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Those who know how to distinguish, in a reign, this low voice, and to hear what it whispers to the loud, are the real historians. Queen Anne had several of these low voices about her. Barkilphedro was one. Besides the queen, he secretly worked, influenced, and plotted upon Lady Josiana and Lord David. As we have said, he whispered in three ears, one more than Dangeau.
The crown of Agrippina, being placed publicly on a small round table, excited general attention and admiration. The Italian Princess, Madame de Maintenon, the Duc de Saint Aignan, and Dangeau himself went into raptures over the rare perfection of these marvellously assorted brilliants. The King, drawing near, in his turn examined the masterpiece with pleasure.
She did not look around with the quick, alert, bright glance of the Parisienne whom everything interests and amuses; she had the abstracted and sad air of a child who suffers, and whom suffering bewilders. Stocks said, in a low voice, tinged with pity: "L'amie de Dangeau." Peter received that announcement with a shock of surprise and distaste. Dangeau was such an utter brute!
I should particularly avoid soiling this page with an account of the operation for fistula which Courcillon, only son of Dangeau, had performed upon him, but for the extreme ridicule with which it was accompanied.
There was no generosity in him, only an insatiable and ferocious demand that life should give him more, always more! Peter, who both admired and detested him, was sorry for this gentle creature fallen into his remorseless claws. And he wondered, as decent men must, at the fatal fascination animals like Dangeau seem to possess for women. He saw her occasionally after that, always alone.
Driven away from the Court, she was after much supplication recalled, and pleased the King so much that Madame de Maintenon, in fear of her, sent her away again. But to go back again to the household of the Princess of Savoy. Dangeau was made chevalier d'honneur.
I asked. "The Marquis de Dangeau," answered Fleuri; "a nobleman of great quality, who keeps a diary of all the king says and does. It will perhaps be a posthumous publication, and will show the world of what importance nothings can be made.
By the side of the king, though a little in the rear, the Prince de Conde, M. Dangeau, and twenty other courtiers, followed by their people and their baggage, closed this veritably triumphant march. The pomp was of a military character. Some of the courtiers the elder ones, for instance wore traveling dresses; but all the rest were clothed in warlike panoply.
During this time, the king asked for Saint-Aignan; the valet ran to his late apartments and found M. Dangeau there; Dangeau sent him on to De Guiche's, and Saint-Aignan was found there; but a little delay had of course taken place, and the king had already exhibited once or twice evident signs of impatience, when Saint-Aignan entered his royal master's presence, quite out of breath.
Madame, who left Paris June 16, returned there October 1, and there was not a day in these three months that she was not the object of enthusiastic ovations. In a book of nearly six hundred pages, Viscount Walsh has described, with the fidelity of a Dangeau, this journey in which the mother of the Duke of Bordeaux was treated like a queen of a fairy tale.
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