Chapter VI: Some Results of Early Rising

“Pendant qu’aux lueurs du matin
La lame à la lame est croisée,
Dans l’herbe humide et dans le thym
Les grives boivent la rosée.”
—VICTOR HUGO, _Duel en Juin_.

It may be a truism, and therefore tiresome, that the night brings counsel, but of the instances of that truism the Marquis de Château-Foix was certainly one as he stood next morning outside his cousin’s door. A few hours of nocturnal reflection had wrought a considerable change in the mental attitude which had been his when he parted from the Vicomte, and a night’s rest had worked a greater still. He had resolved to return once more to the subject on which last night’s discussion had somewhat disastrously split. Proofs he had none, but there was no time even to bewail their absence, for whatever he could do must be done at once. Indeed, the sun was already high in a blue sky, and but for other business, and a belief, based on experience, that it would have found Louis still a-bed—more especially as it was Sunday—he would have paid him an earlier visit.

The correctness of this surmise was attested by the lackey when the door at last swung open. Monsieur le Vicomte had not yet arisen, but if Monsieur were Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix, Monsieur le Vicomte would certainly receive him. The man still wore livery, though that badge of servitude had been legally abolished for a year or more. But Saint-Ermay’s servants were always devoted to him, for no reasons that were at all tangible. The bedroom door was opened by the valet whom Louis had had from a boy, and Gilbert went in.

It was some time since the Marquis had visited his cousin’s apartments, and his never-failing sensation of having strayed by mistake into those of a member of the other sex fell on him more strongly than usual. Yet Madame de Château-Foix, though by no means indifferent to her surroundings, had not, in her spacious bed-chamber at home, a quarter of the silk and satin luxury which reigned in her nephew’s room in Paris. Her toilet-table was not so garnished with costly appurtenances, nor, in the country, was it possible to supply her all the year round with roses. She had indeed recently replaced her huge four-poster, solemn as the tomb and potentially quite as airless, by the more fashionable bed of the time, with its drapery falling from one central point. But—whether inspired by hygienic or æsthetic considerations—her nephew reposed in a couch at once more elegant and more airy than either. The slender fluted pillars which supported the brocaded tester, and whose gilt was now toned down to exactly the requisite paleness, the curtains of thin silk-apple-green and white deftly caught to them by cords which were obviously but rarely untied, the fine lace-bordered sheets and embroidered coverlet—whereon, too, there slumbered at the moment a magnificent Persian cat—might very well have enshrined some much-courted beauty of the last reign. Possibly they had done so, for at the head was stretched a delicate vista of painted silk covered with fluttering trains of doves and laughing Cupids and butterflies, of which the lowest cherub had the effect of balancing himself on the curved rim of the gilded woodwork immediately above the pillows, while from his plump fingers a slow rain of the palest poppies floated down, presumably upon the sleeper’s head. A group of his fellows, sustaining themselves in their downward flight on ludicrously inadequate pinions, tendered him fresh garlands of the flowers. The exquisite handling of this embellishment, more than atoning for the artificiality of its design, might almost have surprised a spectator into an expectation of seeing, somewhere on the bed below it, one or two of the smooth and shining poppy petals.

The present critic, however, saw nothing there beyond his kinsman’s brown curls—which still bore traces of last night’s powder—tossing on a broad pillow edged with Valenciennes. Their owner did not look in the least sleepy, and at once jerked himself with alacrity from his recumbent position on to his right elbow.

“Good-morning!” he exclaimed. “I did not expect you so early. Jasmin, set a chair for Monsieur le Marquis, and bring some chocolate.”

The chair was brought, and set by the bedside, and as Château-Foix took his seat, after being relieved of his hat and cane, the Vicomte relapsed on to his pillows, and looked at his visitor with his brilliant smile. It was evident that the slight cloud under which the two had parted was passed from his mind, and for his part the Marquis was content that it should be so. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling very near akin to a rush of affection. As he lay there, in the midst of these vernal glories, Louis looked extraordinarily innocent and boyish, a very Prince Charming of happy fortunes and gay auguries—yet in what dark mesh of intrigue and fate was he entangled! And Gilbert knew that all his arguments and eloquence might once more beat themselves in vain against that airy tenacity of purpose. But he had braced himself to patience. Last night he had taken the wrong path to bring about the salvation of a person who took things as little seriously as did Louis. That characteristic had always fretted Château-Foix in the past; it was hard now to find it taking on all the appearance of a wrong-headed heroism in place of the more facile flippancy it used to wear.

