Joseph Balsamo (26 page)
In the meantime, the brother and sister resumed their conversation ; still, however, in the Provenqal dialect.
Suddenly the viscount leaned forward. ” See, there he is 1 ” cried he.
“What?”
” The Arabian which I wished to buy.”
“Oh !” exclaimed Chon, ” what a splendid woman the rider is !
* Call her, Chon ; she will not, perhaps, be so much
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afraid of yon. I would give a thousand crowns for the horse.”
” And hor much for the woman ?” said Chon, laughing.
” I would give all I have for her ; but call her.”
” Madame ! ” cried Chon, ” madame ! “
But the stranger appeared not to hear, or not to understand. Wrapped in a long white mantle, and her face shaded by a large beaver hat with drooping feathers, she flew past them like an arrow, crying: “Avanti, Djerid, avanti! “
“She is an Italian,” said the viscount. “Mordieu, what a splendid woman ! If it were not for the pain of my arm, I would jump out and run after her.”
” I know her,” said Gilbert.
” Why, the little fellow is a directory for the whole province ; he knows every one.”
“Who is she?” asked Chon.
” Her name is Lorenza, and she is the sorcerer’s wife.”
“What sorcerer?”
” The Baron Joseph Balsamo ! “
The brother and sister looked at each other with an expression which said : ” We did well to keep him.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE COUNTESS DUBARRY’s MORXIXG LEVEE.
WHILE Mile. Chon and Viscount Jean are traveling post on the Chalons road, let us introduce the reader to another member of the same family.
In the suite of rooms at Versailles which the Princess Adelaide, daughter of Louis XV. had once occupied, his majesty had installed his mistress, the Countess Dnbarry, not without keenly studying beforehand the effect which this piece of policy would produce on his court. The favorite, with her merry whims and her careless, joyous humor, had transformed that wing of the palace, formerly
DUMAS VOL. VI. I
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so quiet, into a scene of perpetual merriment and tumult, and every hour she issued thence her commands for a banquet or a party of pleasure.
But what appeared still more unusual on these magnificent staircases, was the never-ceasing stream of visitors ascending them, and crowding an antechamber filled with curiosities from all parts of the globe certainly containing nothing so curious as the idol worshiped by this crowd.
The day after thao on which the scene which we have just described occurred at the little village of Lachausse, about nine in the morning, the countess, lovely as an eastern houri, was at the important duties of the toilet.
‘ No news of Choii ? ” asked one of her tiring women. No, madame.” Nor of the viscount ? ” No, madame.”
‘ Do you know has Bischi received any ? ” A message was sent to your sister’s, madame, this morning, but there were no letters.”
“It is very tiresome waiting in this way,” said the countess, pouting her lovely mouth. ” I am in a wretched humor I pity all who may come near me to-day. Will some means never be invented of conversing at a hundred leagues’ distance ? Is my antechamber passably filled this morning ? “
“Can madame think it necessary to ask ?”
” Dame ! but listen. Doree the dauphiness is coming ; I shall be abandoned for that sun, I who am only a little twinkling star. But tell me, who is there this morning ? “
” The Duke d’Aiguillon, madame, the Prince de Soubise, Monsieur de Sartines, the President Maupeou “
” And the Duke de Eichelieu ? “
“Not yet, madame.”
” How ! neither to-day nor yesterday ? He is afraid of compromising himself. You must send one of my servants to the Hotel du Hanover to inquire if the duke be ill.”
” Yes, madame ; will you receive all who are waiting at once, or do you wish to give any one a private audience ? “
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” Monsieur de Sartines first ; I must speak to him alone.”
The order was transmitted by the countess’s woman to a tall footman who waited in the corridor leading from her bed-chamber to the anterooms, and the minister of police immediately appeared, dressed in black, and endeavoring, by an insinuating smile, to moderate the severe expression of his gray eyes and thin lips.
” Good morning, my dear enemy ! ” said the countess, without looking round, but seeing him in the mirror be-fore her.
” Your enemy, madame?”
” Yes ; my world is divided into only two classes friends and enemies ; I admit no neutrals, or class them as enemies.”
