“And then?”

  “And then the jeweller was frightened and dared not refuse to do what the Dauphine demanded. So he left the diamond spray with her, and came hurrying to me to tell me my property had been stopped en route.”

  “Well, and what would you have me do?”

  “Why, I would have you make them give me back my spray, of course.”

  “Make them give you back your spray?”

  “Certainly!”

  “Make the Dauphine, that is to say? You must be mad, my dear.”

  “Mad? I mad?”

  “Yes; I would rather give you another instead.”

  “Good! may I count on what you say?”

  “Upon my honour, you may.”

  “Yes! and I shall get it, I suppose, in a year’s time, or six months hence at earliest, — a pleasant prospect truly!”

  “The delay will serve as a warning to you.”

  “A warning, — how a warning?”

  “A warning to be less ambitious in future.”

  “I ambitious?”

  “Certainly. You remember what Monsieur de Chauvelin said the other day?”

  “Chauvelin indeed, he talked nothing but foolishness.”

  “But tell me, who authorised you to bear the arms of France?”

  “Who authorised me; why! you did.”

  “I did!”

  “Yes, you! The spaniel you gave me the other day bore them on his collar; why should not I wear them on my head. But there, I know the meaning of it all; I have been told.”

  “What else have you been told? come.”

  “Your plans, to be sure.”

  “Well, tell me my plans, Countess. Upon my word, I should be glad to hear them.”

  “Can you deny there is a project on foot for your marrying the Princesse de Lamballe, and that Monsieur de Chauvelin and all the Dauphin and Dauphine’s clique are urging you to make this alliance?”

  “Madame,” answered the King in a severe voice, “I will not deny there is some truth in what you say, and I will go so far as to add I might do worse. You know this better that I do myself, Countess, you who have had me sounded as to another marriage.”

  This speech stopped the Countess’s mouth, and she went and sat down at the further end of the room in a rage, and broke two of the china ornaments.

  “Ah, yes! Chauvelin was quite right,” muttered the King, “the crown is ill placed in the hands of cupids.”

  Then ensued a moment of sultry silence, during which Mademoiselle du Barry returned to the room, to say:

  “Sire, Monsieur de Chauvelin cannot be found anywhere. They think he is shut up in his own rooms; but though I went myself and rang and asked for him at his door, he refused to take any notice.”

  “Alas! alas!” ejaculated the King, “can he have met with an accident? is he ill? Quick, quick, tell them to break in the door.”

  “Oh! no, Sire, he is not ill,” the Countess declared sourly, “for on leaving the Prince de Soubise and my brother Jean just now in the Œil-de-Boeuf, he announced he was going to be at work all day on urgent business, but that he would make a point of being present this evening at Your Majesty’s card tables.”

  The King took advantage of the Countess’s return to a more yielding attitude to patch up a truce.

  “Perhaps he is writing his confession,” he laughed, “for the edification of his Monk at Grosbois.”

  Then turning to the Countess, “By-the-bye, Madame,” he said, “do you know, Bordeu’s medicine works miracles? I mean to take no other. A fig for Bonnard and Lamartinière and all I their systems! My new doctor is going to make me young again, he is upon my word!

  “Bah! sire,” put in Chon, “what ails your Majesty to be always talking about growing old? ‘Od’s life! Your Majesty is the same age as everybody else, I suppose.”

  “Come now!” cried the King gleefully, “now you talk like that scamp D’Aumont. I regretted to him the other day I had no teeth left, and he answered, showing me as fine a set of grinders as ever a market-porter had, “Why, good Lord, Sire, who has any teeth nowadays?”

  “I have,” broke in the Countess, “and what’s more, I tell you I will bite you, — bite you till the blood comes, — if you go on sacrificing me like this to everybody.”

  So saying, she came and sat close to the King, showing him a row of pearls that plainly belied her threatening words. Thereupon the Monarch, braving all risks, put his own to the Conutess’s rosy lips. The latter nodded to Chon, who picked up the fragments of the two broken ornaments.

