Chapter II. The Messenge

The little balcony of wrought iron which advanced in front of this
window was furnished with a pot of red gilliflowers, another pot of
primroses, and an early rose-tree, the foliage of which, beautifully
green, was variegated with numerous red specks announcing future roses.

In the chamber lighted by this window, was a square table, covered with
an old large-flowered Haarlem tapestry; in the center of this table was
a long-necked stone bottle, in which were irises and lilies of the
valley; at each end of this table was a young girl.

The position of these two young people was singular; they might have
been taken for two boarders escaped from a convent. One of them, with
both elbows on the table, and a pen in her hand, was tracing characters
upon a sheet of fine Dutch paper; the other, kneeling upon a chair,
which allowed her to advance her head and bust over the back of it to
the middle of the table, was watching her companion as she wrote, or
rather hesitated to write.

Thence the thousand cries, the thousand railleries, the thousand
laughs, one of which, more brilliant than the rest, had startled the
birds in the gardens, and disturbed the slumbers of Monsieur’s guards.

We are taking portraits now; we shall be allowed, therefore, we hope,
to sketch the two last of this chapter.

The one who was leaning in the chair—that is to say, the joyous,
laughing one—was a beautiful girl of from eighteen to twenty, with
brown complexion and brown hair, splendid, from eyes which sparkled
beneath strongly-marked brows, and particularly from her teeth, which
seemed to shine like pearls between her red coral lips. Her every
movement seemed the accent of a sunny nature; she did not walk—she
bounded.

The other, she who was writing, looked at her turbulent companion with
an eye as limpid, as pure, and as blue as the azure of the day. Her
hair, of a shaded fairness, arranged with exquisite taste, fell in
silky curls over her lovely mantling cheeks; she passed across the
paper a delicate hand, whose thinness announced her extreme youth. At
each burst of laughter that proceeded from her friend, she raised, as
if annoyed, her white shoulders in a poetical and mild manner, but they
were wanting in that richfulness of mold that was likewise to be wished
in her arms and hands.

“Montalais! Montalais!” said she at length, in a voice soft and
caressing as a melody, “you laugh too loud—you laugh like a man! You
will not only draw the attention of messieurs the guards, but you will
not hear Madame’s bell when Madame rings.”

This admonition neither made the young girl called Montalais cease to
laugh nor gesticulate. She only replied: “Louise, you do not speak as
you think, my dear; you know that messieurs the guards, as you call
them, have only just commenced their sleep, and that a cannon would not
waken them; you know that Madame’s bell can be heard at the bridge of
Blois, and that consequently I shall hear it when my services are
required by Madame. What annoys you, my child, is that I laugh while
you are writing; and what you are afraid of is that Madame de
Saint-Remy, your mother, should come up here, as she does sometimes
when we laugh too loud, that she should surprise us, and that she
should see that enormous sheet of paper upon which, in a quarter of an
hour, you have only traced the words Monsieur Raoul. Now, you are
right, my dear Louise, because after these words, ‘Monsieur Raoul’,
others may be put so significant and incendiary as to cause Madame
Saint-Remy to burst out into fire and flames! Hein! is not that true
now?—say.”

And Montalais redoubled her laughter and noisy provocations.

The fair girl at length became quite angry; she tore the sheet of paper
on which, in fact, the words “Monsieur Raoul” were written in good
characters; and crushing the paper in her trembling hands, she threw it
out of the window.

“There! there!” said Mademoiselle de Montalais; “there is our little
lamb, our gentle dove, angry! Don’t be afraid, Louise—Madame de
Saint-Remy will not come; and if she should, you know I have a quick
ear. Besides, what can be more permissible than to write to an old
friend of twelve years’ standing, particularly when the letter begins with the words ‘Monsieur Raoul’?”

“It is all very well—I will not write to him at all,” said the young
girl.

“Ah, ah! in good sooth, Montalais is properly punished,” cried the
jeering brunette, still laughing. “Come, come! let us try another sheet
of paper, and finish our dispatch off-hand. Good! there is the bell
ringing now. By my faith, so much the worse! Madame must wait, or else
do without her first maid of honor this morning.”

A bell, in fact, did ring; it announced that Madame had finished her
toilette, and waited for Monsieur to give her his hand, and conduct her
from the salon to the refectory.

This formality being accomplished with great ceremony, the husband and
wife breakfasted, and then separated till the hour of dinner,
invariably fixed at two o’clock.

The sound of this bell caused a door to be opened in the offices on the
left hand of the court, from which filed two maitres d’hotel followed by eight
scullions bearing a kind of hand-barrow loaded with dishes under silver
covers.

One of the maitres d’hotel, the first in rank, touched one of the guards,
who was snoring on his bench, slightly with his wand; he even carried his
kindness so far as to place the halbert which stood against the wall in the
hands of the man stupid with sleep, after which the soldier, without
explanation, escorted the viande of Monsieur to the refectory, preceded by
a page and the two maitres d’hotel.

Wherever the viande passed, the soldiers ported arms.

