Chapter XXXI: The Ball at the Intendant's Palace edit
The bevy of fair girls still surrounded Bigot on the terrace stair. Some of them stood leaning in graceful pose upon the balusters. The wily girls knew his artistic tastes, and their pretty feet patted time to the music, while they responded with ready glee to the gossiping of the gay Intendant.
Amid their idle badinage Bigot inserted an artful inquiry for suggestion, not for information, whether it was true that his friend Le Gardeur de Repentigny, now at the Manor House of Tilly, had become affianced to his cousin, Heloise de Lotbiniere? There was a start of surprise and great curiosity at once manifested among the ladies, some of whom protested that it could not be true, for they knew better in what direction Le Gardeur's inclinations pointed. Others, more compassionate or more spiteful, with a touch of envy, said they hoped it was true, for he had been "jilted by a young lady in the city!" Whom they "all knew!" added one sparkling demoiselle, giving herself a twitch and throwing a side glance which mimicked so perfectly the manner of the lady hinted at, that all knew in a moment she meant no other than Angelique des Meloises. They all laughed merrily at the conceit, and agreed that Le Gardeur de Repentigny would only serve the proud flirt right by marrying Heloise, and showing the world how little he cared for Angelique.
"Or how much!" suggested an experienced and lively widow, Madame La Touche. "I think his marrying Heloise de Lotbiniere will only prove the desperate condition of his feelings. He will marry her, not because he loves her, but to spite Angelique."
The Intendant had reckoned securely on the success of his ruse: the words were scarcely spoken before a couple of close friends of Angelique found her out, and poured into her ears an exaggerated story of the coming marriage of Le Gardeur with Heloise de Lotbiniere.
Angelique believed them because it seemed the natural consequence of her own infidelity.
Her friends, who were watching her with all a woman's curiosity and acuteness, were secretly pleased to see that their news had cut her to the quick. They were not misled by the affected indifference and gay laughter which veiled the resentment which was plainly visible in her agitated bosom.
Her two friends left her to report back to their companions, with many exaggerations and much pursing of pretty lips, how Angelique had received their communication. They flattered themselves they had had the pleasure of first breaking the bad tidings to her, but they were mistaken! Angelique's far-reaching curiosity had touched Tilly with its antennae, and she had already learned of the visit of Heloise de Lotbiniere, an old school companion of her own, to the Manor House of Tilly.
She had scented danger afar off from that visit. She knew that Heloise worshipped Le Gardeur, and now that Angelique had cast him off, what more natural than that he should fall at last into her snares--so Angelique scornfully termed the beauty and amiable character of her rival. She was angry without reason, and she knew it; but that made her still more angry, and with still less reason.
"Bigot!" said she, impetuously, as the Intendant rejoined her when the half-hour had elapsed, "you asked me a question in the Castle of St. Louis, leaning on the high gallery which overlooks the cliffs! Do you remember it?"
"I do: one does not forget easily what one asks of a beautiful woman, and still less the reply she makes to us," replied he, looking at her sharply, for he guessed her drift.
"Yet you seem to have forgotten both the question and the reply, Bigot. Shall I repeat them?" said she, with an air of affected languor.
"Needless, Angelique! and to prove to you the strength of my memory, which is but another name for the strength of my admiration, I will repeat it: I asked you that night--it was a glorious night, the bright moon shone full in our faces as we looked over the shining river, but your eyes eclipsed all the splendor of the heavens--I asked you to give me your love; I asked for it then, Angelique! I ask for it now."
Angelique was pleased with the flattery, even while she knew how hollow and conventional a thing it was.
"You said all that before, Bigot!" replied she, "and you added a foolish speech, which I confess pleased me that night better than now. You said that in me you had found the fair haven of your desires, where your bark, long tossing in cross seas, and beating against adverse winds, would cast anchor and be at rest. The phrase sounded poetical if enigmatical, but it pleased me somehow; what did it mean, Bigot? I have puzzled over it many times since--pray tell me!"
Angelique turned her eyes like two blazing stars full upon him as if to search for every trace of hidden thought that lurked in his countenance.
"I meant what I said, Angelique: that in you I had found the pearl of price which I would rather call mine than wear a king's crown."
"You explain one enigma by another. The pearl of price lay there before you and you picked it up! It had been the pride of its former owner, but you found it ere it was lost. What did you with it, Bigot?"
The Intendant knew as well as she the drift of the angry tide, which was again setting in full upon him, but he doubted not his ability to escape. His real contempt for women was the lifeboat he trusted in, which had carried himself and fortunes out of a hundred storms and tempests of feminine wrath.
