The Historical Nights' Entertainment - Rafael Sabatini (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📗

last.

 

They entered the ante-room, a spacious chamber, bare of furniture

save for an oaken table in the middle, some faded and mildewed

tapestries, and a cane-backed settle of twisted walnut over against

the wall. An alabaster lamp on the table made an island of light

in that place of gloom, and within the circle of its feeble rays

stood a gross old man of some seventy years of age in sacerdotal

garments of unusual design: the white alb worn over a greasy cassock

was studded with black fir-cones; the stole and maniple were of

black satin, with fir-cones wrought in yellow thread.

 

His inflamed countenance was of a revolting hideousness: his cheeks

were covered by a network of blue veins, his eyes squinted horribly,

his lips vanished inwards over toothless gums, and a fringe of white

hair hung in matted wisps from his high, bald crown. This was the

infamous Abbe Guibourg, sacristan of Saint Denis, an ordained

priest who had consecrated himself to the service of the Devil.

 

He received the great lady with a low bow which, despite herself,

she acknowledged by a shudder. She was very pale, and her eyes

were dilating and preternaturally bright. Fear began to possess

her, yet she suffered herself to be ushered into the chapel, which

was dimly illumined by a couple of candles standing beside a basin

on a table. The altar light had been extinguished. Her maid would

have hung back, but that she feared to be parted from her mistress.

She passed in with her in the wake of Guibourg, and followed by La

Voisin, who closed the door, leaving her daughter in the ante-room.

 

Although she had never been a participant in any of the sorceries

practised by her mother, yet Marguerite was fully aware of their

extent, and more than guessed what horrors were taking place beyond

the closed doors of the chapel. The very thought of them filled

her with loathing and disgust as she sat waiting, huddled in a

corner of the settle. And yet when presently through the closed

doors came the drone of the voice of that unclean celebrant, to

blend with the whine of the wind in the chimney, Marguerite, urged

by a morbid curiosity she could not conquer, crept shuddering to

the door, which directly faced the altar, and going down on her

knees applied her eye to the keyhole.

 

What she saw may very well have appalled her considering the exalted

station of Madame de Montespan. She beheld the white, sculptural

form of the royal favourite lying at full length supine upon the

altar, her arms outstretched, holding a lighted candle in each hand.

Immediately before her stood the Abbe Guibourg, his body screening

the chalice and its position from the eye of the watching girl.

 

She heard the whine of his voice pattering the Latin of the mass,

which he was reciting backwards from the last gospel; and

occasionally she heard responses muttered by her mother, who with

Mademoiselle Desoeillets was beyond Marguerite’s narrow range of

vision.

 

Apart from the interest lent to the proceedings by the presence of

the royal favourite the affair must have seemed now very stupid and

pointless to Marguerite, although she would certainly not have found

it so had she known enough Latin to understand the horrible

perversion of the Credo. But when the Offertory was reached,

matters suddenly quickened. In stealing away from the door, she

was no more than in time to avoid being caught spying by her mother,

who now issued from the chapel.

 

La Voisin crossed the ante-room briskly and went out.

 

Within a very few minutes she was back again, her approach now

heralded by the feeble, quavering squeals of a very young child.

 

Marguerite Monvoisin was sufficiently acquainted with the ghastly

rites to guess what was impending. She was young, and herself a

mother. She had her share of the maternal instinct alive in every

female animal - with the occasional exception of the human pervert

- and the hoarse, plaintive cries of that young child chilled her

to the soul with horror. She felt the skin roughening and

tightening upon her body, and a sense of physical sickness overcame

her. That and the fear of her mother kept her stiff and frozen in

an angle of the settle until La Voisin had passed through and

reentered the chapel bearing that piteous bundle in her arms.

 

Then, when the door had closed again, the girl, horrified and

fascinated, sped back to watch. She saw that unclean priest turn

and receive the child from La Voisin. As it changed hands its

cries were stilled.

 

Guibourg faced the altar once more, that little wisp of humanity

that was but a few days old held now aloft, naked, in his criminal

hands. His muttering, slobbering voice pronouncing the words of

that demoniac consecration reached the ears of the petrified girl

at the keyhole.

 

Ashtaroth, Asmodeus, Princes of Affection, I conjure you to

acknowledge the sacrifice I offer to you of this child for the

things I ask of you, which are that the King’s love for me shall

be continued, and that honoured by princes and princesses nothing

shall be denied me of all that I may ask.”

 

A sudden gust of wind smote and rattled the windows of the chapel

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 Desoeillets, 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 particularly expert. Were you troubled with