Meanwhile the Vicomte looked supremely at his ease, lying with his left arm under his head, his right buried in the bedclothes. He was so obviously waiting in expectation of a remark of some sort that Gilbert complied by asking somewhat abruptly:

“Why are you still in bed?”

“Parbleu! because it is too early to get up.”

Château-Foix could not help smiling. “That is a matter of opinion, it seems to me,” he retorted.

“Oh, I did not suppose that our views would coincide,” returned the Vicomte pleasantly. “But whereas you, my dear Gilbert, are a stranger in Paris of late, and may find enough of novelty in the present state of affairs to drag you from your bed at unseasonable hours, I, as an inhabitant, am far from sharing your enthusiasm. It has lost the charm of novelty for me. But you can see your beloved _tiers-état_ behaving here in a way you never dreamed of at Chantemerle. Go through the Faubourg Saint Antoine. Have you been to the Cordeliers for a little oratory? If so, and you happen to have heard Marat, Desmoulins, or Danton, you might go to the Halles, and compare the oratory there. But you must forgive my not accompanying you, for I assure you that the daily repetition of these demonstrations has become excessively boring to me.”

Before Gilbert had time to reply to this unusual view of the state of Paris the solemn old Jasmin entered with the chocolate.

“Really, my dear Louis,” remarked his cousin as the door closed, “it had not occurred to me to make a tour round Paris to see the sights! And so, with the foundations of the world crumbling around you, you stay in bed because you are—bored!”

“Or sleepy,” finished the Vicomte calmly. “Take some chocolate, Gilbert—no, I don’t want any—and tell me then how you propose to amuse yourself to-day.”

The Marquis took up his cup, and leaning back in his chair, crossed his legs. “Louis,” he said with some emphasis, but with perfect good-humour, “if you are trying to see how far you can play on my credulity with regard to yourself, I warn you to desist. Neither of us, I imagine, is a fool——”

Saint-Ermay interrupted him with a laugh. “I am by no means sure about myself. I sometimes think,” he said, looking at his cousin with an appearance of great candour, “that I am moving in that direction. In which case,” he concluded politely, “we should naturally part company.”

The Marquis acknowledged this compliment with an ironic bow. “I think you are mistaken about yourself,” he returned. “You depreciate your capacities unduly. For instance, you really know perfectly well that your present position is—to say the least—insecure.”

It was not without misgivings that he thus approached the delicate topic. The Vicomte stretched himself luxuriously among his down and draperies, and clasped both hands at the back of his head.

“Well, what of that?” he demanded lazily, looking up at the canopy of the bed. “Your statement, you know, has not the attribute of novelty.”

As Saint-Ermay threw up his arm the flood of lace fell away from his right wrist and revealed to Gilbert’s notice the fact that the wrist itself was enveloped in a bandage of considerable extent, whose surface was flecked with two little spots of crimson.

“Ah, you concede that!” he said quietly, and added: “What have you done to your arm?”

Louis reddened perceptibly, and immediately returned the injured member to its hiding-place beneath the bedclothes. “It is nothing,” he responded hastily, “a mere scratch.”

“A scratch?” repeated the Marquis, setting down his cup. “But with what did you inflict one of that length?”

His question was followed by a moment’s silence, which it is possible that Saint-Ermay utilised in searching for a plausible explanation.

“It . . . the fact is, I did not do it myself,” he admitted finally. “Will you have some more chocolate, Gilbert?”

But the Marquis’ curiosity was piqued by the presence in the speaker’s tone of some concealed emotion other than embarrassment.

“Thank you, no. It was an accident, then, I hope? You have not been set upon in the streets, or anything of the sort?”

Louis shook his head. “It is nothing worth distressing yourself about, I assure you.”

