My master went to Paris for Christmas, to our old lodging at the Luxembourg. The king was very anxious for Count Saxe to be permanently lodged at Versailles, but my master, by a variety of clever subterfuges, declined to exchange his splendid and spacious apartments at the Luxembourg, for the dog-hole which was all they had to offer him at Versailles. Two thousand persons were lodged in the palace. It may be imagined what sort of lodging much of it was; mere closets for ladies of quality, a landing at a stair’s head curtained off for gentlemen. My master was offered a couple of rooms under the roof for himself, myself and Beauvais. Count Saxe responded that he was not a snail, and required a lodging somewhat larger than himself. He was told that a bishop was satisfied with one room and an alcove for his valet. My master replied that a bishop was a holier man than he. The fact is, my master did not like the everlasting restraints of Versailles. Some malicious people said he preferred Paris on account of Mademoiselle VeriÈres, the actress. God knows. There are always people who can ascribe the worst motives to the simplest actions.

Francezka and Gaston Cheverny spent the winter at 411 the HÔtel Kirkpatrick. Madame Riano had gone to England then, but only made a brief stay. From thence she went to Rome, and Monsieur Voltaire declared it was for the purpose of getting the pope to put himself at the head of the Kirkpatricks to march to London and wrest the throne of England from the Hanoverians for Prince Charles Edward Stuart. At all events, news reached Paris that Madame Riano had fallen out violently with the Holy Father, as she had done with the Kings of France, of Spain and of England, and was breathing out fire and slaughter against the Holy See.

It was to be expected that Francezka and Gaston should live with splendor and gaiety at the HÔtel Kirkpatrick, and they did; this, too, upon a scale that probably made Francezka’s father, the prudent old Scotchman, writhe in his grave. Balls, masques, concerts and ballets followed each other with dazzling swiftness. A temporary theater was built in the garden on the site of the one where Francezka had made her first dramatic adventure with the baker’s boy, under the management of Jacques Haret. Here were given the best comedies of the day, with Francezka as the star. Monsieur Voltaire was often in the cast, and some of his own masterpieces were given at this theater for the first time.

Nor was he the only wit who frequented the HÔtel Kirkpatrick. Not only wits, but scholars like Maupertius, the two Bernouillis, many poets and literary men, Cardinal de Polignac and Marquis de Beauvau, soldiers like Marshal Count de Belle-Isle, his brother the Chevalier, the Prince de Soubise, the Prince de Clermont, and others, made Francezka’s saloon 412 shine. She was the extreme of the mode and her saloon became the rage. Monsieur Voltaire went about threatening the ladies, that if they did not look out, Madame Cheverny would bring virtue into fashion. But there was no panic among them, although it can not be denied that Francezka was admired for her virtue as for her wit, and, with such a fortune as hers, neither would be likely to remain under an eclipse.

She was in the greatest demand at Versailles, too, and danced in all of the finest ballets given for the king. She had her English curricle, and with her English joki standing up behind her, was often seen driving in the Bois de Boulogne. She dressed superbly, and was altogether glorious. The same felicity seemed to attend Gaston. The Duc de Richelieu took a violent fancy to him, which, of course, recommended him to the king. He was of all the royal hunting parties. The king loved to hear him tell of his adventures in the East, which were extremely interesting, and Gaston was ever eloquent of tongue. He was gallant to the ladies, and much run after by them, but I do not think he ever gave Francezka cause for a moment’s jealousy. In short, if two human beings might be supposed to walk the sunny heights of joy, it was Francezka and Gaston Cheverny.

Paris was seething during the winter of 1740-41, which preceded the outbreak of the first Silesian war on the part of the great Frederick of Prussia against the greater Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary. France and Paris were dragged hither and thither, Cardinal Fleury, a peaceful old man, urging that France remain neutral; Marshal Belle-Isle, a genius in war, insisting 413 that France must side with Prussia. Naturally, the military element wanted war, and when it seemed likely that Cardinal Fleury would keep France at peace, Marshal Belle-Isle went about storming that this old parson would ruin everything. It was understood that no active military operations would take place until the late summer, so the gay dogs of officers and the merry ladies who danced in the court ballets, and flitted about like butterflies in the sun, had to make the most of Paris then. The pace at which they went was killing—and Francezka and Gaston Cheverny were not the last in this race.

