The Elusive Pimpernel Baroness Orczy (read more books txt) 📖

give us some of her charming old French songs at my rout tomorrow.”

“By all means! By all means!” said the Prince. “I used to know some in my childhood days. Charming and poetic.⁠ ⁠… I know.⁠ ⁠… I know.⁠ ⁠… We shall be delighted to hear Mademoiselle sing, eh, Blakeney?” he added good-humouredly, “and for your rout tomorrow will you not also invite M. Chauvelin?”

“Nay! but that goes without saying, your Royal Highness,” responded Sir Percy, with hospitable alacrity and a most approved bow directed at his arch-enemy. “We shall expect M. Chauvelin. He and I have not met for so long, and he shall be made right welcome at Blakeney Manor.”

IX Demoiselle Candeille

Her origin was of the humblest, for her mother⁠—so it was said⁠—had been kitchen-maid in the household of the Duc de Marny, but Désirée had received some kind of education, and though she began life as a dresser in one of the minor theatres of Paris, she became ultimately one of its most popular stars.

She was small and dark, dainty in her manner and ways, and with a graceful little figure, peculiarly supple and sinuous. Her humble origin certainly did not betray itself in her hands and feet, which were exquisite in shape and lilliputian in size.

Her hair was soft and glossy, always free from powder, and cunningly arranged so as to slightly overshadow the upper part of her face.

The chin was small and round, the mouth extraordinarily red, the neck slender and long. But she was not pretty: so said all the women. Her skin was rather coarse in texture and darkish in colour, her eyes were narrow and slightly turned upwards at the corners; no! she was distinctly not pretty.

Yet she pleased the men! Perhaps because she was so artlessly determined to please them. The women said that Demoiselle Candeille never left a man alone until she had succeeded in captivating his fancy if only for five minutes; an interval in a dance⁠ ⁠… the time to cross a muddy road.

But for five minutes she was determined to hold any man’s complete attention, and to exact his admiration. And she nearly always succeeded.

Therefore the women hated her. The men were amused. It is extremely pleasant to have one’s admiration compelled, one’s attention so determinedly sought after.

And Candeille could be extremely amusing, and as Magdelon in Molière’s Les Précieuses was quite inimitable.

This, however, was in the olden days, just before Paris went quite mad, before the Reign of Terror had set in, and ci-devant Louis the King had been executed.

Candeille had taken it into her frolicsome little head that she would like to go to London. The idea was of course in the nature of an experiment. Those dull English people over the water knew so little of what good acting really meant. Tragedy? Well! passons! Their heavy, large-boned actresses might manage one or two big scenes where a commanding presence and a powerful voice would not come amiss, and where prominent teeth would pass unnoticed in the agony of a dramatic climax.

But Comedy!

Ah! ça non, par example! Demoiselle Candeille had seen several English gentlemen and ladies in those same olden days at the Tuileries, but she really could not imagine any of them enacting the piquant scenes of Molière or Beaumarchais.

Demoiselle Candeille thought of every English-born individual as having very large teeth. Now large teeth do not lend themselves to well-spoken comedy scenes, to smiles, or to double entendre.

Her own teeth were exceptionally small and white, and very sharp, like those of a kitten.

Yes! Demoiselle Candeille thought it would be extremely interesting to go to London and to show to a nation of shopkeepers how daintily one can be amused in a theatre.

Permission to depart from Paris was easy to obtain. In fact the fair lady had never really found it difficult to obtain anything she very much wanted.

In this case she had plenty of friends in high places. Marat was still alive and a great lover of the theatre. Tallien was a personal admirer of hers, Deputy Dupont would do anything she asked.

She wanted to act in London, at a theatre called Drury Lane. She wanted to play Molière in England in French, and had already spoken with several of her colleagues, who were ready to join her. They would give public representations in aid of the starving population of France; there were plenty of Socialistic clubs in London quite Jacobin and Revolutionary in tendency: their members would give her full support.

She would be serving her country and her countrymen and incidentally see something of the world, and amuse herself. She was bored in Paris.

Then she thought of Marguerite St. Just, once of the Maison Molière, who had captivated an English milor of enormous wealth. Demoiselle Candeille had never been of the Maison Molière; she had been the leading star of one of the minor⁠—yet much-frequented⁠—theatres of Paris, but she felt herself quite able and ready to captivate some other unattached milor, who would load her with English money and incidentally bestow an English name upon her.

So she went to London.

The experiment, however, had not proved an unmitigated success. At first she and her company did obtain a few engagements at one or two of the minor theatres, to give representations of some of the French classical comedies in the original language.

But these never quite became the fashion. The feeling against France and all her doings was far too keen in that very set, which Demoiselle Candeille had desired to captivate with her talents, to allow of the English jeunesse dorée to flock and see Molière played in French, by a French troupe, whilst Candeille’s own compatriots resident in England had given her but scant support.

One section of these⁠—the aristocrats and émigrés⁠—looked upon the actress who was a friend of all the Jacobins in Paris as nothing better than canaille. They sedulously ignored her presence in this country, and snubbed her whenever they had an opportunity.

The other section⁠—chiefly