From the Memoirs of a Minister of France Part 35

"Madame de Conde?"

"Yes, Madame de Conde, or I am a madman!" Henry answered, speaking a little more moderately. "I saw her gallop out of the patch of rocks at the end of the Dormoir--where the trees begin. She did not heed the line of the hounds, but turned straight down the boxwood ride; and, after that, led as I followed. Did you not see her?"

"No, sire," I said, inexpressibly alarmed--I could take it for nothing but fantasy--"I saw no one."

"And I saw her as clearly as I see you," he answered. "She wore the yellow ostrich-feather she wore last year, and rode her favourite chestnut horse with a white stocking. But I could have sworn to her by her figure alone; and she waved her hand to me."

"But, sire, out of the many ladies riding to-day--"

"There is no lady wearing a yellow feather," he answered pa.s.sionately.

"And the horse! And I knew her, man! Besides, she waved to me! And, for the others--why should they turn from the hunt and take to the woods?"

I could not answer this, but I looked at him in fear; for, as it was impossible that the Princess de Conde could be here, I saw no alternative but to think him smitten with madness. The extravagance of the pa.s.sion which he had entertained for her, and the wrath into which the news of her flight with her young husband had thrown him, to say nothing of the depression under which he had since suffered, rendered the idea not so unlikely as it now seems. At any rate, I was driven for a moment to entertain it; and gazed at him in silence, a prey to the most dreadful apprehensions.

We stood in a narrow ride, bordered by evergreens, with which that part of the forest is planted; and but for the songs of the birds the stillness would have been absolute. On a sudden the King removed his eyes from me, and, walking his horse a pace or two along the ride, uttered a cry of joy.

He pointed to the ground. "We are right!" he said. "There are her tracks! Come! We will overtake her yet!"

I looked, and saw the fresh prints of a horse's shoes, and felt a great weight roll off my mind, for at least he had seen someone. I no longer hesitated to fall in with his humour, but, riding after him, kept at his elbow until he reached the end of the ride. Here, a vista opening right and left, and the ground being hard and free from tracks, we stood at a loss; until the King, whose eyesight was always of the keenest, uttered an exclamation, and started from me at a gallop.

I followed more slowly, and saw him dismount and pick up a glove, which, even at that distance, he had discerned lying in the middle of one of the paths. He cried, with a flushed face, that it was Madame de Conde's; and added: "It has her perfume--her perfume, which no one else uses!"

I confess that this so staggered me that I knew not what to think; but, between sorrow at seeing my master so infatuated and bewilderment at a riddle that grew each moment more perplexing, I sat gaping at Henry like a man without counsel. However, at the moment, he needed none, but, getting to his saddle as quickly as he could, he began again to follow the tracks of the horse's feet, which here were visible, the path running through a beech wood. The branches were still bare, and the shining trunks stood up like pillars, the ground about them being soft. We followed the prints through this wood for a mile and a half or more, and then, with a cry, the King darted from me, and, in an instant, was racing through the wood at break-neck speed.

I had a glimpse of a woman flying far ahead of us; and now hidden from us by the trunks and now disclosed; and could even see enough to determine that she wore a yellow feather drooping from her hat, and was in figure not unlike the Princess. But that was all; for, once started, the inequalities of the ground drew my eyes from the flying form, and, losing it, I could not again recover it. On the contrary, it was all I could do to keep up with the King; and of the speed at which the woman was riding, could best judge by the fact that in less than five minutes he, too, pulled-up with a gesture of despair, and waited for me to come abreast of him.

"You saw her?" he said, his face grim, and with something of suspicion lurking in it.

"Yes, sire," I answered, "I saw a woman, and a woman with a yellow feather; but whether it was the Princess--"

"It was!" he said. "If not, why should she flee from us?"

To that, again, I had not a word to say, and for a moment we rode in silence. Observing, however, that this last turn had brought us far on the way home, I called the King's attention to this; but he had sunk into a fit of gloomy abstraction, and rode along with his eyes on the ground. We proceeded thus until the slender path we followed brought up into the great road that leads through the forest to the kennels and the new ca.n.a.l.

Here I asked him if he would not return to the chase, as the day was still young.

"Mon Dieu, no!" he answered pa.s.sionately. "I have other work to do.

Hark ye, M. le Duc, do you still think that she is in Brussels?"

"I swear that she was there three days ago, sire!"

"And you are not deceiving me? If it be so, G.o.d forgive you, for I shall not!"