“Ah, I see! Your cat, perhaps?” suggested the Marquis drily, glancing at that animal.

“Comme tu persistes! Lucidor never scratches! I suppose I may as well out with it,” said Louis, half laughing, half vexed. He raised himself on his elbow. “Though you think me a lie-a-bed, mon cousin, I have been abroad this morning for all that!” His eyes danced as he made this admission.

“Louis! You have not been—fighting?”

“Si fait!” returned the culprit, nodding cheerfully. “Tierce and carte at six o’clock this morning. The air was delightful; some day I shall take to early rising.”

Visions of Champcenetz, of Barnave, of Mirabeau-Tonneau, passed through the Marquis’ mind.

“But, my dear Louis,” he began, somewhat aghast, “the days are surely over when you of the Court can hope to rid yourselves by that means of obnoxious deputies. You are not in 1790 now. Who was it—and where did you meet? I should not have thought an encounter possible——” He broke off in perplexity and a genuine anxiety. “You are not deceiving me, Louis?” he asked. “You are not seriously hurt?”

“No more than this,” replied the Vicomte lightly, holding up the bandaged wrist. “As I told you, a scratch—due to my own carelessness. It was all over in three minutes.”

“And your adversary?”

“I ran him through the lungs,” returned Saint-Ermay. “He will recover.” Both statements were made with great indifference, but Gilbert remarked that the speaker’s face was many degrees graver than his tone, and that he was studying the ornamentation of the bottom of the bed with almost a sombre expression. For his own part he scarcely knew what to say.

“I am glad you are come out of it so well,” he observed at length, “and, considering the present state of affairs, perhaps even more glad that you did not kill your deputy. Is it permitted to ask the cause of dispute?”

Louis turned his gaze on his kinsman. “I am afraid I must ask you to spare me any further questions,” he said, and then he looked away, and began to stroke Lucidor, the Persian. “And . . . it was not a deputy. It was M. de Bercy with whom I fought.”

“Of your own party!”

“Precisely!” responded Louis bitterly. “Unfortunately, membership of that party does not seem to be a guarantee for—honourable conduct. However,” he continued, with a spice of vindictive enjoyment, “he will have time enough to repent of it. I am not sure that I wanted to kill him—this morning.”

The Marquis lifted his eyebrows and refrained from speech, though he could have given vent to some very trenchant remarks. The Vicomte, who had now been serious for quite four minutes (and Gilbert thought he scarcely remembered in him so long a period of gravity) suddenly shook off his preoccupation.

“I know exactly what you are thinking, Gilbert,” he said, with a certain malign merriment in his eyes. “We are mad, are we not? Ah well! one must live, and to-morrow takes care of itself, you know. And confess now, Monsieur le Marquis, that—seeing one’s days on this planet are likely shortly to be accomplished (oh, I am not blind as well as mad)—confess now, that, fool as you think me, I get more out of my foolish life than you with all your wisdom and your dirty peasants!”

If his cousin’s remark were true, Château-Foix had no intention of acknowledging it.

“I am not here to discuss the general philosophy of life with you,” he responded with a smile, “but its conduct at this particular juncture. I have seen the King.”

“The deuce you have!” exclaimed the Vicomte, sitting up. “When?”

“This morning. I had an audience at ten o’clock.”

“To acquaint him with what you told me last night, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said the Marquis, steeling himself to meet an outburst of indignation. But none came. On the contrary Louis beat up his pillow and lay down again.

“This is interesting,” he observed, settling himself comfortably on his side, with a hand under his cheek and his eyes fixed on his visitor. “How did he receive you? With his usual apathy?”

The Marquis nodded. At his cousin’s question he seemed to hear again the tones of that resigned and hopeless voice.

“I was not prepared for so much dejection,” he said. “His Majesty struck me as prepared for any circumstance, provided only that it were adverse. I imagine that he cannot conceive of any other now. When I told him—merely as a warning—of the inclusion of my name in your list, he professed no surprise; he said that he had always thought the alliance a vain hope and a dangerous—more dangerous than most. ‘They are always telling me of plans,’ he went on, ‘and yet Mirabeau failed, and De Moleville failed, and I have known now that since Varennes no plans will ever succeed for us.’ When I spoke of the present reaction in his favour, he replied that it was only a reprieve.”

