onwards you will not find me so well informed, my child, and I confess to you that it would ill become me if I were. However, Madame d’Egmont did tell me some months later, in an embarrassed sort of way, that she had summoned Monsieur de Guys, secretly, to a church. She had joined him on foot, without any of her servants, and had handed over the £10,000 given to her by the Vidame for that purpose. But I saw a blush on her forehead as she was telling me. I had an idea she wanted to say more, and that I was not having the whole story. But I was careful to do nothing to persuade her to go any further with me, for I feared she might find herself confiding, or even attempting to explain away, certain things that I should have been embarrassed to learn. Because I did not wish to encourage her in this affair, which in any case, I imagined, was over and done with. All I said was, I could only be surprised and vexed that she had met him in church …. My child, she lowered her great eyes at that, and bit her lip. Then I changed the subject abruptly. It hurt me to do this. But I could see she understood, and from that time on I saw less of poor Septimanie. Indeed it must have been five or six months before I heard tell of Monsieur de Guys again.
“I had gone to dinner at the Richelieu’s. I remember it was
the night of a great storm. The Marshal asked me if I meant to pay my respects at Versailles the next day, and dine with their Majesties. I told him I had planned to do so. ‘My daughter ought to go,’ he said. ‘Which of you will take the other?’
“I had always had a very good idea that I was the person with whom he best liked his daughter to go out, and I thought I saw that the sharp old man had noticed how we were no longer quite what we had been to each other. What he had in mind was to put us in one carriage. He imagined this was all that was needed to bring us together again. We exchanged looks, and smiled, his daughter and I.
“As we travelled down to Versailles the next day in her state carriage, I thought I had never seen Madame d’Egmont in such brilliant looks, or more superbly dressed. She was wearing the family pearls, those on which the Republic of Venice once lent such a large sum to Count Lamoral d’Egmont, to finance the war against King Philip, and which were without price, they were so valuable. But I flatter myself her jewels were not the only ones to attract attention that day. For I had brought out the diamonds you will inherit with the family heirlooms. The moment she set eyes on them the Queen sent for me to get a closer view of the Lesdiguière diamond. It was then and there admitted that this was a far finer stone than any of her twelve Mazarin diamonds. Commander d’Esclots, my uncle, and who was making the circle, was so absolutely delighted that it was only after some little trouble that I could persuade him not to write to the Queen to thank her for what she had said. The good old man belonged to a generation when the least word from royalty was too valuable for anything. But he was the old-fashioned sort of Frenchman. He died without having been persuaded it could be a fact that Madame Lenormand d’Etioles had ever had an apartment in the Palace of Versailles, nor, above all, that she could, by any fantastic stroke of the imagination, have been ennobled under the title of Marquise de Pompadour.