  “Good!” murmured the girl, “all that falls in the trenches is the soldier’s.” Then after casting a parting look at the King and Countess. “Undoubtedly,” she said to herself, “Bordeu is a great man; I do think he is,” — and she slipped out of the room, leaving her sister fairly on the road to a reconciliation.

  The same evening at six o’clock play began at the King’s tables. Monsieur Chauvelin had kept his promise and was one of the first to arrive. The Countess also was there in the fullest of full dress, because she knew the Dauphine was to be present.

  Marquis and Countess met and greeted one another with the utmost amiability.

  “Gracious God! Monsieur de Chauvelin,” exclaimed the Countess with one of those double-edged smiles courtiers know so well how to assume,” how red you are in the face! One might think you were going to have a fit of apoplexy. Marquis, Marquis, consult Bordeu; Bordeu is your only hope.”

  Then looking at the King with a smile to drive a Pope into mortal sin, she added, “Ask the King if it is not so.”

  Monsieur de Chauvelin bowed and answered, “I will not fail to follow your advice, Madame.”

  “You will only be doing what a loyal subject should,” she returned.”

  “you are bound to be very careful of your health, my dear Marquis, as you are to be only two month’s before....”

  “I only wish it were the other way and I had to precede you,” put in the King; “you would be sure of a hundred years of life then, Chauvelin. Well, I can only repeat the Countess’s good counsel, — go to Bordeu, old friend, go to Bordeu.”

  “Sire, whatsoever the hour destined for my death, — and God alone knows the hour of every man’s death, — I have promised the King to die at his feet.”

  “Nonsense, Chauvelin; there are some promises people make and don’t keep; ask these ladies if it is not so. But if you are so melancholy as all this, dear friend, we shall all be dying of the dismals only to look at you. Come, Chauvelin, are we to play to-night?”

  “As your Majesty pleases.”

  “Do you care to win a game of ombre from me?”

  “I am at the King’s orders,” — and thereupon the Court took their places for play.

  Monsieur de Chauvelin and the King sat down facing each other at a special table.

  “Now, Chauvelin, look out,” cried the King heartily, “and be careful how you play; you may be ill, but I have never felt better. I am in the highest of high spirits. Hold tight to your money, whatever you do; I have a mirror to pay for to Rottiers, and a diamond spray to Boehmer.”

  Madame du Barry compressed her lips significantly at the words.

  Instead of answering, however, the Marquis rose painfully from his chair, muttering, “It is very hot, Sire.”

  “True,” replied the King, instead of being annoyed, as Louis XIV. would have been, at this breach of the laws of etiquette; he got over the difficulty by adroitly applying the remark to himself; “yes, Chauvelin, it is very hot, and I am glad of it, for often in April the evenings are chilly.”

  The Marquis forced a smile, and gathered up his cards with a painful effort.

  “Come, you are ombre, Chauvelin.”

  “Yes, Sire,” stammered the Marquis, bowing over the table.

  “Have you a good hand, come now? Ah! ventre saint gris as my ancestor Henry IV. used to say, how dull and disagreeable you are to-night!”

  Then, after glancing over his own cards, “Ah, ha! my friend, I think you are done for this time.”

  The Marquis made a violent effort to speak, and turned so red in the face that the King stopped short panic stricken.

  “Why, what is the matter, Chauvelin?” he asked; “speak, man, speak!”

  But Monsieur de Chauvelin only put out his hands blindly, dropped his cards, heaved a sigh, and fell face downwards on the floor.

  “Great God!” cried the King. “A stroke! an apoplectic stroke!” whispered the courtiers who had hurried to the spot, They lifted the Marquis from the ground, but he never moved a limb.

  “Take that away, take it away, I tell you,” the terrified King ordered.

  Trembling and twitching with fear, he left the table and seized Madame du Barry’s arm, who drew him away into her private apartments. He had not once turned his head to look back at the friend from whom only the day before he had found it impossible to be parted.”

