The House of de Mailly

A Romance

By

Margaret Horton Potter

Illustrated by A. I. Keller

New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers 1901

Copyright, 1901, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights reserved.

TO MY DEAREST FRIENDS AND KINDLIEST CRITICS MARIE AND FREDERIC GOOKIN THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

CONTENTS

Book I

CLAUDE

CHAPTER

I. M. De Gêvres Entertains II. The Toilet III. The Gallery Of Mirrors IV. Marly V. The Chapel VI. Claude's Farewell

Book II

DEBORAH

I. A Ship Comes In II. Dr. Carroll's Idea III. The Plantation IV. Annapolis V. Sambo VI. Claude's Memories VII. The Pearls VIII. The Governor's Ball IX. The Rector, The Count, And Sir Charles X. Puritan And Courtier XI. Distant Versailles

Book III

THE POST

I. From Metz II. The Disgrace III. November Thirteenth IV. Claude's Own V. Two Presentations VI. Snuff-Boxes VII. Concerning Monsieur Maurepas VIII. Deep Waters IX. The Duke Swims X. "Vol-au-Vent Royale" XI. "Thy Glory" XII. One More de Mailly? XIII. The Hôtel de Ville XIV. Victorine Makes End XV. Deborah EPILOGUE. A Trail on the Water

ILLUSTRATIONS

"THE PAPER DROPPED TO THE FLOOR" ... Frontispiece

"DE MAILLY HAD THROWN SIX AND SIX"

"'CLAUDE, TAKE THIS AND THROW IT OUT—THERE'"

"HE SUDDENLY STOPPED AND TURNED HIS HEAD TOWARDS HER"

"'I—GIVE YOU ONLY THIS'"

"THE YOUNG MAN ROSE AND BOWED"

"CLAUDE SAT SUDDENLY UP IN BED"

"SURROUNDED BY A GROUP OF PICKANINNIES"

"HORSE AND RIDER HAD FLASHED OUT AT THE GATE"

"'GO ON, MONSIEUR,' MURMURED DEBORAH"

"DEBORAH PERMITTED HIM TO LEAD HER FROM THE BALLROOM"

"'I AM NOT THE DUCHESS OF CHÂTEAUROUX!'"

Book I CLAUDE

The House of de Mailly

CHAPTER I M. de Gêvres Entertains

It was the evening of Tuesday, January 12th, in the year 1744. By six o'clock the gray of afternoon had deepened to the blackness of night, and a heavy rain began to fall, so that the Sèvres road, a mile beyond the Paris barrier, was shortly thick with mud. The only light here visible came from the window of a wretched tavern at the way-side; and by this mine host, had he been watching, would have had some difficulty in perceiving the two riders who came to an uncertain halt by his door.

"It is late, du Plessis, and we have still three miles to go. More than that, 'tis the worst cabaret in France."

"And you would be no more of a Jean-Jacques than necessary to-night—eh, Claude?" returned the other good-humoredly.

"I should prefer drowning or to perish of a rheum by the way than be poisoned by the liquor to be had here," returned the other, flicking his saddle restlessly with his riding-whip.

"So be it, then. Come, we waste time. Mordi! A little gently there, I beseech! It is raining mud."

A dig of the spur in the thoroughbred's flank, a spattering of drops from the puddle in which they had stood, a quick apology, and the landlord had lost his guests, illustrious guests, who paid never a sou too much for their wine, but could make a drinking-place the fashion for weeks by five minutes' presence within it.

The two rode for some minutes in silence, though no one of the finest apperception could have felt any enmity existent between them. The night lowered. The rain pelted coldly from the starless sky; and horses and riders alike shrank from the raw, streaming atmosphere. When the silence was again broken the lights of Paris were visible in the distance. This time it seemed that du Plessis—the Duc de Richelieu—addressed his companion's secret thoughts as though he had been reading them for some time past.

"Believe me, Claude, you are unwise. She is not quite—quite of your fibre. The elder branch, you will often find, if you study these things, is less quick in sensibility, though perhaps not lacking in finesse. The King, dear child, the King—"

"The King is a man. I also am one; he, de Bourbon; I, de Mailly."

Richelieu laughed heartily. "Pretty—pretty, Claude! I must enter it in the unauthenticated register at Mme. Doublet's to-morrow! Why do you not lay the matter thus before Mme. de Châteauroux herself?"

