The Historical Nights' Entertainment - Rafael Sabatini (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📗
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
- Performer: -
Book online «The Historical Nights' Entertainment - Rafael Sabatini (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📗». Author Rafael Sabatini
and the ante-room, as if the legions of hell had flung themselves
against the walls of the chateau. There was a rush and clatter in
the chimney of the ante-room’s vast, empty fireplace, and through
the din Marguerite, as her failing limbs sank under her and she
slithered down in a heap against the chapel door, seemed to hear a
burst of exultantly cruel satanic laughter. With chattering teeth
and burning eyes she sat huddled, listening in terror. The child
began to cry again, more violently, more piteously; then, quite
suddenly, there was a little choking cough, a gurgle, the chink of
metal against earthenware, and silence.
When some moments later the squat figure of La Voisin emerged from
the chapel, Marguerite was back in the shadows, hunched on the
settle to which she had crawled. She saw that her mother now
carried a basin under her arm, and she did not need the evidence
of her eyes to inform her of the dreadful contents that the witch
was bearing away in it.
Meanwhile in the chapel the ineffably blasphemous rites proceeded.
To the warm human blood which had been caught in the consecrated
chalice, Guibourg had added, among other foulnesses, powdered
cantharides, the dust of desiccated moles, and the blood of bats.
By the addition of flour he had wrought the ingredients into an
ineffable paste, and over this, through the door, which La Voisin
had left ajar, Marguerite heard his voice pronouncing the dread
words of Transubstantiation.
Marguerite’s horror mounted until it threatened to suffocate her.
It was as if some hellish miasma, released by Guibourg’s monstrous
incantations, crept through to permeate and poison the air she
breathed.
It would be a half-hour later when Madame de Montespan at last came
out. She was of a ghastly pallor, her limbs shook and trembled
under her as she stepped forth, and there was a wild horror in her
staring eyes. Yet she contrived to carry herself almost defiantly
erect, and she spoke sharply to the half-swooning Desceillets, who
staggered after her.
She took her departure from that unholy place bearing with her the
host compounded of devilish ingredients which when dried and reduced
to powder was to be administered to the King to ensure the renewal
of his failing affection for her.
The Marchioness contrived that a creature of her own, an officer of
the buttery in her pay, should introduce it into the royal soup.
The immediate and not unnatural result was that the King was taken
violently ill, and Madame de Montespan’s anxiety and suspense were
increased thereby. On his recovery, however, it would seem that
the demoniac sacrament - thrice repeated by then - had not been in
vain.
The sequel, indeed, appeared to justify Madame de Montespan’s faith
in sorcery, and to compensate her for all the horror to which in
her despair she had submitted. Madame de Ludres found herself coldly
regarded by the convalescent King. Very soon she was discarded, the
Widow Scarron neglected, and the fickle monarch was once more at the
feet of the lovely marchioness, her utter and devoted slave.
Thus was Madame de Montespan “thunderously triumphant” once more,
and established as firmly as ‘ever in the SunKing’s favour. Madame
de Sevigne, in speaking of this phase of their relations, dilates
upon the completeness of the reconciliation, and tells us that the
ardour of the first years seemed now to have returned. And for two
whole years it continued thus. Never before had Madame de
Montespan’s sway been more absolute, no shadow came to trouble, the
serenity of her rule.
But it proved, after all, to be no more than the last flare of an
expiring fire that was definitely quenched at last, in 1679, by
Mademoiselle de Fontanges. A maid of honour to madame, she was a
child of not more than eighteen years, fair and flaxen, with pink
cheeks and large, childish eyes; and it was for this doll that the
regal Montespan now found herself discarded.
Honours rained upon the new favourite. Louis made her a duchess
with an income of twenty thousand livres, and deeply though this
may have disgusted his subjects, it disgusted Madame de Montespan
still more. Blinded by rage she openly abused the new duchess, and
provoked a fairly public scene with Louis, in which she gave him
her true opinion of him with a disturbing frankness.
“You dishonour yourself,” she informed him among other things. “And
you betray your taste when you make love to a pink-and-white doll,
a little fool that has no more wit nor manners than if she were
painted on canvas!” Then, with an increase of scorn, she delivered
herself of an unpardonable apostrophe: “You, a king, to accept the
inheritance of that chit’s rustic lovers! “
He flushed and scowled upon her.
“That is an infamous falsehood!” he exclaimed. “Madame, you are
unbearable!” He was very angry, and it infuriated him the more that
she should stand so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow
the proudest heads in France. “You have the pride of Satan, your
greed is insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable,
and you have the most false and poisonous tongue in the world!”
Her brutal answer bludgeoned that high divinity to earth.
“With all my imperfections,” she sneered, “at least I do not smell
as badly as you do!”
It was an answer that extinguished her last chance. It was fatal
to the dignity, to the “terrible majesty” of Louis. It stripped
him of all divinity, and revealed him authoritatively as intensely
and even unpleasantly human. It was beyond hope of pardon.
