CHAPTER XX
DESCAMPATIVOS
Winter passed. The company of Noailles returned from its quarters atTroyes to Versailles. Whatever he did, his passion for Cyrene colouredevery thought and scene with an artist's imposition of its owninterpretations. The world in which she dwelt was to him a vision, apoem, a garden.
A change had, it is true, come over his character; he became moredesperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection.The incident of the reprieve of la Tour, which had meanwhile reachedhim, sank deeper into his heart than the whole round of his pleasures,and made him anxious for the moment when he might again meet her.
The society in which he found himself flying, like one of a tribe ofbright-plumaged birds in a grove full of song, centred around the Queen.Marie Antoinette constantly sought refuge with her intimate circle frompeople and Court at the gardens and dairy of the Little Trianon, in thePark of Versailles, where it was understood that ceremony was banishedand the romps and pleasures of country life were in order.
In the month of June Lecour received a command to a private picnic here.It was the highest "honour" he had as yet attained. As a Canadian hehad paid his respects in the beginning to the Count de Vaudreuil. Thelatter was the leader in the pastimes of the Queen's circle, a handsomeand accomplished man, and one of social boldness as well as polish.Though in his successes at Court he affected to forget that he was ofCanadian extraction, he yet evinced an interest in Lecour on thataccount and showed courtesy to him. When the Count therefore one dayheard the Queen refer with favour to the graceful Guardsman, he addedhim to the next list of invitations.
The guests, about forty, all approved by Marie Antoinette, includedmembers of both the rival sets at Court. The young Duchess of Polignac,a simple, pleasant woman whom the liking of the Queen had alone raisedto importance, was there with several of her connections and friends.The Noailles family, with its haughty alliances, its long-standinggreatness, and its contempt for those new people the Polignacs, was tobe chiefly represented by the amiable young Duchess of Mouchy, who camelate.
No picnic could have been more free and easy. The Queen herself looked aVenus-like dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it wasannounced that the game of the afternoon should be that called"Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the LittleTrianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined to cast a Druidshade upon the lawn. Here Vaudreuil was elected high priest.
Assuming a white robe and mock-heroic solemnity, and standing out in thecentre of the grass, he sang forth in a strikingly rich voice--
"Let us raise an altar to Venus the goddess of these groves."
Four attendants, moving quickly forward in response, carrying squares ofturf, piled them into an altar as rapidly as possible. The partyarranged themselves in a quadrangle around it.
The altar being completed, Pontiff Vaudreuil proceeded with the mysterythus--
"Listen, dryads and demi-gods, to the oracles of the divinity. Thedecree of Aphrodite hath it that for the space of one hour there shallbe fair amity between----" Here he named the company off in pairs,carefully pre-meditated. As pair after pair were called, they steppedforward on the lawn amid a chorus of laughter, and swelled a processionfacing the priest and altar.
Lecour wondered as he saw the remaining number dwindle, who should bepaired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it.At length, to his astonishment, he heard the words--
"Madame la Baronne de la Roche-Vernay, and Monsieur de Repentigny."
He looked hastily around.
It was then that two ladies were seen hurrying into the arena from thedirection of the Trianon. One was the Duchess de Mouchy; the other, ofthe same age and dressed in a simple cloud of white tulle, came behindher, and Germain, as if in an apparition, saw his Cyrene. Her obeisancesto the Queen and company over, she turned and courtesied very deeply toher lover, who trembled with delight under her smile.
He was quickly recalled by the voice of de Vaudreuil, this time crying--
"Her Majesty of France, and her Majesty's servant and subject the HighPriest of the goddess."
It was the invariable custom of the ambitious and confident courtier toappropriate the Queen to himself.
Pausing at the close, he raised his arm ritually towards the trees andrested thus a moment speechless.
"Descampativos!" he suddenly exclaimed in a stentorian tone, throwingoff his robe.
At the word, the pairs broke ranks, the ladies screamed with merriment,and all the pairs scampered into the woods in different directions tofollow what paths might suit them, bound only by the rule of the game toreturn in an hour.
Germain and Cyrene strayed from the others into the groves, until thevoices grew fainter and fainter and at last died away. They walked onwithout finding any necessity of speaking, for their glances and theever sweet pang of love in their breasts sufficed. At last they found alittle space with a fountain where the water spurted up in three jetsout of the points of a Triton's spear, and there being a seat there,they took it, sat down, and looked in each other's eyes.
"My love," he whispered, kissing her cheek.
"Germain," breathed she slowly, her fair breast heaving, and suddenlythrew her arms around his neck and burst into tears. Sweet, sweet,sweet, were the moments of their supreme bliss.
THE HOUSE OF THE GOLDEN DOG
_From the model by Thomas O'Leary in McGill University._]