"Ah, monsieur, I think you understand her even less than I. I do not dare address her as my position admits. My cousin cannot be more proud of our family than am I; and yet—and yet—"

In the darkness Louis Armand François du Plessis de Fronsac de Richelieu, from strong force of habit, snapped his fingers. "Afraid of a woman! Truly, we have schooled you well, Claude!"

"You, Monsieur le Duc, you yourself—have you kissed my cousin on the lips?"

"Oh, I do not infringe on his Majesty's rights."

"Mon Dieu! If it were any but you!—"

"Come, my dear Count, you are making an enormous mistake, permit me to say. The one thing which no man should ever do is to take himself in great seriousness. You have yet many a lesson to learn about women. Now hear from me a bit of gravity, which shall prove my friendship for all of you—madame, yourself, and his Majesty. When it happens that a man chooses a woman, and the woman accepts that man, whether it be for love, or—something else,—it is the place of the world merely to look on. A third personality will not enter complaisantly into the tête-à-tête. The King heaps upon his Duchess the favors which only a royal lover can confer. And madame certainly does not seem loath to accept them. A dozen besides yourself are sighing after her to-day. Yet remember d'Agenois, my friend. And—and Mlle. d'Angeville is charming in 'L'Ecole des Femmes.'"

De Richelieu smiled slightly, fumbled for his snuff-box, which was unobtainable at the moment, and never knew that Claude had angrily squared his shoulders and was cruelly hurting his horse with bit and spur. The mention of d'Angeville happily turned the subject, as the Duke had intended it to do, and by the time the barrier was reached the vicissitudes of the Count de Mailly and the position of Mme. de Châteauroux were, to all appearances, forgotten.

Once in the city, with rivers of rain above and below, and filth, crime, poverty, and utter darkness about them, Claude de Mailly and his illustrious companion made their way with what rapidity they could down the Rue de Sèvres, past St. Vincent de Paul and the Lazariste, through the little Rue Mi-Carême, the Place du Dragon, Rue Dauphine, and so out upon the quays. After riding for three squares along the river-bank, with the waters of the Seine foaming below them, the two finally passed the Pont St. Louis, and, turning down a short side street, drew up before a doorway wherein lanterns were lighted, and before which two link-boys and twice as many lackeys stood waiting. Above, upon a long iron arm, tossed by the ever-rising wind, swung a great painted sign, a harlequin in cap and bells, throwing his parti-colored cap above his head. Below, in uncertain letters, were the words "Café Procope."

As the two gentlemen dismounted, Richelieu called to one of the servants, who hastened forward to take his bridle. A second assisted Claude, while another, evidently under orders, turned and called back to some one inside. Instantly both doors were flung wide open, while the landlord of this most popular resort himself braved the weather and came out, candelabrum in hand, to greet his guests.

"Ah, Cressin," deigned the Duke, nodding, as he entered the house, "are the rest not yet arrived?"

"Indeed, my lord, they have waited for some time above—Monsieur le Duc de Gêvres, Monsieur le Duc d'Epernon, the Marquis de Mailly-Nesle, and the Baron d'Holbach."

"Um. 'Twas the hunt kept us. Light the way up."

Claude lagged behind to throw off his wet riding-cloak, brush what water he could from his hat, and shake out his hair which had flattened beneath the protecting collar. Richelieu was kept waiting for some seconds, and the landlord had become ill at ease before the young précieuse signified his willingness to proceed to the room above, where his host waited.

Not a bad-looking fellow was Claude de Mailly, albeit what individuality he possessed had some difficulty in asserting itself through the immaculate foppishness of his attire. His wig, a very fine one, was arranged à la brigadière, and tied with the regulation black ribbon. His forehead was broad and smooth, his eyes of a grayish green, shaded with heavy black lashes and good brows, which, however, were artificially pencilled. His nose was one bequeathed of ten generations of noble ancestry; his mouth was sensitive, his complexion dark. The dress that he wore was not expensive, though its ruffles were of fine Mechlin, and he carried both patch and snuff box of ivory and gold. Richelieu, who preceded him up the narrow stairs, was a more striking figure—taller, broader of frame, with well-shaped head, great brown eyes that had carried him through life, a hand like a woman's, with muscles of steel, a smile that had won him a king's heart, and a charm, a power of presence which had made time stand still before him, so that his eight-and-forty

years were something less than Claude de Mailly's twenty-three.

Before the two noblemen and the landlord were half-way up-stairs there reached them from above the tones of familiar voices engaged in that species of conversation, half witty, half absurd, which typified the times.

