The Vicomte de Bragelonne | Page 6

his life. A
man cannot allow the heads of a dozen of his best friends to be cut off
without feeling a little excitement; and as, since the accession of
Mazarin to power, no heads had been cut off, Monsieur's occupation
was gone, and his morale suffered from it.
The life of the poor prince was then very dull. After his little morning
hawking-party on the banks of the Beuvron, or in the woods of
Cheverny, Monsieur crossed the Loire, went to breakfast at Chambord,
with or without an appetite, and the city of Blois heard no more of its
sovereign lord and master till the next hawking-day.

So much for the ennui _extra muros_; of the ennui of the interior we
will give the reader an idea if he will with us follow the cavalcade to
the majestic porch of the Castle of the States.
Monsieur rode a little steady-paced horse, equipped with a large saddle
of red Flemish velvet, with stirrups in the shape of buskins; the horse
was of a bay color; Monsieur's pourpoint of crimson velvet
corresponded with the cloak of the same shade and the horse's
equipment, and it was only by this red appearance of the whole that the
prince could be known from his two companions, the one dressed in
violet, the other in green. He on the left, in violet, was his equerry; he
on the right, in green, was the grand veneur.
One of the pages carried two gerfalcons upon a perch, the other a
hunting-horn, which he blew with a careless note at twenty paces from
the castle. Every one about this listless prince did what he had to
listlessly.
At this signal, eight guards, who were lounging in the sun in the square
court, ran to their halberts, and Monsieur made his solemn entry into
the castle.
When he had disappeared under the shades of the porch, three or four
idlers, who had followed the cavalcade to the castle, after pointing out
the suspended birds to each other, dispersed with comments upon what
they saw: and, when they were gone, the street, the palace, and the
court, all remained deserted alike.
Monsieur dismounted without speaking a word, went straight to his
apartments, where his valet changed his dress, and as Madame had not
yet sent orders respecting breakfast, Monsieur stretched himself upon a
chaise longue, and was soon as fast asleep as if it had been eleven
o'clock at night.
The eight guards, who concluded their service for the day was over,
laid themselves down very comfortably in the sun upon some stone
benches; the grooms disappeared with their horses into the stables, and,
with the exception of a few joyous birds, startling each other with their
sharp chirping in the tufted shrubberies, it might have been thought that
the whole castle was as soundly asleep as Monsieur was.
All at once, in the midst of this delicious silence, there resounded a
clear ringing laugh, which caused several of the halberdiers in the
enjoyment of their siesta to open at least one eye.

This burst of laughter proceeded from a window of the castle, visited at
this moment by the sun, that embraced it in one of those large angles
which the profiles of the chimneys mark out upon the walls before
mid-day.
The little balcony of wrought iron which advanced in front of this
window was furnished with a pot of red gilliflowers, another pot of
primroses, and an early rose-tree, the foliage of which, beautifully
green, was variegated with numerous red specks announcing future
roses.
In the chamber lighted by this window, was a square table, covered
with an old large-flowered Haarlem tapestry; in the center of this table
was a long-necked stone bottle, in which were irises and lilies of the
valley; at each end of this table was a young girl.
The position of these two young people was singular; they might have
been taken for two boarders escaped from a convent. One of them, with
both elbows on the table, and a pen in her hand, was tracing characters
upon a sheet of fine Dutch paper; the other, kneeling upon a chair,
which allowed her to advance her head and bust over the back of it to
the middle of the table, was watching her companion as she wrote, or
rather hesitated to write.
Thence the thousand cries, the thousand railleries, the thousand laughs,
one of which, more brilliant than the rest, had startled the birds in the
gardens, and disturbed the slumbers of Monsieur's guards.
We are taking portraits now; we shall be allowed, therefore, we hope,
to sketch the two last of this chapter.
The one who was leaning in the chair - that is to say, the joyous,
laughing one - was a