The princess had listened to this with the close attention that one gives to a diplomatic dispatch, to discover the meaning that is often hidden behind a word placed here rather than there, or a comma put in such and such a place.
Then after a moment’s reflection, the Dowager Princess, no doubt seeing in this message all that she had originally feared to see in it – that is, espionage, plain and simple – pursed her lips and said: ‘You will stay in Chantilly, Monsieur, as the queen desires, and moreover you will tell us which apartment would be most pleasing to you and most convenient for carrying out your duties, and that apartment shall be yours.’
‘Madame,’ the young man replied, slightly raising an eyebrow. ‘I have had the honour to explain to Your Highness many things that were not in the instructions. Between Your Highness’s anger and the queen’s will, I am dangerously placed – I, a poor officer and, above all, a bad courtier: yet it seems to me that Your Highness might be generous enough to abstain from mortifying a man who is only a passive instrument. It is unpleasant for me, Madame, to have to do what I am doing. But since the queen has ordered it, I must obey her orders to the letter. I should not have asked for this task, and I should have been happy were it to have been given to someone else; it seems to me that it is saying a lot…’
And the officer raised his head with a blush that brought a similar redness to the haughty forehead of the princess.
‘Monsieur,’ she replied. ‘In whatever rank of society we are placed, as you say, we owe obedience to Her Majesty. I shall therefore follow the example that you have given me and obey as you do. But you should nonetheless understand how hard it is for me not to be able to receive a worthy gentleman like yourself without being free to offer him, as I should wish, the honours of the house. From now on, you are the master here. Continue.’
The officer bowed deeply and replied: ‘Madame, God forbid that I should ever forget the distance that separates me from Your Highness and the respect that I owe to your house. Your Highness will continue to command in her home, and I shall be the first among her servants.’
With these words, the young man retired without awkwardness, without servility and without arrogance, leaving the dowager prey to an anger that was all the more violent since she could not take it out on an officer who was so discreet and so respectful.
So Mazarin was the subject of conversation that evening, a conversation that would have struck the minister down from the depth of the ruelle, if curses had the power to kill like projectiles.
The gentleman went back to the antechamber, to the lackey who had announced him.
‘Now, Monsieur,’ the man said, coming over to the messenger. ‘The Princess de Condé, with whom you have requested an audience on behalf of the queen, agrees to receive you. Please follow me.’
The officer understood this form of speech that saved the face of the princesses and seemed as grateful for the favour that was being done him as if the favour had not been imposed by an order from above. So, going through the apartments on the heels of the valet, he reached the door of the princess’s bedchamber.
At this point, the valet turned round.
‘The princess went to bed after the hunt,’ he said, ‘and since she is tired, she will receive you lying down. Whom shall I announce to Her Highness?’
‘Announce the Baron de Canolles, on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen Regent,’ the young man replied.
At this name, which the supposed princess heard from her bed, she made a start of surprise that, had it been seen, would have seriously compromised her identity. Quickly pulling down her lace cap over her eyes with her right hand, while the left one brought the richly embroidered quilt up to her chin, she said, in a trembling voice: ‘Show him in.’
The officer came in.
BOOK II
MADAME DE CONDÉ
I
Canolles was shown into a huge room lined with dark hangings, lit only by a night light set on a chest of drawers between the two windows. By the little light that came from it, however, one could make out a large painting above the lamp showing a woman, full-length, holding a child by the hand. At the angles of the four corners sparkled the three golden fleurs-de-lys: all that was needed to make the three fleurs-de-lys of France was to remove the heart-shaped bend from them. Finally, in the depths of a huge alcove, where the weak, shimmering light barely penetrated, could be seen under the heavy curtains of a bed, the woman on whom the name of the Baron de Canolles had produced such a striking effect.
The young man addressed the usual polite greetings to her: that is to say, he took the three regulation steps towards the bed, bowed, and took a further three steps. After that the two maids who had doubtless helped Madame de Condé into her bed retired, and after the valet had shut the door behind him, Canolles was alone with the princess.
It was not Canolles’s place to open the conversation, so he waited for her to say something to him. But since the princess, too, apparently wished to preserve an obstinate silence, the young officer decided that it was better to ignore convention rather than to remain any longer in such an awkward situation. However, he had no doubt in his mind that the storm, still contained by this contemptuous silence, would burst at the first words, and that he would have to confront a second outburst of anger from a princess who was still more formidable than the first, being younger and more interesting.
But the young man was emboldened by the extreme nature of the offence that was being committed against him, and he bowed for the third time, as fitted the circumstances, that is in a stiff, formal manner, indicating the bad temper that was rising inside his Gascon brain.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I have had the honour to request an audience of Your Highness on behalf of Her Majesty the reigning Queen, and Your Highness has deigned to grant me one. Now could Your Highness stretch her goodness to the very limit and indicate by a word or a sign that she has been gracious enough to notice my presence and is ready to hear me?’
A movement of the curtains and under the blankets told Canolles that he was about to have a reply. And a voice could be heard, so full of emotion that it was almost stifled.
‘Speak, Monsieur,’ said the voice. ‘I am listening.’
