‘I see no reason to take off my jacket. Put the dressing gown on a chair and wait.’
‘What! Monsieur is not going to take off his jacket?’ Castorin, a naturally capricious valet, appeared more cantankerous than ever that evening. ‘So. Is Monsieur not going straight to bed?’
‘No.’
‘And when does Monsieur intend to go to bed then?’
‘What does it matter to you?’
‘A great deal, since I’m very tired.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Canolles, stopping and looking directly at Castorin. ‘You’re very tired, are you?’
The baron could clearly read on his groom’s face the impertinent expression worn by servants who are dying to get themselves dismissed.
‘Very tired,’ said Castorin.
Canolles shrugged his shoulders.
‘Go outside,’ he said. ‘Stay in the antechamber. When I need you, I’ll ring.’
‘I must warn you, Monsieur, that if you wait too long, I shall no longer be in the antechamber.’
‘And where will you be, may I ask?’
‘In my bed. It seems to me that after travelling two hundred leagues, one should take some rest.’
‘Monsieur Castorin,’ said Canolles, ‘you are a weakling.’
‘If the baron feels that a weakling is not worthy of serving him, he has only to say the word, and I shall relieve him of my service,’ Castorin replied, assuming his most majestic air.
Canolles was not feeling patient at that moment, and if Castorin could have merely glimpsed the shadow of the storm that was brewing in his master’s mind, it is certain that, however keen he was to acquire his freedom, he would have waited until another time before making the proposal that he had just suggested. The baron marched directly up to his groom, and taking one button on his jerkin between his thumb and index finger (a gesture that has since become associated with a greater man1 than poor Canolles ever was), he said: ‘Repeat.’
‘I repeat,’ Castorin replied with the same impertinence, ‘that if the baron is not satisfied with me, I shall relieve him of my services.’
Canolles let go of Castorin and with a serious manner went over to get his cane. Castorin realized what was about to happen.
‘Monsieur!’ he cried. ‘Beware of what you are about to do. I am no simple lackey. I am in the service of the princess.’
‘Ah, ha!’ said Canolles, lowering the cane that he had already raised. ‘Ah, ha, so you are in the service of the princess.’
‘Yes, Monsieur, for the past quarter of an hour,’ said Castorin, straightening up.
‘And who hired you to serve her?’
‘Monsieur Pompée, her steward.’
‘Monsieur Pompée!’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this at once?’ Canolles exclaimed. ‘Yes, yes, my dear Castorin, you were right to leave my service, and here are two pistoles to make up for the blows that I was just about to give you.’
‘But…’ said Castorin, not daring to take the money. ‘But what does this mean. Is the baron making fun of me?’
‘Not at all. On the contrary – go and be a groom in the service of the princess, my friend. When is your service supposed to begin?’
‘As soon as the baron releases me.’
‘Very well, I shall release you from tomorrow morning.’
‘And between now and tomorrow morning?’
‘Until then you are still my groom, and you must obey me.’
‘Happily! What are the baron’s orders?’ asked Castorin, making up his mind to take the two pistoles.
‘Since you wish to sleep, I order you to undress and get into bed.’
‘What! What does the baron mean? I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to understand, just to obey. Get undressed, I’ll help you.’
‘What! Monsieur wants to help me?’
‘Of course. Since you are going to play the role of the Baron de Canolles, I shall have to play that of Castorin.’
And, without waiting for his groom’s permission, the baron took off his jerkin and put it on himself, removed his hat and put it on his own head and, double-locking the door behind him before Castorin had recovered from his surprise, hurried downstairs.
Canolles was at last starting to penetrate this mystery, though part of what had happened was still shrouded in obscurity. For the past two hours, it seemed to him that nothing he had seen or heard was quite natural. The attitude of everyone at Chantilly was stilted: everyone that he met seemed to him to be playing a part, yet the details merged into a general theme that suggested to the investigator on his mission from the queen that he would have to be twice as watchful if he did not wish to be the victim of some great ruse.
The association of Pompée with the Viscount de Cambes was very enlightening.
Whatever doubts Canolles still retained were finally dispelled, when, as soon as he emerged from the courtyard, despite the profound darkness of the night, he saw four men approaching and preparing to go in by the very door through which he had just emerged. The four men were led by the same manservant who had taken him to see the princesses. Another man, wrapped in a cloak, followed behind.
As they reached the door, the little group stopped, waiting for the orders of the man in the cloak.
‘You know where he is staying,’ he said, in an imperious voice, speaking to the servant. ‘You know him, since you are the one who guided him. So keep watch on him: make sure he cannot leave. Put your men in the stairway, in the corridor, wherever you want, it doesn’t matter, just as long as he is kept under guard himself, without knowing it, instead of him guarding Their Highnesses.’
Canolles made himself more insubstantial than a dream in the darkest corner, and from there, without being seen, he saw the five guards assigned to him disappear through the archway, while the man in the cloak, after making sure that they were carrying out his order, went back the way that he had come.
‘This still does not prove anything very precise,’ Canolles thought, watching him go. ‘Because mere irritation might be making them return the favour. Now, as long as that devil Castorin doesn’t decide to shout, cry out or do anything silly! I was wrong not to gag him. Too bad! It’s too late now. Off we go, let’s start our rounds.’