One day, shortly before the carnival, there was a great fÊte at the Louvre, and the courtyard was filling up with magnificent coaches. The finest of all was a gilt coach superbly horsed with six horses, with four outriders in the crimson and gold of Francezka’s liveries. She sat alone in the coach, waiting her turn to drive up to the great entrance. She was, as always, dressed with splendor, and as she sat back in the coach, fanning herself with a beautiful fan that slightly moved the white plumes of her head-dress, I made my way through the crush and spoke to her. She had one of her lackeys let down the coach steps, and I stood on them while speaking to her. I congratulated her on her splendid equipage.

“It is very superb, I know,” she replied, but a shade came over her face. “Is it not trying, Babache, to have one’s lightest word taken seriously? Here is the story of this coach. I had a handsome one—fine enough for any one—but happening to say one day, in pure carelessness, that I should like to have a gilt coach, Gaston 414 orders this one for me, secretly, and it arrives this morning, to my astonishment. Moreover, in order to do it, Gaston, himself, went without some horses he needs. He is by no means so well mounted as he should be.”

“At least, Madame,” I replied, “few wives have your cause of complaint.”

I noticed then some dissatisfaction in Francezka’s face; the pursuit of pleasure, night and day, is bound to leave its marks on the strongest frame, and the best balanced nerves. I suspected Francezka was in the mood to find fault.

“Yes,” she replied to my last words, “few wives can complain of too great complaisance on the part of their husbands. But it is, surely, not a comfortable way to live, for a woman, to watch and weigh her words with her husband, lest he act upon the most lightly expressed wish. Depend upon it, Babache, a great passion is a great burden.”

Francezka said this to me—Francezka, less than a year after Gaston’s return. Oh, how strange a thing is a great passion after all!

In a minute or two more, I heard Gaston’s voice over my shoulder. He was standing on the coach step below me, and looked smiling and triumphant.

“I see you approve of this equipage,” said he to me. “It is not unworthy even of Francezka.”

I agreed with him; admired the horses—six superb roans—and then the time came to move on, and I sprang to the ground, while Gaston stepped into the coach.

As I walked away, I reflected that the money to pay 415 for the gilt coach and six came out of Francezka’s estate. But Gaston, I knew, had the management of it; and it is not the husband of every heiress who is satisfied to keep indifferent horses for himself, and provide his wife with six for her coach, and four for her outriders, to say nothing of the finest coach in Paris.

But was Francezka happy? Her air that day did not indicate it, but rather weariness, and disgust of the pleasures she followed so assiduously. It is never a sign of happiness to follow pleasure madly.

In walking and riding about the streets of Paris I kept a lookout for Jacques Haret. I had not forgotten my promise to give him a good beating the next time I saw him, and felt conscientious scruples that I had not done it when I had met him the spring before. But the news he gave me on that occasion was so startling it put my duty out of my head. I had not the slightest doubt that some time or other he would drift back to Paris. Fellows of Jacques Haret’s kidney can no more keep away from Paris than cats can keep away from cream.

So I watched for him, and one evening, soon after the carnival, as I was walking along the Rue St. Jacques, I came face to face with Jacques Haret. It was dusk, but the lamps which hung across the street had not yet been lighted. Jacques Haret was stepping debonairly along, whistling cheerfully Sur le pont d’Avignon. I noticed, even in the dim February evening, that he was shabbily dressed, but bore the marks of good eating and drinking on his face. When we came face to face he involuntarily halted. I stepped up to him and said:

“Where will you take it?”

The fellow knew I meant the beating I had promised. I continued:

“Here in the public street, where we shall be recognized, arrested, and Count Saxe will see that I come to no harm, while you will cool your heels in the ChÂtelet prison where you belong; or in the Luxembourg gardens which are deserted now, and where I can beat you more at my leisure, but not the less hard?”

“In the Luxembourg gardens,” said the scoundrel, coolly, after a pause.

