Chapter VIII: Correspondence

A couple of communications, relating to the rather fantastic business in hand, were despatched about this date from Colorno, the one by Tiretta and the other by the _gouvernante_. The soldier wrote, _inter alia_, to his royal friend and patron:

“You will recall your words, that in this _affaire_--one of policy, it is true, but still an _affaire_--you were determined to woo your own way--c’est-à-dire, the way of a prince, who cannot desire plums but he must have a lackey to put them into his mouth for him. Well, as your Highness’s lackey, I have the honour to inform your Highness that the plum forthcoming is a very blooming and delectable one, promising satisfaction on all the points specified, and indeed, I think, on others supernumerary. The question is merely if the plum, for her part, wishes to be devoured; but, even so, there is always a sweet provocation in coyness. Rest assured, at least, that I have left nothing undone to commend to it the fine taste of the connoisseur for whose enjoyment it is distinguished in being selected. I put it so for the reason that, whether by way of intuition or tittle-tattle, my mission, as I soon discovered, was suspect. That made my task none the easier; and none the easier the allaying of the prejudice which, as your Highness correctly surmised, _did_ exist against yourself. There is no blinking the fact that the lady had learnt to associate the Count of Falckenstein of a certain occasion with the heir to the Austrian throne, and that the knowledge stood at first in the way of a perfect reconciliation between her impressions of fact and the laudatory image, even a little strained, which I was moved to draw of your Highness. But that impression, I flatter myself, and the true devotion which gives fervour to my poor art, is surely if slowly in process of readjusting itself; and I look confidently to the near time when the complete conversion I anticipate shall see eye to eye with me in the regard of your Highness’s true character, its essential greatness and nobility. In the meanwhile I pray that that state of grace may be quickly forthcoming, in order to my release from a task to which nothing but my sense of friendship (I say it with all deference) could reconcile me. Carpet-mongering is not to my taste, nor am I pleased to have my soul sit and grin like a monkey on a hurdy-gurdy, while I grind out the music to order. Improvisation to command is a pure paradox, is it not? So that, to end, if your Highness is dissatisfied with my progress, I have only to suggest that I possess another instrument at least as familiar to my hand as the mandolin, and as ready to ring true in the service of Austria, and that your father the Emperor waits at this moment for recruits in Silesia.”

This missive the young archduke received and pondered in his cabinet at Schönbrunn. He frowned over it a good deal; it interested and yet irritated him. Truth to tell, this romantic venture of his had, in the multitudinous pressure of State affairs, got rather crowded out of his mind. Fervours and enthusiasms have a distressing way of dwindling, like toy balloons, when put aside after an exciting game, and of incontinently bursting when one seeks to re-inflate them. So this unphilosophical afflatus had come to appear just a little limp and puckered to Joseph now he was invited to resume it, and to threaten, if incautiously reblown, to explode into thin air. The private mission it had inspired appeared to him all at once an extravagance, and more calculated to cheapen than to vindicate the imperial virtues which were its theme. This affected humility was perhaps a bad precedent to set in view of future relations; after all, he was answerable to no one but himself for his principles and actions; and he was particularly annoyed in that connection to learn that his purpose had been more or less divined. Tiretta must have managed very badly to make such a thing possible. He trusted at least that the suspicion was limited to Colorno, since he had an idea that the Empress, were it to reach her ears, would strongly disapprove his action. On the whole, he regretted having embarked on a project which had grown, or was growing, distasteful to his better sense of fitness.

And yet--that vision! The archduke was unphilosophically impressionable, as has been said, to feminine attractions, and fain, where women were concerned, to be admired for himself rather than his position. Perhaps, all considered, as things had progressed so far and so favourably, it would be folly to recall his advocate at the crucial moment. At the same time there was something in that advocate’s tone which disturbed him. Under its veneer of homage he seemed to detect a shadow of mockery, a humorous independence of mind, an imperfect conception of the sacro-sanctity of the task imposed. Humour, if the “something” was due to that objectionable quality, was quite out of place in a matter so momentous. He would be relieved to be satisfactorily done with a man whom he had never really fathomed or understood.

