(1) But the strange twist of Fortune’s wheel which, nine years after her husband’s departure, had brought the Duchesse de Trélan as concierge to her own palace, was first set in motion when M. Georges Camain, originally a builder at Angers, was returned at the elections of 1795 as Deputy for Maine-et-Loire, and, coming up to Paris to take his seat, received, after a time, from the Director Larevellière-Lépeaux—like him an Angevin and the quasi-pontiff of that new and arid creed which M. Camain also professed, Theophilanthropism—the charge of Mirabel. For M. Camain was a cousin of Suzon Tessier’s, though they had not met since Suzon was a child.
Nor indeed did the Deputy discover Suzon’s existence till the year that Alcibiade Tessier died; but after that he was pretty assiduous in his visits. Valentine sometimes wondered if he had a vision of consoling the little widow. She herself met him occasionally at meals—a person of forty-five or so, large, high-coloured, good-humoured, inclined to a florid style in dress and a slightly vulgar gallantry. Report said that down at Angers in ’94 he had been a Terrorist, but Suzon discreetly refrained from making enquiries on that point. Now he seemed so moderate in his politics that it was hard to understand how he had escaped being fructidorisé with the other moderate and Royalist deputies in the coup d’état of 1797.
M. Camain found, of course, that Suzon’s “aunt” had already lived with her for years, and he was not sufficiently conversant with his cousin’s relations by marriage to contest any statements which Mme Tessier chose to make about her kinswoman’s past history. Even her neighbours in the Rue de Seine scarcely remembered now, so fast did events move, that Mme Vidal had begun her residence with the Tessiers at a very significant date in 1792, and had passed more than a year in prison since. Besides, M. Camain did not frequent any house in the street but Suzon’s.
One afternoon, therefore, in March, 1799, the Deputy, dropping in, in his genial way, to his cousin’s little shop, said, after some casual conversation, “By the way, ma cousine, how would you like to live in a chateau?” and when Mme Tessier, who was sewing behind the counter, replied that she had no such ambition, her kinsman admitted that she might find Mirabel lacking in cosiness.
Mme Tessier’s work left her fingers. “Mirabel!” she exclaimed, in a tone not to be described.
Camain cocked his eyebrow at her. “Yes, Mir-a-bel! The present concierge is leaving, her husband having come home discharged from the army, and I always refuse to have a married couple there. Do you fancy the job?”
“God forbid!” said his cousin fervently.
“Of course, I was forgetting your grandfather. His ghost would certainly walk to see you installed there as the employee of the present régime.”
“Mirabel is full of ghosts,” said Mme Tessier, half unconsciously, her eyes suddenly fixed. Yes, had the Deputy but known, the ghost of ghosts was not even so far away as Mirabel.
As if, startlingly, her cousin had read her thoughts, he said, looking from one counter with its array of clocks to the other with its piles of linen garments, “No, I suppose you would not want to leave this singular union of science and . . . er . . . art which you have created. But what about that aunt of yours? She is very badly off, isn’t she,—and a charge to you, I suspect? How would it suit her? She would have assistance, you know, for the cleaning—she need never touch a brush herself—but she would have to live in the place, and be responsible for its condition. She has always struck me as a notable woman. What do you think of that, Cousin Suzon? You see that I am determined to do you a good turn, whether you will or no!”
And not all Suzon’s hastily found arguments about Mme Vidal’s unwillingness and unsuitability could turn him from his purpose of at least offering her the post. Moreover, during the discussion the Deputy unwittingly gave vent to a number of doubles entendres, such as “Nothing like keeping Mirabel in the family!” and, “It only wants a woman with a head on her shoulders,” so that by the time his threat to go and interview Mme Vidal in person had driven her perforce to undertake the office Suzon Tessier was almost hysterical, and went up the staircase wringing her hands. Never for one wild second did she imagine that the offer would be accepted.
At first, indeed, Mme de Trélan had seemed to see in it an insult thrown at her by Fate—but by Fate’s hand only, for Suzon was certain that the Deputy had no suspicion of her identity. “Caretaker of my own house!” the Duchesse had exclaimed. And then she had begun to laugh, saying that it was so preposterous as to be amusing. Yet the next moment, to Mme Tessier’s horror, she had exclaimed, “Dear God! why should I say it is preposterous, now! Tell me, Suzon, what I should have to do as concierge of Mirabel?”
And when Suzon, brokenly, had told her, hoping against hope that she was only playing with the idea to feed the little vein of ironic humour which she had sometimes observed in her, Valentine said gravely, “Since this strange thing has come to me, Suzon, perhaps it is meant, for some reason, that I should do it.”
“Madame, think what you are saying!” cried the poor Tessier, all her fears back again. “You a concierge!”
