Part 74 (1/2)
”It has indeed been many years since we met, monsieur; for, if you recollect, I accompanied my brother to the cabal in St. Roche Street.
What a time! What sad days!”
”Indeed; and your Eminence must recall how lacking in respect to you the reverend Father Morlet was, who arrogated to himself the chairmans.h.i.+p of our meeting. The reverend was accompanied by his G.o.d-son, who seemed to be about the age of this pretty page” (indicating Gonthram); ”but he was far from resembling him, for I never saw a face more sly and hypocritical than that child of the Church wore.”
”Father Morlet is dead, and his G.o.d-son, taking orders in Rome under the name of Abbot Rodin, is affiliated with the Society of Jesus,” the Cardinal informed the group. ”This Father Rodin, as private secretary of the present General of the Order, enjoys great influence. Ah! by my faith! I did not know that our master hypocrite was in Paris!”
While the Cardinal was uttering these last words, the door opened and in stepped himself, the reverend Father Rodin. He was accompanied by an usher, into whose ear he dropped a couple of words. Rodin was now past his thirtieth year. His meager face, smooth shaven and wan, his half-closed and restless reptile eyes, his slightly bowed back, his already bald forehead, his bent neck, his sidling gait, his att.i.tude of mock-humility, through which shone his contempt for others--everything about the man stamped him as hypocrisy incarnate. His black gown was threadbare and whitened at the seams; the mud was caked on his clumsy shoes. In one hand he held a squalid-looking cap, in the other an old cotton umbrella with red-and-white checks.
The usher to whom he spoke stepped for a moment into the next room and returned almost immediately. He made a deep obeisance of respect to the Jesuit, and said to him in a voice marked with great deference, ”Reverend Father, I have the honor to conduct you at once to the private cabinet of monseigneur, who is at present engaged with the Duke of Otranto.”
Rodin made a sign of a.s.sent, and with eyes fixed on his shoes, so that he did not see the Cardinal, he was about to walk by the group in which the latter stood.
”Usher!” called the Cardinal, haughtily, ”a word with you. We, Monsieur the Count of Plouernel and I, were here before this reverend, which he does not seem to know. The reverend gentleman should wait his time of audience, and not usurp ours,” he added, while Rodin bowed himself almost to the ground before him.
”I have the honor to inform your Eminence that I have orders from Monseigneur the Duke of Blacas on the subject of this holy Father. He is to be introduced whenever he presents himself, and before all other persons. I obey the orders given me,” returned the usher.
”I shall not allow a simple priest to precede by a single step a Prince of the Church!” stamped the Cardinal. Rodin only bowed before him several times, lower than before, without raising his eyes to his face.
”My orders are imperative,” said the usher.
Indignant the Cardinal turned to his brother. ”Well, brother,” he said, ”there we are! By the navel of the Pope, I'd like to knock the interloper down!”
For all answer Rodin again mutely and humbly inclined towards the Cardinal. Then he made a sign to the usher to precede him, and vanished through a door on the opposite side of the room from where he had entered.
The latter entrance again swung open, and admitted Lieutenant General Count Oliver, in the garish uniform of his rank and decorated with the Legion of Honor and several foreign orders. He wore the great red ribbon on his scarf, the order of the Iron Crown over his shoulder, and the Cross of St. Louis in one of the b.u.t.tonholes of his coat, which glittered with braid. John Lebrenn's old apprentice was now thirty-eight; his moustache still held its blackness, but his hair was streaked with grey; his face still was handsome and martial. A total stranger to the other personages in the audience chamber, he seated himself a little distance off from the group formed by the Cardinal, the Count of Plouernel, and Monsieur Hubert. Count Desmarais had withdrawn into the alcove of a window.
”That Jesuit, that scamp, that priestlet, introduced to Monsieur Blacas before me!” stormed the Cardinal to the Count, his brother. ”Me, a Prince of the Church! I declare, as things are going, helped along by that execrable charter of 1814, we are marching towards another '93!
France is lost!”
”The Restoration has done a great deal for the clergy, Monsieur Cardinal,” declared Hubert. ”You are very wrong to cast reproaches at the King and the government.”
”I am of my brother's opinion as to what concerns the n.o.bility,” said the Count of Plouernel. ”I blame the King strongly for giving the command of two regiments of his guards to ex-Marshals of the Empire, clodhoppers, men of no account, like all these plebeians, hardly sc.r.a.ped clean by the n.o.bility Napoleon covered them with.” General Oliver, so far unnoticed by the Count of Plouernel, here moved indignantly, but the Count proceeded: ”The King should never have entrusted commands to these barrack-heroes, smelling of the pipe and the bottle, b.u.mpkins whom we must elbow out of our way at the Tuileries, we, old Emigrants, who fought them under the Republic. We sacrificed all for our masters, and they do us the outrage to treat these upstarts as our equals! These specimens, during their Emperor's time, expressed themselves most insultingly toward the house of Bourbon; and to-day they accept services, favors, and commands from the King. It is only to betray him some day; at least that would not be the last word in the renegades'
baseness, and they would not even be conscious of their apostasy!”
At this General Oliver rose, pale with anger, and striding roughly up to Plouernel said in a voice of concentrated rage:
”Sir, you will regret, I am convinced, your last words, when you learn that I, Lieutenant General, Count Oliver, have served the Emperor, to whom I owe my rank and t.i.tle. For I have the honor to be a soldier of fortune, sir. I shall know how to chastise any insolence that may be addressed to me!”
Disdainfully looking General Oliver over from head to foot, the Count of Plouernel made answer: ”Well, sir! I, Gaston, Count of Plouernel, second in command in his Majesty's Black Musketeers, have the honor never to have served any but my masters. I followed them into exile, and I returned to France in 1814. You have my opinion of traitors and turn-coats.”
”The King has conferred on me the command of a military division, and it pleased him to award me the Cross of St. Louis. Tell me, sir, am I in your eyes because of that command and that decoration a traitor or a renegade? Answer, sir,” demanded Oliver.
”Since you ask me, sir, I shall reply in all sincerity----”
At the moment when Plouernel would have finished the sentence, he was interrupted by the hilarious roar of a new personage who had burst into the room laughing fit to split his sides. It was his old friend the Marquis of St. Esteve, that intolerable would-be conspirator, whom the most serious moment could not check in his buffoonery. Powdered white, the Marquis's hair was dressed in 'pigeon-wings'; his little queue bobbed up and down on the collar of his bourgeois' coat with gold epaulets. He wore a court sword, knee breeches, and top boots; he was the epitome of that type of Emigrant dubbed 'Louis XV's tumblers.' On seeing Plouernel he at once ran toward him, clasped him in his arms, and all the while laughing fit to kill, exclaimed:
”Ah, Count! Hold me! I die! Oh, the idea! Ha, ha, ha! This time I shall split of it, surely! Oh, oh, oh! If you knew the funny sto--ry! Ah, the idea! I shall surely choke--let me laugh!”