I have ever admired Jacques Haret’s courage and I admired it now. He knew I meant to thrash him, that I had the strength to do it, and that if he killed me Count Saxe would tear him limb from limb. He had lost that nice honor of a gentleman, which would make a man accept death rather than a blow, but reasoning philosophically, as a rogue often does, concluded to take his punishment as best he might. Kings often reason thus, but few private men do.

We marched along the dark street, Jacques Haret in front, I behind. He resumed his whistling of Sur le pont d’Avignon.

There were no lanterns inside the Luxembourg gardens. When we reached the spot light streamed from many of the windows of the palace, but it did not penetrate the far recesses of the gardens, behind the tall hedges and the summer houses. I motioned Jacques Haret to the farthest corner, behind a grove of dwarf cedars. Once there I began stripping off my coat, and told him to strip off his coat also.

“Now, Babache,” said this fellow, remonstrating, “don’t be unreasonable; it is unworthy of you. Here 417 I have come with you quietly, and I could have made a devil of a row, except I grew tired of dodging you through the streets of Paris; but really I don’t think it good for my health to take your blows with nothing but my shirt between your fist and my skin.”

It was difficult to be serious with Jacques Haret, although his crimes were serious enough, of which his behavior to poor old Peter and the unfortunate Lisa were crimes in every sense. Nevertheless, I made him take off his coat, which he did, grumbling excessively. And in the shadow of the cedars I gave him as sound a beating as any man ever got on this planet. All the while I was thinking of the satisfaction it would give Francezka to know of it.

He had made no active resistance, although he skilfully avoided some of my hardest blows. He uttered no oath, nor prayer, nor remonstrance; he had long known that some time or other I should give him a beating, that I was physically twice the man he was, and in the way he took his punishment he exemplified that singular form of courage in which a rogue often surpasses an honest man.

When I was through with him he presented a very battered appearance.

“I am now in the class with Monsieur Voltaire,” he said, as he wiped the blood from his nose. “He has had two beatings so far and so have I. But faith! the world is so unjust! It will not sympathize with me as it did with Voltaire. However, he was beaten by the Duc de Rohan’s lackeys, while I was pummeled by a prince, a Tatar prince born in the Marais.”

“I ought to have run you through,” I said, “except 418 that I am squeamish about taking human life. Now, go your ways, Jacques Haret, but if you do not want this dose repeated keep out of my way.”

He bowed to the ground.

“My dear sir,” he said, “I never sought your society in my life, nor even that of your master. The inducement which you offer me to keep out of your way is sufficient. I hope I shall never see you or your cross eye again.”

As I turned and went into my lodgings I felt how futile a thing I had done; the dog should have been killed, but as I said, I am squeamish about taking human life. However, I knew that such punishment as I had given him would mightily please Francezka, and I determined to take the first occasion of telling her.

It came the next night, when there was to be a great mi-carÊme rout and ball at the HÔtel Kirkpatrick. I did not usually go to these balls unless commanded by my master, and he was a merciful man; but on this night I went with him of my own free will. It was a very splendid company, and few there were not above my quality. Madame Riano, who had just returned from Rome, sparkled with diamonds like a walking Golconda; but Francezka wore only a few gems, but those exquisite. She looked very weary; the months of gaiety and dissipation she had led were telling on her. Gaston was a noble host, attentive to all, and not forgetting the kind and quality of respect due to each.

When the rout was at its height, and the floor of the dancing saloon crowded, I had occasion to pass through the great suite of rooms, which were nearly deserted for 419 the ball room. There was a little curtained alcove, in which either the lights had been forgotten or had been put out, and from that place, dark and still, although the wild racket of the ball was going on in the same building, I heard Francezka’s voice calling me. I went in and found her sitting on a sofa.

“I am so very tired,” she said. “I came here for a moment’s rest, not thinking I should be fortunate enough to have a word with my Babache.”

I sat down by her and told her the story of my beating Jacques Haret. I could not see her face in the darkness, but she clapped her hands joyously.

