"He disdains to plead!" laughed Madame de Lamballe.
"Guilty or not guilty--say!" cried Marie Antoinette. "Dumb? Maréchal de Brèze! we surrender to you the prisoner that you may investigate and do your duty. We have respectful confidence in that strange phenomenon, a rich man, at a time when all others are paupers. Look after Gabrielle, Mr. Money-bag! Shield her from a designing husband who, I begin to believe, conceals the raffish vices of a rake under the mask of recondite erudition."
The Marquise de Gange was unnecessarily perturbed by the lively sally, and tapped her wooden heel upon the floor.
"Alack, madam!" declared the marquis, compelled to speak, "I regret to be so unmodish as to have few of the fashionable vices. Instead of pleading in my own behalf, I would, if I dared, take up the cudgels for another. Doctor Mesmer----"
"The arch charlatan!" exclaimed the queen, raising both hands in protest.
"Not so. Others have aped his ways; have draped themselves in tawdry frippery which bore some semblance to his robes. In spite of calumny, and persecution, and fraudulent imitation and roguish arts, the master remains the master still, although he be unjustly banished by those whom he has benefited."
"The statue has come to life!" tittered Madame de Lamballe. "Cagliostro was unmasked as a cheat, so the one who went before wisely shook off his dust at him. Let us all agree to be convinced that Mesmer is a persecuted saint. We have the marquis's word for it. Let us have Mesmer back at once from banishment. Perchance he will employ his occult essences to calm the Parisian mob!"
"The king will not permit him to return to France," the queen said doubtfully; "yet as an empiric he was fascinating."
"When your majesty deigns to say I am in cloudland," remarked the marquis, with a high-bred courtesy, in which was a tinge of scorn, "you will understand that my spirit is on earth--at Spa--the refuge in exile of the master."
"I see it all!" said Madame de Lamballe, flourishing her fan. "It is Gabrielle who is jealous--and of Mesmer! What singular complications are produced by mystical alliances. A husband has a lovely wife, for whom everyone else is sighing, and is no whit jealous of her because he is an absorbed neophyte at the fount of wisdom. The prophet usurps his soul and his will. Where is the poor wife then?"
"What cruel things are said in jest!" Gabrielle cried hotly, breaking her silence at last. "I am not unhappy; and if I were, it would be no one's concern but mine. I care no sou for Mesmer or Cagliostro, or any of the conjuring rout. Jealous of such creatures--faugh!"
A shrunken dame who had been slumbering in a corner awoke with a start, and guiltily conscious of a nap, became garrulous in a weak piping treble like the irresponsible murmur of a rivulet.
"Your majesty is misinformed," she babbled plaintively. "People will say such things, and go to mass o' Sundays. Our daughter Gabrielle is happy as the day is long--why not? Clovis isn't jealous one bit, and quite right too. He lets her do as she likes, go where she likes, doesn't care where she goes. Perfect trust is a fine thing, but I often tell him that it is rash to throw so fair a creature into temptation, for who knows what they'll do until they are tempted? Gabrielle, I must admit, though quite a saint, can be as provoking as saints often were. And they, the saints, were so dreadfully frail sometimes, and so easily forgiven, and then held up to us as patterns. I can't quite make it out. If I had ever dreamed of doing half the shocking things that the canonized saints did, I should---- Eh?--oh!"
With that the rivulet ceased to flow as abruptly as it had begun, and the queen, who had with difficulty curbed her merriment, looked round for the cause of interruption. She beheld a little stout gentleman, with a round, blue-red face, in a state of imminent explosion. He whom she had declared to command the respect due to wealth, showed signs of choking from exasperation. His features had swelled till his bead-like eyes were scarcely visible; his finger nails were clenched into his palms. It was some seconds ere he could splutter out his spleen. Then with a deprecating look at her majesty, he gasped out--
"Majesté, pardon her. A fool! Always and for ever a fool--and my wife too."
Then, forgetting the presence in which he sat, he continued in white heat--
"I'll dash your stupid head against the wall when we get home. To dare to make your own daughter ridiculous before this company! To make your own flesh and blood absurd, through your incorrigible idiocy! Not that you can do it, for she's an angel straight from heaven. Provoking, forsooth! My darling--the idol of my heart! The Marquis de Gange knows better than to ill-treat his wife. If he did--well; old battered soldier though I am, I'd be even with him in a way he'd not forget."
"Oh--so harsh--always so harsh!" whimpered the rivulet in choking gasps. "Quite like dear M. Montgolfier's fire-balloon! I did not mean----"
"Hold your tongue!" snorted the maréchal in a menacing whisper--"and wait till we get home."
The situation, like many born of jesting, grew embarrassing. Old soldiers, especially when rich, may be allowed a certain freedom. But the ways of the barrack-yard may not be introduced into palaces. Marie Antoinette was not averse to a certain licence, which should banish for the time being the buckramed etiquette that she so loathed. But a family skeleton suddenly popping out of ambush to shake all its joints and grin with all its teeth! How uncomely a spectacle at the Tuileries! The assembled company, too, evidently enjoyed the fun, and would surely spread the story all over Paris on the morrow as the style of repartée that obtained at the queen's gatherings. If the episode, harmless in itself, were to reach the king's ears, he would be annoyed, and justly in such times as these, when everybody's hand was beginning to clutch his neighbour's throat. How many an innocent jest of Marie Antoinette's had already been built by malice into the proportions of a mountain? Unwittingly, she had, as it appeared, set fire to a mine. Gabrielle looked sorely distressed; her husband sullen, in that his pleading had failed, and that he could do nothing on behalf of the savant whom he worshipped. Her mother hazily perceived that it would be well to cork down the ebullient effervescence of her prattle, while the beady eyes of the maréchal, moving from the husband to the wife and back again, seemed to have detected the trace of something that was new, the discovery of which was disconcerting.
CHAPTER II.
HUSBAND AND WIFE.
When it is so plain to lookers-on that people ought to be happy, how perverse it is of them to be miserable! As the queen had declared, Gabrielle Marquise de Gange had no ostensible excuse for wretchedness. The specks on the sun of her good fortune were so tiny as to be well-nigh invisible. Upon the background of her portrait by Madame le Brun, that ingenious artist had inscribed in a hand so clear that all who ran might read, "The fairest woman of her time."
Mademoiselle Gabrielle de Brèze, when she appeared at court in the capacity of maid of honour, took the town by storm. Veteran lady-killers withdrew gold toothpicks from their gums to vow that so brilliant a complexion, such melting eyes that changed like the moody sea, from blue to deepest violet, such a bewitching little nose, and such deliciously fresh lips, had never been seen before; "and her figure! and her ankle!! and her arm and shoulder!!!" chimed in the younger swains whose hearts were already in their hands to be flung down as a palpitating carpet for her dainty little shoes.
The queen was enchanted with the success of her protégée, who was speedily surrounded by an increasing circle of danglers who minced with toes turned out, shook back their costly ruffles, and lisped the most honeyed compliments from morn to dewy eve. She enjoyed her new position vastly, was blithe as a young bird, and gazed fearlessly on into a future, which seemed an interminable vista paved with roses. Nor was she the least spoilt by adulation. She liked flattery, as every pretty woman does, but looked forward at no very distant period to the sober, substantial enjoyment of calm domestic happiness. When it pleased her parents to provide a spouse, she was prepared to take him to her heart as