Chapter 18. The Court of Versailles

________________________________________________
_ As the King of France entered the antechamber a dead hush fell upon all there, and Rupert Holliday looked eagerly to see what sort of man was the greatest sovereign in Europe.

Louis was under middle height, in spite of his high-heeled shoes, but he had an air of dignity which fully redeemed his want of stature. Although he was sixty-six years of age, he was still handsome, and his eyes were bright, and his movements quick and vivacious.

The courtiers all bent low as the king moved slowly down the line, addressing a word here and there. The king's eye quickly caught that of the young Englishman, who with his companion was taller than the majority of those present.

Louis moved forward until he stopped before him.

"So, Sir Englishman," he said, "you are one of those who have been maltreating our soldiers. Methinks I have more reason than you have to complain of the fortune of war, but I trust that in your case the misfortune will be a light one, and that your stay in our court and capital will not be an unpleasant one."

"I have no reason, sire, to complain of the fortune of war," Rupert said, "since to it I owe the honour of seeing your gracious Majesty, and the most brilliant court in the world!"

"Spoken like a courtier," the king said with a slight smile. "Pray consider yourself invited to all the fetes at court and to all our entrees and receptions, and I hope that all will do their best to make your stay here agreeable."

Then with a slight inclination of the head he passed on, saying in an audible tone to the nobles who walked next, but a little behind him, "This is not such a bear as are his island countrymen in general!"

"In another hour, Rupert, is the evening reception, at which the ladies of the court will be present; and although all set fetes have been arrested owing to the news of the defeat in Flanders, yet as the king chooses to put a good face upon it, everyone else will do the same, therefore you may expect a brilliant assembly. Adele will of course be there. Shall I introduce you, or leave it to chance?"

"I would rather you left it to chance," Rupert said, "except, that as you do not desire it to be known that we have met before, it would be better that you should present me personally; but I should like to see if she will recognize me before you do so."

"My daughter is a young lady of the court of his most puissant Majesty Louis the 14th," the marquis said, somewhat bitterly, "and has learned not to carry her heart upon her sleeve. But before you show yourself near her, I will just warn her by a word that a surprise may take place in the course of the evening, and that it is not always expedient to recognize people unless introduced formally. That will not be sufficient to give her any clue to your being here, but when she sees you she will recall my warning, and act prudently."

Presently they entered the immense apartment, or rather series of apartments, in which the receptions took place.

Here were gathered all the ladies of the court; all the courtiers, wits, and nobles of France, except those who were in their places with the army. There was little air of ceremony. All present were more or less acquainted with each other.

In a room screened off by curtains, the king was playing at cards with a few highly privileged members of the court, and he would presently walk through the long suite of rooms, but while at cards his presence in no ways weighed upon the assembly. Groups of ladies sat on fauteuils surrounded by their admirers, with whom volleys of light badinage, fun, and compliments were exchanged.

Leaving Rupert talking to some of those to whom he had been introduced in the king's antechamber, and who were anxious to obey the royal command to make themselves agreeable to him, the Marquis de Pignerolles sauntered across the room to a young lady who was sitting with three others, surrounded by a group of gentlemen.

Rupert was watching him, and saw him stoop over the girl, for she was little more, and say a few words in her ear. A surprised and somewhat puzzled expression passed across her face, and then as her father left her she continued chatting as merrily as before.

Rupert could scarcely recognize in the lovely girl of seventeen the little Adele with whom he had danced and walked little more than four years before.

Adele de Pignerolles was English rather than French in her style of beauty, for her hair was browner, and her complexion fresher and clearer, than those of the great majority of her countrywomen. She was vivacious, but her residence in England had taught her a certain restraint of gesture and motion, and her admirers, and she had many, spoke of her as l'Anglaise.

Rupert gradually moved away from those with whom he was talking, and, moving round the group, went through an open window on to a balcony, whence he could hear what was being said by the lively party, without his presence being noticed.