  The King gone, no one gave another thought to the Marquis, lying there lifeless. His body remained awhile reclining in an armchair, into which they had lifted him to see if life were extinct or no, and then let it fall back an inert mass.

  The corpse had a weird effect, thus left all alone in the great deserted room, amidst the flashing lustres and the perfumed flowers.

  Before long a man appeared on the threshold of the empty salon, looked all about him, saw the Marquis lying back in the chair, walked up to him, laid a hand over his heart, and in a hard, dry, clear voice, pronounced exactly as the great Palace clock struck seven:

  “He is gone. A fine death, by God! a very fine death!”

  Such was Monsieur de Chauvelin’s only funeral oration, and it was no other than Lamartinière who spoke it.

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE APPARITION.

  AT an early hour of the same day Père Delar had arrived at Grosbois, purposing to say mass in the Chapel and not to allow the Marquis’s good and christianlike dispositions of the day before to cool. But Madame de Chauvelin informed him how their promising neophyte had slipped through their fingers at the first friendly word from the King, and with tears in her eyes expressed many fears for his eventual salvation.

  She invited her Confessor to stay and dine with her, that she might have further opportunity of conversing with him and deriving from his wise advice the courage she needed so sorely after this fresh disappointment.’ After leaving the table, Madame de Chauvelin and the Monk walked in the park till it began to grow late, after which they had seats brought out and spent some time by the side of a fine sheet of water to enjoy the cooling evening breeze after the heat of the day.

  “For all your comforting and consoling words, Reverend Father,” declared the Marquise, “this sudden departure of Monsieur de Chauvelin makes me terribly anxious. I know what strong ties he has binding him to Court life; I know the King is all powerful to influence not his head only but his heart, and his Majesty’s conduct is so very ill regulated. — It is not a sin, is it, Father, to say so? alas! the scandal of it is but too notorious!”

  “I do assure you, Madame, that the Marquis has received a most salutary impression; ‘tis the first battle won, Providence will complete the campaign. I spoke of the matter this morning to our Reverend Prior, and he ordered his Brethren of the House to pray for a happy consummation. You must pray likewise, my daughter, you who are most concerned of any in this blessed work; your children must pray; we must all pray. With the same intent I offered up this morning in the Chapel the holy sacrifice of the mass, and I mean to do the same every day.”

  “For twenty years, — ever since my marriage with Monsieur de Chauvelin,” returned the Marquise, “I have never let an hour pass without asking God to touch his heart. Hitherto the Lord has not answered my prayers. I have lived alone, most often in grief and tears, as you know, Father. I have groaned in solitude over errors I could not prevent; God, it would seem, did not hold me firm enough to deserve the victory. I had to bear more suffering to purchase this gift of grace. Well, I will suffer gladly! The Almighty’s will be done!”

  Meantime, behind the Marquise and Père Delar, the Tutor was walking with his two charges. Scarcely older than they — the Abbé was only eighteen — he took part in all their amusements.

  “Brother,” began the older, “do you know what is the fashionable game now at Court?”

  “Of course I do, my father told me yesterday at supper; it is called ombre.”

  “Well then, let us play at ombre.”

  “Impossible; to begin with, we must have cards, and besides, we don’t know how to play.”

  “One player is the ombre “(shade).

  “And the other?”

  “Faith! the other is afraid, I suppose, and so he loses.”

  “Now, brother,” went on the elder, “let us say no more about cards; you know our mother does not like it, she thinks cards bring misfortune.”

  At that moment Madame de Chauvelin rose from her seat.

  “My mother is going away into the park,” replied the younger lad, following her with his eyes; “so she will never see us. Besides, the Abbé, who is with us, would warn us if it were wrong.”

  “It is always wrong,” said the Tutor, “to grieve one’s mother.”

  “Oh! but my father plays cards at Court,” retorted the child with that pitiless logic that like all weak things clings to any and every support. “My father plays, so we can.”

