Monsieur Durand had indeed not exaggerated when he spoke of M. le Contrôleur's bedchamber being overcrowded this same eventful morning.
All that France possessed of nobility, of wit and of valour, seemed to have found its way on this beautiful day in August past the magic portal guarded by Baptiste, the dragon, to the privileged enclosure beyond, where milor in elegant robe de chambre reclined upon his gorgeous couch, whilst Madame, clad in hooped skirt and panniers of dove-gray silk, directed the affairs of France from the embrasure of a window.
"Achille, my shoes!"
We must surmise that his lordship had been eagerly awaiting the striking of the bracket clock which immediately faced the bed, for the moment the musical chimes had ceased to echo in the crowded room he had thrown aside the lace coverlet which had lain across his legs and called peremptorily for his valet.
"Only half-past ten, milor!" came in reproachful accents from a pair of rosy lips.
"Ma foi, so it is!" exclaimed Lord Eglinton, with well-feigned surprise, as he once more glanced up at the clock.
"Were you then so bored in my company," rejoined the lady, with a pout, "that you thought the hour later?"
"Bored!" he exclaimed. "Bored, did you say, Madame? Perish the very thought of boredom in the presence of Mme. la Comtesse de Stainville!"
But in spite of this gallant assertion, M. le Contrôleur seemed in a vast hurry to quit the luxuriance of his azure-hung throne. M. Achille—that paragon among flunkeys—looked solemnly reproachful. Surely milor should have known by now that etiquette demanded that he should stay in bed until he had received every person of high rank who desired an intimate audience.
There were still some high-born, exalted, and much beribboned gentlemen who had not succeeded in reaching the inner precincts of that temple and fount of honours and riches—the bedside of M. le Contrôleur. But Monseigneur le Prince de Courtenai was there—he in whose veins flowed royal blood, and who spent a strenuous life in endeavouring to make France recognize this obvious fact. He sat in an arm-chair at the foot of the bed, discussing the unfortunate events of June 16th at Piacenza and young Comte de Maillebois's subsequent masterly retreat on Tortone, with Christian Louis de Montmorenci, Duc de Luxembourg, the worthy son of an able father and newly created Marshal of France.
Close to them, Monsieur le Comte de Vermandois, Grand Admiral of France, was intent on explaining to M. le Chancelier d'Aguesseau why England just now was supreme mistress of the seas. M. d'Isenghien talked poetry to Jolyot Crébillon, and M. le Duc d'Harcourt discussed Voltaire's latest play with ex-comedian and ex-ambassador Néricault-Destouche, whilst Mme. la Comtesse de Stainville, still called "la belle brune de Bordeaux" by her many admirers, had been endeavouring to divert M. le Contrôleur's attention from this multiplicity of abstruse subjects.
Outside this magic circle there was a gap, a barrier of parquet flooring which no one would dare to traverse without a distinct look of encouragement from M. Achille. His Majesty had not yet arrived, and tongues wagged freely in the vast and gorgeous room, with its row of tall windows which gave on the great slopes of the Park of Versailles. Through them came the pleasing sound of the perpetual drip from the monumental fountains, the twitter of sparrows, the scent of lingering roses and of belated lilies. No other sound from that outside world, no other life save the occasional footstep of a gardener along the sanded walks. But within all was chatter and bustle; women talked, men laughed and argued, society scandals were commented upon and the newest fashions in coiffures discussed. The men wore cloth coats of sober hues, but the women had donned light-coloured dresses, for the summer was at its height and this August morning was aglow with sunshine.
Mme. de Stainville's rose-coloured gown was the one vivid patch of colour in the picture of delicate hues. She stood close to M. le Contrôleur's bedside and unceremoniously turned her back on the rest of the company; we must presume that she was a very privileged visitor, for no one—not even Monseigneur le Prince de Courtenai—ventured to approach within earshot. It was understood that in milor's immediate entourage la belle Irène alone was allowed to be frivolous, and we are told that she took full advantage of this permission.
All chroniclers of the period distinctly aver that the lady was vastly entertaining; even M. de Voltaire mentions her as one of the sprightliest women of that light-hearted and vivacious Court. Beautiful, too, beyond cavil, her position as the wife of one of the most brilliant cavaliers that e'er graced the entourage of Mme. de Pompadour gave her a certain dignity of bearing, a self-conscious gait and proud carriage of the head which had considerably added to the charms which she already possessed. The stiff, ungainly mode of the period suited her somewhat full figure to perfection; the tight corslet bodice, the wide panniers, the ridiculous hooped skirt—all seemed to have been specially designed to suit the voluptuous beauty of Irène de Stainville.
M. d'Argenson when speaking of her has described her very fully. He speaks of her abnormally small waist, which seemed to challenge the support of a masculine arm, and of her creamy skin which she knew so well how to veil in transparent folds of filmy lace. She made of dress a special study, and her taste, though daring, was always sure. Even during these early morning receptions, when soft-toned mauves, tender drabs or grays were mostly in evidence, Irène de Stainville usually appeared in brocade of brilliant rosy-red, turquoise blue, or emerald green; she knew that these somewhat garish tones, mellowed only through the richness of the material, set off to perfection the matt ivory tint of her complexion, and detached her entire person from the rest of the picture.
Yet even her most ardent admirers tell us that Irène de Stainville's vanity went almost beyond the bounds of reason in its avidity for fulsome adulation. Consciousness of her own beauty was not sufficient; she desired its acknowledgment from others. She seemed to feed on flattery, breathing it in with every pore of her delicate skin, drooping like a parched flower when full measure was denied to her. Many aver that she marred her undoubted gifts of wit through this insatiable desire for one sole topic of conversation—her own beauty and its due meed of praise. At the same time her love of direct and obsequious compliments was so ingenuous, and she herself so undeniably fascinating, that, in the hey-day of her youth and attractions, she had no difficulty in obtaining ready response to her wishes from the highly susceptible masculine element at the Court of Louis XV.
