Farewell, My Queen by Black Moishe (children's ebooks online txt) 📗

And thought by subtle means to let you know full well.

Alas, my feeble cries, you, lady, chose to spurn;

My incense and my heart alike you left to burn.

But time has wrought its change; a maid you are no more,

Yet fresh and fit for love, and lovely as before.

“Beautiful, hey? Hey? HEY?” (He was throwing his full weight into it.) “Could you have written that? Not bloody likely! NO! NO! NO! And yet it’s by you. It’ll be written by you. You just have to sign it, and they’ll all say Rondon de La Tour has just dished us up a real little masterpiece. The Horoscope Set at Naught is a monument of the literary art. Listen, Rondon, you whoremonger, you’ve let me down. You degenerate sonofabitch! Why’d you disappear like that, you pox-ridden Count? Of course I’ll give you a good thrashing when you come to let me loose, but that’s not why you bolted. Something really horrible is going on . . . There’s a scary silence in the miserable rooms around here. As if the wardens have had their throats cut or something. Help! Help!” The door gave way. And under it, carried by his own impetus, Count Rondon’s personal valet came crashing down. He was silent at last, for the table to which he was chained had fallen on him.

Diane gave the incident not one second of her attention; the members of her entourage were equally unconcerned. The destination had been settled upon: Switzerland. As always, when there was a serious decision involved, Diane de Polignac’s strategic intelligence and practical common sense had infected her clan. Every member of it was busily occupied with the departure. The priest was digging around in a trunk. I can remember in every detail that red trunk sitting directly beneath a portrait of Madame Adélaïde as a very young woman. Louis XV’s daughter had posed for the artist in full Court dress.

Diane had donned a man’s costume, something a towns-man would wear, dark-colored and perfectly molded to her squat figure. I looked curiously at the calves of her legs, heavily muscled, their vigorous curves showing clearly under the cotton stockings. She took my glance for one of admiration and gave me in return one of those quick, brilliant smiles that she could produce at will, smiles that, coupled with her intelligence, were the key to her ascendancy over other people. That male costume restored her to her true nature. The dress, which lay where it had fallen at her feet, became a garment that had given her an assumed identity. She pushed it away with the toe of her boot. And I thought to myself that she was treating Versailles the same way she was treating the dress: in the few moments it took to have her stays unlaced, she had thrown into the dustbin all the years of her life at the Court of France. Which is why she was striding impatiently up and down in the large salon of her apartment, now transformed into an actor’s dressing room in which the members of her company, unwilling candidates for exile, were fussing around. Monsieur de Vaudreuil was gloomily contemplating the cloak in which he would be required to muffle himself. “Paris mud, the latest shade,” he joked. “Well, if they are hounding us out of the country, at least we can say we were sporting their colors.” Monsieur de Polignac, his fingers caught in the embroidery around the buttonholes on his waistcoat, was in no mood for laughter. With one violent tug, he snapped the silk cords. “What now?” he asked, ridding himself of the waistcoat and pointing to an ornate lace shirt.

“That’s not a shirt a merchant would wear,” said Diane de Polignac, exasperated by the blunder. Of the group, only she could hear the approaching footsteps of a populace crying out for vengeance. She alone was truly persuaded that the pamphlets did not lie.

Aside from fear, intensified by lack of experience, the Polignac clan were feeling some of the excitement generated by theater rehearsals. Father de La Balivière, too, wanted to wear a disguise. He suggested he might travel as a nun. “Very suitable,” remarked Diane.

Monsieur de Vaudreuil had bared his pale torso with its sunken chest and, perched on high-heeled shoes, was strutting back and forth in front of a mirror. He was trying to coax Diane into the performance, pulling her by the hand. Then he went down on his knees before her, as one expressing adoration. “You’re impossible,” she said, but she was tempted. He stood up and whispered a few words to Father de La Balivière who went away and came back with bottles of champagne. The foam spurted out and splashed over us. The priest’s wimple was soaked. Goblets were produced. “A fête honoring the restoration of the goddess Fortune,” proclaimed Monsieur de Vaudreuil. In the twinkling of an eye he had donned his merchant costume, but he had rouged his pock-marked cheeks and set a mask over his eyes.

“Let us celebrate the goddess Fortune; it is critically important that we do so. The goddess is not to be trifled with.” They were recovering a certain gaiety of spirit, and I could read in the faces and gestures of those three men the same desire to laugh, to touch, to reveal, as well as the regret that at once ensued whenever they recalled their need to put all that sort of thing aside and depart. But each time, the desire resurfaced to act out just one more comedy, just for a few minutes, just so they could laugh.

A table was dragged into the middle of the room to serve as a stage. They covered it with a red carpet. They tried to take Diane’s throne from her, but she brandished her sword at them. They settled for a less imposing armchair, which was placed onstage. Gabrielle de Polignac sat down in