Joseph Balsamo (33 page)

” Come, Loque, come ! you have got some wicked tale to tell, I see. Let us hear it.”

246 JOSEPH BALSAMO.

” Sire, I fear it might vex you a little.”

” No, no ; say you hope it will vex me, that would be nearer the truth.”

Mme.
Adelaide bit her lips.

” Then I shall tell you the truth, sire.”

” Very fine ! If you ever do tell the truth cure yourself of the habit. The truth ? Do I ever tell it ? and yet you see I am not the worse for it, Heaven be praised ! ” and he shrugged his shoulders.

” Speak, sister, speak ‘ said the other two sisters, impatient to hear anything that might wound their father.

” Sweet little creatures ! ” growled the king ; ” see how they love their father ! “

But he consoled himself by thinking that he returned their love in kind.

” Well,” continued the Princess Adelaide,

“Was what?” exclaimed the king. “Come, finish, since you have gone so far.”

‘It was, sire, then, the intrusion of new faces at court.”

” Do you say intrusion ? ” asked he, by no means pleased with this beginning, for he saw to what it tended. ” Intrusion ? Are there intruders, then, in my palace ? Am I forced to receive persons against my will ? “

By this adroit turn he hoped to change the course of the conversation. But the Princess Adelaide felt herself on the right scent, and she was too cunning and too malicious to lose it, when she had so good an end in view as the annoyance of her father.

” Perhaps I was not quite correct perhaps I used the wrong word ; instead of intrusion, I should have said introduction.”

11 Oh, ah ! ” said the king, ” that is an improvement. The other word was a disagreeable one, I confess ; I like introduction better.”

” And yet,” continued the princess, ” that is not the right word either.”

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” What is it then ? “

“It is presentation.”

” Yes,” cried the other sisters, ” yes, you have found the right word now.”

The king bit his lip. ” Oh, do you think so ? ” said he.

“Yes,” replied the Princess Adelaide ; ” my sister was very much afraid of new presentations.”

” Well,” said the king, feeling what must come, and thinking it best to have done with it as speedily as possible ” well, go on.”

” Well, sire, she was consequently afraid of seeing the Countess Dubarry presented at court.”

” Ha ! ” cried the king, with a burst of passion which he could not repress ; ” so yon have been all this time getting this out ! Mordieu ! Madame Tell-truth, how you beat about the bush ! “

” Sire,” replied the princess, ” if I have so long delayed in telling your majesty this, it is because respect closed my lips, and I should not have opened them but by your own command.”

” Yes, yes, you would never have opened them, I suppose, to yawn, or to speak, or to bite.”

” I am quite certain, however, sire, that I have discovered the real motive which has made my sister retire into a convent.”

” Well, you are wrong.”

” Oh, sire ! ” they all three repeated, shaking their heads. ” Oh, sire, we are quite certain of what we say.”

” Pshaw ! You are all of a tale, I see. There is a conspiracy in my family. This is the reason the presentation cannot take place this the reason the princesses can never be seen when persons wish to visit them that they give no answers to petitions or requests for an audience.”

“What petitions? what requests for an audience?” asked the Princess Adelaide.

” Oh, you know,” replied the Princess Sophie, ” the petition of Mademoiselle Jean Vaubernier.” This was the Countess Dubarry’s name in the days of her poverty.

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” Yes,” added the Princess Victoire, ” the requests for an audience of Mademoiselle Lange.” Another name which she had borne.

The king started up, furious with passion ; his eye, generally calm and mild, now flashed in a manner rather alarming for the three sisters, and as none of this royal trio of heroines seemed courageous enough to bear the paternal wrath, they bent their heads before the storm.

” And now ‘ cried he, ” was I wrong when I said the best had left me ? “

“Sire,” said the Princess Adelaide, “you treat us very ill worse than you treat your dogs ! “

” And justly, too. My dogs, when I go near them, receive me kindly caress me ; they are real friends. So adieu, ladies. I shall go to Charlotte, Bellefille, and Gredinet. Poor animals ! Yes, I love them ! And I love them more particularly because they do not bark out the truth.”

