The Queen's Necklace

"Then, your grace, I wait for a bottle of wine."

"A bottle of wine! Explain yourself, sir, the thing begins to interest me."

"Listen then, your grace; his majesty the King of Sweden – I beg pardon, the Count Haga I should have said – drinks nothing but tokay."

"Well, am I so poor as to have no tokay in my cellar? If so, I must dismiss my butler."

"Not so, your grace; on the contrary, you have about sixty bottles."

"Well, do you think Count Haga will drink sixty bottles with his dinner?"

"No, your grace; but when Count Haga first visited France, when he was only prince royal, he dined with the late king, who had received twelve bottles of tokay from the Emperor of Austria. You are aware that the tokay of the finest vintages is reserved exclusively for the cellar of the emperor, and that kings themselves can only drink it when he pleases to send it to them."

"I know it."

"Then, your grace, of these twelve bottles of which the prince royal drank, only two remain. One is in the cellar of his majesty Louis XVI. – "

"And the other?"

"Ah, your grace!" said the maître-d'hôtel, with a triumphant smile, for he felt that, after the long battle he had been fighting, the moment of victory was at hand, "the other one was stolen."

"By whom, then?"

"By one of my friends, the late king's butler, who was under great obligations to me."

"Oh! and so he gave it to you."

"Certainly, your grace," said the maître-d'hôtel with pride.

"And what did you do with it?"

"I placed it carefully in my master's cellar."

"Your master! And who was your master at that time?"

"His eminence the Cardinal de Rohan."

"Ah, mon Dieu! at Strasbourg?"

"At Saverne."

"And you have sent to seek this bottle for me!" cried the old marshal.

"For you, your grace," replied the maître-d'hôtel, in a tone which plainly said, "ungrateful as you are."

The Duke de Richelieu seized the hand of the old servant and cried, "I beg pardon; you are the king of maîtres d'hôtel."

"And you would have dismissed me," he replied, with an indescribable shrug of his shoulders.

"Oh, I will pay you one hundred pistoles for this bottle of wine."

"And the expenses of its coming here will be another hundred; but you will grant that it is worth it."

"I will grant anything you please, and, to begin, from to-day I double your salary."

"I seek no reward, your grace; I have but done my duty."

"And when will your courier arrive?"

"Your grace may judge if I have lost time: on what day did I have my orders for the dinner?"

"Why, three days ago, I believe."

"It takes a courier, at his utmost speed, twenty-four hours to go, and the same to return."

"There still remain twenty-four hours," said the marshal; "how have they been employed?"

"Alas, your grace, they were lost. The idea only came to me the day after I received the list of your guests. Now calculate the time necessary for the negotiation, and you will perceive that in asking you to wait till five I am only doing what I am absolutely obliged to do."

"The bottle is not yet arrived, then?"

"No, your grace."

"Ah, sir, if your colleague at Saverne be as devoted to the Prince de Rohan as you are to me, and should refuse the bottle, as you would do in his place – "

"I? your grace – "

"Yes; you would not, I suppose, have given away such a bottle, had it belonged to me?"

"I beg your pardon, humbly, your grace; but had a friend, having a king to provide for, asked me for your best bottle of wine, he should have had it immediately."

"Oh!" said the marshal, with a grimace.

"It is only by helping others that we can expect help in our own need, your grace."

"Well, then, I suppose we may calculate that it will be given, but there is still another risk – if the bottle should be broken?"

"Oh! your grace, who would break a bottle of wine of that value?"

"Well, I trust not; what time, then, do you expect your courier?"

"At four o'clock precisely."

"Then why not dine at four?" replied the marshal.

"Your grace, the wine must rest for an hour; and had it not been for an invention of my own, it would have required three days to recover itself."

Beaten at all points, the marshal gave way.