The Queen's Necklace by Alexandre Dumas père (best e books to read .TXT) 📕

PROLOGUE.--THE PREDICTIONS.

AN OLD NOBLEMAN AND AN OLD MAITRE-D'HOTEL.

It was the beginning of April, 1784, between twelve and one o'clock. Our old acquaintance, the Marshal de Richelieu, having with his own hands colored his eyebrows with a perfumed dye, pushed away the mirror which was held to him by his valet, the successor of his faithful Raffe and shaking his head in the manner peculiar to himself, "Ah!" said he, "now I look myself;" and rising from his seat with juvenile vivacity, he commenced shaking off the powder which had fallen from his wig over his blue velvet coat, then, after taking a turn or two up and down his room, called for his maitre-d'hotel.

In five minutes this personage made his appearance, elaborately dressed.

The marshal turned towards him, and with a gravity befitting the occasion, said, "Sir, I suppose you have prepared me a good dinner?"

"Certainly, your grace."

"You have the list of my guests?"

"I remember them perfectly, your grace; I have prepared a dinner for nine."

"There are two sorts of dinners, sir," said the marshal.

"True, your grace, but----"

The marshal interrupted him with a slightly impatient movement, although still dignified.

"Do you know, sir, that whenever I have heard the word 'but,' and I have heard it many times in the course of eighty-eight years, it has been each time, I am sorry to say, the harbinger of some folly."

"Your grace----"

"In the first place, at what time do we dine?"

"Your grace, the citizens dine at two, the bar at three, the nobility at four----"

"And I, sir?"

"Your grace will dine to-day at five."

"Oh, at five!"

"Yes, your grace, like the king----"

"And why like the king?"

"Because, on the list of your guests, is the name of a king."

"Not so, sir, you mistake; all my guests to-day are simply noblemen."

"Your grace is surely jesting; the Count Haga,[A] who is among the guests----"

[A] The name of Count Haga was well known as one assumed by the King of Sweden when traveling in France.

"Well, sir!"

"The Count Haga is a king."

"I know no king so called."

"Your grace must pardon me then," said the maitre-d'hotel, bowing, "but, I believed, supposed----"

"Your business, sir, is neither to believe nor suppose; your business is to read, without comment, the orders I give you. When I wish a thing to be known, I tell it; when I do not tell it, I wish it unknown."

The maitre-d'hotel bowed again, more respectfully, perhaps, than he would have done to a reigning monarch.

"Therefore, sir," continued the old marshal, "you will, as I have none but noblemen to dinner, let us dine at my usual hour, four o'clock."

At this order, the countenance of the maitre-d'hotel became clouded as if he had heard his sentence of death; he grew deadly pale; then, recovering himself, with the courage of despair he said, "In any event, your grace cannot dine before five o'clock."

"Why so, sir?" cried the marshal.

"Because it is utterly impossible."

"Sir," said the marshal, with a haughty air, "it is now, I believe, twenty years since you entered my service?"

"Twenty-one years, a month, and two weeks."

"Well, sir, to these twenty-one years, a month, and two weeks, you will not add a day, nor an hour. You understand me, sir," he continued, biting his thin lips and depressing his eyebrows; "this evening you seek a new master. I do not choose that the word impossible shall be pronounced in my house; I am too old now to begin to learn its meaning."

The maitre-d'hotel bowed a third time.

"This evening," said he, "I shall have taken leave of your grace, but, at least, up to the last moment, my duty shall have been performed as it should be;" and he made two steps towards the door.

"What do you call as it should be?" cried the marshal. "Learn, sir, that to do it as it suits me is to do it as it should be. Now, I wish to dine at four, and it does not suit me, when I wish to dine at four, to be obliged to wait till five."

"Your grace," replied the maitre-d'hotel, gravely, "I have served as butler to his highness the Prince de Soubise, and as steward to his eminence the Cardinal de Rohan. With the first, his majesty, the late King of France, dined once a year; with the second, the Emperor of Austria dined once a month. I know, therefore, how a sovereign should be treated. When he visited the Prince de Soubise, Louis XV. called himself in vain the Baron de Gonesse; at the house of M. de Rohan, the Emperor Joseph was announced as the Count de Packenstein; but he was none the less emperor. To-day, your grace also receives a guest, who vainly calls himself Count Haga--Count Haga is still King of Sweden. I shall leave your service this evening, but Count Haga will have been treated like a king."

"But that," said the marshal, "is the very thing that I am tiring myself to death in forbidding; Count Haga wishes to preserve his incognito as strictly as possible. Well do I see through your absurd vanity; it is not the crown that you honor, but yourself that you wish to glorify; I repeat again, that I do not wish it imagined that I have a king here."