“But what am I now, Suzon—a sempstress, almost your pensioner.” She said it without bitterness.
“But at Mirabel—and you its Duchess!”
To that the Duchesse only said calmly, “I could resign, I suppose, when I wished. And you would come to see me sometimes, would you not? I should still have leisure, perhaps, to sew for you. . . . Yes, Suzon, if your good Deputy wants an immediate answer you can give it to him. Tell him that—I accept.”
And as Suzon’s horrified protests against this—to her—monstrous and sacrilegious compliance were broken into by the none too patient benefactor himself tapping on the door, Mme de Trélan was able to tell him in person that, if he really thought her suitable for the post, she should be pleased to take it.
“There!” said Georges Camain triumphantly to the overwhelmed Suzon. And to her “aunt” he announced with a bow, “Madame, one has only to look at you to know that Mirabel is fortunate!”
It was in this manner that the Duchesse de Trélan came to accept her own, and to pass, some three weeks later, into a sort of possession of it.
(2)
Now, at eight o’clock the morning after her entry, she was already going up the stairway to the ground floor, the keys of Mirabel in her hand, for during her night under the patchwork quilt she had discovered that there was one thing about which she had miscalculated her strength. She could not endure to make re-acquaintance with her violated home in the company of Mme Prévost. True, she would probably be obliged to retrace her steps with the ex-concierge when the latter came to instruct her in her new duties, but it would be less desecration of her pride and of her memories if she revisited Mirabel for the first time alone.
But at the top of the stairs she hesitated. What was she going to find? She knew only too well what desolation might greet her. Paris had long been a vast pawnshop for the sale of the plundered goods of noble owners exiled or murdered. She had but to go into the once aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain to see a whole street of empty palaces, stripped, many of them, not only of furniture, mirrors and balustrades, but even of the very lead from the roofs.
And outside Paris it was the same. Where were the galleries and fa?ence pavements of the chateau of Ecouen, Mirabel’s contemporary? And Anet, that palace of love, fruit of the same brain as Mirabel, where every door and window bore the interlaced monograms of Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers? Of that jewel of stone, set in its woods in the valley of the Eure, nothing but its walls remained. Its costly canals were rotting mud and rotting water, its parks cut down, the kneeling statue of Diane in pieces, her mausoleum a horse trough. Chantilly, stripped of its marble columns, of its jaspe fleuri, of its panels of agate, had become a manufactory. Bellevue, that haunt of the Pompadour, was a barracks; Marly, a field and four walls.
And Versailles itself? Versailles was the museum of the department. The avenue under whose fourfold ranks of elms had passed Turenne and Colbert and Corneille existed no longer. In the chapel the very marble itself had been split and hacked to get rid of the encrusted Lilies, and the Virgin over the altar still held a pike in her hand. The beds in the park were covered with brambles and weeds, the borders of the Grand Canal were a grazing ground for goats and donkeys, the Pièce des Suisses was muddy, the Naiads were covered with dust. Trianon was for sale. The rooms, said Suzon, who had been there, smelt damp, like a cellar, and the dining-room was full of a strange lumber which Valentine recognised from her description as the remains of those sledges on which the young, laughing Court of 1788 had sped over the ice. . . .
How should she find her house of Mirabel?
The morning sun, at least, knew nothing of change of ownership nor of desecration. It came stooping in through the outer arcading just as it used to do. In room after room, as she went onwards from one to the other, it accompanied her, the only habitual thing left in that desolation. But, though these rooms were stripped, they were not damaged—only, in their aching bareness, very strange.
She came at last to the midmost point of the ground floor, the great banqueting hall, or Salle Verte, a vast apartment so closely resembling in decoration the Salle d’Hercule at Versailles as almost to suggest that it was a copy of it. There was the same effect of green relieved with gold on a white background, the same green marble pillars and heavily gilded cornice. Triumphal deities swam across the ceiling, and, just as at Versailles, two great pictures, set in elaborately carved frames, formed part of the integral scheme of decoration. As Valentine entered and looked down the vista of pillars she was confronted by the same huge canvas, saw that ?neas was still toilfully bearing Father Anchises on his shoulders from the burning town—the huge canvas which had witnessed the dancing on her wedding night and much beside. She turned almost unthinkingly to look at the companion picture which used to face it at the other end of the great room, over the hearth, and was met by a large blank space. Dido surveying the Trojan ships, with Carthage’s proud towers behind her, was gone. Why? A rude scrawl of Les reines à la lanterne on the blank space answered her. Dido was a queen; ?neas probably considered to be the very model of a virtuous and filial Republican. The Duchesse smiled; not a smile of amusement.
One thing the removal of the enormous canvas had brought into prominence, and that was the coat of arms in relief on the stone hood of the chimney. It was blazoned in colour, and gilt to boot; a............