” And you are right, madame ; but tell me how I, notwithstanding my well-known devotion to your interests, deserve to be included in either one or other of these classes ?”
” By allowing to be printed, distributed, sold, and sent to the king, a whole ocean of pamphlets, libels, verses all against me. It is ill-natured, stupid, odious ! “
” But, madame, I am not responsible.”
” Yes, sir, you are ; for you know the wretch who wrote them.”
” Madame, if they were all written by one author, we should not have the trouble of sending him to the Bastile Hercules himself would sink under such a labor.”
” Upon my word, you are highly complimentary to me!”
” If I were your enemy, madame, I should not speak the truth thus.”
” Well, I believe you. We understand each other now. But one thing still gives me some uneasiness.”
” What is that, madame ?”
” You are on good terms with the Choiseuls.”
” Madame, Monsieur de Choiseul is prime minister ; he issues his orders, and I must obey them.”
” So, if Monsieur de Choiseul orders that I am to be
196 JOSEPH BALSAMO.
vexed, tortured, worried to death, yon will allow me to be vexed, tortured, worried ? Thank you ! “
“Let us discuss matters a little,” said Sartines, sitting down without being asked to do so, but without any dis-pleasure being exhibited on the part of the favorite, for much must be pardoned in the man who knew better than any other all that was doing in France. ” Let us discuss this a little and, first, what have I done for you these three days past ? “
” You informed me that a courier had been sent from. Chanteloup to hasten the arrival of the dauphiness.”
“Was that done like an enemy ?”
” But about the presentation on which you know my heart is set what have you been doing for me ? “
“Doing all I possibly could. “
“Monsieur de Sartines, you are not candid “
” Ah, madame ! I assure you you are unjust. Did I not find and bring you Viscount Jean from the back room of a tavern in less than two hours, when you wanted him in order to send him I don’t know where, or, rather, I do know where ? “
” I had much rather you had allowed my brother-in-law to stay there,” said
Mme.
Dubarry, laughing, ” a man allied to the royal family of France ! “
” Well, but was that not a service to be added to my many other services ?”
” Oh, very well ; but just tell me what you did for me yesterday.”
” Yesterday, madame ? “
” Oh, you may well endeavor to recollect that was your day for obliging others.”
“I don’t understand you, madame.”
” Well, I understand myself. Answer, sir, what were you doing yesterday ?”
” Yesterday morning I was occupied, as usual, writing with my secretary.”
“Till what hour ?”
” Till ten.”
” What did you do then ? “
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” I sent to invite a friend of mine from Lyons, who had made a wager he would come to Paris without my knowing, and my footman met him just at the barrier.”
“Well, after dinner ?” ‘
” I sent to the Austrian lieutenant of police information of the haunt of a famous robber whom he could not discover.”
1 ‘And where is he?”
“At Vienna.”
” So you are not only the minister of police at Paris, but perform the same duties for foreign courts ? “
” Yes, madame in my leisure moments.”
” Well, I shall take a note of that. Then, after having despatched the courier to Vienna ? “
” I went to the opera.”
” To see the little Guimard ? Poor Soubise !”
“No to arrest a famous pickpocket, whom I did not disturb so long as he kept to the f ermiers-general, but who had the audacity to rob two or three noblemen.”
“You should say the indiscretion. Well, after the opera ? “
“After the opera?”
” Yes. That seems to be rather a puzzling question, is it not ? “
” No. After the opera? Let me think “
” So ! How much your memory has failed of late !”
” Oh ! after the opera yes, I remember “
“Well?”
” I went to the house of a certain lady who keeps a gaming-table, and I myself conducted her to Fort-1’Eveque.”
” In her carriage ? “
“No, in a fiacre.”
” Well ? “
” Well, that is all.”
” No, it is not.”
” I got into my fiacre again.”
” And whom did you find iu it ?*
He reddened.
198 JOSEPH BALSAMO.
” Oh ! ” cried the countess, clapping her hands, ‘ ‘ I have really had the honor of making a minister of police blush ! “
” Madame ” stammered Sartines.