Canolles adopted a rhetorical tone and began:
‘Her Majesty the Queen,’ he said, ‘has sent me to you, Madame, to assure Your Highness of her wish to maintain good friendly relations with her.’
There was a visible movement behind the curtains of the four-poster, and the princess interrupted the speech.
‘Monsieur,’ she said, in an unsteady voice, ‘speak to me no more of the friendship between Her Majesty the Queen and the house of Condé. There are proofs to the contrary in the dungeons at Vincennes.’
‘Huh!’ Canolles thought. ‘It appears that they have been rehearsing and will all repeat the same thing.’
Meanwhile, a new movement that the messenger did not observe, because of the awkwardness of the situation, was taking place in the bed. The princess went on: ‘So, what precisely do you want, Monsieur?’
‘I, myself, do not want anything, Madame,’ Canolles said, standing upright. ‘It is Her Majesty the Queen who desired that I should enter this château, that, unworthy though I am of the honour, I should keep company with Your Highness, and that I should strive with all my strength to restore harmony between the two princes of the blood, who are divided without cause at such a painful moment.’
‘Without cause!’ the princess exclaimed. ‘You are claiming that the breach between us is without cause!’
‘Excuse me, Madame,’ Canolles went on. ‘I am claiming nothing. I am not a judge, only an interpreter.’
‘And until this fine harmony is restored, the queen will have me spied upon, under the pretext…’
‘So!’ Canolles exclaimed in exasperation. ‘Now I’m a spy! You have said the word! I thank Your Highness for her frankness.’
In the despair that had started to overtake him, Canolles made on
e of those fine movements that painters so eagerly seek to portray in their scenes of actors and life immobilized in their living pictures.
‘So, that’s it, it’s decided, I’m a spy!’ Canolles went on. ‘Well, then, Madame, please treat me as such wretches are treated, forget that I am the envoy of a queen and that this queen takes responsibility for all my actions and that I am no more than a mote of dust obedient to her breath. Have me driven out by your lackeys and killed by your men; put me in front of those to whom I can respond with a stick or a sword, but please do not so cruelly insult an officer who is obeying his duty both as a soldier and as a subject – you, Madame, who are so elevated in birth, merit and misfortune!’
These words straight from the heart, with the agony of a groan and the stridency of a reproach, were bound to produce an effect, and so they did. As she listened, the princess sat up, leaning on her elbow, with eyes shining and trembling hands, to make a gesture full of anguish towards the messenger.
‘Heaven forbid,’ she said, ‘that I should ever intend to insult such a fine gentleman as yourself. No, Monsieur de Canolles, no, I do not suspect your loyalty. I take back my words which are wounding, I admit, and I never wished to wound you. No, no, you are a noble officer, Baron, and I acknowledge that fully.’
The princess, in speaking these words, doubtless carried away by the generous feeling that drew them from her heart, had involuntarily moved forward outside the shadow of the canopy formed by the thick curtains. Her white forehead had been visible under her cap, and seeing her blonde hair falling in braids, her lips of burning red and her soft, moist eyes, Canolles shuddered because a kind of vision had just passed before him, and he thought that he could once again smell a scent, the very memory of which intoxicated him. It seemed to him as though one of those golden gates through which the happiest dreams pass had opened to release a swarm of delightful thoughts and restore to him the joys of love. He looked more directly and more clearly at the princess’s bed, and, in the space of a second, in the brief light of a flash of lightning that lit up all the past, he recognized, in the princess in the bed before him, the Viscount de Cambes.
In the event, he had been so agitated for the past few minutes that the false princess could have attributed it to the unfortunate remark that he said caused him so much pain, and since the movement that she made, as we said, lasted only a moment and she had been careful to withdraw almost immediately once more into the shadows, cover her eyes and quickly hide even the white hand, so slender that it might give away her identity, she tried – not without emotion, but at least without anxiety – to resume the conversation where she had left it off.
‘You were saying, Monsieur?’ the young woman asked.
But Canolles was dazzled, fascinated… Visions passed back and forth in front of his eyes, his mind was in a whirl, and he was losing his memory, plus his common sense: he was even going to lose respect and question her. A single instinct, perhaps the same that God puts into the heart of those in love, which women call shyness, but which is only avarice, warned Canolles to keep up the pretence and wait; not to lose his dream and not, by an incautious or over-hasty word, to compromise the happiness of his whole life.
He did not add a further gesture or word to the minimum that he ought to say or do. Good heavens! What would happen to him if this great princess suddenly recognized him and if she should conceive a loathing for him here, in her château at Chantilly, as she had conceived a mistrust of him in the inn of Master Biscarros? What if she were to return to the accusation that she had now set aside and imagine that, thanks to an official title and a royal order, he intended to resume a pursuit that was excusable towards the Viscount or Viscountess de Cambes, but insolent and almost criminal when its object was a princess of the blood?
And yet, he suddenly thought, is it possible that a princess of that name and rank could have travelled alone, with only one servant?