"I wore the precious pearl next my heart, as any gallant gentleman should do," replied he blandly; "I would have worn it inside my heart could I have shut it up there."
Bigot smiled in complacent self-approval at his own speech. Not so Angelique! She was irritated by his general reference to the duty of a gallant gentleman to the sex and not to his own special duty as the admirer of herself.
Angelique was like an angry pantheress at this moment. The darts of jealousy just planted by her two friends tore her side, and she felt reckless both as to what she said and what she did. With a burst of passion not rare in women like her, she turned her wrath full upon him as the nearest object. She struck Bigot with her clenched hand upon the breast, exclaiming with wild vehemence,--
"You lie! Francois Bigot, you never wore me next your heart, although you said so! You wear the lady of Beaumanoir next your heart. You have opened your heart to her after pledging it to me! If I was the pearl of price, you have adorned her with it--my abasement is her glory!" Angelique's tall, straight figure stood up, magnified with fury as she uttered this.
The Intendant stepped back in surprise at the sudden attack. Had the blow fallen upon his face, such is human nature, Bigot would have regarded it as an unpardonable insult, but falling upon his breast, he burst out in a loud laugh as he caught hold of her quivering hand, which she plucked passionately away from him.
The eyes of Angelique looked dangerous and full of mischief, but Bigot was not afraid or offended. In truth, her jealousy flattered him, applying it wholly to himself. He was, moreover, a connoisseur in female temper: he liked to see the storm of jealous rage, to watch the rising of its black clouds, to witness the lightning and the thunder, the gusts and whirlwinds of passion, followed by the rain of angry tears, when the tears were on his account. He thought he had never seen so beautiful a fury as Angelique was at that moment.
Her pointed epithet, "You lie!" which would have been death for a man to utter, made no dint on the polished armor of Bigot, although he inly resolved that she should pay a woman's penalty for it.
He had heard that word from other pretty lips before, but it left no mark upon a conscience that was one stain, upon a life that was one fraud. Still his bold spirit rather liked this bold utterance from an angry woman, when it was in his power by a word to change her rage into the tender cooing of a dove.
Bigot was by nature a hunter of women, and preferred the excitement of a hard chase, when the deer turns at bay and its capture gave him a trophy to be proud of, to the dull conquest of a tame and easy virtue, such as were most of those which had fallen in his way.
"Angelique!" said he, "this is perfect madness; what means this burst of anger? Do you doubt the sincerity of my love for you?"
"I do, Bigot! I doubt it, and I deny it. So long as you keep a mistress concealed at Beaumanoir, your pledge to me is false and your love an insult."
"You are too impetuous and too imperious, Angelique! I have promised you she shall be removed from Beaumanoir, and she shall--"
"Whither, and when?"
"To the city, and in a few days: she can live there in quiet seclusion. I cannot be cruel to her, Angelique."
"But you can be cruel to me, Bigot, and will be, unless you exercise the power which I know is placed in your hands by the King himself."
"What is that? to confiscate her lands and goods if she had any?"
"No, to confiscate her person! Issue a lettre de cachet and send her over sea to the Bastile."
Bigot was irritated at this suggestion, and his irritation was narrowly watched by Angelique.
"I would rather go to the Bastile myself!" exclaimed he; "besides, the King alone issues lettres de cachet: it is a royal prerogative, only to be used in matters of State."
"And matters of love, Bigot, which are matters of State in France! Pshaw! as if I did not know that the King delegates his authority, and gives lettres de cachet in blank to his trusted courtiers, and even to the ladies of his Court. Did not the Marquise de Pompadour send Mademoiselle Vaubernier to the Bastile for only smiling upon the King? It is a small thing I ask of you, Bigot, to test your fidelity,--you cannot refuse me, come!" added she, with a wondrous transformation of look and manner from storm and gloom to warmth and sunshine.
"I cannot and will not do it. Hark you, Angelique, I dare not do it! Powerful as I may seem, the family of that lady is too potent to risk the experiment upon. I would fain oblige you in this matter, but it would be the height of madness to do so."
"Well, then, Bigot, do this, if you will not do that! Place her in the Convent of the Ursulines: it will suit her and me both,--no better place in the world to tame an unruly spirit. She is one of the pious souls who will be at home there, with plenty of prayers and penances, and plenty of sins to pray for every day."
"But I cannot force her to enter the Convent, Angelique. She will think herself not good enough to go there; besides, the nuns themselves would have scruples to receive her."
"Not if YOU request her admission of Mere de la Nativite: the Lady Superior will refuse no application of yours, Bigot."
"Won't she! but she will! The Mere de la Nativite considers me a sad reprobate, and has already, when I visited her parlor, read me a couple of sharpest homilies on my evil ways, as she called them. The venerable Mere de la Nativite will not carry coals, I assure you, Angelique."
