and in this difficult time of spiritual distress, made more trying perhaps because of the blazing midsummer days, and long, pent feverish nights, mademoiselle de nazianzi turned in her tribulation towards religion.
the ecclesiastical set at court, composed of some six, or so, ex-circes, under the command of the countess yvorra, were only too ready to welcome her, and invitations to meet monsignor this, or “father” that, who constantly were being coaxed from their musty sacristies and wan-faced acolytes in the capital, in order that they might officiate at masses, confessions and breakfast-parties à la fourchette, were lavished daily upon the bewildered girl.
messages, and hasty informal lightly-pencilled notes, too, would frequently reach her; such as: “i shall be pouring out cocoa after dinner in bed. bring your 135 biscuits and join me!” ... or a rat-a-tat from a round-eyed page and: “the countess’ comp’ts and she’d take it a favour if you can make a ‘station’ with her in chapel later on,” or: “the marchioness will be birched to-morrow, and not to-day.”
o, the charm, the flavour of the religious world! where match it for interest or variety!
an emotion approaching sympathy had arisen, perhaps a trifle incongruously, between the injured girl and the countess yvorra, and before long, to the amusement of the sceptical element of the court, the countess and her confessor, father nostradamus, might often be observed in her society.
“i need a cage-companion, father, for my little bird,” the countess one evening said, as they were ambling, all the three of them before office up and down the perfectly tended paths: “ought it to be of the same species and sex, or does it matter? for as i said to myself just now (while listening to a thrush), all birds are his creatures.”
the priest discreetly coughed. 136
“your question requires reflection,” he said: “what is the bird?”
“a hen canary!—and with a voice, father! talk of soul!!”
“h—m ... a thrush and a canary, i would not myself advise.”
mademoiselle de nazianzi tittered.
“why not let it go?” she asked, turning her eyes towards the window-panes of the palace, that glanced like rows of beaten-gold in the evening sun.
“a hawk might peck it!” the countess returned, looking up as if for one, into a sky as imaginative, and as dazzling as shelley poetry.
“even the court,” father nostradamus ejaculated wryly, “will peck at times.”
the countess’ shoulder-blades stiffened.
“after over thirty years,” she said, “i find court-life pathetic....”
“pathetic?”
“tragically pathetic....”
mademoiselle de nazianzi considered wistfully the wayward outline of the hills.
“i would like to escape from it all for a while,” she said, “and travel.” 137
“i must hunt you out a pamphlet, by and by, dear child, on the ‘dangers of wanderlust.’”
“the great wall of china and the bay of naples! it seems so frightful never to have seen them!”
“i have never seen the great wall, either,” the countess said, “and i don’t suppose, my dear, i ever shall; though i once did spend a fortnight in italy.”
“tell me about it.”
the countess became reminiscent.
“in venice,” she said, “the indecent movements of the gondolieri quite affected my health, and, in consequence, i fell a prey to a sharp nervous fever. my temperature rose and it rose, ah, yes ... until i became quite ill. at last i said to my maid (she was an english girl from wales, and almost equally as sensitive as me): ‘pack.... away!’ and we left in haste for florence. ah, and florence, too, i regret to say i found very far from what it ought to have been!!! i had a window giving on the arno, and so i could observe.... i used to see some curious sights! i would not care 138 to scathe your ears, my innocent, by an inventory of one half of the wantonness that went on; enough to say the tone of the place forced me to fly to rome, where beneath the shadow of dear st peter’s i grew gradually less distressed.”
“still, i should like, all the same, to travel!” mademoiselle de nazianzi exclaimed, with a sad little snatch of a smile.
“we will ask the opinion of father geordie picpus, when he comes again.”
“it would be more fitting,” father nostradamus murmured (professional rivalry leaping to his eye), “if father picpus kept himself free of the limelight a trifle more!”
“often i fear our committees would be corvés without him....”
“tchut.”
“he is very popular ... too popular, perhaps ...” the countess admitted. “i remember on one occasion in the blue jesus, witnessing the duchess of quaranta and madame ferdinand fishbacher, fight like wild cats as to which should gain his ear—(any girl might envy father geordie his ear)—at confession next. the odds 139 seemed fairly equal, until the duchess gave the fishbacher-woman, such a violent push—(well down from behind, in the crick of the joints)—that she overturned the confessional box, with father picpus within: and when we scared ladies, standing by, had succeeded in dragging him out, he was too shaken, naturally as you can gather, to absolve anyone else that day.”
“he has been the object of so many unseemly incidents, that one can scarcely recall them all,” father nostradamus exclaimed, stooping to pick up a dropped pocket-handkerchief with “remembrance” knots tied to three of the corners.
“alas.... court life is not uplifting,” the countess said again, contemplating her muff of self-made lace, with a half-vexed forehead. what that muff contained was a constant problem for conjecture; but it was believed by more than one of the maids-in-waiting to harbour “goody” books and martyrs’ bones.
“by generous deeds and brotherly love,” father nostradamus exclaimed, “we should endeavour to rise above it!” 140
with the deftness of a virtuoso, the countess seized, and crushed with her muff, a pale-winged passing gnat.
“before life,” she murmured, “that saddest thing of all, was thrust upon us, i believe i was an angel....”
father nostradamus passed a musing hand across his brow.
“it may be,” he replied, “and it very well may be,” he went on, “that our ante-nativity was a little more brilliant, a little more h—m ...; and there is nothing unorthodox in thinking so.”
“o what did i do then to lose my wings?? what did i ever say to them?! father, father. how did i annoy god? why did he put me here?”
“my dear child, you ask me things i do not know; but it may be you were the instrument appointed above to lead back to him our neighbour yonder,” father nostradamus answered, pointing with his breviary in the direction of st helena.
“never speak to me of that wretched old man.”
for despite the ablest tactics, the most 141 diplomatic angling, count cabinet had refused to rally.
“we followed the sails of your skiff to-day,” mademoiselle de nazianzi sighed, “until the hazes hid them!”
“i had a lilac passage.”
“you delivered the books?”
the countess shrugged.
“i shall never forget this afternoon,” she said. “he was sitting in the window over a decanter of wine when i floated down upon him; but no sooner did he see me, than he gave a sound, like a bleat of a goat, and disappeared: i was determined however to call! there is no bell to the villa, but two bronze door-knockers, well out of reach, are attached to the front-door. these with the ferrule of my parasol i tossed and i rattled, until an adolescent, with bougainvillea at his ear, came and looked out with an insolent grin, and i recognised peter passer from the blue jesus grown quite fat.”
“eh mon dieu!” father nostradamus half-audibly sighed.
“eh mon dieu ...” mademoiselle de 142 nazianzi echoed, her gaze roving over the palace, whose long window-panes in the setting sun gleamed like sumptuous tissues.
“so that,” the countess added, “i hardly propose to venture again.”
“what a site for a calvary!” father nostradamus replied, indicating with a detached and pensive air the cleft in the white mountain’s distant peaks.
“i adore the light the hills take on when the sun drops down,” mademoiselle de nazianzi declared.
“it must be close on salut....”
it was beneath the dark colonnades by the court chapel door that they received the news from the lips of a pair of vivacious dowagers that the prince was to leave the summer-palace on the morrow to attend “the man?uvres,” after which it was expected his royal highness would proceed “to england.”