He answered Tiretta, commending what he had accomplished, advising the nicest tact, and promising to recall him the moment, in the deputy’s own opinion, his mission was fulfilled.

To the Duke of Parma Madame Gonzalès wrote as follows:

“Your daughter appears irreconcilable in the matter of the chevalier. There is so far so little cause for that apprehension once hinted at in correspondence by her august mother, that the difficulty is to make either the man or his mission endurable in the girl’s eyes. I should doubt the policy of continuing M. le chevalier at Colorno, were it not that I cannot conceive of such an advocate failing in the long run to impress himself. But how often we know the divinely inspired preacher to end by creating between others the emotional ardour which he is incapable of feeling or attracting on his own account. Such, I trust, will result from this propagandism of sweet sounds, and to the most desirable effect. The man is very cunning, like a veritable troubadour, in singing the praises of his prince. There is no direct allusion, but the reference is unmistakable. At present, there is no denying, the seed has fallen on difficult ground; but I have hopes. She listens, at least, and her comments decreasingly savour of coldness and irony. Yet, it would be to deceive ourselves to pretend that she is as yet more than a potential convert. Last night M. Tiretta, being entreated to our entertainment, and demanding, as is his wont, a text, I gave him the posy he wore in his bosom, a little spray of the blossom we call St. Catherine’s flower. ‘It is the blue flower of martyrdom,’ I said; and he answered, ‘Then shall it inspire me to sing of one I know in Vienna who is willing to die for his faith.’ And so he improvised most meltingly on that theme; yet to barren effect so far as her Highness was concerned. I have seldom known her more chill and unresponsive to a sweet ending. Her face was like a stone. Eh, bien! we must console ourselves with the thought that the uttermost resistance often betokens the near point of surrender.”

Don Philip, as has been hinted, fathered his pretty daughter in a tendency to what Mirabeau called “le don terrible de la familiarité”; only what in her proceeded from an open and affectionate disposition, in him was accountable to sheer weakness of character. He was a vain, useless, good-natured man, whose foolishness, perhaps pathetically beautified in the case of his first-born, was to find its supreme expression in the person of Ferdinand the second child, in whom a vicious imbecility came to develop itself. But Philip himself was not vicious, save in the sense of the mischief that is wrought through idleness. He frittered away his time in small local excitements; he devoted the most of his mornings to the mysteries of the toilet; he played faro and enjoyed an occasional intrigue; he patronised the Mass, the opera, and the promenade, each in its due proportion; he now and then entertained, for his highest intellectual distraction, some traveller of distinction visiting Parma. As to money, he could never master its significance; as to business, he detested it. On both counts his ministers had a bad time of it with him, and his familiars, of whom he had several, a remarkably good one. The confusion in the exchequer was their opportunity, and they took full advantage of it. The duke was easily responsive to prayers for assistance, especially if they emanated from people “d’un état peu remarquable.” He had the liking of the petty mind for impressing by his bounty those of such a far social inferiority that the full measure of his condescension could be felt between them. Amongst his closest intimates were the Messieurs la Roque and la Coque, two men of indifferent birth, who caused endless trouble in the matter of palace factions. The former was middle-aged, crafty, smooth-tongued and a flatterer; the latter was a pert coxcomb and braggart, jealous and mischievous. He had a minor faculty for music, which his conceit magnified into genius; could set mediocre verses of “the right butterwoman’s rank to market” order, to compositions as vulgarly primitive. One might find his like in a hundred popular balladmongers of to-day--men who have the gift to touch out emotional chords to clap-trap sentiments. He and Don Philip, whose measure he exactly fitted, wasted much time together producing and practising over a number of such little sticky effusions. They were sometimes moved to tears over their own lucubrations.

