United States or France ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The king embraced him, wept, promised to love him dearly, saw him again in the evening in company with Mdlle. de Montmorency, who knew nothing, and conversed a long while with the young princess. When she retired, perceiving that Bassompierre was watching her, she shrugged her shoulders, as if to hint to him what the king had said to her.
And, as De Launay called to the musketeers to cease, Bassompierre recognized the cavalier. "And how the devil came you here?" cried Bassompierre. "I thought you were at Tours, or even farther, if you had done your duty; but here you are returned to make a fool of yourself."
He looked earnestly upon this for a few moments; and then rising, he put on a cap of dark velvet which lay beside him, took Lavallée by the hand, and approaching Bassompierre placed his valet a few paces behind him, saying as he did so: "Monseigneur, why should you thus have assumed a disguise? You are already a great noble, but your fortunes have not yet reached their acme.
"Gentlemen, I think that we shall do well to select our men, and to take the field; for there is talk of attacking the lines, and I must be at my post." "We are ready, Monsieur," said Cinq-Mars; "and as for selecting opponents, I shall be very glad to become yours, for I have not forgotten the Marechal de Bassompierre and the wood of Chaumont.
M. de Bassompierre had found himself forced, in a manner, to descry the direction and catch the character of his homage. Slow in remarking, he was logical in reasoning: having once seized the thread, it had guided him through a long labyrinth. "Where is she?" he asked. "She is up-stairs." "What is she doing?" "She is writing." "She writes, does she? Does she receive letters?"
And truly enough, the old man, pressing the hand of Cinq-Mars, said slowly and with difficulty, having placed himself near him: "Yes, my son, and you, my children, I see with joy that my old friend Bassompierre is about to be delivered by you, and that you are about to avenge the Comte de Soissons and the young Montmorency.
He was answered by Miss de Bassompierre in quite womanly sort; with intelligence, with a manner not indeed wholly disindividualized: a tone, a glance, a gesture, here and there, rather animated and quick than measured and stately, still recalled little Polly; but yet there was so fine and even a polish, so calm and courteous a grace, gilding and sustaining these peculiarities, that a less sensitive man than Graham would not have ventured to seize upon them as vantage points, leading to franker intimacy.
At the commencement of July the King had accredited the Maréchal de Bassompierre as his ambassador-extraordinary to Lorraine, to be present at the marriage of the Duc de Bar, his brother-in-law, with the daughter of the Duke of Mantua, the Queen's niece; and had also furnished him with instructions to invite the Duchess of Mantua to become the godmother of the Dauphin, and the Duc de Lorraine to act as sponsor to the younger Princess.
One evening Paulina was in her dressing-room, writing, I believe, to Graham; she had left me in the library, reading M. de Bassompierre came in; he sat down: I was about to withdraw; he requested me to remain gently, yet in a manner which showed he wished compliance.
Although Bassompierre had nothing of the dreamer in his character, the tone which the conversation had taken at dinner returned to his memory, and he reconsidered his life, the sad changes which the new reign had wrought in it, a reign which seemed to have breathed upon him a wind of misfortune the death of a cherished sister; the irregularities of the heir of his name; the loss of his lands and of his favor; the recent fate of his friend, the Marechal d'Effiat, whose chambers he now occupied.