CHAPTER XVII

"The Splendid One"--"Le Dieudonné"--otherwise Louis XIV., King of France and Navarre, sat in the Galerie des Cerfs at Fontainebleau before a blazing log fire, his feet and legs encased in long, heavy riding boots, half a dozen dogs round him, and, on his lap, a little spaniel of the breed afterwards known in England as that of King Charles, with whose long silky ears he toyed.

Near the King, yet still at some distance from him, were many members of his family and Court, including the Queen, who sat before a second fire farther down the room in the riding-dress in which she had that day accompanied her husband to a wild stag hunt in the forest. A little distance off, chattering, laughing--in discreetly subdued tones--were women who bore, or were yet to bear, names that the world will never forget. One there was, who, although already a recipient of the favours of Le Roi Soleil if not as yet of his love, sat plainly dressed and with her eyes demurely cast down, near to Madame de Montespan--maitresse en titre--and only raised those eyes at some sallies from the children of the latter who played around her knees. After which she would let them steal swiftly towards the face of the ruler of France's destiny as well as of the destiny of half Europe. Yet, sometimes, too, she would smile softly at some thought not aroused by the children's gambols, when her lips would part and disclose her teeth which were already giving signs of the decay that, later, was to take entire possession of them. When this occurred, those near her would wonder what the woman who, as Fran?oise d'Aubigne, had been born in a prison, was thinking of. Perhaps, they speculated to themselves, on the jokes and gibes of her dead husband, the diseased and crippled poet, romancer and dramatist, Paul Scarron. Or, perhaps, on the lovers she had so often run to meet (when she was supposed to be at mass or confession) in the little, green-hung parloir lent her by Ninon de l'Enclos for her rendezvous: perhaps of the manner in which, slowly but surely, she was spinning her web around the King and enfolding him in it even as the spider spins its web and enfolds and strangles the fly.

Near her were, however, other women who, had they had their way, would themselves have strangled the life out of this woman, now, by creation and gift of estate and brevet, Madame de Maintenon, as willingly as she was secretly strangling the will and power out of Louis; women whom once the King had loved more fiercely than--though not so subserviently as--he was now beginning to love her. Close by la femme funeste was the once lovely Duchesse de Chatillon--now grown fat and troubled with a nervous twitching of the face--who had once disputed with Madame de Beauvais, who had never been lovely and who squinted, the right of having been Louis' first love. Here, too, was the beautiful Mdlle. d'Argenson now married to a husband who was reported to beat her; and many others. While, had the phantoms of all those whom the King had adored and then neglected, and then cast off, been able to appear, the room would have been full of sombre shadows.

Before the King there was placed a small table on which, at this moment, was piled up in great disarray a vast heap of letters that had that afternoon arrived by special courier, and which he was at this time engaged in reading after his return from the stag hunt. Or rather, he was engaged in reading all those which a courtier who sat next to him in a smaller, less comfortable chair, handed to him after he himself had perused them. This courtier was no less a person than the Marquis de Louvois, whose precise position was that of Minister of War but who, during the ascendancy that he had for some years been gradually obtaining over the King--in which ascendancy he ran a race of deadly rivalry with Madame de Maintenon--had become his right hand.

"Two letters, both of the same import," Louis said now, placing one which he held in his hand face downwards on top of another he had previously laid on the table; "two letters from two women, and each telling the same story. Letters coming, you observe, from widely different cities. One from London. The other from Geneva. Almost, it seems, there must be some truth in what they tell."

The King might also have added, had he not doubtless entirely forgotten the fact, that the two women from whom those letters came had each been strongly affected towards him and his interests if they had not, like so many others, allowed themselves to love him.

"Can it be true?" he went on now. "Can it? Yet, it must be, Louise is in a position to know all, everything that transpires, everything that is known in London: the Duchesse de Castellucchio must know every secret that her admirer possesses."

"If, sire, he is her admirer."

"What else should he be?"

