Farewell, My Queen Black Moishe (short novels in english .txt) 📖

lodgings, played games, made music, read, and—especially—got dressed for the evening’s activities. It was the time when jeweled ornaments circulated among the ladies of fashion, when visiting started between families, apartments, or different parts of the château, and maintained a lively pace that would last until midnight and even beyond. More prosaically, in this case, it was the time when I needed to find some supper, and I went to see if Honorine could oblige. I wanted to talk to her about everything I had witnessed; in particular, the episode of the repugnant dessert had left me badly frightened.

Honorine was available, and she could give me some supper. Monsieur and Madame de La Tour du Pin’s apartment boasted an unusual feature: a huge kitchen, equipped with several stoves. Once I had eaten and was feeling the better for it, I started out to share my recent discoveries with my friend but discovered there was nothing I could say. I felt it would be indiscreet to describe for her what had transpired between the Queen and Gabrielle de Polignac. As for the ending to the King’s Luncheon, I feared lest by reporting it I might propagate its evil spell. So instead, it was Honorine who told me the latest news from Paris. We resumed work on the unfinished tapestry. Gradations of green, mosses, ferns, tall forest trees, with some white and brown for a doe near a pond. Embroidery exercises a calming effect on me; it is the daytime equivalent of reciting lists to myself. But now, as I listened to what Honorine had to tell me, the remedy did not work. In victory, the Parisians had gone completely wild. At the Bastille, they had put to death the Swiss Guards and even, in their frenzy, a few prisoners. They were indoctrinating the army, tearing up the cobbled city streets, obtaining weapons everywhere, fabricating bombs, setting fire to the aristocratic Faubourg Saint-Germain. They were running along the ramparts of the city bellowing murderous songs. The Prince de Lambesc, pursued by this maddened horde, had returned with his officers to Versailles.

I pricked my finger and let go of the tapestry. I looked up at the château grounds, to be struck by an absolutely timeless image: going past the windows, preceded by two footmen, was the ancient, paralytic Duke de Reybaud. As he did at this time every day, weather permitting, he was having himself carried to the Ballroom Bosquet. Ordinarily, His Grace de Reybaud was half dead. A glimmer of life returned to his lackluster eyes only when he could contemplate Le Nôtre’s masterpiece of landscape gardening. What was it about this thicket of trees that appealed to him? The limpid water trickling over the rockeries, the wellspring coolness of the air, a scene from his past? He was accompanied by his wife, who was a very young girl, and by one of his daughters from a previous marriage, who was an old woman. I was amazed.

“Look,” I said to Honorine, “over that way, not far from the Hundred-Step Stairway. Look, it’s His Grace the Duke de Reybaud. He is completely unaware of the calamitous events taking place around him. He is going ahead with his daily outing as he has from the beginning of time. Surely he must be accounted more fortunate than any of us.”

“Perhaps,” my friend replied (she was now working on the tapestry by herself). “But being unaware that a thing exists has never prevented that thing from existing. In Paris, the people have seized the Bastille. They are armed. Nothing can stop them now. In Versailles, the National Assembly has scored two victories over the King. He has given up his army and dismissed his ministers. I don’t know what is being planned here at the château. Nothing good, in the opinion of Madame de La Tour du Pin. The fear we experienced last night has only got worse. No voice is raised here that would suggest the presence of a leader prepared to step forward and instill the Court with fresh energy. Monsieur de La Tour du Pin is firmly resolved not to give up the château, to stay and fight, but there are not many, I fear, who share his determination.”

Outside, the pathetic little cortege moved on. At its own pace. Unhurried. And after all, why hurry? They knew by heart where they were going. And the Ballroom Bosquet would always be there waiting for them. An empty place, to those two women and the valets; a place humming with life, filled with sounds of festivities and music, to the old man who could no longer go anywhere except in his memory . . . Honorine had not convinced me. I still favored the policy of deliberately refusing to know. Provided that we followed it unswervingly. Troublesome matters, so it seemed to me, could be abolished by using Enough of that or Let’s think about something else . . . I was mustering arguments, my gaze was wandering among the treetops, level with the Orangerie terrace . . . Well, but . . . It was her again, the misshapen creature, with her red hair and her arms held out stiffly in front of her. She was barely touching the ground. She had presided in the kitchens, and now she was heading into the gardens. She was making for the old Duke’s little procession, but veered away before they met.

“It’s her! Honorine, it’s her, it’s Panic, Panic incarnate!”

My cries had come too late; I was now in her power. She was moving with the speed of disaster, her hair soaked in blood, her obscene flesh made even more obscene by her garment that hung in tatters—tatters one might see on the stage of a theater. She had emerged onto the terrace, hurtled through the clumps of flowers at the Water Parterre, careered off past the Orangerie toward the Lake of the Swiss Guards; she was coming back now, up to the Fountain of Latona, fulminating,