Mademoiselle de Montalais and her companion had watched from their
window the details of this ceremony, to which, by the bye, they must
have been pretty well accustomed. But they did not look so much from
curiosity as to be assured they should not be disturbed. So, guards,
scullions, maitres d’hotel, and pages having passed, they resumed their places
at the table; and the sun, which, through the window-frame, had for an
instant fallen upon those two charming countenances, now only shed its
light upon the gilliflowers, primroses, and rose-tree.

“Bah!” said Mademoiselle de Montalais, taking her place again; “Madame
will breakfast very well without me!”

“Oh! Montalais, you will be punished!” replied the other girl, sitting
down quietly in hers.

“Punished, indeed!—that is to say, deprived of a ride! That is just the
way in which I wish to be punished. To go out in the grand coach,
perched upon a doorstep; to turn to the left, twist round to the right,
over roads full of ruts, where we cannot exceed a league in two hours;
and then to come back straight towards the wing of the castle in which
is the window of Mary de Medici, so that Madame never fails to say:
‘Could one believe it possible that Mary de Medici should have escaped
from that window—forty-seven feet high? The mother of two princes and
three princesses!’ If you call that relaxation, Louise, all I ask is to
be punished every day; particularly when my punishment is to remain
with you and write such interesting letters as we write!”

“Montalais! Montalais! there are duties to be performed.”

“You talk of them very much at your ease, dear child!—you, who are left
quite free amidst this tedious court. You are the only person that
reaps the advantages of them without incurring the trouble,—you, who
are really more one of Madame’s maids of honor than I am, because
Madame makes her affection for your father-in-law glance off upon you;
so that you enter this dull house as the birds fly into yonder court,
inhaling the air, pecking the flowers, picking up the grain, without
having the least service to perform, or the least annoyance to undergo.
And you talk to me of duties to be performed! In sooth, my pretty
idler, what are your own proper duties, unless to write to the handsome
Raoul? And even that you don’t do; so that it looks to me as if you
likewise were rather negligent of your duties!”

Louise assumed a serious air, leant her chin upon her hand, and, in a
tone full of candid remonstrance, “And do you reproach me with my good
fortune?” said she. “Can you have the heart to do it? You have a
future; you will belong to the court; the king, if he should marry,
will require Monsieur to be near his person; you will see splendid fetes,
you will see the king, who they say is so handsome, so agreeable!”

“Ay, and still more, I shall see Raoul, who attends upon M. le Prince,”
added Montalais, maliciously.

“Poor Raoul!” sighed Louise.

“Now is the time to write to him, my pretty dear! Come, begin again,
with that famous ‘Monsieur Raoul’ which figures at the top of the poor
torn sheet.”

She then held the pen toward her, and with a charming smile encouraged
her hand, which quickly traced the words she named.

“What next?” asked the younger of the two girls.

“Why, now write what you think, Louise,” replied Montalais.

“Are you quite sure I think of anything?”

“You think of somebody, and that amounts to the same thing, or rather
even more.”

“Do you think so, Montalais?”

“Louise, Louise, your blue eyes are as deep as the sea I saw at
Boulogne last year! No, no, I mistake—the sea is perfidious: your eyes
are as deep as the azure yonder—look!—over our heads!”

“Well, since you can read so well in my eyes, tell me what I am thinking about, Montalais.”

“In the first place, you don’t think, Monsieur Raoul; you think, My
dear Raoul.”

“Oh!—”

“Never blush for such a trifle as that! ‘My dear Raoul,’ we will
say—‘You implore me to write you at Paris, where you are detained by
your attendance on M. le Prince. As you must be very dull there, to
seek for amusement in the remembrance of a provinciale—’”

Louise rose up suddenly. “No, Montalais,” said she, with a smile; “I
don’t think a word of that. Look, this is what I think;” and she seized
the pen boldly, and traced, with a firm hand, the following words:

“I should have been very unhappy if your entreaties to obtain a
remembrance of me had been less warm. Everything here reminds me of our
early days, which so quickly passed away, which so delightfully flew
by, that no others will ever replace the charm of them in my heart.”

Montalais, who watched the flying pen, and read, the wrong way upwards,
as fast as her friend wrote, here interrupted by clapping her hands.
“Capital!” cried she; “there is frankness—there is heart—there is
style! Show these Parisians, my dear, that Blois is the city for fine
language!”

“He knows very well that Blois was a Paradise to me,” replied the girl.

“That is exactly what you mean to say; and you speak like an angel.”

“I will finish, Montalais,” and she continued as follows: “You often think
of me, you say, Monsieur Raoul: I thank you; but that does not
surprise me, when I recollect how often our hearts have beaten close to
each other.”

“Oh! oh!” said Montalais. “Beware, my lamb! You are scattering your
wool, and there are wolves about.”

Louise was about to reply, when the gallop of a horse resounded under
the porch of the castle.

“What is that?” said Montalais, approaching the window. “A handsome
cavalier, by my faith!”

“Oh!—Raoul!” exclaimed Louise, who had made the same movement as her
friend, and, becoming pale as death, sunk back beside her unfinished letter.

“Now, he is a clever lover, upon my word!” cried Montalais; “he arrives
just at the proper moment.”

“Come in, come in, I implore you!” murmured Louise.

“Bah! he does not know me. Let me see what he has come here for.”