CHAPTER XX.

ROYAL MILKMAIDS.

Marguerite followed Dame Tillery into the cottage. A confused sound of voices, and low bursts of laughter met them at the threshold, and with this was mingled the tinkling sound of metal-pans jarring against each other, and the patter of high-heeled shoes upon the wooden door of a room beyond.

“Put aside your hood and shawl, dame,” said the queen; “you are wanted at once.”

Dame Tillery took off her outer garments, and drawing an apron of white linen from her pocket, tied it around her stout waist with the air of a woman about to perform some important duty, then she entered the room which seemed so full of merriment, as if it had been her own parlor in The Swan Hotel.

The room was a singular one; the floor was of dark walnut, and entirely uncarpeted. Along one end ran a range of shelves, cut from thin slabs of marble, on which pans, some silver, some of white porcelain, were arranged in rows. These pans were full of milk, on which the cream was mantling richly. Pails of almost snow-white wood, hooped and mounted with silver, hung on brackets against the opposite wall. At a long, marble table, which occupied the center of the room, stood two or three pans of milk, with a long, porcelain dish half full of thick cream. Two or three ladies were by the table busy at work, but laughing, chatting, and making merry over their labor, as if they had been accustomed to it all their lives.

One, a little, plump woman, with blue eyes, and a round, pleasant face, had rolled her sleeves to the elbows, and drawn the skirt of her dress through the pocket-holes, while she skimmed the cream from one of the pans, and dropped it into the long, porcelain dish preparatory for churning. A fair young girl, habited in like rustic fashion, but with a good deal of blue in her dress, was washing milk-pans at a marble sink in one corner of the room; while a piquant little lady, with red ribbons in her cap, stood ready with a long, white towel, with which she polished the pans into brightness.

The person who washed these pans was Elizabeth, the king’s sister; the lady who received them was the Princess Lambella—but all titles were ignored in this rustic retreat, and each highborn lady went by her simple name.

“See, Dame Campan, I have brought a person here who will set us all right,” cried the queen, introducing Dame Tillery, with mischievous laughter in her eyes.

The lady, who was skimming milk, dropped her hand to the edge of the pan, and turned her pleasant eyes on the landlady.

“Ah! I dare not go on with my work,” she said, laughing merrily; “that is, with any one who understands it better than I do standing by.”

“No wonder,” answered Dame Tillery, going up to the table and taking the skimmer from the plump, little hand that held it. “Why, you are ladling out more milk than cream; and that makes sour butter.”

With a subtle turn of her wrist, the landlady glided the skimmer between the strata of golden cream and impoverished milk with a dexterity that separated them entirely.

“There,” she said, allowing the rich mass to glide into the dish, “that is the way to skim a pan of milk.”

“Ah! what a bungler I have been!” exclaimed Madame Campan, clasping her hands in mimic humiliation; “but I can never do it like that.”

The landlady laughed, and stood with a hand resting on either hip, while Campan made an effort to imitate her dexterity; but that moment the queen called her away. She stood by a tall churn of spotless wood, mounted with silver and with the dasher grasped in both hands, called out,

“Come hither, landlady—come hither! Dame Capet stands in more need of help than any one. This churn is obstinate as a mule. See how it has bespattered my dress.”

Certainly, there did seem to be cause for the queen’s complaint, for little rivulets of cream were running down the side of the churn, and a shower of drops hung like pearls upon her white arms and her dress; while she worked so vigorously with the dasher that her cheeks were one glow of roses, and her eyes sparkled brighter than all the diamonds she had ever worn.

“What is it that makes the cream grow thinner and thinner the more I beat it?”

Dame Tillery took the dasher from those beautiful hands, lifted the lid of the churn, and examined its contents with wistful interest. Then she drew a fancy milking stool towards her, sat down upon it, and holding the churn between her knees, began to agitate the cream with a slow rise and fall of the dasher, which would have irritated Marie Antoinette with its dull monotony.

“There, there! let me try!” she exclaimed, all impatience. “It is easy enough.”

