That evening at Fix they learned fuller details of the momentous first meeting of the States General. The preceding Monday had been devoted to a solemn spectacle. The deputies had mustered at the Church of Notre Dame and, headed by the clergy of Versailles, marched to the Church of St. Louis to hear Mass and ask the blessing of God on their deliberations. The Third Estate, clad in humble black, had been placed in the van of the procession, while the King and Queen, surrounded by the Princes of the Blood, in gorgeous robes and ablaze with diamonds, had brought up its rear. The choice of so drab a uniform for the representatives of the people had been governed by ancient precedent, but it had been much resented. Many of them were men of substance who normally dressed with some richness, so they considered it a deliberate slight that they should be forced to appear like supplicants in contrast to the nobles and higher clergy, who followed them decked out in all the splendour of rainbow-hued silks, satins and velvets.
The entire population of Versailles, numbering 60,000, had turned out to see the procession, and the crowd had been swollen to more than twice that number by great contingents from Paris and visitors from every province in France. Although the ceremony took place in the royal city, where practically everyone owed their living to the Court, it was the Third Estate which had received by far the greatest ovation. The nobles and clergy had been allowed to pass almost in silence; the King had been cheered but even his presence had not prevented a few catcalls at the Queen, and it was said that by the time they reached the church she was in tears.
On the Tuesday the Three Estates had met in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs, which had been chosen because it was an enormous room that was rarely used; but it had been hastily fitted up and no arrangements made to separate the deputies from such members of the public as could press their way in. The deputies had been summoned for eight o’clock but the proceedings did not begin till ten; and, during the long wait, while the clergy and nobles were allowed to wander about the big room the black-clad Third Estate had been herded into a narrow corridor.
Eventually, when everyone had taken their places, the King entered and formally declared the session open. The Keeper of the Seals delivered a lengthy oration outlining numerous reforms that should engage the attention of the Estates. Then Monsieur Necker started on an even longer speech, describing the state of the finances. On his voice giving out he had handed his script to a secretary, who read the rest of it, and between them they kept the deputies silently crowded on uncomfortable benches for four hours. So had ended the first session.
Two things of great moment emerged from it. Firstly that although the assembly was invited to discuss an immense range of subjects no definite proposals of any kind were put before it by the Crown. Secondly that the King and his Ministers had shirked the vital issue as to whether the three Orders should sit and vote jointly or separately. This was all-important, as the deputies totalled 1,214, of which 621 were representatives of the Third Estate. So if the assembly functioned as one house, seeing that many of the poorer clergy and a number of the nobles were in sympathy with the champions of radical reform, the Third Estate would be assured of a clear majority over the other two. But the irresolute King had left the three Orders to argue the matter out for themselves.
On the 11th of May Isabella’s party left Fix for Thuytz and soon after setting out they passed Polignac, where, even in that mountainous and romantic country, the castle from which the Queen’s favourite took her title provided a feature of outstanding grandeur. It was very ancient, almost cubical in form, and itself perched upon a mountain that dominated the town.
As the coach crawled along the road a mile below it Roger asked Isabella her opinion of Madame de Polignac, and if she was as bad an influence on the Queen as people said.
“She is certainly not an evil woman,” Isabella replied, “but just light-minded and rather stupid. They are a very ancient family but were far from wealthy, so cannot be blamed for accepting the riches that Her Majesty has showered upon them. It was Gabrielle de Polignac’s simplicity and straightforwardness on her being presented at Court that first attracted the Queen to her. Her Majesty asked her to become one of her ladies-in-waiting but she said frankly that she and her husband could not possibly afford to remain at Versailles, so the Queen made a generous arrangement for her.”
“Yet ’tis said that the Polignacs have had millions out of the royal coffers.”
“That is an exaggeration; but the Queen has certainly paid lavishly for her enjoyment of their society. She had Gabrielle’s husband, Count Jules, made a Duke and secured for him the lucrative position of Intendant General de Postes. But it is his sister, the Comtesse Diane, who is the rapacious one of the family; she neglects no chance to abuse the Queen’s generosity, and it is largely her extravagance which has given them the ill-name of greedy sycophants.”
“ ’Tis a pity, though, that, having had so many undesirable relatives forced upon her, the Queen does not choose her own friends more carefully.”
“They are as varied as her tastes, and some are well worthy of her friendship. But, unfortunately, she has little ability to see below the surface. Your own first meeting with her was an instance of that. She liked you well enough to start with, then on being informed that you were a murderer and seducer her sense of justice led her to the impetuous decision that you must be made to pay for your crimes; whereas anyone more discerning would have known from your open countenance that you could not possibly be capable of an unworthy action.”
“I thank you for your good opinion of me,” Roger laughed, but he wondered a little grimly what she would have thought of him if she knew that he now carried only a transcript of the Queen’s letter and had sent the original to London.
On approaching Thuytz they entered a country of pine woods, which in the strong sunshine smelt delicious, but the inn there proved one of the worst at which they had yet stayed.