” No ; I shall tell you who was in the fiacre it was the Duchess de Grammont ! “
” The Duchess de Grammont ? “
11 Yes, the Duchess de Grammont who came to ask yon to contrive to get her admitted to the king’s private apartments.”
” Ma foi, madarae ! ” said the minister, shifting uneasily in his chair, ” I may give up my portfolio to you. It is you who manage the police of Paris, not I ‘
” To tell the truth, sir, I have a police of my own. So beware ! Oh, the Duchess de Grammont in a fiacre with the minister of police at. midnight ! It was capital ! Do you know what I did ? “
“No; but lam afraid it was something dreadful fortunately it was very late.”
” But night is the time for vengeance.”
”And what, then, did you do ?”
” As I keep a police of my own, I keep a body of writers also shocking, ragged, hnngry scribblers.”
” Hungry ? You must feed them badly.”
” I don’t feed them at all. If they became fat, they would be as stupid as the Prince de Soubise ; fat, we are told, absorbs the gall.”
” Go on; I shudder at the thought of them.”
” I recollected all the disagreeable things you have allowed the Choiseuls to do against me, and determined to be revenged. I gave my legion of famishing Apollos the following program : First, Monsieur de Sartines, disguised as a lawyer, visiting an innocent young girl who lives in a garret, and giving her, on the thirtieth of every month, a wretched pittance of a hundred crowns.”
” Madame, that is a benevolent action which you are endeavoring to misconstrue.”
” It is only such actions which can be misconstrued. My second scene was Monsieur de Sartines, disguised like
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a reverend missionary, introducing himself into the convent of the Carmelites of ‘the Sue St. Antoine.”
” I was taking those good nuns some news from the Indies.”
“East or West Indies which? My third scene is Monsieur de Sartines, disguised as lieutenant of the police, driving through the streets at midnight in a fiacre with the Duchess de Grammont.”
” No, madame,” exclaimed he ; ” no you would not bring ridicule on my administration in that manner ! “
” Why, do you not bring ridicule on mine ?” said the the countess, laughing. ” But wait. I set my rogues to work, and they began like boys at college, with exordium, narration, and amplification and I have received this morning an epigram, a song, and a ballad, of which you are the subject.”
” You are not serious ?”
” Perfectly so ; and to-morrow you shall receive them, all three.”
” Why not to-day ?”
“I must have some time to distribute them. Is not that the way ? Besides, the police ought always to hear last about any new affair. I assure you, you will be very much amused. I laughed three-quarters of an hour at them this morning, and the king was nearly dead with laughing it was that which made him so late.”
” I am ruined ! ” cried Sartines, clasping his hands.
” Ruined ? Nonsense ! You are only celebrated in song. Am I ruined by all the verses made on me ? No ; I only get in a passion at them, and then for revenge I determine to put somebody else in a passion, too. Ah ! what delightful verses. I have ordered some wine to my literary scorpions, and I expect by this time their senses are wrapped in happy oblivion.”
” Ah ! countess, countess ! “
” But, pardien, you must hear the epigram:
” ‘ Oh, France, how wretched is thy fate. When women hold the helm of state ! ‘
200 JOSEPH BALSAMO.
No, no ; I am wrong ; that is the scandal perpetrated against myself. But there are so many, I confound them. Listen, listen ; here it is :
” ‘ A perfumer once sought of a painter a sign,
His skill than his genius was duller, For in a huge bottle, with knavish design, He makes Boynes, Maupeou, and Terray to shine,
Displayed in their own proper color. But for Sartines still room in the vessel he leaves, And he labels the mixture the essence of thieves.’ “
” Cruel woman, you will set me mad ! ” cried Sartines. ! < Now, we must look at the poem. You must know it is Madame cle Grammont who speaks :
” ‘ Dear minister, you know my skin Is to the purest snow akin ; Then grant to me this single thing Oh, say so, say so to the king.’ “
” Madame, madame ! ” cried Sartines, more furious than ever.
” Nonsense,” said the countess. ” You need not be so uneasy about these little poems. I have only had ten thousand copies of them struck off ‘
” You have a press, then ?”
” Certainly. Has not the Duke de Choiseul one ?”
”” Let your printer take care ! “
“Oh, it is kept in my own name ; I am the printer.”
” Shocking shocking ! And the king laughs at these calumnies ? “