The Maid of Honour (Historical Novel). Wingfield Lewis
roses. Nor was she the least spoilt by adulation. She liked flattery, as every pretty woman does, but looked forward at no very distant period to the sober, substantial enjoyment of calm domestic happiness. When it pleased her parents to provide a spouse, she was prepared to take him to her heart as a dutiful daughter should, and lavish on him all the treasures of a young and guileless affection.
The king was glad of her success, because she was the child of the Maréchal de Brèze, a veteran of the good old school, whose body had been improved and beautified by honourable scars won in his country's battles. As for Madame de Brèze, people endured her existence. She was a fool and a chatterbox, and wrinkled to boot, with an extraordinary capacity for seeing things awry, and sagely commenting on them after the fashion of a Greek chorus. No one took heed of her, but all liked and respected the red-visaged old soldier whose rough rind covered a generous nature, and whose purse-strings were always slack.
For the Maréchal de Brèze was no mere soldier of fortune with naught in his valise except a bâton. He was rich in moneys safely banked with Necker at Geneva; possessed estates in smiling Touraine; and, moreover, was afflicted with the possession of an ancient and dismal chateau on the Loire, whose waters mirrored a labyrinth of high-pitched roofs, gaunt turrets, and grim gargoyles.
Of noble birth, entrancingly lovely, and an heiress. Heavens! what a combination; and at a time, too, as the queen had remarked, when everyone was out at elbows. It was evident that such a phenomenon must be snapped up at once; and straightway--helter-skelter up the wide stairs of the Hotel de Brèze rushed a mob of needy suitors--a hungry pack, yelling in full cry, whose ravenous ardour so scared madame that she forgot to improve the occasion. They had never loved till now, they cried in unison. Their quarterings were legion, their rent-rolls were miles long. The tenants never paid, and the ermine was somewhat mud-stained, but these were trifling details. They all adored the divine Gabrielle for herself--her angel form alone; that she should happen to be an heiress was another detail, and of course rather a drawback than otherwise.
The maréchal laughed till his round red face was blue, for these disinterested persons oozed with ravening greed. The queen looked grave. To save her favourite from the maw of vultures was a responsibility she would not shirk. A spouse must be found for Gabrielle who might be trusted not to be outrageously bad to her. In these days a good husband of fitting rank was an extinct animal. Warily scanning the horizon, Marie Antoinette fixed, as the fitting swain, on Clovis, Marquis de Gange, and de Brèze agreed with her majesty that Clovis was just the man.
So far as family went, the De Ganges could compete with the noblest. Acres had dwindled; tenants were recalcitrant; Clovis's income was little more than nominal, but nowadays poverty was modish in the highest circles; and, besides, it is well that the husband of a great heiress should be kept under due control. The cunning old soldier had settled long ago that the spouse of his daughter should not make ducks and drakes of her broad pieces, at least without her full consent. He had arranged in his own mind that he would bind up the money tight, and place it in her hands, hedged about with safeguards when called to another world. Till then he would himself dispense his fortune as his darling should wish and dictate. To this arrangement de Gange was quite agreeable, knowing that the maréchal was no skin-flint who would need abject suing. The old gentleman, who flattered himself that he was a judge of character, scanned the young man's features with keen scrutiny, and on the smooth surface could detect nothing of the ravenous wolf. The marquis was a tall, well-built, handsome fellow, dreamy and absent in manner, pedantic in his ways, a trifle too much enamoured of the crotchets of his day.