The king left the apartment in a rage ; but had not taken three steps in the anteroom, when he heard his daughters singing in chorus the first verse of a ballad ridiculing the Countess Dubarry, which was then snng through the streets of Paris.

He was about to return and perhaps the princesses would not have fared well had he done so but he restrained himself, and went on, calling loudly that he might not hear them, ” Hola ! the captain of the greyhounds ! the captain of the greyhounds ! “

The officer who bore this singular title hurried forward.

” Let the dogs be loosed ! “

” Oh, sire,” cried the officer, placing himself in the king’s way, ” do not advance another step.”

” What now ? what now ? ” said the king, stopping be-fore a door, from under which was heard the snuffing of dogs, aware that their master was near.

“Sire,” said the officer, “pardon me, but I cannot per-mit your majesty to enter here.”

” Oh, I understand the keiinel is out of order. Well, then, let Gredinet be brought out.”

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” Sire,” continued the officer, with alarm depicted on his face, ” Gredinet has neither eaten nor drunk for two days, and it is feared he is mad.”

” Oh,” cried the king, ” I am really the most wretched of men ! Gredinet mad ? This alone was wanting to complete my vexation.”

The officer of the greyhounds thought it his duty to shed a tear, to make it seem more perfect. The king turned on his heel, and retired to his private cabinet, where his valet was waiting. He, seeing the king’s face so disturbed, hid himself in the recess of a window and the king, looking upon him rather as a piece of furniture than a man, strode up and down his room talking to himself.

” Yes, I see it I see it plainly,” said he ; ” the Duke de Choiseul laughs at me ; the dauphin looks upon himself as already half master, and thinks he will be wholly so when he has his little Austrian beside him on the throne. Louise loves me but so sternly, that she preaches .me a sermon and leaves me. My three other daughters sing songs, in which I am ridiculed under the name of Blaise. My grandson, the Count de Provence, translates Lucre-tius ; and his brother, the Count d’Artois, is a dissipated scapegrace. My dogs go mad, and would bite me. DeciJ-edly, there is only the poor countess who loves me. To the devil, then, with those who would annoy her !”

Then, with a sort of settled despair, he seated himself at that table on which Louis XV. wrote his proudest letters and signed his latest treaties.

” I know now,” continued he, ” why every one wishes to hasten the arrival of the dauphiness. They think when she shows herself, I shall become her slave, and be governed by her family. I’ faith, I shall see her soon enough, that dear daughter-in-law of mine, particularly if her arrival is to be the signal for new troubles. Let me be quiet as long as I can, and for that purpose the longer she is delayed on the road the better. She was to have passed through Kheims and Noyon without stopping, and to come immediately to Compiegne. I shall insist on the first arrangement. Three days at Eheims, and one no, faith 1

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two ! Bah ! three clays at Noyon ! That would be six days I should gain yes, six good days “

He took a pen, and wrote in person an order to the Count de Stainville, to stop three days at Rheims and three days at Noyon. Then, sending for a courier, ” Don’t draw bridle,” saidlie, ” until you have delivered this according to its address.”

Then, with the same pen, he wrote :

” DEAR COUNTESS, To-day we install Zamore in his government. I am just setting out for Marly. This evening, at Luciennes, I shall tell you all I now think.

“FRANCE.”

” Here, Lebel,” said he to the valet, ” take this letter to the countess, and keep on good terms with her I ad-vise you.”

The valet bowed and left the room.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE COUNTESS DE BEARN.

THE principal object of all the fury of the court, and their stumbling-block on this dreaded occasion the Countess de Beam was, as Chon said, traveling rapidly to Paris. Her journey thither was the result of one of those bright ideas which sometimes came to Viscount Jean’s assistance in his times of trouble.

Not being able to find among the ladies of the court one who would present the Countess Dubarry, and since she could not be presented without a lady to introduce her, lie cast his eye on the provinces. He examined country-seats, searched carefully in the towns, and at last found what he wanted on the banks of the Meuse in an old, Gothic-look- ing country-seat, but one kept in good order.

