Loque, Chiffe, and Graille.
THE KING passed on to what was called the Cabinet of the Equipages. It was there that he was accustomed, before going to hunt or to drive out, to pass a few minutes in giving particular orders concerning the vehicles and attendants he should require during the rest of the day.
At the door of the gallery he bowed to the courtiers, and, by a wave of his hand, indicated that he wished to be alone. When they had left him, he passed through the cabinet to a corridor which led to the apartments of the princesses. Having reached the door, before which hung a curtain, he stopped for a moment, shook his head, and muttered between his teeth:
“There was but one of them good, and she is gone!”
This very flattering speech for those who remained was answered by a shrill chorus of voices; the curtain was raised, and the furious trio saluted their father with cries of “Thank you, father, thank you!”
“Ha, Loque!” said he, addressing the eldest of them, the Princess Adelaide. “You heard what I said — so much the worse for you. Be angry or not, just as you like — I only spoke the truth.”
“Yes,” said the Princess Victoire, “you tell us nothing new, sire. We always knew that you preferred Louise to us.”
“In faith, quite true, Chiffe.”
“And why do you prefer Louise?” asked the Princess Sophie, in a sharp voice.
“Because Louise never gave me any trouble,” replied the king, showing that good-humored frankness of which, when he was perfectly pleased, Louis XV, was so complete a type.
“Oh, but she will give you trouble yet, rest assured!” replied the Princess Sophie, with such a peculiar emphasis that it drew the attention of the king more particularly to her. “I should be rather surprised if she did not, for she is not very fond of you.”
“And pray, what do you know about her, Graille?” said he. “Did Louise, before going away, make you her confidante?”
“I can say most truly,” answered the princess, “that I return her affection with interest.”
“Oh, very well. Hate one another — detest one another as much as you choose; I am perfectly content; only do not summon me to restore order in the kingdom of the Amazons. However, I should like to know how poor Louise is to give me trouble.”
“Poor Louise!” repeated the three princesses, making different grimaces at the words. “You wish to know how she will give you trouble? Well, I shall tell you,” said the Princess Sophie.
The king stretched himself in a large easy-chair, placed near the door, so that he could at any moment make his escape.
“Louise is retiring to a convent, because she wishes to carry on some experiments which she cannot make so well in the palace.”
“Come, come!” said the king, “no insinuations against the virtue of your sister. No one beyond these walls has ever dared to sully that, though many things are said of you for which it were well there were no grounds. Do not you begin this subject!”
“I?”
“Yes, you!”
“Oh, I was not going to attack Louise’s virtue,” said the Princess Sophie, very much hurt by the peculiar accent her father had given to the you, and by the marked repetition of it; “I only said she was going to make experiments.”
“Well, and if she does make experiments in chemistry, if she does make firearms, and wheels for chairs, if she does play on the flute, the drum, or the harpsichord, or even the violin — what harm would there be in it?”
“The experiments to which I alluded were experiments in politics.”
The king started — the princess went on.
“She is going to study philosophy and theology. She will continue the commentaries on the bull ‘Unigenitus’ — indeed, we must seem very useless beings when compared with her — a lady who writes theories concerning governments, systems of metaphysics, and theology!”
“And if these pursuits lead your sister to heaven, what harm can you see in them?” said the king, struck, however, with the connection there was between what the Princess Sophie was saying, and the manner of the Princess Louise’s departure, accompanied as it had been by a political exhortation. “If you envy her happiness you are very bad Christians.”
“No, on my honor!” said the Princess Victoire, “she has my full permission to go, but I shall take care not to follow her.”
“Nor I!” responded the Princess Adelaide.
“Nor I!” said the Princess Sophie.
“Besides, she always detested us,” said the first.
“You all?” the king asked.
“Yes, detested us all,” they replied.
“Oh, then, I see,” he said, “poor Louise has chosen to go to heaven that she may not meet any of her family again!”
This sarcasm made the three sisters laugh, but rather constrainedly, and Adelaide, the eldest, brought all her wit into play in order to deal her father a more weighty blow than he had given them.
“Ladies,” said she, with the sneering tone which was peculiar to her when roused from that habitual indolence which had procured for her the name of Loque, “you have either not found out, or you do not dare to tell the king, the real cause of Louise’s departure!”
“Come, Loque — come! you have got some wicked tale to tell, I see. Let us hear it!”
“Sire, I fear it might vex you a little.”
“No, no — say you hope it will vex me, that would be nearer the truth.”
Madame Adelaide bit her lips. “Then I shall tell you the truth, sire.”
“Very fine! If you ever do tell the truth, cure yourself of the habit. The habit? Do I ever tell it? and yet you see I am not the worse for it, Heaven be praised!” and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Speak, sister, speak,” said the other two sisters, impatient to hear anything that might wound their father.
“Sweet little creatures!” growled the king; “see how they love their father!” But he consoled himself by thinking that he returned their love in kind.
“Well,” continued the Princess Adelaide; “what Louise dreaded most — for she was very precise on the score of etiquette — was—”
“Was what?” exclaimed the king; “come, finish, since you have gone so far!”
“It was, sire, then, the intrusion of new faces at court.”
“Do you say intrusion?” asked he, by no means pleased with this beginning, for he saw to what it tended. “Intrusion? Are there intruders, then, in my palace? Am I forced to receive persons against my will?”
By this adroit turn he hoped to change the course of the conversation. But the Princess Adelaide felt herself on the right scent, and she was too cunning and too malicious to lose it, when she had so good an end in view as the annoyance of her father.
“Perhaps I was not quite correct — perhaps I used the wrong word — instead of intrusion, I should have said introduction.”
“Oh, ah!” said the king, “that is an improvement — the other word was a disagreeable one, I confess — I like introduction better.”
