The Women's War

  ‘Yes, but let’s lose no time. Duke, you write your order and hand Courtauvaux over to me.’

  The duke took a pen and wrote just these two words on a piece of paper: Bordeaux – No. After that, he signed it.

  Then, on the outside of this laconic dispatch, he wrote the following address: ‘To Her Majesty, Queen Anne of Austria, Regent of France.’

  Nanon, for her part, was writing two lines that she put in with the paper, after showing them to the duke. Here they are:

  My dear Baron,

  As you can see, the attached dispatch is for Her Majesty the Queen. As you value your life, leave at once: the safety of the kingdom is at stake!

  Your dear sister,

  Nanon

  Nanon had hardly finished the letter, when hurried footsteps were heard at the bottom of the staircase, and Courtauvaux, charging up, opened the door with the delighted face of a man bringing news which he knows is eagerly awaited.

  ‘Here is Monsieur de Canolles, whom I met a hundred yards away,’ the groom said.

  The duke gave an exclamation of surprise and satisfaction, while Nanon went pale and rushed towards the door, muttering: ‘Am I then fated not to avoid him!’

  At that moment a new figure appeared at the door, magnificently attired, with his hat in his hand and smiling in the most gracious manner.

  IX

  Had a bolt of lightning fallen at Nanon’s feet, it would certainly not have caused her greater surprise than this unexpected apparition, nor would it probably have elicited a more painful exclamation than that which escaped involuntarily from her mouth.

  ‘It’s him!’ she cried.

  ‘Indeed, my dear little sister,’ replied an affable and charming voice. ‘But forgive me,’ the owner of the voice exclaimed on seeing the Duke d’Epernon. ‘Forgive me! Am I interrupting?’

  And he bowed to the ground in front of the Governor of Guyenne, who acknowledged this with a benevolent gesture.

  ‘Cauvignac!’ Nanon muttered, but so softly that the name was spoken in the heart rather than on the lips.

  ‘Welcome, Monsieur de Canolles,’ said the duke, with the most contented expression in the world. ‘Your sister and I have spoken only of you since yesterday evening, and since yesterday we have been wanting to see you.’

  ‘Ah! You have been wanting me? Truly?’ said Cauvignac, turning to Nanon with a look that contained an indefinable expression of irony and suspicion.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nanon. ‘The duke has been kind enough to wish you to be presented to him.’

  ‘Only the fear that I might importune you, Monseigneur,’ said Cauvignac, once more bowing, ‘has prevented me from requesting the honour earlier.’

  ‘Indeed, Baron,’ said the duke. ‘I have been admiring your tact, but I must also reproach you for it.’

  ‘Reproach me for my tact, Monseigneur? Me? Ha!’

  ‘Yes, because if your good sister had not looked after your affairs…’

  ‘Oh!’ Cauvignac exclaimed, with a eloquently reproachful glance at Nanon. ‘Oh, so my good sister looked after the affairs… of…’

  ‘Of her brother,’ Nanon said quickly. ‘What could be more natural?’

  ‘And today, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cauvignac. ‘To what do you owe the pleasure of my company, Monseigneur?’

  ‘Well, of course, to chance, to the simple chance of the fact that you have come back.’

  ‘Ah, ha,’ Cauvignac thought. ‘It appears that I went away.’

  ‘Yes, you went away, wicked Brother, without telling me, except in two words that only increased my anxiety.’

  ‘What do you expect, my dear Nanon?’ said the duke with a smile. ‘A man in love must be allowed some licence.’

  ‘Oh, dear! It’s getting complicated,’ thought Cauvignac. ‘Now it appears that I’m in love.’

  ‘Come now,’ said Nanon. ‘Admit it.’

  ‘I don’t deny it,’ Cauvignac replied, with a triumphant smile, while trying to find some small parcel of truth in the eyes around him from which he could elaborate a great big lie.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said the duke, ‘but let’s have breakfast, if you please. You can tell us about your affairs while we are eating, Baron. Francinette, bring a knife and fork for Monsieur de Canolles. You haven’t eaten yet, I hope, Captain?’

  ‘No, Monseigneur, and I must tell you that the chill of the morning has sharpened my appetite no end.’