  The Abbé could find nothing to say, and the child went on:

  “Look, my mother is bidding good-bye to Father Delar; she is going with him as far as the gate... he is on the point of going. Only wait a bit; once Father Delar is gone, my mother will return to her oratory; we will go into the Château after her, ask for cards and have a game.”

  The children watched their mother’s form growing fainter and fainter in the deepening shadow of the trees beneath which she finally disappeared.

  It was one of those delightful evenings that come before the heats of May. The trees were still leafless, but the swelling buds showed they would soon assume their summer garb. Some, like the chestnuts and lindens, more precocious than the rest, were already clothed in the first tender green of springtide. The still air was filled with the first swarms of the myriad winged insects that are born with the Spring to perish in the Autumn. They could be seen dancing in millions in the last rays of the setting sun, which turned the river into a riband of gold and purple, while to the eastward, that is the direction in which Madame de Chauvelin had plunged into the depths of the park, all objects were beginning to merge into that lovely bluish haze that is seen only at certain specially favoured seasons of the year. Infinite peace and beauty reigned supreme over the twilight landscape.

  Amidst this silence seven o’clock sounded from the castle clock, the strokes vibrating long on the evening breeze.

  Suddenly the Marquise, who was saying farewell to her Monkish Confessor, uttered a loud cry.

  “What is it?” asked the Reverend Father, returning to her side; “what ails you, Marquise?”

  “Ails me? Oh! nothing, nothing. But, oh God...!” and the Marquise blanched visibly.

  “But you cried out!... You felt some pang or pain!... At this very moment you are growing paler and paler! What is the matter? in heaven’s name, what is the matter?”

  “Impossible! my eyes deceive me!”

  “What do you see? speak, Madame, speak!”

  “No, there is nothing,” and on the Monk’s still pressing her, “nothing, nothing,” she repeated emphatically.

  But her voice died between her lips, and her eyes stared fixedly into the gloom, while her hand, white as ivory, was lifted slowly to point towards something her companion could not see.

  “For pity’s sake, Madame,” urged Père Delar eagerly, “tell me what it is you see.”

  “Nothing, I see nothing! No, no, it is sheer folly,” cried Madame de Chauvelin, “and yet... oh! look, look!”

  “Look where?”

  “Yonder, yonder, do you see?”

  “I see nothing.”

  “You see nothing... there, there!”

  “Nothing, nothing whatsoever; but you, Madame, tell me what you see.”

  “Oh! I see, I see... but no, it cannot be.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see Monsieur de Chauvelin in Court dress, but pale and walking feebly; he passed yonder, yonder.”

  “Great God!”

  “Without seeing me, — mark that; or if he did see me, without speaking, — which is stranger still.”

  “And now, do you see him still?”

  “Yes, I see him still,” — and with finger and eyes the Marquise indicated the direction taken by the Marquis, whose form was all the time invisible to Père Delar.

  “And whither is he going, Madame?”

  “Towards the Château; there, he is passing the great oak; there, he is close by the stone bench. Oh! look, look! he is going straight towards the children; he steps round yonder clump of trees; he disappears. If the children are still where they were, they cannot help but see him.”

  Even as she spoke, a cry rang out that made Madame de Chauvelin tremble. The sound came from the two boys, and had a singularly mournful and solemn effect echoing through the spacious gloom. The Marquise nearly fainted and would have fallen, had not Father Delar caught her in his arms.

  “Do you hear?” she faltered, “do you hear?”

  “Yes,” replied the Monk, “I did indeed hear a cry.”

  Next moment the Marquise saw, or rather became intuitively aware of without seeing, her two children running towards her. The patter of their feet, as they dashed breathlessly forward, could be heard on the gravel of the path.

  “Mother, mother! did you see?” cried the elder lad, and the younger re-echoed the words.

  “Oh! Madame, do not listen to what they say,” called the Abbé, hurrying up behind them, breathless with the efforts he had made to overtake them.

  “Well, children, what is it? “Madame de Chauvelin asked them. But the two boys, instead of answering, only pressed closer to her side.

  “Come, tell me what happened,” she said fondling their curly heads, “speak, speak!”