CHAPTER V
MONSIEUR DE REPENTIGNY
For several days he revelled in exploring Eaux Tranquilles. He becamefamiliar with the paths of the gardens, the different statues andfountains. Sweet odours continually seemed to fill his breathing. He satdreaming in the trellised vineries, or wandered with his host along thewalks overhung by carefully trimmed shade-trees. Sometimes he wouldramble in the park, which occupied about a mile of hill across the mere;sometimes he strolled curiously about in the old castle, along deviouspassages and from chamber to chamber, wondering at its heavilytapestried walls, its gloomy dungeons with the water lapping justbeneath, its small windows painted with little coats of arms, and itswalls ten feet thick.
One of his strong recommendations in the eyes of de Bailleul was that heknew a fine horse and how to ride him. The Chevalier, being lord of alarge extent of country, and a very conscientious man who sympathisedenergetically with the broad-minded schemes of the Duke de laRochefoucauld for bettering the peasants, they did much visiting ofcures and cottagers.
"Parsangbleu," he exclaimed to Germain. "What is more simple than thatevery one of the people is a man like any of the rest of us."
That was then new doctrine to society.
Just when they were starting off one day together, the Chevalier's groomhanded him a note.
While they cantered outward he perused it and commented.
"Our visitors arrive from the Palace this afternoon. One is my veryamiable friend, the Prince de Poix, of the family of the Noailles,colonel of bodyguards to his Majesty. With him of course comes hisPrincess. Make yourself agreeable to her, Germain, which is very easilydone. She is the key of the situation for you. In her charge will besome ladies. Don't be afraid of the crinoline, my boy. There will alsobe some officers of the Prince's command, the Noailles company, namely,Baron de Grancey, Viscount Aymer d'Estaing, the Count de Bellecour, theMarquis d'Amoreau, and the Chevalier de Blair. They lead a famous corps,for every private in the bodyguard is a noble, and has the rank ofcaptain. They have come to Fontainebleau with the hunt."
The news brought Germain a shock. Since his experiences at the "HolyGhost" he had progressively arrived at the conviction that the onlyparallel to the distinction of caste between the hereditary gentry andall other persons as then drawn in France was the distinction betweenthe heavens above and the earth beneath; the distance between wasconsidered simply immeasurable and impassable except by thetransmigration of souls. We cannot understand the extent of it in ourday. No aristocrat is now so blind, no plebeian so humble, as tosincerely believe the doctrine. But in that age France was steeped init. High refinement of manners had grown to really differentiate theCourt from the masses, and the members of the governing order werejealous of the privileges of their circle to a degree which has noparallel now. To be suspected of being a farmer or a merchant, nomatter how cultivated or wealthy, was to be written "ignoble." Thehigher _noblesse_, making up in their own society, by the acquisitionsof descent and leisure, a delightful sphere of all that was mostfascinating in art, music, dress, and blazonry, as well as power andfame, moved as very gods, flattered with the tenet that other classeswere an inferior species actually made out of a different clay.Genealogy and heraldry formed a great part of education. The members ofthe privileged families all wore territorial titles as their badge. Themost beggarly individual who wore the sword claimed precedence of themost substantial citizen. Whatever name was plain, to them was base.
Now Germain's name was plain, and he knew his class was held by thesepeople as base. His Elysian gardens, thought he, were about to besnatched away.
About two o'clock in the day he saw with beating heart a courier gallopup to the staircase of the main entrance, dismount, and wait.
The Chevalier's _maitre d'hotel_ hastily caused the doors to be thrownwide open, and the hall swarmed full of servants. De Bailleul, donninghis Grand Cross of St. Louis, placed Germain at his side, and stood atthe foot of the steps.
The Princess arrived in a sedan-chair at the head of a procession ofcarriages, the first of which contained her chief servants and an abbe,who was her reader; those following held her husband and the otherguests.
Germain blanched when he saw the latter descend. They wore that bearingwhich marked their class, and the dress of each seemed to him like thepetals of some rich flower. The Canadian youth looked at them,fascinated. At his age the soul watches eagerly from its tower (what isa man but the tower of a soul?); each new turn of the kaleidoscope,each new figure crossing the landscape, is bathed in the rosy glow ofmorning. Yet he thought of them with a sense of imprisonment andsadness.
"I have not known till now what I desire; alas! I am nothing."
The Chevalier assisted the Princess to alight, and, kissing her hand,turned and said--
"Permit me, Madame, to present to your Excellency Monsieur Lecour, ofRepentigny, in Canada."