At that, Canolles cast an enquiring glance around him, crossed the courtyard and arrived at the wing of the building behind which the stables were situated.
All the life of the château seemed to have taken refuge here. There were the sounds of horses neighing and people hurrying by. The saddle room was echoing with the clink of bit and harness. Carriages were being wheeled out of the coachhouses, and voices, muffled by apprehension, but audible nonetheless if one listened carefully, exchanged comments.
Canolles stayed for a moment and listened. There could be no doubt about it: they were preparing for departure.
He crossed the space between one wing and the other, went through an arch and arrived in front of the château.
There he stopped. The windows on the ground floor were too brightly illuminated for him not to guess that a large number of torches were lit inside, and as these torches were going backwards and forwards, casting huge shadows and vast rays of light across the lawns, Canolles realized that the place in which there was all this activity was also the centre of the enterprise.
At first, he hesitated to uncover the secret that they were trying to hide from him. But he soon thought that his title, as the queen’s emissary, and the responsibility that this mission laid on him, excused many things, even to the most scrupulous conscience.
So, advancing cautiously and keeping close to the wall, the bottom of which was all the darker, the more the windows, set six or seven feet from the ground, were brightly lit, he climbed on to a stone post and from there to a ledge in the wall, and, steadying himself with one hand in an iron ring and with the other on the edge of the casement window, he stared through the corner of the glass with the closest an
d most piercing look that ever surveyed the headquarters of a conspiracy.
Here is what he saw. Near a woman who was standing up and fixing the last pin for holding her travelling hat on her head, a few chambermaids were completing the dressing of a child in a hunting costume. The child’s back was turned towards Canolles, who could only make out his blond hair. But the lady, her face fully lit by the two six-branched candlesticks that two valets were holding like caryatids on either side of her, offered Canolles the exact original of the portrait that he had seen earlier in the half light of the princess’s apartment, which had the long face, stern mouth and imperiously curved nose of the woman whose living image Canolles now had before him. Everything in her spoke of power: her bold gestures, her fiery eyes and the sudden movements of her head. Everything in those around her spoke of deference: their bows, their haste to bring whatever she demanded and their readiness to reply to their sovereign’s voice or to study her looks.
Several officers of the house, among whom he recognized the valet, were piling jewels, or money, or that arsenal of women that is known as her ‘finery’, some into suitcases, some into boxes, some into trunks. Meanwhile, the little prince was playing and running around among the busy servants; but, by some peculiar chance, Canolles did not manage to see his face.
‘I guessed as much,’ he murmured. ‘I’m being tricked and these people are preparing to leave. Yes, but I can with a single gesture change this scene of deception to one of mourning: I have only to run out on to the terrace and blow three times on this silver whistle, and in five minutes, in answer to its shrill note, two hundred men will have burst into the castle, arrested the princesses and garrotted all these officers with their sly smiles. Yes,’ he went on (except that now it was his heart and not his lips that spoke), ‘yes, but what about her… She, who is sleeping there, or pretending to sleep. I should lose her irretrievably: she would hate me, and this time her hatred would be well deserved. More than that: she would despise me, saying that I carried out my mission as a spy to the end. Yet, since she obeys the princess, why should I not obey the queen?’
At that moment, as though fate wanted to shake this newly recovered resolve, a door opened in the room where the princess’s preparations were underway, and two people – a man of fifty and a young woman of twenty – hurried joyfully through it. Canolles was riveted by what he saw. He had just recognized the fine hair, fresh lips and intelligent expression of the Viscount de Cambes, who, still smiling, came to plant a respectful kiss on the hand of Claire-Clémence de Maillé, Princess de Condé. But this time the viscount was wearing the clothes of her true sex and had been transformed into the most charming viscountess on earth.
Canolles would have given ten years of his life to hear their conversation, but it was no good him pressing his head to the window, as only an unintelligible hum reached his ears. He saw the princess make a farewell gesture to the young woman and kiss her forehead, while giving her some piece of advice that got a laugh from everyone around, before she went back to the ceremonial apartments with some under-officers, who were wearing the uniforms of superior officers. He even saw the worthy Pompée, swelling with pride in his orange coat with silver trimmings, puffing out his chest and, like Don Japhet of Armenia,2 leaning on the hilt of an enormous rapier as he accompanied his mistress, who was lifting up the skirts of her long satin dress. Then on the left, through the opposite door, the princess’s escort began to retire, the princess herself leading the procession, with the air of a queen rather than a fugitive. Behind her came the equerry, Vialas, carrying the little Duke d’Enghien wrapped in a cloak, Lenet, bearing an embossed casket and some bundles of papers, and finally the captain of the château, bringing up the rear of the procession, accompanied by two officers with bared swords.
All this crowd of people was leaving through a secret corridor. Canolles immediately jumped down from his observation post and ran to the archway, where, in the meantime, the lights had been put out. There he saw the whole procession silently making for the stables: departure was imminent.
