Stray Pearls: Memoirs of Margaret De Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise by Yonge (best novels for students TXT) 📖

I answered that I could trust him for that. I could not expect any more from him, and indeed none of us were bound in honour. The fault was with the Duke of Anjou, who, as we all know, was an incorrigible chatter-box all his life, and never was trusted with any State secrets at all; but his mother must have supposed him not old enough to understand what she was talking about, when she let him overhear such a conversation.

Gaspard had, however, a private lecture from both of us on the need of holding his tongue, both on this matter and all other palace gossip. He was no longer in waiting, and I trusted that all would be forgotten before his turn came again; but he was to join in the state procession on the following day, a Sunday, when the King and Queen-Regent were return thanks at Notre Dame for the victory at Lens.

Ah, children! we had victories then. Our Te Deums were not sung with doubting hearts, to make the populace believe a defeat a victory—a delusion to which this French nation of ours is only too prone. My countryman, Marlborough, and the little truant Abbe, Eugene of Savoy, were not then the leaders of the opposite armies; but at the head of our own, we had M. le Prince and the Vicomte de Turenne in the flower of their age, and our triumphs were such that they might well intoxicate the King, who was, so to speak, brought up upon them. It was a magnificent sight, which we all saw from different quarters—my mother in the suite of the Queen of England, Gaspard among the little noblemen who attended the King, I among the ladies who followed Mademoiselle, while my brother and sister, though they might have gone among their own Queen’s train, chose to shift for themselves. They said they should see more than if, like us, they formed part of the pageant; but I believe the real reason was, that if they had one early to Queen Henrietta’s apartments in full dress, they must have missed their English prayers at the Ambassador’s, which they never chose to do on a Sunday.

The choir part of the nave was filled with tribunes for the royal family and their suites; and as the most exalted in rank went the last, Mademoiselle, and we ladies behind her, came to our places early enough to see a great deal of the rest of the procession. The whole choir was already a field of clergy and choristers, the white robes of the latter giving relief to the richly-embroidered purple and lace-covered robes of the Bishops, who wore their gold and jeweled mitres, while their richly-gilded pastoral staves and crosses were borne before them. The Coadjutor of Paris, who was to be the Celebrant, was already by the Altar, his robes absolutely encrusted with gold; and just after we had taken our places there passed up the Cardinal, with his pillars borne before him, in his scarlet hat and his robes.

Every lady was, according to the Spanish fashion, which Queen Anne had introduced, in black or in white—the demoiselles in white, the married in black—and all with the black lace veil on their heads. The French ladies had murmured much at this, but there is no denying that the general effect was much better for the long lines of black above and white below, and as there was no restriction upon their jewellery, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds flashed wherever the light fell on them.

Beyond, a lane was preserved all down the length of the nave by the tall, towering forms of the Scottish archers, in their rich accoutrements, many of them gallant gentlemen, who had served under the Marquess of Montrose; and in the aisles behind them surged the whole multitude—gentlemen, ladies, bourgeois, fishwives, artisans, all sorts of people, mixed up together, and treating one another with a civility and forbearance of which my brother and sister confessed and English crowd would have been incapable, though they showed absolutely no reverence to the sacred place; and I must own the ladies showed as little, for every one was talking, laughing, bowing to acquaintance, or pointing out notorieties, and low whispers were going about of some great and secret undertaking of the Queen-Regent. Low, did I say! Nay, I heard the words ‘Blancmesnil and Broussel’ quite loud enough to satisfy me that if the attempt had been disclosed, it would not be possible to fix the blame of betraying it on my little son more than on twenty others. Indeed the Queen of England observed to her niece, loud enough for me to hear her, that it was only too like what she remembered only seven years ago in England, when her dear King had gone down to arrest those five rogues of members, and all had failed because of that vile gossip Lady Carlisle.

‘And who told my Lady Carlisle?’ demanded Mademoiselle with some archness; whereupon Queen Henrietta became very curious to know whether the handsome Duke of Beaufort were, after his foolish fashion, in the crowd, making himself agreeable to the ladies of the market-place.

Trumpets, however, sounded, and all rose from their seats, as up the nave swept Queen Anne, her black mantilla descending over her fair hair from a little diamond crown, her dress—white satin—with a huge long blue velvet train worked with gold fleurs-de-lys, supported by four pair of little pages in white satin. Most regal did she look, leading by the hand the little Duke of Anjou; while the young King, who was now old enough to form the climax of the procession, marched next after in blue and gold, holding his plumed hat in his hand, and bowing right and left with all his royal courtesy and grace, his beautiful fair hair on his shoulders, shining with the sun. And there was my little Marquis among the boys, who immediately followed him in all his bright beauty and grace.

Most glorious was the High Mass that followed. Officer after officer marched up and laid standard after standard before the Altar, heavy with German blazonry, or with the red and gold stripes of Aragon, the embattled castles of Castille, till they amounted to seventy-three. It must have been strange to the Spanish Queen to rejoice over these as they lay piled in a gorgeous heap before the high Altar, here and there one dim with weather or stained with blood. The peals of the Te Deum from a thousand voices were unspeakably magnificent, and yet through them all it seemed to me that I heard the wail not only of the multitudes of widowed wives and sonless parents, but of the poor peasants of all the nation, crying aloud to Heaven for the bread which they were forbidden to eat, when they had toiled for it in the sweat of their brow. Yes, and which I was not permitted to let them enjoy!

Ah! which did the Almighty listen to? To the praise, or to the mourning, lamentation, and woe? You have often wondered, my children, that I absented myself from the Te Deums of victory while we had them. Now you know the reason.

And then I knew that all this display was only an excuse under which the Queen hid her real design of crushing all opposition to her will. She wanted to commit an injustice, and silence all appeals against it, so that the poor might be more and more ground down! How strange in the woman whom I had seen bearing patiently, nay, joyfully, with the murmurs of the faggot-seller in the hospital! Truly she knew not what she did!

As she left the Cathedral, and passed M. de Comminges, a lieutenant of her Guards, she said: ‘Go, and Heaven be with you.’

I was soon at home safely with my boys, to carry an account of our doings to my dear little M. d’Aubepine, who, unable to bear the fatigue and the crush of Notre Dame, had taken her little children to a