This was the crucial moment in the history of the merchant's son. As heheard his name uttered the thought rushed into his mind how baldly andbadly it sounded. There was a second of suspense, soon over. The greatlady, arrayed in all the mountainous spread and shimmering magnificenceof the Court costume, glanced at him with formal smile and impassiveface, drew back, and made the _grande reverence_ of the woman of highsociety. He noted it breathlessly, and as he returned it, full ofquick-summoned grace and courage, he heard an inner music beginning tosound, loud, triumphant, and strange. He became seized of a new-foundconfidence that he could sustain his part. Every small doing nowappeared of importance. The five Life Guards stood near. De Bailleulintroduced Germain to Baron de Grancey and went away. Grancey, nothaving caught the Canadian's name, amiably asked Germain to repeat it.
He stopped, blushed, and faltered--
"Germain--Lecour----"
"De?" the Baron asked, supposing as a matter of course that aterritorial title was to follow.
Lecour, in his confusion taking the requested "de" to mean merely"from," proceeded to utter four fatal words--
"De Repentigny en Canada."
The Baron turned to his nearest companion, and again the formula ofintroduction fell on Germain's ear--
"Chevalier de Blair, I have the honour of presenting you to _Monsieur deRepentigny_."
"Monsieur, I have the honour of saluting you," said de Blair.
Before Germain could collect his ideas he had bowed to each of the otherGuards under the name "de Repentigny."
It cannot be said that, once he had recovered his self-possession afterhis narrow escape from being announced as a plebeian, any great qualmsfor the present overtook him. He reasoned that the title just attributedto him was not the result of his own seeking. Though destined to bringon all the serious consequences which form the matter of this story andto change a lighthearted young man into a desperate adventurer, it camein the aspect of a petty accident, which but facilitated his receptionat the hands of the companions who crowded around him.
"Have I not seen you at Court? Were you not presented six months ago inthe Oeil de Boeuf?" inquired de Blair.
"I am only a provincial," he answered. "I know nothing of the Court."
"When I first came from Dauphiny up to Versailles," laughed the Count deBellecour, "I spoke such a _patois_ they thought I was a horse."
"You come from Canada? Tell us about the Revolution in the Englishcolonies. It is not a new affair, but we army men are always talkingabout it."
Germain ventured on an epigram.
"That was simple; it was the coming of age of a continent."
"A war of liberty against oppression?"
"Rather, gentlemen, a war of human nature against human nature. We hadexperience of the armies of both sides in our Province."
"Would I had been there with Lafayette!" another Guardsman cried.
"You, d'Estaing!" exclaimed Grancey. "You would cry if an Englishmanspoiled your ruffles!"
"Sir, my second shall visit you this evening!"
"Pray, you twin imitations of Modesty-in-P
erson, let us have a realtragediette in steel and blood," put in d'Amoreau, the fifth Life Guard.
D'Estaing and Grancey, drawing swords, lunged at each other. D'Amoreauand the Count de Bellecour each ran behind one of them and acted as asecond, the Chevalier de Blair standing umpire, when the Abbe, thePrincess's reader, entered. The blades were thrust, mock respectfully,back into their scabbards, and they all bowed low to the ecclesiastic.
A short, spare man of thirty with a cadaverous face, whose sharp,lustreless black eyes, thin projecting nose, and mouth like a sardonicmere line, combined with a jesuitical downwardness of look, made onefeel uneasy--such was the Abbe Jude as he appeared to Germain's brieffirst glance.
"Never mind, gentlemen; one less of you would not be missed," heretorted to their obeisance.
"You would like a death-mass fee, Abbe?"
The Canadian, brought up to other customs, wondered how a priest couldbe addressed with such contempt by good Catholics.
"Is he a monk or a cure?" he inquired, when the reader had passed on.
"He is nothing," answered d'Estaing, with clear eye and scornful lip."Paris is devastated by fellows calling themselves abbes. They have noconnection with the Church, except a hole in the top of their wigs. Thisfellow is Jude, the Princess's parasite."
To Germain the Guardsmen made themselves very agreeable. The manners ofthe Canadian attracted men who held that the highest human quality afterrank was to be amiable. The Baron took him violently into his heart. Hewas a large, well-made fellow of a certain grand kindliness of bearing,and wore his natural hair, which was golden. The rich-laced blue silktunic of the Bodyguard shone on his shoulders in ample spaces, and hewell set off the deep red facings, the gold stripes, big sleeves, andelegant sword, the coveted uniform, loved of the loveliest and proudestof Versailles.