Lewis Wingfield - The Maid of Honour - A Tale of the Dark Days of France. Volume 3 of 3

"What if I refuse?" he said, sulkily. "You will play the martyr, I suppose?"

"I will place the matter before the Seigneurie and magistrates of Blois," Gabrielle quietly replied. "The line they counsel I will take."

The wrath of the marquis boiled over. His hands shook, and his fingers twitched as though he would like to strike her.

"You will do that?" he muttered, harshly. "You will wash our linen in public to make me a fool before the province? You will deliberately create a public esclandre at so dangerous a moment?"

"Alas!" returned his wife, mournfully, "the scandal is made by you. All I ask is to be treated with respect. Rid me for ever of her who has been the shadow across our path, and I will carry out your wishes. Refuse, and I will seek the protection of the Seigneurie, who shall arbitrate between us."

"I will return you a written answer," Clovis said, abruptly rising and making for the door. He could not and would not be ordered thus to part with Algaé; and yet he was sorely anxious for the cancelling of the hateful document. He was not capable of steering his bark alone among rocks and shallows, but must seek counsel from the others. They were awaiting him, and in a white heat of vexation he poured out to them his woes.

Mademoiselle Brunelle laughed merrily, directing sly looks of intelligence at the abbé, who frowned over his brother's shoulder, and pursed his lips.

Appeal to the Seigneurie, indeed! It was well to know of such a project in order to circumvent it. Clovis had been awkward and unskilful; and he, the abbé, must assume henceforth more openly the command of operations. Inopportune stiff necks are productive of no end of worry. Why could not the silly zany have done as he was bid, have accepted every suggestion, leaving further action to the others? The all-important object was to secure a proper will, and that point gained, both Pharamond and Algaé were well aware of what the next step would have to be. Clovis, the shilly-shally, must henceforth be excluded from a hand in the management of affairs. The lucky fellow should reap his share of profit by and by without the sweat of labour. His abortive interview with his wife had produced one good result. He was more than ever exasperated against her, and swore, with needless oaths, that he would never look on her or speak to her again.

"In that he must please himself," Pharamond remarked with indifference; "but he must take up his pen and write. If he would cease fretting and fidgeting, and sit down, his obliging brother would dictate, and the epistle should be of the shortest. Would mademoiselle kindly listen and suggest, since for her there were no secrets?"

The letter placed an hour later in the hand of Gabrielle ran thus: -

"Madame, – Your instructions shall be obeyed. I have sent to Blois for a notary.

How provoking and how unfair to be called upon to drag out the years of our earthly pilgrimage during so stormy a period as this one! With unexpected bombshells exploding at one's feet, what was the use of sketching elaborate schemes which accident would most likely shiver? The abbé had already been obliged to change his tactics several times in consequence of untoward circumstances, and now from a clearing heaven there rained down missiles whose unexpected proximity sharpened his ire. "Why was I born so late?" he asked himself with muttered curses. "Under Louis XV., le Bien-Aimé , everybody did what they liked, provided that his majesty smiled. And if his own fancy was not thwarted, that monarch must have been much addicted to smiling, for he found the world a pleasant place. And now, just a few years later, there seemed to be not such a thing as a smile left anywhere. They had been so lavishly showered by the bien-aimé and his lotus-eating coterie that the stock was completely exhausted, and humanity had to put up with execrations as a substitute."

Each time that a courier arrived with intelligence of what was passing in the capital, the male occupants of Lorge shuddered, guessing that the news was bad. Bad, forsooth! The ball set a rolling was tearing down the hillside with such velocity that the sight thereof took away the breath.

Old de Vaux, grateful ever to the marquis and his affinity for their treatment of his sciatic nerve, came riding over with crumpled gazettes in his pocket, his eyes goggling in his head. If the whitened locks upon his pate had not been artificial, they would have stood up on end. "What are we all coming to?" was the burthen of his wail. If the world was coming to an abrupt conclusion, why did it not perform a dignified smash and vanish into vacuum in smoke, instead of first permitting that over-rated creation, man, to show what a base thing he was?

Smash! Paris, beautiful Paris, had come to smash. From a paradise it was become a pandemonium where all that was best and noblest was torn by devils' pincers.

Sciatica? Oh, yes. It was charming well, thanks to the delightful and indefatigable pupil of Mesmer and the enlightened marquis. A pair so good as they would certainly be canonized-so would the prophet. Madame and Angelique were as disgusted as the baron, but sent kindest messages to all. Would they allow their patient to unfold the latest budget?

Then the old gentleman would drone out before a long-suffering but apparently appreciative audience the result of his private lucubrations, and pour forth as well those of his lady and of Angelique. The seigneurs, he declared, must select the strongest fortress in the province, arm and victual it, and thus secure from the scum, look out for better times.

Of course, the crescendo of Parisian sinfulness found its echo, of fluctuating intensity, in the provinces. The timorous old baroness and her daughter preferred their garden to possible insult on the roads. Moreover, there was little to be gained by visiting at Lorge now. The marquise since her return from the capital, had been vastly frigid and stand-off-a stuck-up piece of goods. It was certain, now that she had her fabulous possessions in her hands, that a mere country noble's family were too contemptible to touch. It was equally clear that the oaf who was called chevalier had no honourable intentions, and that it would be more than imprudent to place so chaste a specimen as Angelique within reach of his brandy-laden breath. And so it came about that the only neighbours of the fair sex in the vicinity visited less and less at Lorge, and that the old baron when he trotted over on his prad, looked as a matter of course for the society of the mesmerists to whom he owed so much, and ceased to ask to see the chatelaine.

Not understanding her, the baron had always been frightened of Gabrielle-one shade less than of the abbé. Strange! When that gentleman first came among them, the baron and all the booby squires voted him the most charming of acquisitions. Now, somehow, he was to be avoided as much as might be, for his tongue was sharp and his wit scathing, and he was no respecter of persons. The abbé would sometimes take up the old gentleman in his claws, as it were, toy with him as cat does with a mouse, till he was bewildered and breathless; then turn him inside out with a gesture of contempt, and fling him aside. This was terribly disrespectful to a Vaux of Vaux, but it certainly was a fact, whose enormity was only revealed by slow degrees, that the abbé was not averse to treating a Vaux de Vaux (with a thousand quarterings) as if he were no more than a puppet. Having arrived at and digested this stupendous fact, it stood to reason that the baron disliked the abbé as much as he dared; but, at the same time, the counsel of that ghostly man was so worldly-wise; he was so respected by the mesmerists, appealed to by them on every occasion as an oracle, that in moments of startling difficulty such as were now of frequent occurrence, it was only natural that the baron should amble over from Montbazon to crave the oracle's advice.