"You are cruel, Mademoiselle d'Etamps," one of the courtiers said. "I believe you have no heart. You love to drive us to distraction, to make us your slaves, and then you laugh at us."

"It is all you deserve, Monsieur le Duc. One would as soon think of taking the adoration of a butterfly seriously. One is a flower, butterflies come round, and when they find no honey, flit away elsewhere. You amuse yourself, so do I. Talk about hearts, I do not believe in such things."

"That is treason," the young lady who sat next to her said, laughing. "Now, I am just the other way; I am always in love, but then I never can tell whom I love best, that is my trouble. You are all so nice, messieurs, that it is impossible for me to say whom I love most."

The young men laughed.

"And you, Mademoiselle de Rohan, will you confess?"

"Oh, I am quite different," she said. "I quite know whom I love best, but just as I am quite sure about it, he does something disagreeable or stupid--all men are really disagreeable or stupid when you get to know them--and so then I try another, but it is always with the same result."

"You are all very cruel," the Duc de Carolan laughed. "And you, Mademoiselle de Pignerolles? But I know what you will say, you have never seen anyone worth loving."

Adele did not answer; but her laughing friends insisted that as they had confessed their inmost thoughts, she ought to do the same.

For a moment she looked serious, then she laughed, and again put on a demure air.

"Yes," said she, "I have had a grande passion, but it came to nothing."

A murmur of "Impossible!" ran round the circle.

"It was nearly four years ago," she said.

"Oh, nonsense, Adele, you were a child four years ago," one of her companions said.

"Of course I was a child," Adele said, "but I suppose children can love, and I loved an English boy."

"Oh, oh, mademoiselle, an English boy!" and other amused cries ran round the circle.

"And did he love you, mademoiselle?" the Duc de Carolan asked.

"Oh, dear no," the girl answered. "I don't suppose I should have loved him if he had. But he was strong, and gentle, and brave, and he was nearly four years older than I was, and he always treated me with respect. Oh, yes, I loved him."

"He must have been the most insensible of boys," the Duc de Carolan said; "but no doubt he was very good and gentle, this youthful islander; but how do you know that he was brave?"

The sneering tone with which the duke spoke was clearly resented by Adele, for her cheek flushed, and she spoke with an earnestness quite different from the half-laughing tone she had hitherto spoken in.

"I know that he was brave, Monsieur le Duc, because he fought with, and ran through the body, a man who insulted me."

The girl spoke so earnestly that for a moment a hush fell upon the little group; and the Duc de Carolan, who clearly resented the warm tone in which she spoke, said:

"Quite a hero of romance, mademoiselle. This unfortunate who incurred your Paladin's indignation was clearly more insolent than skillful, or Sir Amadis of sixteen could hardly have prevailed against the dragon."

This time Adele de Pignerolles was seriously angry:

"Monsieur le Duc de Carolan," she said quietly, "you have honoured me by professing some admiration of my poor person, and methinks that good taste would have demanded that you would have feigned, at least, some interest in the boy who championed my cause. I was wrong, even in merry jest, to touch on such a subject, but I thought that as French gentlemen you would understand that I was half serious, half jesting at myself for this girlish love of mine. He is not here to defend himself against your uncourteous remarks; but, Monsieur le Duc, allow me to inform you that the fact that the person who insulted me paid for it almost with his life was no proof of his great want of skill, for monsieur my father will inform you, if you care to ask him, that had you stood opposite to my boy hero, the result would probably have been exactly the same; for, as I have often heard him say that this boy was fully a match for himself; I imagine that the chance of a nobleman who, with all his merits, has not, so far as I have heard, any great pretensions to special skill with his sword, would be slight indeed."

The duke, with an air of bitter mortification on his face, bowed before the indignant tone in which Adele spoke; and as the little circle broke up, the rumour ran round the room that L'Anglaise had snubbed the Duc de Carolan in a crushing manner.

Scarcely had the duke, with a few murmured excuses, withdrawn from the group, than the marquis advanced towards his daughter with a tall figure by his side.