She took the dasher, while Dame Tillery moved her stool back and looked on. A few moments the rise and fall of the dasher was slow and cautious; but after a little, the impulsive character of the queen broke into action. A shower of snowy drops flashed upward, the lid was knocked one side and then the other, frothing cream dashed tumultuously against the sides of the churn, and everything was in commotion again.

“There, you see! You see nothing can be more obstinate. I have been following your method perfectly, but it comes to this.”

“Nay,” answered the dame, resting an elbow on each knee, as a broad, genial smile swept her face, “it is because you try too much. Slow and sure—slow and sure is a good maxim, both on the farm and at court.”

“Hush! we have no such thing as court here, good woman,” whispered a tall, dark lady, who had just come in. She was in a rustic dress, like the rest; but Dame Tillery instantly recognized her as a lady of the royal household. “Dame Capet has no knowledge of the queen, remember that.”

Marie Antoinette had relinquished her hold of the dasher.

“It takes away my breath,” she said, moving toward a window and looking out.

Dame Tillery drew the chum between her knees again, and went on with her monotonous work. Marguerite came and leaned upon her chair; she was very pale, and her eyes shone with suppressed anxiety.

“Tell me,” she whispered, “is this lady, in truth, the queen?”

“In truth she is,” answered the dame, suspending the motion of her dasher a moment.

“And if I speak to her?”

“Speak to her! Ah! now I remember, it was something more than a wish to see how royal ladies can amuse themselves, that made you so anxious to come.”

“It was life or death—nothing less.”

“So serious as that? I am sorry for it. Of all places in the world, this is the last for such things. The queen and her ladies came here to escape them.”

“I see. It is almost hopeless; but I must speak.”

“Not yet—wait a little. I will watch for an opportunity. Go to the other window yonder, and tell me what they are all looking at.”

Marguerite went quietly to the window, and saw a drove of cows coming up from their pasture in the Park, beautiful creatures, with coats like velvet, and coal-black horns curving inward like cimeters.

A group of young men, wearing blouses and ribbons upon their hats, were driving the cows, all laughing, chatting, and making the air riotous with mirth. Marguerite saw one or two of these young men go up to the window, around which the inmates of the room were grouped.

“It is of no use inviting us out,” said Marie Antoinette to a young man who protested, with grave earnestness, that the cows suffered for want of milking. “We have our own duties to perform first; so, my Lord de ——, I beg ten thousand pardons, my gentle herdsman; you must watch and wait a little longer.”

“But how long, Dame Capet? My companions are getting impatient of their idleness.”

The Princess Elizabeth ran out of the room, and returned with a sickle in each hand, which she held out of the window with a demure smile.

“Let them cut grass for the cows,” she said, “while we go on with our butter-making.”

The young Duke de Richelieu, for it was no less a person, took the sickles, and tossing one to the feet of his companion, fell upon his knees beneath the window, and made an awkward attempt at cutting the grass.

The ladies at the window burst into shouts of mellow laughter, and smoothing their aprons, went to work again like so many dairy-maids.

“Now,” said Marie Antoinette, approaching the churn, “I will be more obedient.”

She took the dasher between her hands, and continued the slow, steady motion, which seemed so easy to Dame Tillery. The work had almost been done in her hands. Directly she saw the ridges of cream that gathered in a circle about the dasher divide off into particles, while the rejected milk flowed in thin bluish drops back to the churn.

“It has come!” exclaimed Dame Tillery, with mild triumph.

“What has come?” demanded her pupil, astonished to hear a liquid-splash come up from the churn, instead of a mellow sound, half-smothered in the richness of the cream, which her dasher had all the time produced.

“What has come? Your, your —— My pretty dame! why, the butter, of course. You can hear it floating in lumps against the dasher.”

“Butter! and I have really made it! Oh! how delicious, Campan. Elizabeth Polignac, come and see your Capet in her glory. Butter of her own churning—golden butter, sweet as violets, and such quantities! Look! look!”

The queen lifted the lid of her churn, and a swarm of pretty women crowded around it.

“Oh! this is something like!” exclaimed one.

“Superb!” cried another. “But how are we to get it out?”

“Bring a dish,” said Dame Tillery, whose portly figure seemed to swell and broaden under a consciousness of superior knowledge. “Bring a dish, little one.”