"What, then, does your grace take me for? It is not that I wish it known that there is a king here."

"Then in heaven's name do not be obstinate, but let us have dinner at four."

"But at four o'clock, your grace, what I am expecting will not have arrived."

"What are you expecting? a fish, like M. Vatel?"

"Does your grace wish that I should tell you?"

"On my faith, I am curious."

"Then, your grace, I wait for a bottle of wine."

"A bottle of wine! Explain yourself, sir, the thing begins to interest me."

"Listen then, your grace; his majesty the King of Sweden--I beg pardon, the Count Haga I should have said--drinks nothing but tokay."

"Well, am I so poor as to have no tokay in my cellar? If so, I must dismiss my butler."

"Not so, your grace; on the contrary, you have about sixty bottles."

"Well, do you think Count Haga will drink sixty bottles with his dinner?"

"No, your grace; but when Count Haga first visited France, when he was only prince royal, he dined with the late king, who had received twelve bottles of tokay from the Emperor of Austria. You are aware that the tokay of the finest vintages is reserved exclusively for the cellar of the emperor, and that kings themselves can only drink it when he pleases to send it to them."

"I know it."

"Then, your grace, of these twelve bottles of which the prince royal drank, only two remain. One is in the cellar of his majesty Louis XVI.----"

"And the other?"

"Ah, your grace!" said the maitre-d'hotel, with a triumphant smile, for he felt that, after the long battle he had been fighting, the moment of victory was at hand, "the other one was stolen."

"By whom, then?"

"By one of my friends, the late king's butler, who was under great obligations to me."

"Oh! and so he gave it to you."

"Certainly, your grace," said the maitre-d'hotel with pride.

"And what did you do with it?"

"I placed it carefully in my master's cellar."

"Your master! And who was your master at that time?"

"His eminence the Cardinal de Rohan."

"Ah, mon Dieu! at Strasbourg?"

"At Saverne."

"And you have sent to seek this bottle for me!" cried the old marshal.

"For you, your grace," replied the maitre-d'hotel, in a tone which plainly said, "ungrateful as you are."

The Duke de Richelieu seized the hand of the old servant and cried, "I beg pardon; you are the king of maitres d'hotel."

"And you would have dismissed me," he replied, with an indescribable shrug of his shoulders.

"Oh, I will pay you one hundred pistoles for this bottle of wine."

"And the expenses of its coming here will be another hundred; but you will grant that it is worth it."

"I will grant anything you please, and, to begin, from to-day I double your salary."

"I seek no reward, your grace; I have but done my duty."

"And when will your courier arrive?"

"Your grace may judge if I have lost time: on what day did I have my orders for the dinner?"

"Why, three days ago, I believe."

"It takes a courier, at his utmost speed, twenty-four hours to go, and the same to return."

"There still remain twenty-four hours," said the marshal; "how have they been employed?"

"Alas, your grace, they were lost. The idea only came to me the day after I received the list of your guests. Now calculate the time necessary for the negotiation, and you will perceive that in asking you to wait till five I am only doing what I am absolutely obliged to do."

"The bottle is not yet arrived, then?"

"No, your grace."

"Ah, sir, if your colleague at Saverne be as devoted to the Prince de Rohan as you are to me, and should refuse the bottle, as you would do in his place----"

"I? your grace----"

"Yes; you would not, I suppose, have given away such a bottle, had it belonged to me?"

"I beg your pardon, humbly, your grace; but had a friend, having a king to provide for, asked me for your best bottle of wine, he should have had it immediately."

"Oh!" said the marshal, with a grimace.

"It is only by helping others that we can expect help in our own need, your grace."

"Well, then, I suppose we may calculate that it will be given, but there is still another risk--if the bottle should be broken?"

"Oh! your grace, who would break a bottle of wine of that value?"

"Well, I trust not; what time, then, do you expect your courier?"

"At four o'clock precisely."

"Then why not dine at four?" replied the marshal.

"Your grace, the wine must rest for an hour; and had it not been for an invention of my own, it would have required three days to recover itself."

Beaten at all points, the marshal gave way.

"Besides," continued the old servant, "be sure, your grace, that your guests will not arrive before half-past four."

"And why not?"

"Consider, your grace: to begin with M. de Launay; he comes from the Bastile, and with the ice at present covering the streets of Paris----"

"No; but he will leave after the prisoners' dinner, at twelve o'clock."

"Pardon me, your grace, but the dinner hour at the Bastile has been changed since your grace was there; it is now one."

"Sir, you are learned on all points; pray go on."

"Madame Dubarry comes from the Luciennes, one continued descent, and in this frost."

"That would not prevent her being punctual, since she is no longer a duke's