“And yet,” continued the princess, “that is not the right word either.”
“What is it, then?”
“It is presentation.”
“Yes,” cried the other sisters, “yes, you have found the right word now.”
The king bit his lip. “Oh, do you think so?” said he.
“Yes,” replied the Princess Adelaide, “my sister was very much afraid of new presentations.”
“Well?” said the king, feeling what must come, and thinking it best to have done with it as speedily as possible, “well? go on!”
“Well, sire, she was consequently afraid of seeing the Countess Dubarry presented at court.”
“Ha!” cried the king, with a burst of passion which he could not repress; “so you have been all this time getting this out! Mordieu! Madame Tell-truth, how you beat about the bush!”
“Sire,” replied the princess, “if I have so long delayed in telling your majesty this, it is because respect closed my lips, and I should not have opened them but by your own command.”
“Yes, yes; you would never have opened them, I suppose, to yawn, or to speak, or to bite!”
“I am quite certain, however, sire, that I have discovered the real motive which has made my sister retire into a convent.”
“Well! — you are wrong!”
“Oh, sire!” they all three repeated, shaking their heads, “oh, sire! we are quite certain of what we say.”
“Pshaw! You are all of a tale, I see. There is a conspiracy in my family. This is the reason the presentation cannot take place — this is the reason the princesses can never be seen when persons wish to visit them — that they give no answers to petitions, or requests for an audience.”
“What petitions? What requests for an audience?” asked the Princess Adelaide.
“Oh, you know,” replied the Princess Sophie, “the petitions of Mademoiselle Jeanne Vaubernier.” (This was the Countess Dubarry’s name in the days of her poverty.)
“Yes,” added the Princess Victoire, “the requests for an audience of Mademoiselle Lange.” (Another name which she had borne.)
The king started up, furious with passion; his eye, generally calm and mild, now flashed in a manner rather alarming for the three sisters, and as none of this royal trio of heroines seemed courageous enough to bear the paternal wrath, they bent their heads before the storm.
“And now,” cried he, “was I wrong when I said the best had left me?”
“Sire,” said the Princess Adelaide, “you treat us very ill — worse than you treat your dogs!”
“And justly, too. My dogs, when I go near them, receive me kindly — caress me — they are real friends. So, adieu, ladies! I shall go to Charlotte, Bellefille, and Gredinet. Poor animals! Yes, I love them! And I love them more particularly because they do not bark out the truth.”
The king left the apartment in a rage; but had not taken three steps in the anteroom, when he heard his daughters singing in chorus the first verse of a ballad ridiculing the Countess Dubarry, which was then sung through the streets of Paris.
He was about to return — and perhaps the princesses would not have fared well had he done so — but he restrained himself, and went on, calling loudly, that he might not hear them, “Hola! the captain of the greyhounds! the captain of the greyhounds!”
The officer who bore this singular title hurried forward.
“Let the dogs be loosed!”
“Oh, sire!” cried the officer, placing himself in the king’s way, “do not advance another step!”
“What now? what now?” said the king, stopping before a door, from under which was heard the sniffing of dogs, aware that their master was near.
“Sire,” said the officer, “pardon me, but I cannot permit your majesty to enter here.”
“Oh, I understand — the kennel is out of order. “Well, then, let Gredinet be brought out.”
“Sire,” continued the officer, with alarm depicted on his face, “Gredinet has neither eaten nor drunk for two days, and it is feared he is mad.”
“Oh!” cried the king, “I am really the most wretched of men! Gredinet mad! This alone was wanting to complete my vexation!”
The officer of the greyhounds thought it his duty to shed a tear to make the scene more perfect. The king turned on his heel, and retired to his private cabinet, where his valet was waiting. He, seeing the king’s face so disturbed, hid himself in the recess of a window — and the king, looking upon him rather as a piece of furniture than a man, strode up and down his room talking to himself.
“Yes. I see it — I see it plainly,” said he; “the Duke de Choiseul laughs at me — the dauphin looks upon himself as already half master, and thinks he will be wholly so when he has his little Austrian beside him on the throne. Louise loves me — but so sternly, that she preaches me a sermon and leaves me. My three other daughters sing songs, in which I am ridiculed under the name of Blaise. My grandson, the Count de Provence, translates Lucretius; and his brother, the Count d’Artois, is a dissipated scapegrace. My dogs go mad, and would bite me. Decidedly, there is only the poor countess who loves me. To the devil, then, with those who would annoy her!”
Then with a sort of settled despair, he seated himself at that table on which Louis XIV, wrote his proudest letters and signed his latest treaties.
“I know now,” continued he, “why every one wishes to hasten the arrival of the dauphiness. They think when she shows herself, I shall become her slave, and be governed by her family. I’faith, I shall see her soon enough, that dear daughter-in-law of mine, particularly if her arrival is to be the signal for new troubles. Let me be quiet as long as I can, and for that purpose, the longer she is delayed on the road the better. She was to have passed through Rheims and Noyon without stopping, and to come immediately to Compiegne. I shall insist on the first arrangement. Three days at Rheims — and one — no, faith — two! Bah! three days at Noyon! That would be six days I should gain — yes, six good days!”
He took a pen, and wrote in person an order to the Count de Stainville to stop three days at Rheims and three days at Noyon.
Then, sending for a courier, “Don’t draw bridle,” said he, “until you have delivered this according to its address.”
Then with the same pen he wrote:
“DEAR COUNTESS — To-day we install Zamore in his government. I am just setting out for Marly. This evening, at Luciennes, I shall tell you all I now think.
“FRANCE.”
“Here, Lebel,” said he to the valet, “take this letter to the countess, and keep on good terms with her — I advise you.”
The valet bowed and left the room.