"Parbleu, Baron, you will be calling Richelieu out to-morrow! Your carp will be ruined."

"In such case, Marquis, I must order your cousin spitted. He will have been swimming the streets long enough, by the time he arrives, to have acquired an excellent flavor, of a kind."

"Oh, 'tis more likely that the Count de Mailly's flavor would be rather cloying. All love is sweet; but his is so really violent, gentlemen, that—"

"For a month after you would sicken with the mere thought of a rissole," cried the Duke from the threshold.

"And the epitaph which you would place over my picked bones," said Claude, from behind Richelieu's shoulder, "would be:

Sa chair, même, étant douce comme miel, Sa nature était aussi belle. Il entra dans la vie réelle."

"Bravo! Claude. We will forgive the lost feet. You have purchased pardon," cried d'Holbach, smiling. He and de Mailly-Nesle, Claude's cousin and the brother of Mme. de Châteauroux, went forward to greet the late-comers. D'Holbach, epicurean philosopher, and host of the small company, gave them a genial welcome. The Marquis grasped his cousin's hands, and bowed familiarly to the Duke, while the other two men in the room, d'Epernon and de Gêvres, boon companions, both intimates of the King, the one an amateur physician, the other an adept at embroidery, remained languidly seated, deigning a nod and smile to the last arrivals.

After a few further words of greeting and explanation, the party of six arranged themselves about the oval table, on which were already placed the hors-d'œuvres and sweet wines, while Cressin hurried away towards his kitchens to command the attendance of two waiters and the first course of the supper. Only part of the evening's entertainment was being given by the Baron d'Holbach. M. de Gêvres had arranged an amusement for the night which promised some novelty even to these utterly blasé gentlemen. He proposed conducting his friends across the river to his hôtel, which, by royal permission, had, very conveniently for his pocket, been turned into a public gambling-house. Its redoubtable owner, when not at Versailles, lived in exquisite style in his château at St. Ouen; and, since there was always a place for him in the Tuileries, the Hôtel Richelieu, or, more covertly, the Hôtel de Sauvré, in Paris, he had not yet felt any poignant discomfort through the loss of his ancestral house. On the contrary, the unique pleasure of appearing

in its familiar rooms furnished with the rows of tables, frequented by bourgeois and dwellers in St. Antoine, with the presence of an occasional petty noble, was really very refreshing to the jaded spirit of this vaporish child of highest France.

It was a particularly select little company who gathered about the table in the private salon of the Café Procope on this stormy night. All of them were of the bluest of blood; all of them spent the greater part of their time about the person of the King; to all, the doors of any and every house or salon in Paris were open at any hour; and not one of them but had had hearts flung at him from the night of his first appearance in the Gallery of Mirrors to the present moment, when interest in the hors-d'œuvres was beginning to wane, and the first course of the supper should have been making its appearance. D'Epernon had commenced to bore them all with some remarks upon the recent blood-letting of his Majesty after a rout at Choisy, when Claude jumped unceremoniously from the table, crossed the room to a mirror, and took out his patchbox.

"Trust you'll have no women to-night, de Gêvres," he remarked, breaking in upon d'Epernon. "I am wet through. My wig is in strings, and the powder has melted away like—like snow in June. While my boots"—taking out a large star and pasting it below the corner of his left eye—"my boots will not be fit for my valet, when we return to-night."

"Claude is standing there, my lords, aching with vanity to have me relate to you how crazily he has borne himself to-day. Ciel! 'Twould be driving me mad with anxiety to learn how soon I should be registering my presence at the Bastille, had I shown myself so little of a courtier, so utterly reckless for the sake of madame's admiration as has he."

Before any one had time to voice his curiosity, Claude turned quickly from the mirror. "The Bastille, Richelieu! The Bastille! Surely—"

"Why not, my child? I have been there thrice for less; and the last time, had it not been for my ever-honored Duchess of Modena—umph! I had been carried out shorter by a head than when I went in!"

The five gentlemen smiled broadly at certain memories still occasionally recalled on a rainy day at Versailles. But Henri, Claude's cousin, looked anxious. "What is your last exploit, Claude? Marie has been inciting you to rashness again?"

Claude laughed. "Madame did not honor me by a single command. I rode a course, I shot a stag, and I won—this, which was intended for a king, not me."

Forthwith the young fellow drew from beneath his waistcoat something which even de Gêvres leaned forward to see. It was a glove, a white gauntlet, weighted on the back with a crest heavily embroidered in gold, and set here and there with tiny sapphires of the color lately known as œil du Roi; while upon the smooth leather palm was painted a very good miniature of his gracious Majesty, Louis XV.

