The Vicomte de Bragelonne | Page 7

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 beautiful girl of from eighteen to twenty, with
brown complexion and brown hair, splendid, from eyes which sparkled
beneath strongly-marked brows, and particularly from her teeth, which
seemed to shine like pearls between her red coral lips. Her every
movement seemed the accent of a sunny nature; she did not walk - she
bounded.
The other, she who was writing, looked at her turbulent companion
with an eye as limpid, as pure, and as blue as the azure of the day. Her
hair, of a shaded fairness, arranged with exquisite taste, fell in silky
curls over her lovely mantling cheeks; she passed across the paper a
delicate hand, whose thinness announced her extreme youth. At each
burst of laughter that proceeded from her friend, she raised, as if
annoyed, her white shoulders in a poetical and mild manner, but they
were wanting in that richfulness of mold that was likewise to be wished
in her arms and hands.
"Montalais! Montalais!" said she at length, in a voice soft and caressing
as a melody, "you laugh too loud - you laugh like a man! You will not
only draw the attention of messieurs the guards, but you will not hear
Madame's bell when Madame rings."
This admonition neither made the young girl called Montalais cease to
laugh nor gesticulate. She only replied: "Louise, you do not speak as
you think, my dear; you know that messieurs the guards, as you call
them, have only just commenced their sleep, and that a cannon would
not waken them; you know that Madame's bell can be heard at the
bridge of Blois, and that consequently I shall hear it when my services
are required by Madame. What annoys you, my child, is that I laugh
while you are writing; and what you are afraid of is that Madame de
Saint-Remy, your mother, should come up here, as she does sometimes
when we laugh too loud, that she should surprise us, and that she
should see that enormous sheet of paper upon which, in a quarter of an
hour, you have only traced the words Monsieur Raoul. Now, you are

right, my dear Louise, because after these words, 'Monsieur Raoul',
others may be put so significant and incendiary as to cause Madame
Saint-Remy to burst out into fire and flames! _Hein!_ is not that true
now? - say."
And Montalais redoubled her laughter and noisy provocations.
The fair girl at length became quite angry; she tore the sheet of paper
on which, in fact, the words "Monsieur Raoul" were written in good
characters; and crushing the paper in her trembling hands, she threw it
out of the window.
"There! there!" said Mademoiselle de Montalais; "there is our little
lamb, our gentle dove, angry! Don't be afraid, Louise - Madame de
Saint-Remy will not come; and if she should, you know I have a quick
ear. Besides, what can be more permissible than to write to an old
friend of twelve years' standing, particularly when the letter begins with
the words 'Monsieur Raoul'?"
"It is all very well - I will not write to him at all," said the young girl.
"Ah, ah! in good sooth, Montalais is properly punished," cried the
jeering brunette, still laughing. "Come, come! let us try another sheet of
paper, and finish our dispatch off-hand. Good! there is the bell ringing
now. By my faith, so much the worse! Madame must wait, or else do
without her first maid of honor this morning."
A bell, in fact, did ring; it announced that Madame had finished her
toilette, and waited for Monsieur to give her his hand, and conduct her
from the salon to the refectory.
This formality being accomplished with great ceremony, the husband
and wife breakfasted, and then separated till the hour of dinner,
invariably fixed at two o'clock.
The sound of this bell caused a door to be opened in the offices on the
left hand of the court, from which filed two _maitres d'hotel_ followed
by eight scullions bearing a kind of hand-barrow loaded with dishes
under silver covers.
One of the _maitres d'hotel_, the first in rank, touched one of the
guards, who was snoring on his bench, slightly with his wand; he even
carried his kindness so far as to place the halbert which stood against