"Prétendu, perhaps, sire. Perhaps soupirant, awaiting events and fortune. Needy men have often married rich women, heiresses, women who can set them on their feet again; and they have done so without loving them."

"It is true," the King said, speaking in tones so low that none but his companion could hear him, but still tones clear, keen, incisive.

Then, lowering his voice as he changed the subject, the King said, "Is he gone?"

"He is, sire, in this room."

"Summon him."

Obedient to this order De Louvois rose from the far from comfortable seat in which he sat, and, proceeding down the gallery while smiling with a smile that had little mirth in it and scarcely any cordiality, reached at last a courtier who, clad in a green hunting costume adorned with gold lace and having on his shoulder the device in gold of a bugle above a sun, was talking to a lady. This courtier was no less a person than De Beaurepaire in his dress of Grand Veneur, while the lady, who possessed a simpering weak face that, in her case, was no index to her mind, and whose little curls all over her head gave her an appearance of youth to which she no longer had any claim, was Madame de Sevigne.

"His Majesty," De Louvois said to the former, after bowing to the latter, "desires to speak with you."

"I am at his service as always," De Beaurepaire replied. "I trust he is satisfied with the day's sport. It was worthy of a royal hunt, thirteen stags being killed."

"No doubt, no doubt," De Louvois muttered, as now De Beaurepaire followed him to where the King sat, while he observed as they drew near their master that the two letters were no longer lying on the table as they had originally been placed.

"Ah! Louis!" the King said to his namesake, addressing his old playfellow as he had always done since boyhood, "so you have not yet left for your house at Saint Mandé, where you now keep yourself so much when you are not called forth from it by your duties to me. Your duties of huntsman and Colonel of my Guards."

"Not yet, sire. The evening runs on; later I will ask your Majesty to permit me to depart. May I crave to know if your Majesty is contented with the day's hunt?"

"Beyond doubt. What you do for me, either as purveyor of sport or as the chief of my guards," bearing again on the fact of the Prince occupying the latter position, "is always well done."

"And always will be, sire. As it has ever been since, if I may recall the past, it was done when I was permitted to be your Majesty's principal playmate and comrade."

"Yes," the King replied, his bright blue eyes resting softly on the other, "my playmate and comrade. My playmate and comrade," he said again. "They were happy days. Once, Louis, you saved my life from an infuriated stag here in this very Forest of Fontainebleau--you remember?--and once in the Forest of Vincennes from an intending assassin."

"I have not forgotten, sire. If your life is ever in danger again, which heaven forfend, I pray it may be I who shall again save it."

"I hope so," the King said gently, "I hope so. Having saved that life before it should be dear to you now. Now, when I am environed with enemies worse than starving footpads and assassins; when the Dutchman, Orange, would, they say, go down on his knees and thank God for my taking off; when the ministers of my imbecile brother-in-law, Charles of Spain, would have me assassinated on my own hearth if it could be accomplished. When," he continued, "there is not a country in all Europe, except that over which Charles Stuart now reigns, that does not thirst for my life. In truth, I need good friends like you, Louis, and you, Louvois. The one to whom I have confided the charge of my own guards, the other the care of my whole army."

"Your Majesty may rely on me and my guards," De Beaurepaire said. "Your Majesty may rely on----"

"I know. I know," Louis said. "Should I have confided that charge to you otherwise?"

"And on me for the whole of your Majesty's army," De Louvois exclaimed.

"That too, I know. Now," the King said, rising from his chair, at which action all the others who were seated in the room rose as one person. "Now, let us prepare for supper. Louis," he said, addressing De Beaurepaire, "I spoke of an imbecile but now. There is another in Paris like unto him, who has a reckoning to make with you. The Duc de Castellucchio. What have you done with his wife?"

"She should be in Milan now, sire, and in her sister's arms. I sent her on to Nancy from Paris well escorted. I did my best for her. If the Duc de Castellucchio has aught to say to me he will know where I am to be found."

"He will not endeavour to find you himself. He may, however, persuade my Grande Chambre to do so."