"As if I did not know her!" she replied impatiently. "Why, she screens with all her authority that wild nephew of hers, the Sieur Varin! Nothing irritates her like hearing a bad report of him, and although she knows all that is said of him to be true as her breviary, she will not admit it. The soeurs converses in the laundry were put on bread and water with prayers for a week, only for repeating some gossip they had heard concerning him."
"Ay! that is because the venerable Mere Superior is touchy on the point of family,--but I am not her nephew, voila la differance!" as the song says.
"Well! but you are her nephew's master and patron," replied Angelique, "and the good Mere will strain many points to oblige the Intendant of New France for sake of the Sieur Varin. You do not know her as I do, Bigot."
"What do you advise, Angelique?" asked he, curious to see what was working in her brain.
"That if you will not issue a lettre de cachet, you shall place the lady of Beaumanoir in the hands of the Mere de la Nativite with instructions to receive her into the community after the shortest probation."
"Very good, Angelique! But if I do not know the Mere Superior, you do not know the lady of Beaumanoir. There are reasons why the nuns would not and could not receive her at all,--even were she willing to go, as I think she would be. But I will provide her a home suited to her station in the city; only you must promise to speak to me no more respecting her."
"I will promise no such thing, Bigot!" said Angelique, firing up again at the failure of her crafty plan for the disposal of Caroline, "to have her in the city will be worse than to have her at Beaumanoir."
"Are you afraid of the poor girl, Angelique,--you, with your surpassing beauty, grace, and power over all who approach you? She cannot touch you."
"She has touched me, and to the quick too, already," she replied, coloring with passion. "You love that girl, Francois Bigot! I am never deceived in men. You love her too well to give her up, and still you make love to me. What am I to think?"
"Think that you women are able to upset any man's reason, and make fools of us all to your own purposes." Bigot saw the uselessness of argument; but she would not drop the topic.
"So you say, and so I have found it with others," replied she, "but not with you, Bigot. But I shall have been made the fool of, unless I carry my point in regard to this lady."
"Well, trust to me, Angelique. Hark you! there are reasons of State connected with her. Her father has powerful friends at Court, and I must act warily. Give me your hand; we will be friends. I will carry out your wishes to the farthest possible stretch of my power. I can say no more."
Angelique gave him her hand. She saw she could not carry her point with the Intendant, and her fertile brain was now scheming another way to accomplish her ends. She had already undergone a revulsion of feeling, and repented having carried her resentment so far,--not that she felt it less, but she was cunning and artful, although her temper sometimes overturned her craft, and made wreck of her schemes.
"I am sorry I was so angry, Bigot, as to strike you with this feeble hand." Angelique smiled as she extended her dainty fingers, which, delicate as they were, had the strength and elasticity of steel.
"Not so feeble either, Angelique!" replied he, laughing; "few men could plant a better blow: you hit me on the heart fairly, Angelique."
He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips. Had Queen Dido possessed that hand she would have held fast Aeneas himself when he ran away from his engagements.
Angelique pressed the Intendant's hand with a grasp that left every vein bloodless. "As I hold fast to you, Bigot, and hold you to your engagements, thank God that you are not a woman! If you were, I think I should kill you. But as you are a man, I forgive, and take your promise of amendment. It is what foolish women always do!"
The sound of the music and the measured tread of feet in the lively dances were now plainly heard in the pauses of their conversation.
They rose, and entered the ballroom. The music ceased, and recommenced a new strain for the Intendant and his fair partner, and for a time Angelique forgot her wrath in the delirious excitement of the dance.
But in the dance her exuberance of spirits overflowed like a fountain of intoxicating wine. She cared not for things past or future in the ecstatic joy of the present.
Her voluptuous beauty, lissomeness, and grace of movement enthralled all eyes with admiration, as she danced with the Intendant, who was himself no mean votary of Terpsichore. A lock of her long golden hair broke loose and streamed in wanton disorder over her shoulders; but she heeded it not,--carried away by the spirit of the dance, and the triumph of present possession of the courtly Intendant. Her dainty feet flashed under her flying robe and scarcely seemed to touch the floor as they kept time to the swift throbbings of the music.
The Intendant gazed with rapture on his beautiful partner, as she leaned upon his arm in the pauses of the dance, and thought more than once that the world would be well lost for sake of such a woman. It was but a passing fancy, however; the serious mood passed away, and he was weary, long before Angelique, of the excitement and breathless heat of a wild Polish dance, recently first heard of in French society. He led her to a seat, and left her in the centre of a swarm of admirers, and passed into an alcove to cool and rest himself.