The Mesmerist's Victim. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ M. Rousseau, if I wanted the society of these ladies, I should go with them now?”

      “Go where you like! I may be deceived once but not twice. Go to this lady, good and amiable—and with this gentleman,” he added pointing to Jussieu, amazed at the philosopher’s rebuke to the royal pet, “he is a lover of nature and your accomplice—he has promised you fortune and assistance and he has power at court.”

      He bowed to the women in a tragic manner, unable to contain himself, and left the pavillion statelily, without glancing again at Gilbert.

      “What an ugly creature a philosopher is,” tranquilly said Chon, watching the Genevan stumble down the hill.

      “You can have anything you like,” prompted Jussieu to Gilbert who kept his face buried in his hands.

      “Yes, anything, Gilly,” added the countess, smiling on the returned prodigal.

      Raising his pale face, and tossing back the hair matted on his forehead, he said in a steady voice:

      “I should be glad to be a gardener at Trianon Palace.”

      Chon and the countess glanced at each other, and the former touched her sister’s foot while she winked broadly. Jeanne nodded.

      “If feasible, do it,” she said to Jussieu.

      Gilbert bowed with his hand on his heart, overflowing with joy after having been drowned with grief.

CHAPTER VIII.

       THE LITTLE TRIANON.

       Table of Contents

      WHEN Louis XIV. built Versailles and perceived the discomfort of grandeur, he granted it was the sojourneying-place for a demi-god but no home for a man. So he had the Trianon constructed to be able to draw a free breath at leisure moments.

      But the sword of Achilles, if it tired him, was bound to be of insupportable weight to a myrmidon. Trianon was so much too pompous for the Fifteenth Louis that he had the Little Trianon built.

      It was a house looking with its large eyes of windows over a park and woods, with the wing of the servant’s lodgings and stables on the left, where the windows were barred and the kitchens hidden by trellises of vines and creepers.

      A path over a wooden bridge led to the Grand Trianon through a kitchen garden.

      The King brought Prime Minister Choiseul into this garden to show him the improvements introduced to make the place fit for his grandson the Dauphin, and the Dauphiness.

      Duke Choiseul admired everything and passed his comments with a courtier’s sagacity. He let the monarch say the place would become more pleasant daily and he added that it would be a family retreat for the sovereign.

      “The Dauphiness is still a little uncouth, like all young German girls,” said Louis; “She speaks French nicely, but with an Austrian accent jarring on our ears. Here she will speak among friends and it will not matter.”

      “She will perfect herself,” said the duke. “I have remarked that the lady is highly accomplished and accomplishes anything she undertakes.”

      On the lawn they found the Dauphin taking the sun with a sextant. Louis Aguste, duke of Berry, was a meek-eyed, rosy complexioned man of seventeen, with a clumsy walk. He had a more prominent Bourbon nose than any before him, without its being a caricature. In his nimble fingers and able arms alone he showed the spirit of his race, so to express it.

      “Louis,” said the King, loudly to be overheard by his grandson, “is a learned man, and he is wrong to rack his brain with science, for his wife will lose by it.”

      “Oh, no,” corrected a feminine voice as the Dauphiness stepped out from the shrubbery, where she was chatting with a man loaded with plans, compass, pencil and notebook.

      “Sire, this is my architect, Mique,” she said.

      “Have you caught the family complaint of building?”

      “I am going to turn this sprawling garden into a natural one!”

      “Really? why, I thought that trees and grass and running water are natural enough.”

      “Sire, you have to walk along straight paths between shaped boxwood trees, hewn at an angle of forty-five, to quote the Dauphin, and ponds agreeing with the paths, and star centres, and terraces! I am going to have arbors, rockeries, grottoes, cottages, hills, gorges, meadows—— ”

      “For Dutch dolls to stand up in?” queried the King.

      “Alas, Sire, for kings and princes like ourselves,” she replied, not seeing him color up, and that she had spoken a cutting truth.

      “I hope you will not lodge your servants in your woods and on your rivers like Red Indians, in the natural life which Rousseau praises. If you do, only the Encyclopædists will eulogise you.”

      “Sire, they would be too cold in huts, so I shall keep the out-buildings for them as they are.” She pointed to the windows of a corridor, over which were the servant’ sleeping rooms and under which were the kitchens.

      “What do I see there?” asked the King, shielding his eyes with his hand, for he had short-sight.

      “A woman, your Majesty,” said Choiseul.

      “A young lady who is my reading-woman,” said the princess.

      “It is Mdlle. de Taverney,” went on Choiseul.

      “What, are you attaching the Taverneys to your house?”

      “Only the girl.”

      “Very good,” said the King, without taking his eyes off the barred window out of which innocently gazed Andrea, with no idea she was watched.

      “How pale she is!” remarked the Prime Minister.

      “She was nearly killed in the dreadful accident of the 30th of May, my lord.”

      “For which we would have punished somebody severely,” said Louis, “but Chancellor Seguier proved it was the work of Fate. Only that fellow Bignon, Provost of the Merchants, was dismissed—and—poor girl! he deserved it.”

      “Has she recovered?” asked Choiseul quickly.

      “Yes, thank heaven!”

      “She goes away,” said the King.

      “She recognized your Majesty, and fled. She is timid.”

      “A cheerless dwelling for a girl!”

      “Oh, no, not so bad.”

      “Let us have a look round inside, Choiseul?”

      “Your Majesty, Council of Parliament at Versailles СКАЧАТЬ