“Yes,” said Louis rather sadly, “he is always like that. What else?”

The crisis had come. And to his own surprise Gilbert got up suddenly from his chair, and sitting down on the bed, put his hand impulsively over the Vicomte’s.

“Louis, I will be absolutely frank with you. You shall call me an interfering fool, if you will. I asked the King for a positive command against the continuance of a scheme so dangerous.”

Not a muscle of the face on the pillow moved, and the hand was not withdrawn from underneath his own.

“And he gave it to me. He gave me absolute injunctions—for you, and for the others. He sent this as a warrant.” Château-Foix turned Louis’ passive hand palm uppermost and laid in it a heavy mourning ring. In the centre was a tiny braid of the palest hair, finer than silk.

Louis moved at last. “Yes, I know that ring,” he said, looking at it attentively. “That hair is the late Dauphin’s.” He continued to look at the ring in silence, then, slipping it on his finger he sank back again on to his pillows and shut his eyes. A frown made its appearance between his clear eyebrows. The Marquis gazed at him anxiously and almost wistfully, got slowly off the bed, and the Persian cat, roused by the slight seismic commotion, stretched out a well-armed claw with an enormous yawn.

Suddenly Louis opened his eyes and looked up straight at his visitor. “What was the real reason of your coming to Paris, Gilbert?” he asked abruptly.

“To stop you,” returned Château-Foix. “I did not know about the 20th until I had made up my mind to come.”

“To stop me—without real proof?”

“Yes.”

“The devil!” said Saint-Ermay.

There was another pause.

“I would give my right hand to have one,” said the Marquis, with a certain passion. “But I have only convictions, and those you won’t listen to.”

“If your convictions are right,” observed Louis reflectively, “it means that we are all Vergniaud’s dupes. That would be amusing. . . Perhaps . . . . perhaps . . . Convictions indeed! Deuce take me, but they must be strong to have brought you so far.”

“Yes, they are strong,” said the Marquis.

The Vicomte sat up in bed, hugging his knees. “Of course it is all guesswork. I wonder how I can most quickly get hold of D’Aubeville.” He paused and then broke out laughing. “I’lI tell them, but if you are right . . . we are gone too far for that to be of any use.”

It was strange that the full realisation of where the speaker stood came only at that moment to Gilbert, with his laugh, quite unfeigned, and his glance of self-mockery, not so simple. Yet Château-Foix had thought of this through miles of travelling and a partially sleepless night, and it was the very anxiety which had wrecked his interview of the previous evening. His voice escaped his control. “Do you really mean what you are saying?”

Louis looked away. He had read his cousin’s mind, and he hated emotion.

“They have all our signatures,” he said in his cool voice.

Gilbert also knew now how much he cared for his scapegrace playmate. The years, with their sundering of interests and sympathies, fled backwards. “Something must be done—something must be done,” he repeated almost mechanically, while Louis threw him a smile, and tossing back his hair, lay down again.

“Thank you for coming,” he resumed cheerfully. “I wish I had been more—had listened better last night. But I will obey your warning—and the King’s wish. The best thing you can do meanwhile is to leave Paris as quickly as possible. You will see Lucienne, I suppose?”

“I am going to see her now,” replied Gilbert, rising slowly. “And what will you do?”

“I will get up at once,” returned the Vicomte, stifling a yawn, “and spread your enlivening suspicions. Where is that rascal Jasmin?” He stretched to the bell-rope and rang lustily.

“I must see you again, Louis. Where can we meet? I am staying at the Hôtel des Etats Généraux, Rue des Petits-Pères.”

The young Royalist considered. “I will write,” he said finally. “But surely you will go back to-morrow?”

Château-Foix shook his head. “I shall not leave Paris while Lucienne is here—or you either,” he added to himself. “Au revoir.”

“Poor Gilbert,” said the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay as the door closed. “I never knew he cared so much. Jasmin, you are slower than a tortoise! Where are my clothes?”