"Adele," he said, "allow me to introduce to you the English officer whose own unlucky fate threw him into my hands. He desires to have the honour of your acquaintance. You may remember his name, for his family lived in the county in which we passed some time. Lieutenant Rupert Holliday, of the English dragoons."

Adele had not looked up as her father spoke. As he crossed the room towards her she had glanced towards his companion, whose dress showed him to be the English officer who was, as she knew, with him; but something in her father's tone of voice, still more the sentences with which he introduced the name, warned her that this was the surprise of which he had spoken, and the name, when it came at last, was almost expected. Had it not been for the manner in which she had just been speaking, and the vague wonder that flashed through her mind whether he could have heard her, she could have met Rupert, with such warning as she had had, as a perfect stranger. What she had said was perfectly true, that as a child he had been her hero; but a young girl's heroes seldom withstand the ordeal of a four years' absence, and Adele was no exception. Rupert had gone out of her existence, and she had not thought of him, beyond an occasional feeling of wonder whether he was alive, for years; and had it not been for that unlucky speech--which, indeed, she could not have made had any of her girlish feeling remained, she could have met him as frankly and cordially as in the days when they danced together.

In spite, therefore, of her efforts, it was with a heightened colour that, as demanded by etiquette, Adele rose, and making a deep reverence in return to the even deeper bow of Rupert, extended her hand, which, taking the tips of the fingers, Rupert bent over and kissed. Then, looking up in her face, he said:

"The marquis your father has encouraged me to hope that you will take pity upon a poor prisoner, and forget and forgive his having fought against your compatriots."

Adele adroitly took up the line thus offered to her, and was soon deep in a laughing contest with him as to the merits of their respective countries, and above all as to his opinion of French beauty. Rupert answered in the exaggerated compliments characteristic of the time. After talking with her for some little time he withdrew, saying that he should have the honour of calling upon the following day with her father.

The next day when they arrived Rupert was greeted with a frank smile of welcome.

"I am indeed glad to see you again, Monsieur Rupert; but tell me why was that little farce of pretending that we were strangers, played yesterday?"

"It was my doing, Adele," her father said. "You know what the king is. If he were aware that Rupert were an old friend of ours he would imagine all sorts of things."

"What sort of things, papa?"

"To begin with, that Monsieur Rupert had come to carry you off from the various noblemen, for one or other of whom his Majesty destines your hand."

The girl coloured.

"What nonsense!

"However," she went on, "it would anyhow make no difference so far as the king is concerned, for I am quite determined that I will go into a convent and let all my lands go to whomsoever his Majesty may think fit to give them rather than marry any one I don't care for. I couldn't do it even to please you, papa, so you may be quite sure I couldn't do it to please the king.

"And now let me look at you, Monsieur Rupert. I talked to you last night, but I did not fairly look at you. Yes, you are really very little altered except that you have grown into a man: but I should have known you anywhere. Now, would you have known me?"

"Not if I had met you in the street," Rupert said. "When I talk to you, and look at you closely, Mademoiselle Adele Dessin comes back again; but at a casual glance you are simply Mademoiselle Adele de Pignerolles."

"I wish I were Adele Dessin again," she said. "I should be a thousand times happier living with my father than in this artificial court, where no one is what they seem to be; where everyone considers it his duty to say complimentary things; where everyone seems to be gay and happy, but everyone is as much slaves as if they wore chains. I break out sometimes, and astonish them."

A slight smile passed over Rupert's face; and Adele knew that he had overheard her the evening before. The girl flushed hotly. Her father and Madame de Soissons were talking together in a deep bay window at the end of the room.

"So you heard me last night, Monsieur Rupert. Well, there is nothing to be ashamed of. You were my hero when I was a child; I don't mind saying so now. If you had made me your heroine it would have been different, but you never did, one bit. Now don't try to tell stories. I should find you out in a moment; I am accustomed to hear falsehoods all day."

