The Mesmerist's Victim

“Why, prince!” cried the older peer, with a smile.

“Hush, duke!” replied Rohan, laying a finger on his lips.

And away they were carried in opposite directions.

Richelieu was going to Baron Taverney’s residence in Coq-Heron Street.

The baron was seated before a dying fire, lecturing Nicole, or rather, chucking her under her pretty chin.

“But I am dying of weariness here, master,” she protested with wanton swinging of her hips in protest, “it was promised me that I should go to the palace with my mistress.”

It was at this point that the old rake fondled her, no doubt to cheer her up.

“Here I am between four ugly walls,” she went on wailing her fate: “no society – not enough air to breathe. But at Trianon, I should have people around me, and see luxury – stare and be stared at.”

“Fie, little Nicole!”

“Oh, I am only a woman like the rest of us.”

“No, you are more tempting than the rest,” said the old reprobate. “I only wish I were younger and rich again for your sake.”

At this juncture the door-bell rang and startled the master and maid.

“Run and see who can come at half-past eleven, girl.”

Nicole went out and through the passage by the house on the other street, and through the door which she left open. Richelieu saw a shadow of military aspect flit. This shadow and the face of Nicole, lighted up by her candle, enabled the old noble to read her character at a glance.

“Our old scamp of a Taverney spoke about his daughter, but he never breathed a word about the pretty maid,” he muttered.

“The Duke of Richelieu!” Nicole announced, not without a flutter of the heart, for the lady-killer was notorious.

It produced such a sensation on the baron that he got up and went to the door without believing his ears.

“Do you know what has brought me,” said the duke, giving hat and cane to Nicole to be more at ease in a chair. “Or rather what I have brought my old brother-officer? why, the company you asked the other day for your son. The King has just given it. I refused to act then for I was likely to be the Prime Minister but now that I have declined the post I can ask a favor. Here it is.”

“Such bounty on your part – ”

“Pooh! it is the natural outcome of my duty as a friend. But mark that the King does this more to spite Lady Dubarry than to oblige me. He knows that your son offended the Lady by quarreling with her bully of a brother on the highway. That is why she takes me in off-dudgeon at present.”

“You want me to believe that you serve me to spite the Dubarry woman?”

“Have it so. By the way, you have a daughter as well as a son.”

“Yes.”

“She is sixteen, fair as Venus, and – ”

“You have seen her?”

“At Trianon, where I passed the evening with her – and the King and I talked about her by the hour together. Are you vexed at this?”

“Certainly not; but the King is accused of having – ”

“Bad morals? is that what you were about to say?”

“Lord forbid! I would not speak ill of his Majesty, who has the right to have any kind of morality he likes.”

“What is the meaning of your astonishment, then? do you intend to assert that Mdlle. de Taverney is not an accomplished beauty and that consequently the King has not the right to look at her with an admiring eye?”

Taverney simply shrugged his shoulders and fell into a brown study, watched by Richelieu’s pitilessly prying eye.

“All right! I guess what you would say if you spoke aloud,” continued the marshal, “to wit that the King is habituated to bad company. That he likes the mud, as they say; but would be all the better if he turned from salacious talk, libertine glances, and the common woman’s jests to remark this treasure of grace and charm of every kind – the nobly-born young lady with chaste affections and modest bearing – ”

“You are truly a great man, duke, for you have guessed aright,” answered Taverney.

“It is tantamount to saying that it is high time for our master no longer to force us, nobles, peers and companions of the King of France, to kiss the base and harpy hand of a courtesan of the Dubarry type. Time that he danced to our piping, and that after falling from the Marchioness of Chateauroux, who was fit to be a duchess, to the Pompadour, who was the daughter and wife of a cook, then from her to Dubarry, and from her again to some kitchen wench or dairymaid. It is humiliating to us, baron, who wear coronets round our helmets, to bend our heads to such jades.”

“Ah, here be truths well spoken,” said Taverney, “and it is clear that a void is made at court by these low fashions.”

“With no queen, no ladies; with no ladies, no courtiers; and the commoners are on the throne in Jeanne Vaubernier, now Dubarry, a seamstress at Paris.”

“Granting things stand so, yet – ”

“There is a fine position at present. I tell you, my lord, for a woman of wit to rule France – ”

“Not a doubt of it, but the post is held,” said Taverney with a throbbing heart.

“A woman,” pursued the marshal, “who, without vice, would have the far-reaching views, calculation and boldness of these vixens; one who would so adorn her fortune that she would be spoken of after the monarchy ceased to exist. Has your daughter brightness and sense?”

“Yes.”

“And she is lovely, of the charming and voluptuous turn so pleasing men; with that virginal flower of candor which imposes respect on women themselves. You must take care of your treasure, my old friend.”

“You speak of her with an animation which – ”

“Why, I am madly in love with her and would marry her to-morrow if I could get rid of my seventy-four years. But is she well off? has she the luxury round her which so fair a blossom deserves? Nay, my dear baron, this evening she went to her lodgings, without a maid, or footman, and one of the Dauphin’s henchmen carried a lantern before her – it looked like some girls of middleclass life.”

“How can one help it when not rich?”

“Rich or not, Taverney, you must have a waiting-maid for her.”

“I know she ought to have one,” sighed the old noble.

“Why, what is this sprightly Abigail who opened the door to me,” said Richelieu, “cunning and pretty, on my word!”

“She is her maid but I dared not send her to the palace.”

“I wonder why, when she seems cut out for the part?”