His face turned the colour of wax. A glacial silence hung over the
agonized witnesses of that royal humiliation. Then, without a word,
in a vain attempt to rescue the dignity she had so cruelly mauled,
he turned, his red heels clicked rapidly and unsteadily across the
polished floor, and he was gone.
When Madame de Montespan realized exactly what she had done, nothing
but rage remained to her - rage and its offspring, vindictiveness.
The Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis
escape punishment for his faithlessness. La Voisin should afford
her the means to accomplish this. And so she goes once more to the
Rue de la Tannerie.
Now, the matter of Madame de Montespan’s present needs was one in
which the witches were particularIy expert. Were you troubled with
a rival, did your husband persist in surviving your affection for him,
did those from whom you had expectations cling obstinately and
inconsiderately to life, the witches by incantations and the use of
powders - in which arsenic was the dominant charm - could usually
put the matter right for you. Indeed, so wide and general was the
practice of poisoning become, that the authorities, lately aroused
to the fact by the sensational revelations of the Marchioness de
Brinvilliers, had set up in this year 1670 the tribunal known as
the Chambre Ardente to inquire into the matter, and to conduct
prosecutions.
La Voisin promised help to the Marchioness. She called in another
witch of horrible repute, named La Filastre, her coadjutor Lesage,
and two expert poisoners, Romani and Bertrand, who devised an
ingenious plot for the murder of the Duchess of Fontanges. They
were to visit her, Romani as a cloth merchant, and Bertrand as his
servant, to offer her their wares, including some Grenoble gloves,
which were the most beautiful gloves in the world and unfailingly
irresistible to ladies. These gloves they prepared in accordance
with certain magical recipes in such a way that the Duchess, after
wearing them, must die a lingering death in which there could be no
suspicion of poisoning.
The King was to be dealt with by means of a petition steeped in
similar powders, and should receive his death by taking it into his
hands. La Voisin herself was to go to Saint-Germain to present
this petition on Monday, March 13th, one of those days on which,
according to ancient custom, all comers were admitted to the royal
presence.
Thus they disposed. But Fate was already silently stalking La
Voisin.
It is to the fact that an obscure and vulgar woman had drunk one
glass of wine too many three months earlier that the King owed his
escape.
If you are interested in the almost grotesque disparity that can
lie between cause and effect, here is a subject for you. Three
months earlier a tailor named Vigoureux, whose wife secretly
practised magic, had entertained a few friends to dinner, amongst
whom was an intimate of his wife’s, named Marie Bosse. This Marie
Bosse it was who drank that excessive glass of wine which, drowning
prudence, led her to boast of the famous trade she drove as a
fortuneteller to the nobility, and even to hint of something
further.
“Another three poisonings,” she chuckled, “and I shall retire with
my fortune made!”
An attorney who was present pricked up his ears, bethought him of
the tales that were afloat, and gave information to the police.
The police set a trap for Marie Bosse, and she betrayed herself.
Later, under torture, she betrayed La Vigoureux. La Vigoureux
betrayed others, and these others again.
The arrest of Marie Bosse was like knocking down the first of a row
of ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these
stood in the royal apartments.
On the day before she was to repair to Saint-Germain, La Voisin,
betrayed in her turn, received a surprise visit from the police -
who, of course, had no knowledge of the regicide their action was
thwarting - and she was carried off to the Chatelet. Put to the
question, she revealed a great deal; but her terror of the horrible
punishment reserved for regicides prevented her to the day of her
death at the stake - in February of 1680 from saying a word of her
association with Madame de Montespan.
But there were others whom she betrayed under torture, and whose
arrest followed quickly upon her own, who had not her strength of
character. Among these were La Filastre and the magician Lesage.
When it was found that these two corroborated each other in the
incredible things which they related, the Chambre Ardente took
fright. La Reynie, who presided over it, laid the matter before
the King, and the King, horror-stricken by the discovery of the
revolting practices in which the mother of his children had been
engaged, suspended the sittings of the Chambre Ardente, and
commanded that no further proceedings should be taken against Lesage
and La Filastre, and none initiated against Romani, Bertrand, the
Abbe Guibourg, and the scores of other poisoners and magicians who
had been arrested, and who were acquainted with Madame de Montespan’s
unholy traffic.
But it was not out of any desire to spare Madame de Montespan that
the King proceeded in this manner; he was concerned only to spare
himself and his royal dignity. He feared above all things the
scandal and ridicule which must touch him as a result of publicity,
and because he feared it so much, he could impose no punishment
upon Madame de Montespan.
This he made known to her at the interview between them procured by
his minister Louvois, at about the time that the sittings of the
Chambre Ardente were suspended.
To this interview that proud, domineering woman came in dread, and
in tears and humility for once. The King’s bearing was cold and
hard. Cold and hard were the words in which he declared the extent
of his knowledge of her infamy, words which revealed the loathing
and disgust this knowledge brought him. If at first she was
terror-stricken, crushed under the indictment,
Comments (0)