Now, what he wanted was an old lady fond of law, and having a lawsuit on hand.

The old lady with the lawsuit was the Countess de Beam.

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The lawsuit was an affair on which all her fortune depended, and which was to be heard before M. de Maupeou, who had lately taken up the cause of the Countess Dubarry, having discovered what had remained hidden, until then that he was related to her, and now called her cousin. Looking forward to the appointment of lord chancellor through her interest, he showed the king’s favorite all the warmth of a friendship naturally arising from such a substantial basis. This friendship and this interest had procured for him from the king the office of vice-chancellor, and from the world in general the pithy denomination of the Vice.

The Countess de Beam was a thin, angular, agile little woman, always on the alert, always rolling her eyes like those of a frightened cat, from under her gray eyebrows. She still wore the dress which had been fashionable in her youth, and as the capricious goddess of fashion has sensible fits now and then, it so happened that the costume of the young girl of 1740 should be precisely that of the old woman or 1770.

Broad guipure, pointed mantelet, an enormous coif, an immense bag, and a neck-handkerchief of flowered silk such was the costume in which Chon, the well-beloved sister and confidante of the Countess Dubarry, found the Countess de Beam arrayed when she presented herself before her as Mile. Flageot, the daughter of the lawyer in Paris who had the management of her suit. The old countess wore the costume of her early days as much from taste as from economy. She was not one of those persons who blush for their poverty, because her poverty had not been caused by her own fault. She regretted, indeed, not being rich for her son’s sake, to whom she would have wished to leave a fortune worthy of his name. The young man was thoroughly country-bred, tipiid to a fault, caring ‘much more for what belonged to the substantial things of life than to the honors of renown.

The countess’s sole consolation was in calling the lands that were contested with the Salnce family, ” my estate ; ” but as she was a woman of sense, she felt that if she wanted

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to borrow money on that estate, not a usurer in France and there were some bold enough in running risks at that period would lend it her ; not an attorney and there were some not very scrupulous then, as there have been at all times would procure her the smallest sum on such a guarantee.

Forced, then, to live on the annual rents of those lands that were not disputed, the Countess de Beam, having only one thousand crowns a year, kept very far from court; for there she must have spent nearly twelve livres a day in the hire of a carriage to take her to her lawyer’s and to the judge’s. She was still more determined in keeping aloof, since she had despaired of her cause being heard for four or five years at least. Lawsuits, even in the present day, are, in truth, tedious affairs; but still, without living to the age of the patriarchs, a person who commences one has some hope of seeing it to an end ; but, formerly, a suit extended through two or three genera-tions, and was like those fabulous plants of the Arabian tales, which blossomed only at the end of two or three centuries.

The Countess de Beam, therefore, did not wish to lose the remains of her patrimony in recovering the ten twelfths of it which were disputed. She was, what is always called, ” a woman of the old school,” sagacious prudent, firm, ava-ricious. She could certainly have managed her suit much better herself than any advocate, lawyer, or attorney ; but she was called Beam, and that name prevented her from doing many things which economy might have prompted. Like the divine Achilles in his tent, suffering a thousand deaths when he heard the trumpet, although feigning to be deaf to it, she, in her retirement, was devoured by regret and anguish. She passed her days in deciphering old parchments, her spectacles on her nose ; and at night, on her pillow, she pleaded with such eloquence the cause of the estate claimed by the Saluces, that she was always successful a termination of the affair which she could but wish her advocate to arrive at.

It may readily be imagined that in such a temper of mind

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the arrival of Chon, and the news she brought, were very agreeable to
Mme.
de Beam.

The young count was with his regiment.

We always believe what we wish to believe ; so
Mme.
de Beam was very easily caught by the young lady’s tale.

There was, however, a shadow of suspicion in the countess’s mind. She had known Master Flageot twenty years, and had visited him two hundred times in his narrow, dark street ; but she had never seen a child playing on the square bit of carpet which looked so little on the floor of his large office ; and had there been children there, they would surely have found their way into it to get a toy or a cake from the clients.