  ‘You mean the chill of the night, you reprobate,’ said the duke. ‘You’ve been out and about roistering since last night.’

  ‘Well, I never!’ Cauvignac muttered to himself. ‘For once the brother-in-law guessed right.’

  ‘Very well, if you like… I have to admit it… The night air…’

  ‘Come on, then,’ said the duke, giving Nanon his arm and passing into the dining room, followed by Cauvignac. ‘I hope we have something here to defeat your appetite, however healthy it is.’

  And, indeed, Biscarros had surpassed himself. There were not many dishes, but they were delicious and succulent. The yellow wine of Guyenne and the red wine of Burgundy slipped from their bottles like golden pearls and cascades of rubies.

  Cauvignac devoured his meal.

  ‘This lad is going to it with a will,’ said the duke. ‘And you, Nanon, aren’t you eating?’

  ‘I am not hungry any longer, Monseigneur.’

  ‘Dear Sister!’ said Cauvignac. ‘And when I think that it is the pleasure of seeing me that has taken away her appetite! Honestly, I have to reproach her with loving me so much.’

  ‘A grouse’s wing, Nanon?’ asked the duke.

  ‘For my brother, Monseigneur, for my brother,’ said the young woman, seeing Cauvignac’s plate emptying with terrifying rapidity and fearing the banter that would follow the disappearance of the food.

  Cauvignac held out his plate with an extremely grateful smile. The duke put the bird’s wing on it, and Cauvignac put both in front of himself.

  ‘Well, now, Canolles, what are you up to?’ asked the duke with a familiarity that seemed to Cauvignac to bode very well. ‘I’m not talking about love, you understand…’

  ‘Oh, please do talk about it, Monseigneur, please do. Feel quite free,’ said the young man, whose tongue was starting to be loosened by successive and equal applications of Médoc and Chambertin, and who, moreover, unlike those who themselves take other people’s names, was not afraid of being interrupted by his double.

  ‘He understands the joke very well,’ said Nanon.

  ‘So we can put it down to the little gentleman?’ the duke asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nanon. ‘The little gentleman you met yesterday evening.’

  ‘Ah, yes… on my way,’ said Cauvignac.

  ‘And then at Master Biscarros’s inn,’ said the duke.

  ‘And then at Biscarros’s inn,’ Cauvignac repeated. ‘That’s quite correct.’

  ‘Did you really meet him?’ Nanon asked

  ‘The little gentleman?’

  ‘Yes. What was he like? Come on! Tell me honestly.’

  ‘Why,’ said Cauvignac. ‘He was a delightful little fellow, blond, slender, elegant and travelling with a sort of groom.’

  ‘That’s it exactly,’ said Nanon, biting her lip.

  ‘Are you in love?’ asked the duke.

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘With that little, blond, slender, elegant gentleman?’

  ‘Why, Monseigneur!’ said Cauvignac, wanting to dispel any misunderstanding. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you still have the little pearl-grey glove against your heart?’ the duke went on, with a sly laugh.

  ‘The little pearl-grey glove?’

  ‘Yes, the one you were sniffing and kissing so passionately yesterday evening.’

  Cauvignac was completely lost.

  ‘I mean the one that led you to suspect the trick, the me-tamor-pho-sis,’ the duke went on, stressing each syllable.
r />   Cauvignac understood everything from that one word.

  ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed. ‘So the gentleman was a woman? Well, well, on my word, I suspected as much.’

  ‘There’s no more doubt,’ Nanon murmured.

  ‘Give me a drink, Sister,’ said Cauvignac. ‘I don’t know who emptied the bottle over here on my side, but there’s nothing left in it.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said the duke. ‘There’s a cure for this love, since it doesn’t prevent him from drinking and eating, and the king’s cause will not suffer.’

  ‘The king’s cause suffer!’ cried Cauvignac. ‘Never! The king’s cause before everything. The king’s cause is sacred. To His Majesty’s health, sir!’

  ‘So can we count on your devotion, Baron?’

  ‘My devotion to the king?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I should think you can count on it. I’d let myself be cut in pieces for him… sometimes.’