"There is nothing to be ashamed of, mademoiselle. Every one must have a hero, and I was the only boy you knew. No one could have misunderstood you; and even to those artificial fops who were standing round you, there seemed nothing strange or unmaidenly in your avowal that when you were a little girl you made a hero of a boy. You are quite right, I did not make a heroine of you. Boys, I think, always make heroines of women much older than themselves. I looked upon you as a dear, bright little girl, whom I would have cared for and protected as I would my favourite dog. Some boys are given to heroine worship. I don't think that is my line. I am only just getting out of my boyhood now, and I have never had a heroine at all."

So they sat and chatted, easily and pleasantly, as if four years had been rolled back, and they were boy and girl again in the garden of Windthorpe Chace.

"I suppose I shall see you every evening at the court?" Rupert said.

"I suppose so," the girl sighed. "But it will be much more pleasant here. You will come with papa, won't you?"

"Whenever he will be good enough to bring me," Rupert said.

"You remember what I told you about Adele," the marquis said, as they walked back to their rooms in the palace.

"Surely, sir," Rupert replied.

"I think it would be as well, both for her sake and your own, that you should not frequent her society in public, Rupert. His Majesty intends to give her hand to one of the half-dozen of his courtiers who are at present intriguing for it. Happily, as she is little over sixteen, although marriages here are often made at that age, the question does not press; and I trust that he will not decide for a year, or even longer. But if you were to be seen much at her side, it might be considered that you were a possible rival, and you might, if the king thought that there was the slightest risk of your interfering with his plans, find yourself shut up in the Bastille, or at Loches, or some other of the fortress dungeons, and Adele might be ordered to give her hand at once to the man he selected for her.

"There is hope in time. Adele may in time really come to love one of her suitors, and if he were one of those whom the king would like to favour, he would probably consent to the match. Then, the king may die. It is treason even to suppose such a thing possible; still he is but mortal; or something else may occur to change the course of the future.

"Of one thing I have decided: I will not see Adele sacrificed. I have for the last four years managed to transmit a considerable portion of the revenues of my estates to the hands of a banker in Holland; and if needs be I will again become an exile with her, and wait patiently until some less absolute monarch mounts the throne."

It was not so easy, however, to silence the mouths of the gossips of Versailles as the Marquis de Pignerolles had hoped. It was true that Rupert was seldom seen by the side of Adele in the drawing room of the palace, but it was soon noticed that he called regularly every morning with the marquis at Madame de Soissons', and that, however long the visits of the marquis might be, the young English officer remained until he left.

Adele's English bringing up, and her avowed liking for things English, were remembered; and the Duc de Carolan, and the other aspirants to Adele's hand, began to scowl angrily at the young Englishman whenever they met him.

Upon the other hand, among the ladies Rupert was a general favourite, but he puzzled them altogether. He was ready to chat, to pay compliments, to act as chevalier to any lady, but his compliments never passed beyond the boundary of mere courtly expression; and in a court where it appeared to be almost the duty of everyone to be in love, Rupert Holliday did not seem to know what love meant.

The oddness of this dashing-looking young officer--who was, the Marquis de Pignerolles assured everyone, a very gallant soldier, and who had killed in a duel the finest swordsman in the German army--being perfectly proof to all blandishments, and ready to treat every woman with equal courtesy and attention, was a mystery to the ladies of the court of Versailles; and Rupert was regarded as a most novel and amusing specimen of English coldness and impenetrability.

Rupert himself was absolutely ignorant of the opinion with which men and women alike regarded him. He dreamt not that it was only the character which so high an authority as the Marquis de Pignerolles had given him as a swordsman of extraordinary skill, that prevented the Duc de Carolan and some of Adele's other admirers from forcing a quarrel upon him. Still less did he imagine that the ladies of the court considered it in the highest degree singular that he did not fall in love with any of them. He went his way, laughed, talked, was pleasant with everyone, and enjoyed his life, especially his morning visits to Madame de Soissons.