As always happens in such circumstances, when a shaken and troubled mind is seeking to steady itself on something, Canolles was distraught. He looked around him and his eyes rested on the portrait of the woman holding her son’s hand. At the sight of it, a sudden realization came to him, and, despite himself, he took a step closer to the painting.
The false princess herself could not repress a little gasp, and when, hearing it, Canolles turned round he saw that her face, that had been veiled, was now entirely masked.
‘Ah, ha!’ Canolles thought to himself. ‘What is the meaning of this? Either it was the princess that I met on the Bordeaux road, or I am the victim of a deception and she is not the person in that bed. In any case, we shall see.’
‘Madame,’ he said, bruquely, ‘I am not sure now how to interpret your silence, and I have recognized…’
‘What have you recognized?’ exclaimed the lady in the bed sharply.
‘I have recognized,’ Canolles continued, ‘that I have the misfortune to have inspired the same feeling in you as I did in the Dowager Princess.’
‘Ah!’ said the voice, with a sigh of relief that its owner could not suppress.
Canolles’s remark was perhaps not especially logical or even relevant to the matter in hand, but it had achieved the desired effect. He had noticed the startled movement that interrupted it and the happy one that greeted his last words.
‘However,’ he went on, ‘I am nonetheless obliged to tell Your Highness, however unpleasant this may be, that I must stay in the château and accompany Your Highness wherever she chooses to go.’
‘What!’ the princess exclaimed. ‘I am not to be allowed even to be alone in my room? Oh, Monsieur, this is more than an indignity!’
‘I told Your Highness that such were my instructions, but Your Highness has no need to worry,’ Canolles added, staring hard at the lady in the bed and emphasizing every word. ‘Your Highness must know better than anyone that I am ready to accede to a woman’s demands.’
‘I should?’ the princess exclaimed, in a voice that still expressed more uneasiness than astonishment. ‘In truth, Monsieur, I don’t know what you mean; I can’t think to what situation you refer.’
‘Madame,’ the officer continued, with a bow. ‘I believe that the valet who let me in told Your Highness my name. I am the Baron de Canolles.’
‘Well?’ said the princess, in quite a firm voice. ‘What has that to do with me?’
‘I thought I had already had the honour to be of service to Your Highness.’
‘To me? In what way, I beg you?’ the voice continued, at a pitch that reminded Canolles of an intonation, at once very irritated and very fearful, that was lodged in his memory. He decided that he had gone far enough; in any case, he was more or less certain of what he wanted to know.
‘By not carrying out my instructions to the letter,’ he continued, in a tone of the deepest respect.
The princess seemed to be reassured.
‘I don’t want to put you in the wrong, Monsieur,’ she said. ‘Carry out your instructions, whatever they may be.’
‘Fortunately, Madame,’ said Canolles, ‘I still do not know how to persecute a woman and still less how to offend a princess. I therefore have the honour to repeat to Your Highness what I already told the Dowager Princess, namely that I am her very humble servant. Please, give me your word that you will not leave the château unless I accompany you, and I shall relieve you of my presence – which, as I well understand, must be abhorrent to Your Highness.’
‘But in that case,’ the princess said, urgently, ‘you will not be carrying out your orders?’
‘I shall do what my conscience tells me to do.’
‘Monsieur de Canolles,’ said the voice. ‘I swear to you that I shall not leave Chantilly without informing you.’
‘In that case, Madame,’ said Canolles, with a deep bow, ‘forgive me for having been the involuntary cause of your anger a moment ago. Your Highness will not see me again unless she calls for me.’
‘Thank you, Baron,’ said the voice, with an exp
ression of joy that seemed to echo beneath the canopy. ‘Thank you, you may leave. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again tomorrow.’
This time, there was no mistaking it: the baron recognized the voice, the eyes and the indescribably voluptuous smile of that delightful creature who had, so to speak, slipped through his fingers on the evening when the unknown rider had arrived bringing the order from the Duke d’Epernon. There were those intangible emanations that perfume the air breathed by the loved one, that warm vapour which comes from the body whose contours the entranced soul imagines it is embracing… through a supreme effort of the imagination; that deceiving elf that feeds on the ideal as matter feeds on the actual.
A last glance at the portrait, ill-lit though it was, showed the baron, whose eyes were starting to become accustomed to this half light, the aquiline nose of the Maillé family, the black hair and deep-set eyes of the princess, while, before him, the woman who had just played the first act of the very demanding role that she had undertaken had eyes set level with her face, a straight nose with flared nostrils, a mouth wrinkled at the corners by the habit of smiling and the rounded cheeks that dispel any notion of tedious meditation.
Canolles knew all that he needed to know, so he bowed once more with the same respect as if he still believed that he was dealing with the princess and retired to his quarters.
II
Canolles had no definite plan: so, on returning to his room, he started to walk quickly back and forth (as people are inclined to do when they are undecided), without noticing that Castorin, who had been waiting for him, had got up and was following him, completely covered by the dressing gown that he was holding out in front of him.
Castorin bumped into a piece of furniture, and Canolles turned round.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are you doing there with that garment?’
‘I’m waiting for you to take off your jacket, Monsieur.’
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