  ‘And it’s quite simple,’ said Nanon, fearing that Cauvignac, in his enthusiasm for Médoc and Chambertin, might forget the character that he was playing and slip back into himself. ‘It’s quite simple: aren’t you a captain in His Majesty’s service, thanks to the goodness of my lord Duke?’

  ‘I shall never forget it!’ said Cauvignac, in a voice tearful with emotion, putting a hand on his heart.

  ‘We shall do better than that, Baron, in future,’ said the duke.

  ‘Thank you, Monseigneur, thank you!’

  ‘And we have already started.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, you are too shy, my young friend,’ the duke continued. ‘When you need protection, you must turn to me – now that there is no further need of disguise, now that you don’t need to hide, now that I know that you are Nanon’s brother.’

  ‘Monseigneur, from now on I shall come straight to you!’ said Cauvignac.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I undertake to do so.’

  ‘You would do well. Meanwhile, your sister will explain what it’s about: she has a letter to give you on my behalf. Your fortune may be in the message that I am entrusting to you, on her recommendation. Follow the advice of your sister, young man, follow her advice; she has a fine mind, a distinguished wit and a generous heart. Love your sister, Baron, and you will have my goodwill.’

  ‘Monseigneur!’ Cauvignac burst out. ‘My sister knows how much I love her and that I wish for nothing so much as to see her happy, powerful… and rich…’

  ‘I like your warmth,’ said the duke. ‘So stay with Nanon while I go and take care of some rascally fellow. But as it happens, Baron, you may be able to tell me something about the bandit in question.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Cauvignac. ‘However, I shall have to know what bandit you mean, my lord, because there are a lot, of every kind, around nowadays.’

  ‘Quite right, but the one I mean is among the most impudent scoundrels I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Really!’ said Cauvignac.

  ‘Just imagine: this wretch, in exchange for the letter that your sister wrote to you yesterday, which he managed to procure by the basest act of violence, demanded a letter of attestation from me.’

  ‘Really? A letter of attestation? But what interest was there for you,’ Cauvignac asked, in an innocent kind of way, ‘in having this letter from a sister to her brother?’

  ‘Have you forgotten that I was unaware of the relationship?’

  ‘You’re right, I had.’

  ‘And that I was silly enough – forgive me, won’t you, Nanon?’ the duke went on, holding out his hand to the young lady, ‘ – that I was silly enough to be jealous of you?’

  ‘Really? Jealous of me? Ah, my lord, you were very wrong there.’

  ‘So I wanted to ask you if you had any idea of who he could be, this man who played the part of traitor to me.’

  ‘No, truly… But your lordship knows that such actions do not go unpunished, and one day you will find out who committed this one.’

  ‘Yes, I certainly shall know it one day,’ said the duke, ‘and I have taken measures to ensure that. But I would rather have known it at once.’

  ‘So,’ Cauvignac said, pricking up his ears. ‘You have taken precautions?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I have! And the scoundrel will be very lucky if his letter of attestation doesn’t get him hanged.’

  ‘Really?’ said Cauvignac. ‘And how will you recognize this letter of attestation from the other orders you have issued, Monseigneur?’

  ‘I made a mark on this one.’

  ‘A mark?’

  ‘Yes, a mark that is invisible to everyone, but which I shall know by means of a chemical process.’

  ‘Well, well, well!’ said Cauvignac. ‘What you’ve done is very ingenious, Monseigneur, but you must beware in case he suspects the trap.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no danger of that. Who’s going to tell him?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cauvignac. ‘Nanon won’t, and I won’t…’

  ‘Nor shall I,’ said the duke.

  ‘Nor will you! So you are quite right, Monseigneur, you will certainly know one day who this man is, and then…’

  ‘And then, since I shall have kept my word to him – since I shall have given him what was promised by the letter of attestation – I shall have him hanged.’

  ‘Amen!’ said Cauvignac.

  ‘And now, since you can give me no information about this rogue…’

  ‘No, indeed I can’t.’

  ‘Well, then, as I said, I shall leave you with your sister. Nanon, give this boy precise instructions and, above all, let him lose no time.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Monseigneur.’