At that moment, the notion of the duties imposed by the mission which the queen had entrusted him with rose up in Canolles’s mind. This woman leaving – this meant that it was the hounds of civil war, fully armed, that he was letting out once more to ravage the entrails of France. Of course, being a man, he was ashamed of being a spy and standing guard over a woman, but the Longueville lady who had set light to all four corners of Paris was a woman, too.
Canolles rushed to the terrace overlooking the park and put the silver whistle to his lips.
This was the end of all the preparations: Madame de Condé would not leave Chantilly, or, if she did, she would not have to travel a hundred yards before being surrounded, her and her escort, by a force three times its size. In this way, Canolles could accomplish his mission without the slightest risk. At a single blow he would destroy the fortune and the future of the house of Condé, and, at the same time, on the ruins of that house, he would build his fortune and lay the foundations of his future as the Vitrys and the Luynes had once done, and more recently the Guitauts and the Miossens,3 in circumstances perhaps still more threatening to the safety of the monarchy.
Then Canolles looked up at the apartment where, behind red velvet curtains, the light of the night light burning for the false princess shone soft and melancholy, and he thought he could see her beloved shadow against the great white blinds.
All sensible resolutions and selfish plans were scattered by this ray of soft light, just as the first light of day dispels the dreams and phantasms of night.
‘Monsieur de Mazarin,’ he thought, with a surge of passion, ‘is rich enough to do without all these princes and princesses who are escaping from him here, but I am not rich enough to lose the treasure that I now hold, over which I shall watch as closely and as jealously as a dragon. For the moment she is alone, in my power, depending on me. I can enter her apartment at any time of the day or night. She will not run away without telling me: I have her sacred word on that. So what do I care if the queen is deceived and Monsieur de Mazarin is angry! I was told to watch the Princess de Condé, and I am doing so. They only had to give me a description of her, or send a more able spy than I am to look after her.’
Canolles put the whistle back in his pocket and listened to the bolts grating, the distant thunder of the coaches on the bridge in the park and the vanishing sound of a cavalcade growing ever more distant. Then when all had gone from sight and hearing, without considering that he had just hazarded his life for the love of a woman, that is to say for the mirage of happiness, he slipped into the second empty courtyard and cautiously went up his staircase, which, like the doorway, was plunged into the most profound darkness.
But despite his caution, when he reached the corridor Canolles could not help bumping into someone, who appeared to be listening at his door and gave a muffled cry of terror.
‘Who are you? Who are you?’ the person asked in a frightened voice.
‘Why, for goodness’ sake!’ said Canolles. ‘And who are you, gliding around this corridor like a spy?’
‘I am Pompée!’
‘The princess’s steward?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s right.’
‘Why, that’s perfect,’ said the baron. ‘I’m Castorin.’
‘Castorin – the Baron de Canolles’s valet?’
‘The very same.’
‘Oh, my dear Castorin,’ said Pompée. ‘I’m sure I gave you a dreadful fright.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you know… When you haven’t been a soldier… But can I help you, my good friend?’ Pompée went on, recovering his self-important air.
‘Yes, you can.’
‘Tell me how.’
‘You can announce at once to the princess that my master wishes to speak to her.’
‘At this hour?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Impossible!’
‘You think so?’
‘I’m
sure of it.’
‘So she will not receive my master?’
‘No.’
‘The king’s orders, Monsieur Pompée. Go and tell her that.’
‘The king’s orders!’ Pompée exclaimed. ‘I’m going.’
And Pompée dashed down the stairs, driven at once by respect and fear, two greyhounds that would make a tortoise run.
Canolles continued on his way, returning home to find Castorin snoring, while royally stretched out in a large armchair. He put his officer’s clothes back on and awaited the events that he himself had put in motion.
‘My word!’ he thought. ‘I may not be doing much on behalf of Monsieur de Mazarin, but it strikes me that I’m not doing too badly for myself.’
He waited in vain for Pompée to come back, and, after ten minutes, seeing that he was not coming, or anyone else in his place, he decided to make the introductions himself. So he woke up Castorin, whose wrath had been somewhat appeased by an hour’s sleep, commanded him sternly to be ready for any eventuality, and set out towards the princess’s rooms.
At her door, the baron found a footman in a very bad temper because the bell had just summoned him at the moment when his shift was ending, and when he thought, like Master Castorin, that he would at last be able to start a restorative sleep after his tiring day.
‘What do you want, Monsieur?’ the footman asked, when he saw Canolles.
‘I want to pay my respects to the Princess de Condé.’
‘At this hour, Monsieur?’
‘What do you mean, at this hour?’
‘Why, it seems to me that it is very late.’
‘How dare you say that, fellow?’
‘But, Monsieur…’ the lackey stammered.
‘I am no longer requesting. I wish,’ said Canolles, in the haughtiest of voices.
‘You wish! Only the princess gives orders here.’
‘The king gives orders everywhere. By order of the king!’
The footman shuddered and bowed his head.
‘Forgive me, Monsieur,’ he said, trembling. ‘I am just a poor servant. I cannot take the responsibility of opening the princess’s door to you myself. Let me go and wake up a chamberlain.’
The Women's War Page 22