His Excellency was at his toilet, his two friends being present, when the marquise’s letter was brought in to him. Its delivery had to be delayed, pending the performance of an important rite. This was no less than the placing of the ducal wig in position on the ducal poll. M. Frisson, the _perruquier_, spotlessly aproned and with a comb stuck in the side-frizzle of his own bob-jerom, as a clerk sticks a pen behind his ear, received the august erection from an attendant who had just brought it in from the powdering-closet, and, delicately shaking and blowing on it, poised it a moment over the cropt scalp, with the air of an archbishop officiating at a coronation, before he deftly lowered it into place. It was an action of ineffable and unfaltering elegance, necessitating none but the most trifling of after-touches to complete the effect--a slight joining of the flats, so to speak, with a fragrant grease-stick, a whiff of powder, a just more perceptible distribution of the rouge on the cheekbones. His fingers fluttered like butterflies tasting the honey of flowers; he stood back finally to admire his own work; a valet offered the duke a laced _mouchoir_ heavily scented with tuberose; and the ceremony was accomplished.

Don Philip, exhaling incense, proceeded leisurely, the attendants being dismissed, to read the _gouvernante’s_ communication. But first he put it from him with a nose of disgust.

“Toilet-vinegar,” he said. “The very ink reeks of it. What odds on the writer?”

“Ten to one on the Gonzalès,” cried la Coque.

“No takers,” said the duke, and, frowning, perused the thing at arm’s length. Both men sat eyeing him, the one inquisitively, the other covertly, as he read the letter. He pished and anathema’d over it a good deal.

“Twenty gold ducats to a lira that she asks her wages in it!” cried la Coque impulsively, as the duke made an end.

Philip sniggered. “Taken,” he said, and tossed the letter across to the speaker.

La Coque made a wry face, and la Roque laughed softly and enjoyingly. He was a full-bodied man, with small drooping-lidded eyes and a small moist mouth.

“Look before you leap, my little Charles, is a ver-y good proverb,” he said.

“Bah! good for cardsharpers,” retorted la Coque angrily.

“Is that,” said the other smoothly, “a specific innuendo or a generalisation?”

“Supposing it is the former?” said la Coque insolently.

“Then I repudiate it, with----”

“With what?” demanded the coxcomb, rising.

“With considerable indignation,” said la Roque.

The duke made a laughing gesture.

“Put down your crest, bully-boy; and either read the letter or hand it me back.”

La Coque’s curiosity got the better of his temper, and, reseating himself, he obeyed, muttering below his breath. After a while he looked up, a very sneering expression on his pert combative face:

“Her Highness shows a better judgment in music than some other people--that is all I have got to remark,” he said.

Don Philip prepared to amuse himself at his friend’s expense. He was always ready to exact such payment for the familiarity he invited.

“Meaning,” he said, with a just perceptible wink at the other intimate, “that she shows signs of succumbing after all to what, for our part, we found instantly irresistible.”

“I neither meant that, nor detect here any such indication,” was the glowering answer.

“You puzzle me, Charles,” said the duke. “What _did_ you mean then, may I ask?”

“I meant just what I said.”

“Was ever such a cross enigma!” protested Philip to la Roque. “Here is our daughter, though in an unaccommodating mood, almost confessing herself at last a captive to the charm to which we all yielded at the first assault, and our friend will have us insensible by comparison. But I say we shall refuse to surrender to the Infanta that first place in appreciating M. Tiretta, in taking which we were all unanimous.”

“Say with one exception,” cried la Coque.

“One? Yourself, do you mean?”

“Certainly I do.”

“What! You valued him at first at something lower than the rest of us?”

He knew very well the spiteful jealousy aroused in this rival bosom by the stranger’s success, and delighted to prick and goad it.

La Coque ignored the exclamation. His patron’s amiable purpose was perfectly plain to him.

“I recognise, at this moment, M. Tiretta’s art to be supreme,” he said; “only I spell it, for my part, with a little a.”

“‘Elles ne sont point bonnes,’ remarked the little low fox of the big high mulberries,” murmured la Roque silkily.

The other darted a malignant glance at the speaker, but restrained himself. The duke, his nose wrinkled in a covert snigger, saw something in the insolent face which stiffened his own.

“An innuendo, Charles my friend?” he said. “Or are you meaning nothing but to belittle, after your way, M. Tiretta’s gift?”

La Coque set his white teeth and nodded. He looked very much like a snapping terrier, whom it would be dangerous to handle incautiously.

“I do not belittle his gift,” he said. “I spell it with a smaller letter than you, that is all.”