"I do not fear even that august assembly, sire, so long as I have your protection."

"Do you fear aught on earth, Louis?"

"Nothing, sire, except your displeasure," the Prince answered with the courtier's true--yet false--air.

When, however, some hours later, De Beaurepaire had withdrawn, not only from the Royal Presence but also from all the crowd of courtiers who hovered round Le Roi Soleil, and he was seated on the back of a fresh, mettlesome horse which was to bear him to Paris as swiftly as might be, he rode as one rides whose mind is ill at ease. For his head was bent forward over the animal's mane, his handsome features were clouded and the reins in his hand were carelessly held.

"How he harped on the word assassin," he mused, "how oft he repeated it. How, too, he dwelt on my command of his guards. Yet I am no assassin nor would-be assassin. Whatever evil I may meditate against him, I have never thought of that. Nor has there been any talk of murder, of assassination--of him--so far as I have heard. La Truaumont spoke nothing of this after he rode back from Switzerland, but only that I should put myself at the head of the discontented nobility of Normandy who so protest against heavy taxation and the ignoring of their rights. Assassination! God! it is an evil word. And--assassination of him, my friend, my early playmate! The King who has showered benefits on me full-handed."

Musing still, meditating always, he rode on down the great avenue that led towards the little town of Fontainebleau, and, past it, to Paris five-and-thirty miles off; while, as he continued upon his way, he still mused, though now his thoughts took a different turn.

"A pity 'tis," he pondered, "that Humphrey West pryed into their--our--secrets. I would have had him spared, or, at least, slain in open honest fight, not done to death by so foul a thing as that Boisfleury--as La Truaumont says he was after he confessed that he knew all. Boisfleury! A piece of vermin fit only to crawl in the gutters of Paris, to herd with the lowest, but not fit to take the life of young, handsome Humphrey West. Humphrey, poor Humphrey! And poor Mademoiselle d'Angelis. She loved him passing well."

He paused ere concluding what he was saying, and, reining in his horse, stared fixedly into a dense copse that bordered the side of the drive. He stared at something he saw moving suspiciously through the undergrowth and as though with the desire of avoiding attention. Recollecting, however, that, on such a night as this, and after a great hunt in the vast forest which, at that time, covered very nearly a hundred square miles of ground, and where, too, hundreds of villagers, vauriens and ne'er-do-wells generally would be about, he muttered, "Psha! what need to be surprised at the sight of any creeping, crawling vagabond here," and withdrew his hand with almost a feeling of self-contempt from the holster towards which he had thrust it.

As, however, he again set his horse in motion, he saw that which, in all likelihood, had caused the creeping figure to take shelter in the undergrowth, if it was not due to his own appearance. Coming up the long avenue from the direction where, afar off, Paris lay, was one of those vehicles known as a chaise roulante--a small carriage which would hold but one person; a thing not much larger than a sedan-chair, but which was transported on two wheels and had a seat in front for the driver. To-night, since it was entirely dark, a lamp placed by the driver's side was alight and the rays from it were sufficient to illuminate the whole of the interior of the small carriage.

Attracted by the appearance of this vehicle, wondering who could be coming in so plain and common a conveyance to Fontainebleau at this hour--Fontainebleau, with the King in residence!--De Beaurepaire could not resist the impulse of curiosity which impelled him to glance in at the occupant.

Then, suddenly, his hands so tightened on the reins they held that his high-mettled horse rose on its hind legs and, in its rearing, nearly threw him.

He had tightened the reins thus as he saw a white, death-like looking face gazing out as he glanced in at the window; a face from out of which two hollow eyes stared into the darkness of the night.

"Dieu!" De Beaurepaire whispered, even as he knew, as he divined, that he had himself turned as white as that sepulchral-looking face inside the chaise roulante, and while he felt his whole body suffused with the perspiration that burst from every pore. "He is alive. And he knows all. To-night the King will know all, too. He must be here to tell him all!"