“I am going to turn this sprawling garden into a natural one!”
“Really? why, I thought that trees and grass and running water are natural enough.”
“Sire, you have to walk along straight paths between shaped boxwood trees, hewn at an angle of forty-five, to quote the Dauphin, and ponds agreeing with the paths, and star centres, and terraces! I am going to have arbors, rockeries, grottoes, cottages, hills, gorges, meadows – ”
“For Dutch dolls to stand up in?” queried the King.
“Alas, Sire, for kings and princes like ourselves,” she replied, not seeing him color up, and that she had spoken a cutting truth.
“I hope you will not lodge your servants in your woods and on your rivers like Red Indians, in the natural life which Rousseau praises. If you do, only the Encyclopædists will eulogise you.”
“Sire, they would be too cold in huts, so I shall keep the out-buildings for them as they are.” She pointed to the windows of a corridor, over which were the servant’ sleeping rooms and under which were the kitchens.
“What do I see there?” asked the King, shielding his eyes with his hand, for he had short-sight.
“A woman, your Majesty,” said Choiseul.
“A young lady who is my reading-woman,” said the princess.
“It is Mdlle. de Taverney,” went on Choiseul.
“What, are you attaching the Taverneys to your house?”
“Only the girl.”
“Very good,” said the King, without taking his eyes off the barred window out of which innocently gazed Andrea, with no idea she was watched.
“How pale she is!” remarked the Prime Minister.
“She was nearly killed in the dreadful accident of the 30th of May, my lord.”
“For which we would have punished somebody severely,” said Louis, “but Chancellor Seguier proved it was the work of Fate. Only that fellow Bignon, Provost of the Merchants, was dismissed – and – poor girl! he deserved it.”
“Has she recovered?” asked Choiseul quickly.
“Yes, thank heaven!”
“She goes away,” said the King.
“She recognized your Majesty, and fled. She is timid.”
“A cheerless dwelling for a girl!”
“Oh, no, not so bad.”
“Let us have a look round inside, Choiseul?”
“Your Majesty, Council of Parliament at Versailles at half-past two.”
“Well, go and give those lawyers a shaking!”
And the sovereign, delighted to look at buildings, followed the Dauphiness who was delighted, also, to show her house. They passed Mdlle. de Taverney under the eaves of the little kitchen yard.
“This is my reader’s room,” remarked the Dauphiness. “I will show you it as a sample of how my ladies will fare.”
It was a suite of anteroom and two parlors. The furniture was placed; books, a harpsichord, and particularly a bunch of flowers in a Japanese Vase, attracted the King’s attention.
“What nice flowers! how can you talk of changing your garden? who the mischief supplies your ladies with such beauties? do they save any for the mistress?”
“It is very choice.”
“Who is the gardener here so sweet upon Mdlle. de Taverney?”
“I do not know – Dr. Jussieu found me somebody.”
The King looked round with a curious eye, and elsewhere, before departing. The Dauphin was still taking the sun.
CHAPTER IX
THE HUNT
A LONG rank of carriages filled the Forest at Marly where the King was carrying on what was called an afternoon hunt. The Master of the Buckhounds had deer so selected that he could let the one out which would run before the hounds just as long as suited the sovereign.
On this occasion, his Majesty had stated that he would hunt till four P. M.
Countess Dubarry, who had her own game in view, promised herself that she would hunt the King as steadfastly as he would the deer.
But huntsmen propose and chance disposes. Chance upset the favorite’s project, and was almost as fickle as she was herself.
While talking politics with the Duke of Richelieu, who wanted by her help or otherwise to be First Minister instead of Choiseul, the countess – while chasing the King, who was chasing the roebuck – perceived all of a sudden, fifty paces off the road, in a shady grove, a broken down carriage. With its shattered wheels pointing to the sky, its horses were browsing on the moss and beech bark.
Countess Dubarry’s magnificent team, a royal gift, had out-stripped all the others and were first to reach the scene of the breakdown.
“Dear me, an accident,” said the lady, tranquilly.
“Just so, and pretty bad smash-up,” replied Richelieu, with the same coolness, for sensitiveness is unknown at court.
“Is that somebody killed on the grass?” she went on.
“It makes a bow, so I guess it lives.”
And at a venture Richelieu raised his own three-cocked hat.
“Hold! it strikes me it is the Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan. What the deuce is he doing there?”
“Better go and see. Champagne, drive up to the upset carriage.”
The countess’s coachman quitted the road and drove to the grove. The cardinal was a handsome gentleman of thirty years of age, of gracious manners and elegant. He was waiting for help to come, with the utmost unconcern.
“A thousand respects to your ladyship,” he said. “My brute of a coachman whom I hired from England, for my punishment, has spilled me in taking a short cut through the woods to join the hunt, and smashed my best carriage.”
“Think yourself lucky – a French Jehu would have smashed the passenger! be comforted.”
“Oh, I am philosophic, countess; but it is death to have to wait.”
“Who ever heard of a Rohan waiting?”
“The present representative of the family is compelled to do it; but Prince Soubise will happen along soon to give me a lift.”
“Suppose he goes another way?
“You must step into my carriage; if you were to refuse, I should give it up to you, and with a footman to carry my train, walk in the woods like a tree nymph.”
The cardinal smiled, and seeing that longer resistance might be badly interpreted by the lady, he took the place at the back which the old duke gave up to him. The prince wanted to dispute for the lesser place but the marshal was inflexible.
The countess’s team soon regained the lost time.
“May I ask your Eminence if you are fond of the chase again,” began the lady, “for this is the first time I have seen you out with the hounds.”
“I have been out before; but this time I come to Versailles to see the King on pressing business; and I went after him as he was in the woods, but thanks to my confounded driver, I shall lose the royal audience as well as an apartment in Paris.”
“The cardinal is pretty blunt – he means a love appointment,” remarked Richelieu.
“Oh, no, it is with a man – but he is not an ordinary man – he is a magician and works miracles.”
“The very one we are seeking, the duke and I,” said Jeanne Dubarry. “I am glad we have a churchman here to ask him if he believes in miracles?”
“Madam,