CHAPTER XXVI.

THE LANDLADY OF THE SWAN PLUMES HERSELF.

Marguerite spent the morning after her adventure at the Swiss cottage, in the front chamber, to which Dame Tillery had been ready to conduct her on the previous day. The good dame was in high spirits after her experience with royalty. It was with great difficulty she could keep back the exhilaration of her pride sufficiently to preserve that discreet silence which the queen had so delicately recommended. Whenever a customer came in, she found dangerous words of triumph struggling to escape; and nothing but an application of the plump hand to her mouth kept them from proclaiming the glory of her visit to the whole town.

Feeling her weakness, and resolute against temptation, the good woman was constantly appeasing her desire to talk, by passing in and out of the room in which Marguerite sat, where she could indulge in comments on her high good fortune with safety.

“To think of it,” she would say over and over again. “Only yesterday you and I were strangers, and now we have been at court together, saved the very life of the queen, to say nothing of teaching her how to make butter, and have a right to enter the palace and be thanked graciously with the highest of the land. While you sprang forward and flung yourself before the queen, I kept the animal I was milking from plunging at her, by throwing myself on the earth under her very feet. She had not the power to leap over me; besides, the pail and stool got under her feet and tamed her down; but for that there is no knowing what sorrow might have fallen on the nation. In a great event like this it is an honor to have acted the principal part; I feel it so—I feel it so. That idea it was what made me so patient while I lay before the cow, a bulwark between her and the queen; but you did your part, I must confess that, and shall say as much to her majesty.”

Five or six times the proud dame visited Marguerite in her chamber to say this; and for half an hour together she would sit by the window with a hand on each knee, looking radiant as a full moon, while she described the scene in the park, in which her own chivalrous action became more and more prominent.

While the good woman was solacing her vanity after this fashion, a young man passed the house more than once, and looked up to the window where Marguerite and her friend were sitting. Dame Tillery saw him, bustled up from the chair, and threw the window open.

“Monsieur! Monsieur! are you looking for me? Is the queen getting impatient. Don’t be bashful, but come up and tell me all about it.”

The young man’s face brightened, he lifted his hat, smiled pleasantly, and came into the house. Marguerite heard his light step on the stairs, and the next minute saw him standing within the door, his hat in one hand, his coat glittering with embroidery, and a profusion of gossamer lace floating over his bosom.

Dame Tillery lifted herself from the chair, which creaked under her weight, and stood up to receive her courtly guest. Marguerite followed her example, and shrinking behind her portly figure, stood, blushing and confused, while the young man’s eyes were fixed upon her. She remembered him well. He was the young man who had made such awkward attempts to cut grass with a sickle the day before. He had sprung to her relief when she and the queen were clinging together in mutual terror, while Monsieur Jacques was conquering the vicious beast which had frightened them so.

“I trust,” said the young man, treading his way daintily into the room, as if that humble chamber had been the boudoir of a princess, “I trust that the affair of yesterday has left no bad effect on Dame Tillery or mademoiselle?”

“Oh, monsieur! do not think of us,” said the dame; “but relieve our minds about her majesty, the queen.”

“I have not seen her highness this morning; but Madame Campan reports her in no degree injured by her adventure. The king, she says, is most disturbed of the two, and declares the Swiss cottages shall be razed to the ground, and all the pretty cows butchered.”

“Oh! that would be cruel!” protested the dame; “just as her majesty was getting such a knack at churning, too.”

“True, it would be a great privation; for her highness loves these rustic amusements. All her ladies have been trying to make the king understand that there was no malice in the beast; but he will not be convinced.”

“How should he,” cried the dame; “it was a savage monster, and would have led the whole drove into mischief, if I had not flung myself before her, heaven only knows at what peril. I hope the king understands all about that.”

A mischievous smile came into the blue eyes of Richelieu, but his lips gave no evidence of amusement. On the contrary, he answered, with great appearance of interest, that the king knew how much he was indebted to the landlady of the Swan, and it was that he might be assured of her safety, and that of her fair protégée, that he had himself ventured to call upon them.

The young duke took a chair as he said this, begged Marguerite to sit down with his eyes, and Dame Tillery to oblige him in the same way, with his voice. When they had obeyed him, he dropped into a conversation, which soon arose far above Dame Tillery’s capacity, though she listened attentively, and occasionally raised her plump hands in admiration.

At first Marguerite answered him shyly, and with blushes; but, after a little, her interest deepened, and she spoke with less restraint. He had found the way to her heart, and was talking of the queen—of her goodness, her beauty, and the gratitude she was sure to feel for the fair girl who had thrown herself, with such heroic self-sacrifice, between her and danger.

“Let me say to you,” he continued, in a low, earnest voice, “that there is nothing you can ask of the king which he will not grant, in return for this one act of devotion to the woman he loves better than anything on earth. I was told, last night, that some friend or relative of yours is in the Bastille, and that your object in coming here was to ask mercy for him. There is nothing, perhaps, that the king shrinks from so much as this subject of the Bastille. The clamors of the people have only made him regard it more resolutely as one of the royal appendages, which they threaten to destroy, and he is bound to defend. Say as little as possible of the horrors of that terrible prison, but confine yourself entirely to pleading the cause of this one man, be he friend or relative.”

Tears came into Marguerite’s eyes; she lifted them to his face with an expression of gentle thankfulness that went to the young man’s heart.

“You are kind,” she said; “I will not forget what you have suggested, and I shall always be thankful that you have remembered my mournful errand with interest.”

“Who could look on that lovely face and not be interested. Surely, surely, you are not related to that stalwart man, who——”

“Who saved the queen,” said Marguerite, quickly. “No, he is no relative of mine; only the very best man that ever lived.”

“I hope you will not always think so,” was the gentle reply. “But now I come to say, that the queen will expect you two hours hence.”

Marguerite gave him a quick, frightened look.

“But Monsieur Jacques may not be here,” she said, anxiously.

“Then I will escort you,” said the duke. Then, with a smile and a wave of the hand, he left the room.