  ‘I’ll leave the two of you then.’

  The duke made a graceful bow to Nanon and a friendly wave to her brother, before going down the stairs with a promise that he would probably come back during the day.

  Nanon accompanied him to the top of the stairs.

  ‘Damnation!’ said Cauvignac. ‘He did well to warn me, the worthy lord! Well, he’s not so much of a ninny as he seems. But what shall I do with his letter of attestation? Why – the same thing that one does with a banknote: I’ll discount it.’44

  ‘Now, Monsieur,’ said Nanon, coming back and closing the door. ‘As the duke just said, it’s the two of us.’

  ‘Yes, my dear little sister,’ Cauvignac replied. ‘It’s the two of us. Because the only reason I came here was to talk to you. But if we want to chat, we should sit down, so please take a chair.’

  He pulled up a chair and gestured to Nanon, to show that it was for her. Nanon sat down with a raised eyebrow that boded no good.

  ‘Firstly,’ said Nanon, ‘why are you not where you are supposed to be?’

  ‘Now! My dear little sister, this is not very kind. If I was where I am supposed to be, I should not be here, and consequently you would not have the pleasure of seeing me.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to take holy orders?’

  ‘No, I certainly didn’t. Let’s say that some people who are interested in me, in particular yourself, did have a desire to make me take those vows, but personally I have never had a particularly strong religious vocation.’

  ‘Yet you had an entirely religious education.’

  ‘Yes, my sister, and I do believe that I took advantage of it most religiously.’

  ‘Please, let’s have no sacrilege. Don’t mock what is holy!’

  ‘I wasn’t mocking, my dear little sister, just describing a fact. Here: you sent me to study with the Paulist brethren in Angoulême.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I did study. I know Greek like Homer, Latin like Cicero and theology like Jan Hus.45 So, having nothing more to learn from the worthy brothers, I left them, still in accordance with your intentions, to go to the Carmelites in Rouen and take my vows.’

  ‘You are forgetting that I promised to give you an annual allowance of a hundred pistoles and that I kept my promise. It seems to me that a hundred pistoles should
be more than enough for a Carmelite.’

  ‘I don’t deny it, dear Sister, but on the excuse that I was not yet myself a Carmelite, it was the monastery that always took the allowance.’

  ‘However that may be, did you not make a vow of poverty in dedicating yourself to the Church?’

  ‘If I did make a vow of poverty, I assure you that I carried it out to the letter. No one has been poorer than I.’

  ‘But how did you get out of the monastery?’

  ‘Ah, now! In the same way that Adam got out of the earthly paradise: knowledge was what damned me. I was too clever.’

  ‘What! You were too clever?’

  ‘Yes. You must realize that among the Carmelites, whose reputation is not that of being any Pico della Mirandolas, Erasmuses and Descartes,46 I was naturally considered a prodigy of learning. The result was that when the Duke de Longueville come to Rouen to urge the town to declare in favour of the Parliament, I was sent to Monsieur de Longueville to address him, which I did in such elegant and well-chosen words that he showed himself not only very satisfied with my gift of the gab, but even asked if I should like to be his secretary. This was at the very moment when I was about to pronounce my vows.’

  ‘Yes, I remember the occasion. You even, on the pretext of taking your leave of the world, asked me for a hundred pistoles, which I sent to you, to be given into your own hands.’

  ‘And they were the only ones that I ever saw, on my honour!’

  ‘But you were supposed to renounce the world.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I intended, but it was not the intention of Providence, which probably has designs on me. It engineered a different fate for me, through the medium of Monsieur de Longueville. It did not want me to become a monk. So I bowed to the will of that good Providence, and, I must say, I have not repented of doing so.’

  ‘So you are no longer in holy orders?’

  ‘No, at least, not for the time being, dear Sister. I would not venture to tell you that I shall not return there some day, for what man can say on the eve what he will do tomorrow? Hasn’t Monsieur de Rancé just founded the Trappist order?47 Perhaps I shall follow Monsieur de Rancé’s example and invent some new religious order. But for the time being I’ve tasted war, you know, and that’s made me profane and impure for a bit. I’ll purify myself at the first opportunity.’