From Fix to Thuytz was one of the longest stages that they had so far accomplished, and next day they planned to do another to Montélimar, but luck was against them. A few miles short of Villeneuve de Berg a more than usually bumpy piece of road caused the back axle of the coach to crack, and although it did not actually break in two Manuel declared that it would be dangerous for them to proceed further.
As they always carried ample provisions against such an emergency, while help was being sent for they were able to picnic in the fringe of the beautiful chestnut woods that here spread for many miles covering all the lower slopes of granite mountains. In due course farm waggons arrived, to which the baggage was transferred and the coach, lightened of its load, was driven on at walking pace to the township. The rest of the day went in fitting a new axle to the coach, so it was not until the afternoon of Wednesday the 13th that they were ferried across the broad Rhone and reached Montélimar.
Here the post road from Lyons joined that upon which they had come from Paris, thereby doubling the traffic southward bound for the great port of Marseilles; so, for once, in the Hôtel de Monsieur at which they put up, they enjoyed the comfort and good food of a first-class hostelry.
They enquired for news of the States General but no startling developments had occurred. After the first session the clergy and nobles had retired to deliberate in separate chambers, leaving the Third Estate in possession of the Salle des Menus Plaisirs; which later proved to have been a tactical error, since that had been officially designated as the meeting-place of the whole assembly, and was the only one to which the public were allowed admittance.
The next step was the verification of credentials, at which each deputy had to produce to his colleagues the papers proving him to have been properly elected and the actual person nominated to represent his constituency. This was obviously a matter which would occupy several days, but the manner of observing the formality had provided the first bone of contention. The question at issue was, should these verifications be carried out in a combined assembly or by each Order separately?
As
the decision would so obviously create a precedent it was not surprising that both the clergy and nobles had decided on separate verification, the former by 133 votes to 114 and the latter by 188 to 47. The Third Estate had therefore been left high and dry, as they had no powers to act on their own, and they had begun to protest more vigorously against the other two Orders’ refusal to join them.
At Montélimar, in addition to the welcome change that the well-run inn provided, the travellers enjoyed the delicious newly made nougat for which the town is famous; although little Quetzal ate himself sick on it.
It was Quetzal, too, who provoked an episode the following day that showed Isabella to Roger in quite a new light. After leaving Montélimar they had passed through still hilly but sterile, uninteresting country to the old Roman town of Orange, reaching it early in the afternoon. Had Roger been able to walk he would have set off to view the ruins of the great stone circus and the fine triumphal arch, but he had to be content with a distant view of them before being carried upstairs to the principal bedroom of the inn.
As the day was very hot he was made comfortable near the open window, and the inn being a comparatively new one on the outskirts of the town he could see some way down the road where it wound into the country. After a little while Isabella and the Señora joined him there and he embarked on his daily Spanish lesson. They had been thus employed for about three-quarters of an hour when a little party of excited people emerged from round the corner of a nearby hovel, and came hurrying along the road towards the inn. The group was led by Quetzal, who was being half pushed along by a tall, gaunt peasant; at their heels there tagged two slatternly women and several ragged children.
With a cry of angry excitement at seeing her Indian handled in such a fashion Isabella jumped to her feet and ran downstairs. Roger, seeing that Quetzal had suffered no actual harm, did not unduly disturb himself, but watched out of the window with mild interest to learn the cause of the trouble.
He liked Quetzal. The boy was a droll little fellow and could be very amusing at times; but generally he was inclined to be sedate, had charming manners and never obtruded himself, being apparently quite happy to play for hours with his toys or go off for walks on his own. His fearlessness was one of the things that Roger admired most about him. With his red-brown face, brilliantly embroidered clothes and feathered head-dress he presented an object calculated to arouse the amazement and possible hostility of the superstitious peasantry in any village—as they might easily have taken him for a Satanic imp sprung from the underworld. But, although groups of villagers often followed him about, he had the superb self-confidence of a true aristocrat. Evidently he considered that an Aztec Prince who was in the service of one of the first ladies of Spain could afford to ignore such lesser beings, since he never paid the slightest attention to the unkempt children who sometimes shouted and pointed at him.
Running to the boy Isabella tore him from the peasant’s grasp, at the same time calling loudly to her servants. Hernando and Manuel came hurrying from the stable yard, upon which she screamed orders at them in Spanish. Instantly they seized the peasant and forced him to his knees in front of her. Then, snatching from Manuel a whip that he had been carrying, she raised it high in the air and brought it cracking down on the kneeling man’s shoulders.
“Hi!” cried Roger from his dress-circle seat at the window. “One moment, Señorita, I pray! Before you belabour the fellow at least find out what is at the root of the matter.”
Turning, she scowled up at him, her black brows drawn together, her brown eyes blazing. “Why should I? This scum laid hands on Quetzal! How dare he lay his filthy paws upon my little Indian!”
As she turned back to strike a second time, Roger shouted at her louder than before; begging her to desist until she had heard what the man had to say. It was only at his urgent plea that she lowered her arm, and by that time people were hurrying up from all directions. A number of scowling peasants had edged towards their kneeling fellow countryman but Pedro and the two hired guards arrived to reinforce Isabella, and it was clear that the locals were too cowed to venture on attacking her armed retainers. Then the landlord of the inn appeared and with a scraping bow to Isabella enquired what offence her victim had committed.
