The Queens Necklace | Page 2

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 maître-d'hôtel, 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 maître-d'hôtel, 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 maître-d'hôtel 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 maître-d'hôtel, 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 maîtres d'hôtel."
"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