M. le Contrôleur-Général—whom she specially honoured with her smiles—had certainly no intention of shirking the pleasing duty attached to this distinction, and, though he was never counted a brilliant conversationalist, he never seemed at a loss for the exact word of praise which would tickle la belle Irène's ears most pleasantly.
And truly no man's heart could be sufficiently adamant to deny to that brilliantly-plumaged bird the tit-bits which it loved the best. Milor himself had all the sensitiveness of his race where charms—such as Irène freely displayed before him—were concerned, and when her smiling lips demanded acknowledgment of her beauty from him he was ready enough to give it.
"Let them settle the grave affairs of State over there," she had said to him this morning, when first she made her curtsey before him. And with a provocative smile she pointed to the serious-looking group of grave gentlemen that surrounded his bedside, and also to the compact row of backs which stood in serried ranks round Mme. la Marquise d'Eglinton in the embrasure of the central window. "Life is too short for such insignificant trifles."
"We only seem to last long enough to make love thoroughly to half a dozen pretty women in a lifetime," replied M. le Contrôleur, as he gallantly raised her fingers to his lips.
"Half a dozen!" she retorted, with a pout. "Ah, milor, I see that your countrymen are not maligned! The English have such a reputation for perfidy!"
"But I have become so entirely French!" he protested. "England would scarce know me now."
And with a whimsical gesture he pointed to the satin hangings of his bed, the rich point lace coverlet, and to his own very elaborate and elegant robe de chambre.
"Is that said in regret?" she asked.
"Nay," he replied, "there is no more place for regret than there is for boredom in sight of smiles from those perfect lips."
She blushed, and allowed her hands—which were particularly beautiful—to finger idly the silks and laces which were draped so tastefully about his person. As her eyes were downcast in dainty and becoming confusion, she failed to notice that M. le Contrôleur was somewhat absent-minded this morning, and that, had he dared, he would at this juncture undoubtedly have yawned. But of this she was obviously unconscious, else she had not now murmured so persuasively.
"Am I beautiful?"
"What a question!" he replied.
"The most beautiful woman here present?" she insisted.
"Par ma foi!" he protested gaily. "Was ever married man put in so awkward a predicament?"
"Married man? Bah!" and she shrugged her pretty shoulders.
"I am a married man, fair lady, and the law forbids me to answer so provoking a question."
"This is cowardly evasion," she rejoined. "Mme. la Marquise, your wife, only acknowledges one supremacy—that of the mind. She would scorn to be called the most beautiful woman in the room."
"And M. le Comte de Stainville, your lord, would put a hole right through my body were I now to speak the unvarnished truth."
Irène apparently chose to interpret milor's equivocal speech in the manner most pleasing to her self-love. She looked over her shoulder toward the window embrasure. She saw that Mme. la Marquise d'Eglinton's court was momentarily dismissed, and that M. le Duc d'Aumont had just joined his daughter. She also saw that Lydie looked troubled, and that she threw across the room a look of haughty reproof.
Nothing could have pleased Irène de Stainville more.
Apart from the satisfaction which her own inordinate vanity felt at the present moment by enchaining milor's attention and receiving his undivided homage in full sight of the élite of aristocratic Versailles, there was the additional pleasure of dealing a pin-prick or so to a woman who had once been her rival, and who was undoubtedly now the most distinguished as she was the most adulated personality in France.
Irène had never forgiven Lydie Gaston's defalcations on that memorable night, when a humiliating exposure and subsequent scene led to the disclosure of her own secret marriage, and thus put a momentary check on her husband's ambitious schemes.
From that check he had since then partially recovered. Mme. de Pompadour's good graces which she never wholly withdrew from him had given him a certain position of influence and power, from which his lack of wealth would otherwise have debarred him. But even with the uncertain and fickle Marquise's help Gaston de Stainville was far from attaining a position such as his alliance with Lydie would literally have thrown into his lap, such, of course, as fell to the share of the amiable milor, who had succeeded in capturing the golden prey. In these days of petticoat government feminine protection was the chief leverage for advancement; Irène, however, could do nothing for her husband without outside help; conscious of her own powers of fascination, she had cast about for the most likely prop on which she could lean gracefully whilst helping Gaston to climb upward.
The King himself was too deeply in the toils of his fair Jeanne to have eyes for any one save for her. M. le Duc d'Aumont, Prime Minister of France, was his daughter's slave; there remained M. le Contrôleur-Général himself—a figure-head as far as the affairs of State were concerned, but wielding a great deal of personal power through the vastness of his wealth which Lydie rather affected to despise.
Irène, therefore—faute de mieux—turned her languishing eyes upon M. le Contrôleur. Her triumph was pleasing to herself, and might in due course prove useful to Gaston, if she succeeded presently in counterbalancing Lydie's domineering influence over milor. For the moment her vanity was agreeably soothed, although "la belle brune de Bordeaux" herself was fully alive to the fact that, while her whispered conversations at milor's petits levers, her sidelong glances and conscious blushes called forth enough mischievous oglings and equivocal jests from the more frivolous section of society butterflies, Lydie only viewed her and her machinations with cold and somewhat humiliating indifference.
"And," as M. d'Argenson very pertinently remarked that self-same morning, "would any beautiful woman care to engage the attentions of a man unless she aroused at the same time the jealousy or at least the annoyance of a rival?"