The lanky peasant and his women could speak no French but the landlord interpreted their patois, and it then emerged that Quetzal had had an argument with the man’s nanny-goat. Whether Quetzal had teased the goat, or his unusual appearance had excited her to unprovoked anger, could not be satisfactorily determined. The fact was that she had charged him and, instead of taking to his heels as most grownups would have done, the courageous little fellow had dealt with the situation in precisely the same way as he had seen a matador deliver the quité in Spanish bull-fights. Drawing his tomahawk he had stood his ground till the last moment, then side-stepped and neatly driven the pointed end of his weapon through the skull of the goat, killing it instantly.
Isabella and her Spanish servants were enraptured with Quetzal’s feat, the Señora and Maria clapped loudly from the window, and Roger felt that whether the boy had first incited the goat or not he was deserving high commendation for his bravery; but, even so, his English sense of justice still urged him to ensure that the peasant had a fair deal.
The miserable man pleaded that the dead nanny-goat had been his most treasured possession, as the milk and cheese she gave had formed the main items of food for his whole family; and, knowing the abject poverty of the lowest strata of the French peasantry, Roger believed that he was telling the truth. In consequence he urged Isabella to give the poor wretch a half a louis to buy himself another goat, but she would not until Roger offered to pay, and even then she was swift to devise a judgment that tempered charity with harshness.
Hernando, in his capacity of their courier, always carried a supply of ready cash, so handing him Manuel’s whip she told him to give the peasant eight lashes with it and a crown for each. As she had expected, Hernando gave the man eight lashes and threw him only four crowns, but his cries of pain were instantly silenced at the sight of money. The sum was sufficient to buy him several goats, so the bystanders applauded the foreign lady’s generosity and he and his family shuffled off grinning from ear to ear.
That evening while they supped Roger argued the ethics of the episode with Isabella, but he could not get her to see that her treatment of the peasant had been either unjust or brutal. She maintained that such creatures were for all practical purposes animals, and that if one failed to treat them as such they would in no time get out of hand and become a menace to all civilised society; that whatever Quetzal might have done the fellow had no right whatever to lay a finger on him, and had merited punishment just as much as if he had been a dog that had bitten the boy. She added by way of clinching the argument that had he been one of her father’s serfs in Spain she could have had his hand cut off for such an act, and that he was extremely lucky to have had anyone so eccentric as Roger present to get him compensation for his beating.
Knowing her to be normally the gentlest of women Roger found it strange to hear her setting forth such views; but he felt certain they were tenets that she had automatically absorbed in her upbringing, and no part of her personal nature. Cynically it crossed his mind that Louis XVI might not now be involved in such desperate trouble with his people if, earlier in his reign, he had had the firmness to give short shift to agitators and the dirty little scribblers who lived by producing scurrilous libels about his wife. But the thing that intrigued Roger most about the affair was the violence of the temper that Isabella had unleashed. He had been right in supposing that her heavy eyebrows indicated that she could at times be carried away by intense anger, and that in addition to her father’s intelligence she had inherited his well-known intolerance of all opposition to his will.
On the Saturday they temporarily left France to enter the Papal territory of Avignon, and soon afterwards arrived at the ancient walled city. It was here that early in the fourteen
th century Pope Clement V had taken refuge on being driven from Rome. It had then become for the better part of a century the seat of Popes and Anti-Popes who were acknowledged by France, Spain and Naples in opposition to rival Pontiffs in Rome who were supported by northern Italy, central Europe, England and Portugal. The Great Schism of the Western Church had ended in the triumph of the Eternal City, but the domain of Avignon had been retained and was still ruled by a Papal legate.
As soon as they were settled in the Hôtel Crillon Roger declared that even though his plaster-encased foot would not allow him to leave a carriage, they must not miss the opportunity of driving round a town with so many monuments of historic interests. The Señora Poeblar replied that she felt far from well, but had no objection to Isabella accompanying him provided they took Maria with them; so with Quetzal in the fourth seat of a fiacre they drove off in the strong afternoon sunshine to see the sights.
Even the hotel in which they were staying was of some interest, as it had once been the private mansion of King Henry III’s famous Captain of the Guards, known for his indomitable courage as le brave Crillon; but infinitely more so was the Church of the Cordeliers, as it contained the tomb of the fair Laura, whose beauty had been made immortal in the poems of her lover Petrarch.
From the church they drove down to the mighty Rhone to see the remnant of that outstanding feat of mediaeval engineering, the Pont d’Avignon. The river here was so wide and swift that even the Romans had failed to bridge it, yet St. Bénézet had succeeded in doing so in the twelfth century, and his bridge had withstood the torrent for 500 years. In 1680 the greater part of it had been washed away, but four arches still remained on the city side as a monument to his memory.
They then drove up the hill to the great fortress palace of the Popes, began by John XXII, which dominates the countryside for miles around; and it was here, while admiring the vast pile of stone, that Roger and Isabella first touched upon the thorny subject of their respective religions.
The Rising Storm Page 17