Farewell, My Queen by Black Moishe (beginner reading books for adults .txt) 📕

it, partly recumbent, her arms on the elbow rests, her head thrown back. Facing her, Destiny, Monsieur de Vaudreuil, took up her position. The actor was smiling. Fortune, Gabrielle de Polignac, was gradually supposed to revive. While Adversity, Father de La Balivière, already stooped and bent when the scene opened, caught between Destiny and Fortune, became progressively more and more sickly, was shaken with spasms, and finally stretched out stiff and stark on the ground. Standing upright once more, ready to step over the body of Adversity, whose smile was trying so hard to be triumphant that it was starting to look downright nasty, Gabrielle moved like a sleepwalker. Fuddled by champagne, she continued to hold out her goblet and others continued to fill it up for her. Leaning her head on Destiny’s chest, she said: “What is the news? Why must there always be new news?”

Encouraged by Destiny, Gabrielle de Polignac was pitting her nonchalance against the Event. Monsieur de Vaudreuil, musing over the absence of Renown, was winding one of his curls around his finger. At that moment the Queen came into the room. We did not have to look at her to know her reaction. Before she had opened her mouth to speak, the enormity of her pain and condemnation smote us like a blow.

“Please, do not stop. It makes a touching scene. Both of you are playing it to perfection.” It was not so much what she was saying that turned us to stone as the fact that she had entered without being announced. Stunned, incredulous, we stood there looking at her. Diane was the first to collect her wits. Leaving the stage, Gabrielle ran across the room to cast herself at the Queen’s feet. The Queen was moved. She said, speaking clearly but very gently: “Your departure must be thought of. I am sure it will be only temporary. Soon you will come back to me, but for the moment, I beg of you, make haste.”

The Queen bent down to Gabrielle and raised her to her feet. “Let me help you, Madam.” In a deathly silence, with her own hands she removed her friend’s pale green dress, began to slip a petticoat over Gabrielle’s head, and even tried to pull stockings onto the other woman’s legs. She was the one on her knees now, at Gabrielle’s feet. Her face was firm and resolute. She was driven by a kind of energy and precision born of despair. Gabrielle, all white-faced and unresisting, with the fragile nakedness of a little girl, wept soundlessly.

The Queen, with the impulse for perfection that took hold of her the moment clothing was involved, had reached the stage of covering her friend’s shoulders with a fichu when a thunderous voice announced the arrival of the King. It was the same voice that had shouted, “Gentlemen, the King!” when the Royal Council emerged from its meeting. The voice’s owner must have been replacing the regular Usher. We were profuse in curtsys and bows. By the time we had done with our reverences, the King was in the middle of the room, holding in his hand several passports, which he proffered to Gabrielle de Polignac. But she, unaware, confused, swept away by the force of a newly discovered grief, did not see them, could not see anything. Her eyes were swimming with tears, which were streaming down her cheeks, to be lost in dark stains on the garnet-colored fichu. And the Queen, facing her, still wore that statuesque expression—an expression verging on the nonhuman, or human only in the intensity of the eyes, as they concentrated on seeing, so as never to forget, the person she was about to lose.

The King’s presence, as was usual whenever he shared a physical space with the Queen, had at once been subordinated to hers. Whether in moments of love or in moments of fright, she was the person he turned to for all his needs. This completely robbed of their value any gestures or words of his, intended for other people. So it was that when he held out the passports, he did so with genuine emotion, but his feelings did not extend beyond the range expected on an official occasion. Since Gabrielle de Polignac failed to react, the King, uncertain of himself, turned to her husband. The Duke de Polignac was appropriately responsive and lavish with words of thanks. The polite duet of courteous phrases was duly sung. Diane had quickly seized the passports and the bills of exchange. Overlooked in my corner, I put on the dress, a very elegant one, that was to disguise me as a person of rank. At that moment a clamor, so violent that it seemed to be rising from very close by, split the air. It was a shout, a howl; we were transfixed. Taken completely aback, we looked at each other. The clamor grew even louder, ungoverned, mighty. The King, vainly seeking a courteous phrase in response to one from the Duke de Polignac, said simply: “It’s the Representatives. They have just been apprised of my orders summoning Necker back. Tomorrow I shall go to Paris.”

The King said no more and remained with his head slightly bent, in a protective stance that he often adopted. The Queen stood beside him. She was looking steadily at us. Suddenly she shivered, turned very pale, and said: “Come. It is past the time.” The King gave us his blessing, while she, turning so she almost faced a window, so that she was silhouetted clearly against the leafy shade of the gardens, said in a harsh voice oddly jarred by an accent long since buried: “Adieu. I bring bad luck to those I love.”

Scarcely had we left the Hall of Mirrors, along corridors we had trod many a time (“Noailles Street,” people called it), when, after a few routinely used detours, we lost our way. “My name is Daedalus, builder of mazes,” jeered Monsieur de Vaudreuil, but the desire to