CHAPTER L.

THE DAME OF THE DAIRY.

Dame Tillery called her household together, maids, grooms, and helpers, and standing at a long table in one end of the most public room in her house, proclaimed to them the high honor that day conferred on her by the queen.

“Not altogether to myself has her majesty done this honor,” she said, lifting her closed fan on high, and looking around benignly on her retainers; “but as the sun sheds light on the weeds and the grass, as well as the flowers, my glory shall, in some sort, fall on the humblest of my servants; from this hour you may look upon yourselves as next in service to the retainers of the high nobility of France. I have not decided yet upon a livery or a badge, all that will be left to more cool deliberation; but you can go forth with a feeling of high preferment; and as such honors can no longer be kept secret, you have my free permission to promulgate this good news throughout the town as occasion may offer. Now, my humble friends, you may disperse for a holiday. In the tap-room a cask of wine has been broached, free to every man and woman in my employ. All that I ask is, that you drink the health of their majesties, and your liege lady, The Dame of the Dairy.”

Dame Tillery opened her fan with the slow spread of a peacock’s tail, waved it once or twice with superb dignity, and closing it into a baton again, retired amid the bewildered shouts of her household. On her way from the room she met the strange page, who came in hurriedly and flushed with excitement. He was about to pass the landlady, but she stood smiling in his way, and rendered that impossible.

“You had an audience, and such an one as no other person outside the court could have obtained for you,” she said, in high good-humor. “Did her majesty speak of the great honor conferred on your humble servant? Did she say that, in her serene goodness, she had lifted Dame Tillery, who stands here before you, into the nobility of France? Did she tell you that this day a new order has been created, and Dame Tillery, of The Swan, stands at its head?”

The page listened impatiently and did not seem to comprehend what the woman was talking about; but, with a sudden start of memory, he drew a rouleau of gold from his pocket and handed it to her.

“What is this? For whom is it intended?” she inquired, drawing her portly figure up with a swell of importance.

“It is the gold I promised for the service you have rendered me, with enough added to cover the cost of my lodging here,” answered the page. “I give it now, because in a few minutes I shall take the road again.”

“Nay,” replied the dame, waving the gold aside with her fan, “that was all well enough yesterday, when I was only mistress of The Swan; but I have my doubts about it now. Can a person of my rank receive money in her own person? I—I am in doubt—I think not.”

“I crave pardon,” said the page, and a laughing imp came dancing into his eyes. “If there is any person in your household who can act as treasurer, I will give the money to him.”

Dame Tillery, who had been all the while eyeing the rouleau of gold askance, broke into an approving smile, and called aloud for one of the men she had left in the public room, whom she ordered to take charge of the money, and see that it was properly bestowed in her strong coffer; then she turned to address the page again, but he was gone.

“Zamara.”

The dwarf started up and opened the door through which the page came in haste.

“Zamara, I have failed; the ring is on her finger, but I cannot get it off. Oh, Zamara! how often I have wished that wretched man had never crossed my path!”

“It was a great misfortune, my lady. Nothing seems to have gone well with us since that terrible ring was taken from his finger.”

“If we could only get it back again—if we could devise some way. Zamara, can you think of no device by which it can be obtained? The poor queen has given us nothing but kindness, and to her we have brought perpetual disappointment—perhaps undreamed of trouble. Try, marmosette. In the old times you were never at loss for invention—help me in this strait. I cannot go away and leave that accursed serpent clinging to her hand.”

Tears stood in this hard woman’s eyes, she was passionately in earnest. Zamara started up, and seizing her hand, kissed it with heathenish devotion.

“Madame has spoken; Zamara has seen her tears, and will give his soul to the task she appoints him.”

“My good Zamara, my kind, kind friend! I know that you will wrest this talisman from her hand, if human ingenuity can do it. If I have trust in mortal being, it is in you, my poor marmosette. But to help me in this you must stay at Versailles, while I go up to Paris. Ah! this task of uprooting the wrongs one has perpetrated is a hard one. Something baffles me ever when I strive to do good, while it was so easy to be kicked. Why is this, I wonder! Ah me! how different it might have proved had I been born among the great, rather than forced upon them.”

“Madame, I hear some one at your chamber-door.”

“Go, go. It is doubtless that tiresome woman.”

The next moment Zamara stood by Dame Tillery, who was knocking loudly at the door of Madame Du Berry’s chamber.

“Ah!” he said, “let me congratulate you, Dame; all the house is in commotion—such joy, such unheard-of good fortune. Why, it is like being made a princess. They wanted me to come down into the public room and drink to this new dignity—but I said no. When madame herself appears, I will drink to her health, but not with servants, only in her own august presence. This was what I said, madame.”

Zamara pressed a tiny hand upon his heart, and bent low as he finished speaking.

“That was the thought of a person endowed with most gentle breeding,” said the dame, wheeling from the door full of hospitable thoughts. “Come with me to my own room, where you will find something better than the people down yonder would know how to relish. You shall taste of Burgundy from the best bin in my cellar, the more readily because I wish to send a flask to your mistress. It was this that took me to her door but now.”

Zamara stood by bowing and smiling, while the dame filled a goblet with wine from a bottle that seemed to have rested years in her cellar, and, though compelled to hold it between both hands, he drained it to the bottom.

“Now,” said the dame, giving him a salver to carry, on which she had placed a second bottle and glasses. “Follow me to madame’s room; she must not be neglected when the lowest scullion in the kitchen rejoices.”

There was no difficulty of access now. The page had disappeared. His clothes lay huddled in Zamara’s closet, and Madame Du Berry was in bed, resting in a recumbent position on her pillows in a demi-toilet, but with her hair less elaborately arranged than usual. She received Dame Tillery with a smile, congratulated her warmly when she heard the good news, tossed off a goblet of the sparkling Burgundy, and declared that the exaltation of her friend had made her well—so well that she would start for Paris within the hour, leaving Zamara behind to arrange the baggage, and follow her when she should send for him.

Dame Tillery expostulated a little; but finding her guest positive, allowed her to depart, but not till the bottle of Burgundy had been drained in honor of her new dignity. What Du Berry refused to drink, the jovial dame insisted on dividing with Zamara, whose eyes twinkled with infinite mischief when she sat down with the bottle on her knee, and proposed that he should drain glass for glass with her.

So confused became the happy landlady of The Swan before the hour was gone, that she arose in the morning with a vague idea that the page had left rather abruptly, but of the period when Madame Du Berry took her departure, she had no recollection at all.