The little group of courtiers glanced from the trophy to the face of its owner, who was gazing upon them with a smile not wholly unconscious, but wisely tempered with cynicism. Presently the Baron reached forward and took the costly article from Claude. Holding it with a delicate touch in the light of a waxen candle, he smiled as he observed:

"Madame should not have removed this ere she gave it to you, my dear Count."

"I would to God she had not!" cried de Mailly-Nesle.

Four pairs of brows went gently up, but Claude's eyes met those of his cousin with such an expression of affection and melancholy that for an instant he seemed to be transformed to some other order of man.

The slight pause was broken by the entrance of the first course proper of the supper. The Count took back his gage and thrust it again to the conventional resting-place over his heart; and while the innumerable dishes were being placed upon the table or passed about, he returned the patch-box to his pocket and seated himself between his cousin and Richelieu.

"Now that Claude has given you his meagre idea of the crisis through which he passed to-day," remarked Claude's companion, helping himself to a fillet of partridge, "permit me to advance to him my own opinion of the affair, as well as to lay the tale before you all. His coming fate shall be surmised by you. Now hark: His Majesty and a little suite rode to Rambouillet yesterday, in the afternoon. The hunters were to follow this morning; but they say that de Rosset never permits the King to rise earlier than eight o'clock, so that he is fain to be near the forest on the day of the chase. I was with him; but, for some royal reason, Madame la Duchesse, despite some very eloquent pleading on my part, had refused to go. Possibly Mme. de Toulouse is of family too scrupulous to receive her."* The Dukes and d'Holbach smiled. "Claude, however, was of the royal train, for, mark you, gentlemen, Louis adores the Count at twenty miles distance from madame his cousin. Well, then, at ten this morning the meet was called at the edge of the forest.

His Majesty was in a frenzy of eagerness, and looked—did he not look like a little god, my dear Count? Hein? But for the point. The first deer had not yet been started by the keepers when a diversion occurred. His Majesty was talking with the head man. There was a murmur behind us. I turned about, and saw—"

* The Count of Toulouse was a legitimated son of Louis XIV.

"Monsieur le Comte perishing of loneliness," murmured de Gêvres, feebly.

"Not at all. On the contrary. It was Monsieur le Comte dismounted, standing beside the newly arrived coach of Mme. de Châteauroux, with his head so very far inside the window that it set some of us thinking—many things. Parbleu! I would that you had seen Louis' face."

"Madame must have risen very early," remarked d'Epernon, helping himself to a cream.

"Madame is always wonderful. When she stepped from the conveyance to greet her liege she looked more of a queen than her Majesty ever did. Small wonder that the King was all devotion. Before he had finished his first compliment, the heartless Leroy came forward to announce that stags do not wait. Madame was very gracious, and instantly mounted the horse prepared for her. She had driven from Versailles in her crimson habit. When all was ready, the King turned in his saddle and cried out before us: 'What reward have you to offer, madame, to him who shall present you with the antlers to-day?' We all watched her. She smiled charmingly for an instant. Some turned their eyes then upon the King. I was more subtle. I gazed at Claude."

"He is certainly very pleasant to look upon," observed d'Holbach, absently.

"'Twas not his beauty, Baron. I am most tender of his modesty. But, next time I plead with Mlle. Mercier for life and hope, I shall imitate the look he wore at that moment."

"Take care, my dear Richelieu. She will marry you if you do."

"On my faith, that would not be bad. 'Tis an excellent way to rid one's self of a woman. Baron, the carp is marvellous. Madame, of course, offered the glove that you have seen as gage of triumph. It is worth eighty livres. Lesage himself did the miniatures. When we finally set off, Louis' eyes were bright with certainty of success; for who would dare to engage in rivalry with the King?"

"Come, come, du Plessis, finish the tale. You are straining the budding nonchalance of de Mailly here to an alarming degree."

Richelieu shrugged. "We started, madame following at a little distance, though half a dozen ladies rode. After a quarter of an hour we got sight of the animal, and de Sauvré fired at it, but missed. By the manner in which his Majesty sat his horse, as we raced along to gain on the beast, we all knew that our shots must go astray to-day. Gradually the King drew away from the rest of us, and we reined the horses a little. That is, all but one of us played good courtier. The one was Claude."

"Monsieur, you might dare Satan for a lady if you would; but no one should dare the King."