The False Chevalier Part 18

"The army, I say, it shall be."

"Madame----"

"To-morrow I will hear your choice concerning this commission--horse, foot, or artillery?"

One did not argue with Princesses--partly because Princesses did not argue with one. He humbly retired, revolving an undefined notion of flight.

By chance Grancey entered during the afternoon.

"Homesick, just at the nick of fortune? Do you know that a sub-lieutenancy is vacant in my company? Sub-lieutenant, with rank of a Colonel of Dragoons?"

"I did not."

"You must ask for it."

"That is out of the question, my lord." The gravity and humility of his demeanour astonished Grancey, who surveyed him quizzically. "Is this a new _role_, Repentigny, a part from _The Unconscious Philosopher_? Are you ill?"

"I am leaving Versailles."

"Nonsense."

"And France."

"Never!"

"It is the case."

"But I have named you for the sub-lieutenancy."

Lecour looked up; but it was not enough to revive him from so deep a slough.

"I must go, Baron."

"_Galimatias!_ You shall not throw away a commission in the Bodyguard of the greatest Court in Europe. My brother-officers demand you, and you must not desert me, your friend--your _friend_, Germain."

Germain went over to a window and looked out, to hide the tears with which his eyes were filling. In the courtyard below a coach had stopped at one of the doors. Cyrene was entering it. Why was she brought before him just at that moment. This inopportune glimpse of her cancelled all reasoning. With fevered sight he watched her till the coach disappeared, and turning, said eagerly to de Grancey--

"Is not the Prince's consent required?"

"You agree!" Grancey cried, embracing him joyfully. "As to the Prince, comrade," said he, "the sole difficulty is that he will grant anything to anybody. We must get his signature--for which I admit it is delicate to ask him--before any other applicant."

Lecour's pulses sprang back to life.

"Could the _Princess_ a.s.sist us?" he inquired.

"Perfect!" cried the Baron.

Germain returned to her apartment. The Abbe was handing her a paper and saying--

"An entirely worthy gentleman, your Excellency, and wounded in several of the King's victories, as well as of irreproachable descent."

Germain did not guess until it was too late that this was the pet.i.tion of the Chevalier de la Violette.

She was stretching out her hand to take the pen which Jude pa.s.sed to her.

"Madame," Lecour exclaimed breathlessly, "I have a prayer to make to you immediately."

"Yes, Monsieur de Repentigny?"

"For a commission."

"Delightful."

"A vacant commission of sub-lieutenant in the company of the Prince."

She dropped the pen in wonder and looked at the Abbe Jude, whose face turned sickly.

And so Germain obtained a great position.

"As a matter of form," said Major Collinot, the Adjutant of the Bodyguard, at headquarters, "Monsieur de Repentigny of course proves the necessary generations of _n.o.blesse_?"

"Here is the herald's attestation, sir," replied Germain, producing that which Grancey's intercession had obtained for him at Fontainebleau.

Doubly past the strictest tests of ancestry and rea.s.sured in boldness he was now ready even to play cards with the dread Marechale de Noailles--her who it was reported once said, "That although our Lord was born in a stable yet it must be remembered St. Joseph was of royal line and not any common carpenter."

The pomp and glitter of the new life appealed immensely to the youthful instincts of the Canadian. The Baron detailed to his fascinated listener the composition, privileges, and duties of the Gardes--

"We are thirteen hundred, Repentigny, in four companies--the Scotch, the Villeroy, the Noailles, and the Luxembourg, each over three hundred persons; we relieve each other every three months. Just now it is the turn of our company of Noailles. Of the three months, each man spends one on guard at the Palace, one at the hunting-lodge, and one at liberty; after that we withdraw to towns some distance apart, those of the Noailles company to Troyes in Champagne." He told with pride of what good stature and descent it was necessary to be to be received, how keenly sought after even the commissions as privates were, hence the fine picked appearance of the body. He dilated on the various instruments and startling costumes of his company's band; on the style of their horses and the magnificence of their reviews and parades; on the superiority of the pale blue cross-belts which distinguished them, over the silver and white ones of the Scotch company, the green of the Villeroys, the yellow of the Luxembourgs. These differences, he a.s.serted, were the greatest distinctions under the sun.

Let us in our colder blood add to his description that each of these companies consisted of one captain, one adjutant, two lieutenant-commandants of squadron, three lieutenants, ten sub-lieutenants, two standard-bearers, ten quartermasters, two sub-quartermasters, twenty brigadiers or sergeants, two hundred and eighty guards, one timbalier, and five trumpeters. Germain studied the roll with great interest.

CHAPTER XX

DESCAMPATIVOS

Winter pa.s.sed. The company of Noailles returned from its quarters at Troyes to Versailles. Whatever he did, his pa.s.sion for Cyrene coloured every thought and scene with an artist's imposition of its own interpretations. The world in which she dwelt was to him a vision, a poem, a garden.

A change had, it is true, come over his character; he became more desperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection.

The incident of the reprieve of la Tour, which had meanwhile reached him, 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 of bright-plumaged birds in a grove full of song, centred around the Queen.

Marie Antoinette constantly sought refuge with her intimate circle from people and Court at the gardens and dairy of the Little Trianon, in the Park of Versailles, where it was understood that ceremony was banished and 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 he had paid his respects in the beginning to the Count de Vaudreuil. The latter was the leader in the pastimes of the Queen's circle, a handsome and accomplished man, and one of social boldness as well as polish.