In the waning eighteenth century, while ladies were hopelessly frivolous or else weighed down with pedantry, the gentlemen came for the most part under three categories. There was the debauched voluptuary, ruined alike in health, purse, and reputation, whose honour was perforce upon his sleeve, since there was no room in his body for aught but selfishness. Then there was a feeble imitator who was as artistically unsatisfactory as nondescripts always are, for his fragment of conscience pulled him one way, and his envious admiration of stupendous wickedness another. He was always on the see-saw between vice and virtue, barely within touch of either. The third class was the most interesting, for it was clothed in mystery and draped in paradox. The dark and uncanny and incomprehensible engrossed the minds of this set. Revealed religion having been voted out of date by the encyclopædists and others, it was necessary to replace the broken idol with another. It was affirmed that Nature was moved by secret springs, governed by a world of spirits whom it was possible to coerce and bring under man's dominion. It was discovered that talismans, astrology, magic sciences, were not the vulgar impostures denounced by a jealous priestcraft; that the genus homo was composed of two distinct organisms, one visible and one invisible, the latter of which was privileged to roam freely about the universe, paying morning calls in remote planets, communing with angelic hosts. This was a fascinating theory for many reasons. The spirits who pulled our world-strings were good and bad, and alike vulnerable. Clearly, then, it was the distinct duty of philanthropists to fight and conquer those who were responsible for human ills. How delightful a sensation to seize a naughty spirit by the hair and administer a sound drubbing! To wrestle with the one, for instance, who is responsible for gout, and return him tweak for tweak! The yoke of the evil ones must be thrown off, that humanity, comfortably free from pain and sorrow, might sit down and enjoy millennium.
Hence, the dreamy people who vaguely wished well to their fellows, joined the train of mystics, laid claim to superior virtue, and titillated their petty vanity by posing cheaply as philanthropists.
Then think of the refreshing variety which might be introduced into one's amours! A weariful succession of mundane mistresses is so palling to a jaded palate. But according to the new creed, as your earthly tenement was occupied, faute de mieux, by commonplace lovemaking and intrigue, your more fortunate other self was blessed by an ethereal Affinity. While, in the flesh, you dallied, for want of something more amusing to do, at the feet of Phryne, your soul was flirting with a seraph somewhere in rarified space. It is gravely and seriously related of the visionary Swedenborg that while he resided in London, his fleshly frame was continually being refreshed. And how? His ethereal essence was in constant communion with that of a noble lady in Gutemburg. Their entwined spirits sat on a satin sofa in a boudoir illumined by wax candles--which candles were punctually lighted by respectful footmen at the accustomed hour of the rendezvous.
The high priest of the new creed was Mesmer, a Swabian doctor, who was conspicuously successful in waging war against the envious elves who undermine the health. As to his career of victory there was no doubt whatever, for by hocus-pocus and laying on of hands, he succeeded in curing a variety of nervous complaints which the enemy said were due to diseased imagination. It was idle to deny that somehow or other he did work miracles. Even St. Thomas, arch-doubter, could believe what he saw and felt. Under Mesmer's influence the sick took up their beds and walked, the halt flung away their crutches. The streets about his dwelling were choked with blazoned coaches. The frivolous and the earnest alike lost their heads. Considering the peculiarities of his temperament--too timid and too lazy to act, and therefore easily satisfied with theory--it was in the nature of things that Clovis, Marquis de Gange, should be Mesmer's most fervent pupil.
At a period when the peccadilloes of high-born aspirants to eligible maidens were apt to be somewhat deep-dyed, it would have been absurd to object to a suitor on the frivolous score of mysticism. The most exacting of wives could hardly be jealous of a passing flirtation with the crystal ball of Doctor Dee. Nor could she fairly take umbrage at delicate attentions to a crucible. Clovis and Gabrielle were married in the royal chapel, the bride being given away by the most amiable and unsinning of hard-used monarchs, and the world (who ought to know) said that the future of the happy pair could not be otherwise than rosy. They were a model couple, for Clovis was serious and reflective beyond his years, with a graceful turn for music, while the lovely face of Gabrielle beamed with affectionate pride. She was quiet, steady, and domestic, quite smothered under a heap of virtues.
Unfortunately, there were spirits at work who should have been detected at once in their mischievous game if Mesmer had not been napping, and duly routed by that prophet for the behoof of his dear pupil. They should have been carefully exorcised by the Master for his benefit, and sent packing into space to worry some one else; but as ill-luck would have it, the prophet was no longer present.