“And with another significance--you imply something,” said the duke, after frowning at him awhile. “What is it?”

“Perhaps my ears,” replied la Coque, “are more sensitive than most to the subtle nuances of sound--to discords, disharmonies, so slight as to be imperceptible to less exquisite understandings. Perhaps her Highness is likewise constituted, so that within this Tiretta’s mellifluous tones she is able to detect a something insidious, incorrect, which at once fascinates and repels her.”

The duke did not answer; and presently he went on:

“I was over at Colorno yesterday, and listening--not to him, you may be sure, but to one who observes things, and reports to me in confidence. See clever Hyacinth laugh to himself there, as if he guesses who that someone may be. This Hyacinth of ours, monsieur, has a marvellous gift for detecting smoke by its smell. Put his fat nose above a hearth, and ten to one he will instruct you presently where the fire burns. That is not the case with her Highness’s governess, whom we may certainly commend for an old fool--saving her marquisate. She cannot see an inch beyond _her_ nose in any direction; and, when it comes to smoke, a man may blow it in her eyes in the name of flattery, and she will go blind rather than not accommodate him.”

The duke, still staring with a perplexed expression and still silent, made a gesture to have the letter returned to him. Receiving it from la Coque’s hands, he sat awhile studying and frowning over its opening sentences. Presently he looked up.

“I find no shadow of justification here,” he said, “for such an innuendo.”

“What innuendo, monsieur?”

“That--that----” Don Philip rose suddenly to his feet, angry excitement in his eyes. “Are you daring to imply that this man is capable of such a mad abuse of his mission?”

La Coque, his lids stretched, his chin hanging, looked the picture of stupefied innocence.

“Why, what can your Excellency mean?” he said.

“What did _you_ mean, sir, by your art with a little a?”

“Nothing whatever, but that I do not rate the chevalier’s capacity for music so high as you do.”

“And that was all?”

“What else, in heaven’s name?”

“You suggest that he blinds the marquise’s eyes--to what?”

“O, to nothing in particular!”

“I insist upon knowing.”

“Your Excellency overwhelms me. The mere thoughtless speculation of an idle mind. I put two and two together, not even considering that, according to some people, they do not necessarily make four.”

“Come, explain yourself.”

“Why, her Highness, by what we hear, is not, and very sensibly, moved by this man’s meretricious Art--with a big A; and yet she is moved by his art.”

“Well?”

“Well, monsieur?”

“You suggest a personal interest?”

“I suggest nothing--nothing whatever.”

“Who was your informant?”

La Coque smiled, and shook his head.

The duke stood moody and preoccupied a moment. He had never in his heart approved this fantastic wooing by deputy; and had only abetted it for a diplomatic reason. It was still an open question with him and his duchess whether Maria Theresa destined Isabella for her son Joseph or for his younger brother Leopold, and, while that question hung in the balance, he had been willing to contribute what bias he could to the desired result. But supposing the girl’s own perversity was actually promising to confound that issue by way of an intrigue with the chosen instrument to its success! It was the day of slack moralities, and he had no hesitation in putting it so to himself, with little resentment but for the offence it implied against policy. And yet he loved his daughter in his way, and believed in her.

Believed in her, of course. She was utterly incapable of such a descent from all that constituted her his child and an Infanta of Spain. The thing was insanely preposterous--a vicious calumny. His expression cleared.

“My good Charles,” he said ironically, “your discretion is beyond praise; only, evidence withheld is little better than false evidence. I should recommend you, for the future, to modify your spite against a better man, or it may get you into trouble.”

And, with these severe words, he left the room.

La Roque, following, paused an instant to whisper in the ear of the crestfallen coxcomb:

“Mum, Charles--mum for your life! Mamselle Fanchette was it?--and in her Highness’s own suite It would never do to reveal the source, would it? But trust to my silence.”

La Coque, grinning savagely, struck his right hand softly into the palm of his left.

“A better man?” he muttered. “We’ll see. Let him conquer where he will, then. Only, if signs are reported true, the victory will not be exactly as desired.”

But from that moment his jealousy of the rival singer developed into a positive hatred.