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But a day will come when that lowly-born lad, joining his baptismal name to that of the town which sheltered his cradle, will become Jules de Mazarin, robed in the Roman purple, quartering his shield with the consular fasces of Julius Cæsar, governing France, and through her preparing and influencing the destinies of entire Europe. De Retz Memoirs, Petitot Collection.
Fabri, who was leader of the deputation of three who had come upon him without warning, discerned this; much more Baudichon and Petitot, whose eyes were on the watch for the least sign of weakness. And Blondel was conscious that they saw it, and on that account strove the more to mask his feelings under a show of decision. "I have little doubt that I shall have news within the hour," he said.
He submitted to the cardinal, he withdrew from Condé, and in 1653, still his head bound with bandages and wearing black spectacles to hide those clear and seductive eyes which Petitot had painted, he crept, a broken man, to his country house at Verteuil, in the neighbourhood of Ruffec, now in the Charente.
Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said. "Ay, ay." "No more than you know!" "But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the town." "And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what credentials he had.
In the silence which followed Blondel's fingers tapped restlessly on the table. He cleared his throat and voice. "But there, I tell you there are no risks," he said. He was moved nevertheless. Petitot bowed, humbly for him. "Very good," he said. "I do not say that you are not right. But " "And moment by moment I expect news.
They only concern, so far, your ministers, I should say, your priests; you are not one, and are never likely to be; what do these new orders of the Council matter to you?" "Madame," resumed Petitot, "our ministers, by preaching the holy gospel, fulfil the first of their duties. The King forbids them to preach; then, he persecutes them and us.
We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight. Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly cherished one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in the flower of his youth.
He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret; and took the more shame to himself, inasmuch as in cooler blood he saw the lad's error to be far from irremediable. As Petitot said, that which could be done so easily and quickly could be done a second time. If only he had not struck the lad! If only he had commanded himself, and spoken him fairly and sent him back!
It was an insignificant little picture, representing a simple round face with ringlets; and it made, as it must be confessed, a very poor figure by the side of Mademoiselle Petitot, dancing over a rainbow, or Mademoiselle Redowa, grinning in red boots and a lancer's cap.
He destined this miniature for the Emperor of China or the Sultan. I went to see M. Petitot at Clagny. When he saw me he came to me with a wrathful air, and, presenting me his unfinished enamel, he said to me: "Here, madame, is your Greek hero; his new edicts finish us, but, as for me, I shall not finish him.
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