“I am afraid I want vengeance to be mine instead of the Lord’s,” she cried with her old spirit. “I am like my Aunt Peggy in that. Thank you for every blow you gave Jacques Haret. I shall tell Peter, but not poor Lisa. That girl has the nature of a spaniel. I believe she reproaches herself for having thrown in his face the silver snuff-box Jacques Haret gave her.”

I knew that Francezka and Gaston had been invited to visit Chambord in the spring, and I expressed a wish that they might come.

“No,” replied Francezka, relapsing into the weary tone she had first used. “We have declined the invitation. I am so tired of balls and hunting parties and ballets, and everything in the world, that I feel sometimes as if I wished to be a hermit.”

I listened in sorrow, but hardly in surprise. It is as true as the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid that to give a human being all he or she wants of anything is to cure all liking for it. Francezka’s natural taste, however, was so strongly in favor of gaiety and splendor, 420 and she had tasted so little of it, that I thought satiety would spare her longer than most. There was a pause, after which I said:

“You will be missed at Chambord, but Capello is so sweet in the spring and summer.”

“Yes,” answered Francezka, “but even there I shall not be able to escape people. Do you remember how they flocked there when Gaston came home? And I verily believe half Paris means to follow us to Capello. Gaston has invited many persons to visit us.”

“Against your wish Madame?” I asked in surprise.

“Oh, no, he never does anything against my wish, but he never knows what my wish is—since his return. Before he went away he always knew my wishes in advance. Sometimes he combatted them. We had our little wrangles from the time we first met and loved, and often showed temper, one to the other, until his return. Now we never have any wrangles. As soon as I express my will Gaston immediately makes it his will. That, you will grant, is an unnatural way for two merely human creatures to live.”

“At least not many are afflicted with that form of unhappiness, Madame.”

“It is a form of unhappiness, though. I dare not express the smallest disapproval of a thing or a person that Gaston does not seem to take it as law. The most casual wish is fulfilled, but, as I say, he has not the clairvoyance of love with all this devotion. He might have seen that I longed for rest and quiet at Capello, but he did not. Now, if I express the slightest distaste for company there he will withdraw every invitation. To have one’s lightest word taken seriously, and one’s 421 smallest inclination influence the conduct of another person, is highly uncomfortable.”

I knew not what to say. Francezka’s grievance appeared to me to be a strange one though not wholly unreasoning. But I saw what gave me the sharpest pain. It flashed upon me that she no longer loved Gaston Cheverny. As if she had the clairvoyance that she complained of Gaston’s lacking, she continued:

“Yes; outwardly, all is the same; inwardly, all is changed. I have a growing sense of strangeness with my husband. At first I felt the same intimate friendship I had felt during our short married life, but by insensible degrees I have come to feel that I do not know Gaston, nor does Gaston know me. It is an appalling feeling.”

“I should think so,” I replied, and fell silent.

It was all strange and painful to me. I knew Francezka’s faults well, but I had never seen in her any deficiency in good sense. Even her obstinate hanging on to the belief that Gaston was alive when the world believed him dead had been justified, and her course had been most practical during it all. But this new disgust at life, this fault-finding with her husband, seemed to me lacking in reason. Yet there was undoubtedly something changed in Gaston’s personality. As this thought passed through my mind she answered it, again as if by intuition:

“You remember, Babache, you always told me you loved Gaston from the moment you beheld him. But you don’t love him now. You have not loved him since his return.”

Oh, what a misfortune it is to be too quick of wit!

Francezka then rose and said to me:

“I return now to my guests. Think not that I have uttered to any other human being what I have said to you. But I have looked my last on happiness. I do not love you any the less, Babache. As you were my chief consolation in that dreadful time of waiting, so now that Destiny has played me this shabby trick in giving me back the shadow of happiness and withholding the substance, I still look to you for comfort. Remember, whoever wearies me at Capello, you never will. Not since that first hour we met in this old garden, when you saw me in the beginning of my career of headstrong folly, have I ever beheld your honest face without pleasure.”

I returned to the ballroom, and the first thing I saw was Francezka dancing the wildest branle I ever saw with the most graceful abandon imaginable. I concluded that all women were singular beings, in which my master agreed, when I made the observation to him; and some persons said that Count Saxe had great experience with the sex.