"It is no trick of mine, sire," I answered firmly.

"Trick?" he cried, with a flash of his eyes. "A trick, you say? No, VENTRE DE SAINT GRIS! there is no man in France dare trick me so!"

I did not contradict him, the rather as we were now close to the kennels, and I was anxious to allay his excitement; that it might not be detected by the keen eyes that lay in wait for us, and so add to the gossip to which his early return must give rise. I hoped that at that hour he might enter unperceived, by way of the kennels and the little staircase; but in this I was disappointed, the beauty of the day having tempted a number of ladies, and others who had not hunted, to the terrace by the ca.n.a.l; whence, walking up and down, their fans and petticoats fluttering in the sunshine, and their laughter and chatter filling the air, they were able to watch our approach at their leisure.

Unfortunately, Henry had no longer the patience and self-control needful for such a RENCONTRE. He dismounted with a dark and peevish air, and, heedless of the staring, bowing throng, strode up the steps.

Two or three, who stood high in favour, put themselves forward to catch a smile or a word, but he vouchsafed neither. He walked through them with a sour air, and entered the chateau with a precipitation that left all tongues wagging.

To add to the misfortune, something--I forget what--detained me a moment, and that cost us dear. Before I could cross the terrace, Concini, the Italian, came up, and, saluting me, said that the Queen desired to speak to me.

"The Queen?" I said, doubtfully, foreseeing trouble.

"She is waiting at the gate of the farther court," he answered politely, his keen black eyes reverting, with eager curiosity, to the door by which the King had disappeared.

I could not refuse, and went to her. "The King has returned early, M.

le Duc?" she said.

"Yes, madame," I answered. "He had a fancy to discuss affairs to-day, and we lost the hounds."

"Together?"

"I had the honour, Madame."

"You do not seem to have agreed very well?" she said, smiling.

"Madame," I answered bluntly, "his Majesty has no more faithful servant; but we do not always agree."

She raised her hand, and, with a slight gesture, bade her ladies stand back, while her face lost its expression of good-temper, and grew sharp and dark. "Was it about the Conde?" she said, in a low, grating voice. "No, madame," I answered; "it was about certain provisions.

The King's ear had been grossly abused, and his Majesty led to believe--"

"Faugh!" she cried, with a wave of contempt, "that is an old story! I am sick of it. Is she still at Brussels?"

"Still, madame."

"Then see that she stops there!" her Majesty retorted, with a meaning look.

And with that she dismissed me, and went into the chateau. I proposed to rejoin the King; but, to my chagrin, I found, when I reached the closet, that he had already sent for Varennes, and was shut up with him. I went back to my rooms therefore, and, after changing my hunting suit and transacting some necessary business, sat down to dinner with Nicholas, the King's secretary, a man fond of the table, whom I often entertained. He kept me in talk until the afternoon was well advanced, and we were still at table when Maignan appeared and told me that the King had sent for me.

"I will go," I said, rising.

"He is with the Queen, your Excellency," he continued.

This somewhat surprised me, but I thought no evil; and, finding one of the Queen's Italian pages at the door waiting to conduct me, I followed him across the court that lay between my lodgings and her apartments.

Two or three of the King's gentlemen were in the anteroom when I arrived, and Varennes, who was standing by one of the fire-places toying with a hound, made me a face of dismay; he could not speak, owing to the company.

Still this, in a degree, prepared me for the scene in the chamber, where I found the Queen storming up and down the room, while the King, still in his hunting dress, sat on a low chair by the fire, apparently drying his boots. Mademoiselle Galigai, the Queen's waiting-woman, stood in the background; but more than this I had not time to observe, for, before I had reached the middle of the floor, the Queen turned on me, and began to abuse me with a vehemence which fairly shocked me.

"And you!" she cried, "who speak so slow, and look so solemn, and all the time do his dirty work, like the meanest cook he has enn.o.bled! It is well you are here! ENFIN, you are found out--you and your provisions! Your provisions, of which you talked in the wood!"

"MON DIEU!" the King groaned; "give me patience!"

"He has given me patience these ten years, sire!" she retorted pa.s.sionately. "Patience to see myself flouted by your favourites, insulted and displaced, and set aside! But this is too much! It was enough that you made yourself the laughing-stock of France once with this madame! I will not have it again--no: though twenty of your counsellors frown at me!"

"Your Majesty seems displeased," I said. "But as I am quite in the dark--"