The first intimation that was given of the jealousy with which the Duc de Carolan and others regarded Rupert, was a brief order that the Marquis de Pignerolles received from the king to retire with his prisoner to Paris; an intimation being given that although the marquis would as heretofore be received at court, yet that Rupert was not to leave the circuit of the walls of Paris. The marquis, who had foreseen the gathering storm in a hundred petty symptoms, was not surprised at the order. He knew the jealousy with which the king regarded any person who appeared even remotely likely to interfere with any plans that he had formed, and was sure that a mere hint from some favourite as to the possibility of Rupert's intimacy at Madame de Soissons proving an obstacle to the carrying out of his wishes with regard to the disposal of Adele's hand, would be sufficient to ensure the issue of an order for his instant dismissal from Versailles. Rupert was astonished and indignant at the order.

"At any rate I may call and say 'Goodbye' to mademoiselle, may I not?"

"I think that you had better not, Rupert; but I have simply orders to leave Versailles at one o'clock today. I can therefore only ask you to be here at that hour. It is now eleven."

"Very well, sir," Rupert said, "I will be here in time; and as I am not a prisoner, and can go about where I like, I do not think that even the king could object to my paying a visit of adieu."

On presenting himself at Madame de Soissons', Rupert heard that, in accordance with the king's command that morning received, Madame de Soissons and Mademoiselle de Pignerolles had gone out to the hunt, one of the royal carriages having come for them.

Rupert, determined not to be baulked, hurried back to the stables where the horses of the marquis, one of which was always at his disposal, were kept. In a few minutes he was riding out towards the forest of Saint Germains, where he learned that the royal chase had gone.

He rode for some time, until at last he came up with one of the royal carriages which had got separated from the others. He saw at once that it contained two of the ladies of the court with whom he was most intimate. They gave an exclamation of surprise as he reined up his horse at the window.

"You, Monsieur Holliday! How imprudent! Everyone knows that you are in disgrace, and exiled to Paris. How foolish of you to come here!"

"I have done nothing to be ashamed of," Rupert said. "Besides, I was ordered to leave at one o'clock, and it is not one o'clock yet."

"Oh, we are all angry with you, Monsieur l'Anglais, for you have been deceiving us all for the last three months. But, now mind, we bear no malice; but pray ride off."

As she spoke she made a sign to Rupert to alight and come to the window, so that the coachman might not overhear what was said.

"Do you know," she said, earnestly, "that you are trifling with your safety; and, if la belle Anglaise loves you, with her happiness? You have already done more than harm enough. The king has today, when he joined the hunt, presented to her formally before all the court the Duc de Carolan as her future husband. Remember, if you are found here you will not only be sent straight to some fortress, where you may remain till you are an old man, but you will do her harm by compromising her still further, in which case the king might be so enraged, that he might order her to marry the duke tomorrow."

"You are right. Thank you," Rupert said, quietly; "and I have indeed, although most unwittingly, done harm. Why you should all make up your minds I love Mademoiselle de Pignerolles I know not. I have never thought of the matter myself. I am but just twenty, and at twenty in England we are still little more than boys. I only know that I liked her very much, just as I did when she was a little girl."

"Oh, monsieur, but you are sly, you and l'Anglaise. So it was you that she owned was her hero; and monsieur the marquis introduced you as a stranger. Oh, what innocence!

"But there," she went on kindly, "you know your secret is safe with us. And monsieur," and she leant forward, "although you would not make love to me, I bear no malice, and will act as your deputy. A very strict watch is certain to be kept over her. If you want to write to her, enclose a note to me. Trust me, she shall have it.

"There, do not stop to thank me. I hear horses' hoofs. Gallop away, please; it would ruin all were you caught here."

Rupert pressed the hands the two ladies held out to him to his lips, mounted his horse, and rode furiously back to Versailles, where he arrived just in time to leave again for Paris at the hour beyond which their stay was not to be delayed. _

Read next: Chapter 19. The Evasion

Read previous: Chapter 17. A Prisoner of War

Table of content of Cornet of Horse: A Tale of Marlborough's Wars


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book