THE SIBYL  
As she had told the young general, Madame de Beauharnais found Madame Tallien waiting for her.
Madame Tallien (Thérèse Cabarus) was, as everybody knows, the daughter of a Spanish banker. She was married to M. Davis de Fontenay, a councillor of the parliament of Bordeaux, but was soon divorced from him. This was at the beginning of '94, when the Terror was at its height.
Thérèse Cabarus wished to rejoin her father, who was in Spain, in order to escape the evils of which proscription was the least. Arrested at the gates of the city, she was brought before Tallien, who fell passionately in love with her at first sight. She made use of this passion to save a great number of victims. At this time love was the most powerful opponent of its rival, death.
Tallien was recalled, and Thérèse Cabarus followed him to Paris, where she was arrested; from the depths of her prison she brought about the 9th Thermidor, after which she was free.
It will be remembered that her first care had been to secure the liberty of her companion in prison, Josephine de Beauharnais.
From that time the two women had been inseparable.[Pg 355] One woman only in Paris disputed the palm of beauty with them; and that woman was Madame Récamier.
This evening, as we know, they had decided to go to the fashionable sibyl, Mademoiselle Lenormand, disguised as maids, and under assumed names. In a twinkling the two great ladies were transformed into two charming grisettes.
Their lace caps fell over their eyes, and the hood of a little silk mantle hid the head; clad in short dresses of India muslin, and bravely shod with shoes with paste buckles and stockings embroidered with pink and green, which their skirts did not hide, they jumped into a hired carriage, which they had ordered to stop at the great gate of the house No. 11, Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. Then, in a trembling voice, like that of all women who are doing something out of the ordinary, Madame de Beauharnais said to the driver: "Rue du Tournon, No. 7."
The carriage stopped at the place indicated, the driver got down from his seat, opened the door, received his fare, and knocked at the house-door, which was opened at once.
The two women hesitated an instant, as if their hearts failed them at the critical moment. But Madame Tallien urged her friend on. Josephine, light as a bird, alighted upon the pavement without touching the step; Madame Tallien followed her. They crossed the formidable threshold, and the door closed behind them.
They found themselves under a sort of porte-cochère, the arch of which extended into the court. At the further end, by the light of a reflector, they saw these words written on an outside shutter: "Mademoiselle Lenormand, bookseller."
They advanced toward this light, which revealed a short flight of four steps. They went up the four steps and came to a porter's lodge.
"Citizeness Lenormand?" inquired Madame Tallien, who, although the younger of the two, seemed on this occasion to take the initiative.
"Ground floor, left-hand door," replied the porter.
[Pg 356]
Madame Tallien went up the steps first, holding up her already short skirt, which discovered a leg that might vie with a Greek statue in shape, which had, nevertheless, condescended this evening to the grisette's garter tied below the knee. Madame de Beauharnais followed, admiring her friend's free and easy manner, but unable to emulate it. She was still only half-way up the steps when Madame Tallien rang the bell. An old servant opened the door.
The new arrivals, whose faces were more of a recommendation than their attire, were examined with the most scrupulous minuteness by the lackey, who bade them sit down in a corner of the first room. The second, which was a salon, and through which the lackey had to pass to reach his mistress, was occupied by two or three women whose rank it would have been difficult to determine, all ranks at that time being practically merged into that of the bourgeois. But to their great astonishment, the door of the second salon opened after a few moments, and Mademoiselle Lenormand herself came and spoke to them, saying:
"Ladies, be good enough to enter the salon."
The two pretended grisettes looked at each other in astonishment. Mademoiselle Lenormand was supposed to make her predictions in a state of somnambulism. Was this true, and had she, by reason of her second-sight, recognized, even without seeing them, two ladies of rank in the supposed grisettes whom the lackey had announced?
At the same time, Mademoiselle Lenormand signed to the ladies in the first salon to pass into the second room, where she told fortunes.
Madame Tallien and Madame de Beauharnais began to examine the room in which they had been left. Its principal ornaments were two portraits, one of Louis XVI. and the other of Marie-Antoinette. Notwithstanding the terrible days that had passed, and the fact that the heads of the originals had fallen upon the scaffold, the portraits had not left their places, and had not for an instant ceased to be[Pg 357] treated with the respect which Mademoiselle Lenormand entertained for the originals.
After the portraits, the most remarkable thing in the room was a long table covered with a cloth, upon which sparkled necklaces, rings, and pieces of silverware ele............