One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre. G. P. R. James
of Philip d'Aubin, however, were such as did not permit of consideration for himself or others. He felt himself condemned, and he believed himself despised, by the only woman that, perhaps, he had ever truly loved. The better feelings of his heart, too, rose against him: he knew that his conduct was ungenerous; and he felt that, had the time been one when faith and honour towards woman were aught but mere names, his behaviour would have been dishonourable in the eyes of mankind, as well as in the stern code of abstract right and wrong: and unhappy is the man who has no other means of justifying himself to his own heart but by pleading the follies and vices of his age. D'Aubin did plead those follies and vices, however, and he pleaded them successfully, so far as in soon banishing reflection went; but there was a sting left behind, which was the more bitter, perhaps, as mortified vanity had no small share in the pain that he suffered. He had believed that he could not so soon be treated with scorn and indifference; he had fancied that his hold on the heart of Beatrice of Ferrara was too strong to be shaken off so easily; and though he had no definite object in retaining that hold, though other passions had for the time triumphed over affection, and placed a barrier between himself and her which he was not willing to overleap, yet still the lingering love that would not be banished was wounded by her bitter tone; and, joined to humbled pride and offended vanity, made his feelings aught but pleasing.
In the meantime, the carriage of Beatrice of Ferrara bore her on with a heart in which sensations as bitter were thronging; though, as we have seen in her conversation with Eugenie de Menancourt, her feelings towards her lover were less keen and scornful than her words might lead him to believe. On the state of her bosom, however, there is no necessity to dwell here, as many an occasion will present itself for explaining it in her own words; and it may be better, also, to let her thus speak for herself, because in endeavouring to depict abstractedly, by means of cold descriptions, that varying and chameleon-like thing, the human heart, one is often led into seeming contradictions, from the infinite variety of hues which it takes, according to the things which surround it.
The carriage rolled on and entered the court-yard of the splendid mansion in which she dwelt. Here Beatrice alighted; but she did not go into the house, for a hand-litter or chair,--one of the most ancient of French conveyances,--waited under the archway, as if prepared by her previous order, with its two bearers, and a single armed attendant; and this new conveyance received her as soon as she set foot out of the other. The door was immediately closed, and the blinds, filled with their small squares of painted glass, were drawn up, Beatrice merely saying to the attendant who stood beside her as she shut out the gaze of the passers-by, "To Armandi's!"
The bearers instantly lifted their burden, and began their course at the same peculiar trot which has probably been the pace of chair-men in all ages; nor from this did they cease or pause till they reached one of the most showy, if not one of the richest, shops in the city. Standing forth from the building, under a little projecting penthouse, to secure the wares against both sun and rain, was along range of glass cases, containing every sort of cosmetic then in vogue, from the plain essence of violets, wherewith the simple burgher's wife perfumed her robe of ceremony, to the rich ointment compounded from a thousand rare ingredients, wherewith the King himself masked his own effeminate countenance against the night air whilst he slept. Behind these cases was the shop itself, hanging in which might be seen a crowd of various objects for the gratification of vanity and luxury,--the black velvet mask, or loupe, the embroidered and many-coloured gloves, the splendid hair-pins and enamelled clasps, the girdles of gold and silver filigree and precious stones, together with many another part of dress or ornament, some full of grace and taste, some fantastic and absurd, and some scarcely within the bounds of common decency. Beyond the shop, again, but separated from it by a partition of glass, covered in the inside with curtains of crimson silk, was the inner shop, or most private receptacle for all those peculiarly rich or fragile wares which Armandi, the famous perfumer of that day, did not choose to expose, to tempt cupidity, or lose their freshness, in the more exposed parts of his dwelling. Here, too, report whispered, were concealed those drugs and secret preparations, his skill in compounding which, it was said, had been much more the cause of his great favour with Catherine de Medicis than his art as a perfumer, which was the ostensible motive of her calling him from Italy to take up his abode in her husband's capital. However this might be, certain it is that, after the sudden death of the Queen of Navarre, the suspicions of the Huguenots turned strangely against Armandi, to whose diabolical skill they very generally attributed the loss of their beloved princess: and it is more than probable that he would have fallen a victim to their indignation, whether just or unjust, had not the horrors of St. Bartholomew shortly after delivered him from the presence of his adversaries in Paris.
Nevertheless, although suspicion might be strong, and the man's character as infamous as such suspicions could render it, yet the shop of Armandi was not less the resort of the beautiful and the fair, and even of the gentle and good: for it is most extraordinary how far female charity will extend towards those who contribute to the gratification of vanity and satisfy the thirst for novelty. The newest fashions, the most beautiful objects of art and luxury, the freshest and most costly rarities were nowhere to be found but at his shop; and no one chose to believe that Armandi dealt in poisons--but those who wanted them.
Thither, then, the chair, or litiere encaissee, as it was called, of Beatrice of Ferrara, was borne at an hour when the greater part of the gay Parisians were busy with that employment which few people love better, namely, that of eating the good things which their own gastronomic art produces. The bearers halted not at the steps which led into the shop, but proceeded till the chair was brought parallel to a door in the partition, between the outer and the inner chamber, so that she could pass at once from the one into the other. Her countenance, however, bore but little the expression of one going to buy trinkets, or to amuse oneself by turning over the light frivolities of such a place as that in which she stood. The usual fire of her eye was somewhat quelled, and a degree of melancholy, perhaps of anxiety, unusual with her at any time, had, since her meeting with the Count d'Aubin, pervaded her whole countenance. The doors of the partition and that of the chair had been both thrown open as soon as the gilded lions' feet of the latter touched the floor, and there stood the Signor Armandi, dressed in silks and velvets of rose colour and sky blue, with his mustachio turning up almost to his eyes, and a small jewelled dagger occupying the place of the sword, which his calling did not permit him to wear in Paris. His face was dressed in sweet complacent smiles; and, as he bowed three times to the very ground before his lovely visiter, his head was certainly "dropping odours;" for no one held his own perfumes in higher veneration than he did himself.
"Enchanted and honoured are my eyes to see you once again, lady most fair and chaste!" said he, in high-flown Italian. "I heard that you had been upon that sad couch, where the head is propped by the thorns of sickness, rather than by the roses of love."
"Hush, hush, Armandi!" cried Beatrice, with an impatient wave of the hand; "you should know me better than to speak such trash to me. I neither use your cosmetics, nor will hear your nonsense. I have come upon more weighty matters."
"For whatever you have come, most beautiful of the beautiful," replied the other, affecting to subdue his exalted tone; "you have come to command, and I am here to obey. Speak! your words are law to Armandi."
"When followed by the necessary seal of gold, I know they are," answered Beatrice, gravely. "Now hear me, then. I wish--I wish--" she paused and hesitated, and the perfumer, accustomed to receive communications of too delicate a nature to bear the coarse vehicle of language, hastened to aid her.
"You wish, perhaps," he said, in a soft voice, "to see some friend, and require the magical influence of Armandi to bring him to your presence----"
"Out, villain!" cried Beatrice, her eyes flashing fire. "For whom do you take me, pitiful slave? Do you fancy yourself speaking to Clara de Villefranche, or Marguerite de Tours en Brie, or, higher still in rank and infamy, Marguerite de Valois? Out, I say! Talk not to me of such things;--I wish--I wish--"
"Perhaps you wish to see some friend no more," said the soft voice of the perfumer, apparently not in the least offended by the hard terms she had given him, and equally disposed to do her good and uncompromising service of any kind. "Perhaps you wish the magical influence of Armandi to remove from your sight some one who has been in it too long, and troubles