Part 7 (1/2)

CHAPTER VIII

THE ABBe'S DISASTER

The force of circ.u.mstances had proved too great. What strength had his training or his age to resist them? The old master, Love, the compeller of so many heroisms and so many crimes, from Eve and Helen to Manon Lescaut, had grasped him with his wizard power. Poor Germain, thitherto so worthy and so well-intentioned, rose in the morning an adventurer--an adventurer, it is true, driven by desperation and anguish into his dangerous part, and grasping the hope of nevertheless yet winning by some forlorn good deed the forgiveness of her who was otherwise lost to him.

As Dominique, the Auvergnat valet who had been a.s.signed to him by de Bailleul--because he had been foster father to the Chevalier's son--tied his hair, put on his morning coat and sword, buckled the sparkling buckles on his shoes, and handed him his jewelled snuff-box, each process seemed to Germain a preparation for some unknown accident that might happen, and in which he must be ready to conquer. When he stepped down to meet his companions, it was distinctly and consciously to henceforth play a _role_.

He saw Cyrene sitting on a seat in the garden, putting together, with the critical fingers of a girl, a large bouquet. There was a statue of Fame close by, and beside it a laurel. She had plucked some of the leaves to tie with her blossoms.

He went out to her and proffered a word of greeting. She was about to reply, but the meeting was interrupted by a voice, and the Abbe appeared from behind the pedestal.

”What! a laurel twig among your flowers, Baroness?” said he. ”Excellent!

for Fame herself is not a G.o.ddess more suited to distribute favours. Do I not in you Madame, see again Daphne, the friend of Apollo, who turned into that tree?” and, smiling atrociously over his cla.s.sical sweet speech, he looked at Lecour.

”The insolence!” thought Germain, who also took it as a good opportunity to begin his _role_. ”Well, sir,” he exclaimed sharply, ”talking of Apollo, did you ever hear that this G.o.d flayed one Marsyas for presumption?”

Cyrene flashed him a surprised and grateful glance.

”I have heard, sir,” replied Jude, ”that the Princess de Poix desires me to find and conduct to her Madame the Baroness de la Roche Vernay.”

So saying, he carried off Cyrene again, like some black piratical cruiser, and she reluctantly accompanied him, looking back regretfully over her shoulder.

Lecour could not understand the eternal use of the formal orders of the Princess. He watched the two in a vexed stupor until they disappeared.

Then he recalled the inanity and exacting requests of the great lady, and guessed how her reader was able to so boldly play his annoying trick.

Just then Grancey laid his hand on Germain's shoulder. There was so much friends.h.i.+p in the face of the golden-haired Life Guard that Lecour at once raised the question uppermost in his mind.

”Baron,” said he, ”tell me, who is Madame de la Roche Vernay?”

Grancey's eyes twinkled intelligently.

”It is an affair, then? I can keep secrets.”

”An affair only on my unfortunate side,” Germain admitted gloomily.

”As on that of many another. Your Cyrene is the bearer of a very great name: she is a Montmorency.”

”A Montmorency!”

”Yes; she is a widow, you see.”

”Never.”

”While an orphan. Her father, the Vicomte Luc de Montmorency, who was a madman of a spendthrift, ended up in two bankruptcies, and was banished from Court. Cyrene was brought up in a mouldy old chateau near St. Ouen.

When only thirteen her hand was sought by an ambitious financier, Trochu, for his son, Baron la Roche Vernay, who was then with his regiment in Dominica. Money was necessary to the Vicomte, and, in short, Mademoiselle was sold for two million livres, and the marriage celebrated by proxy, as both the fathers were impatient to finish the bargain. It appeared by the mails that the young man died of fever two days after.

”She wears no mourning,” said Germain.