THE gayety and racketing went on during the whole year at one place or another—the Château de Belgarde, other châteaus, Paris and Versailles. Trimousette saw Madame de Valençay oftener than any other woman of her acquaintance. Madame de Valençay was fairly polite, but in her eyes and smile lurked a kind of insolence which the reticent young duchess understood quite well, but of which she made not the slightest sign. She had no more liberty and not much more money as Duchess of Belgarde than when she lived in her grandmother’s house as a little demoiselle. There was much to buy and to give, and besides, ever since King Louis the Sixteenth called the States General together, the peasants had refused to pay their rents and even their taxes, and the work people demanded their money with threats and curses. So far from having a thousand louis d’ors with which to pay Victor’s debts, the poor little duchess had only managed, by skimping and saving in her own personal expenses, to scrape together three hundred louis—and it was so little she was ashamed to offer it to Victor.

A year after her marriage Trimousette disappointed and offended the duke very much by bringing into the world a daughter. A son would have been welcomed; but a girl—well, the poor little thing, as if knowing she was not wanted by anyone except her young mother, soon wailed her life away. Trimousette grieved as one whose heart was broken, and wore nothing but black. This still more annoyed the duke, but on this point alone Trimousette showed a slight obstinacy. The duke wished her to go about, to visit Versailles, to be seen at the theatre. The young duchess humbly obeyed these instructions, but not in the spirit the duke desired. Trimousette’s heart, poor lonely captive, beat against its prison bars, and made its melancholy cry a little heard; then grew silent.

She led a life singularly lonely for a great lady who received twice in the week, and who went to a ball nearly every night. Her grandmother thought she had done enough in marrying Trimousette off to one of the greatest dukes in France, and gave herself up to sermons, taking no more thought of her granddaughter. Victor had his own amusements, as became an officer of the Queen’s Musketeers and a gay dog. Only the poor, broken-legged hound Diane seemed to seek Trimousette’s company, and together the two creatures who loved the duke listened for his footsteps, and hung timidly upon his words.

But there was so great a noise of other things in Paris that private woes were not much heeded. It was impossible for a lady to walk without molestation upon the streets full of turbulent people, and it was actually dangerous to drive about in a ducal coach. The pavements were thronged by hungry creatures, both men and women, with menacing eyes, and threatening, yelling voices, who had been known to scream and flout ladies in their carriages, and to drag gentlemen from their horses and maltreat them. Once Madame de Valençay, seeing Trimousette preparing to go forth somewhat unwillingly in her coach, hinted that perhaps the duchess was afraid.

“Not in the least, madame,” answered Trimousette quietly. “Perhaps you will join me in my coach and drive with me to the Palais Royal.”

Madame de Valençay was so stunned by this proposal that she accepted it, the duke standing by and wondering if his taciturn young duchess had not lost her wits.

The two ladies were assisted into the coach, which set off toward the Palais Royal. It was about seven in the evening when the work of the day was over and the streets were fullest of these ragged, starving beings who had found voice at last, and shouted out the story of their rags, their hunger, their misery, and their determination to punish somebody for it. The splendid coach and six of the Duchess of Belgarde was like showing a red rag to a bull. The mob surrounded it, hooting and screaming, and wrenched the whips from the hands of the coachmen and postilions, and the canes from the three footmen hanging on behind. Madame de Valençay, who had started out laughing and defiant, grew pale and then frightened, and when a wretched woman, with the glare of famine in her eyes, dragged the coach door open and tore the ribbons from Madame de Valençay’s hat, that lady fell to whimpering and almost fainting with terror. Not so little Trimousette. It had been complained of her often that she was too silent and impassive, and she remained so now, giving no sign whatever of fear or uneasiness. She even smiled with a faint contempt at Madame de Valençay’s terrors, and refused to give orders for the coachman to return to the Hôtel de Belgarde until they had made the circuit of the Palais Royal. When they returned, the duke was awaiting them in the courtyard of the hotel. He was wondering what would be the next miracle. Madame de Valençay had been so terribly scared that she could not disguise it, and clamored to have not only the duke, but all the men servants in the hotel to escort her home. She looked a wreck, did this beautiful, gayly gowned lady, with her hat in fragments, her fan broken, her clothes almost torn off her by the furious, yelling, laughing crowd of women in the streets. Not so Trimousette, in her sedate black gown, better suited to eighty than eighteen.

“I was not at all frightened,” she said to the duke, and if she had not been so shy, she would have told him all about it. The coachmen and footmen did this, however, and slyly, after the manner of their kind, brought the duchess’s calm courage into contrast with Madame de Valençay’s undignified screams and pleadings.

The duke, who was insensible to fear himself, expected courage in women, and was secretly disgusted with Madame de Valençay. Besides, like most ladies of her sort, she was beginning to hound the duke with what she called her love. It had grown more insistent since his marriage to the quiet little Trimousette, who appeared not to know there was such a thing as faithlessness in the world. The duke chafed a little under Madame de Valençay’s shameless pursuit of him. Not being a courageous woman she did not venture into the streets when the people became turbulent; but they were not always turbulent, the poor, starving people. Although herself often afraid to go out, Madame de Valençay did not mind sending out her running footmen, and the Duke of Belgarde could scarcely leave his own door without a lackey in Madame de Valençay’s livery poking a scented pink note at him. The duke ground his teeth, and dimly recognized that his friend, as he called her, harassed and worried him, and indeed hen-pecked him more in two weeks than his pale, quiet little duchess had done in the whole two years of their married life. Nevertheless, Madame de Valençay’s glorious and vivid beauty enchanted him, and made him sometimes forget Trimousette’s very existence. He even forgot to compliment her little feet, which Trimousette still, with a faint, foolish hope in her heart, dressed in charming little shoes, the only patch of coquetry or vanity about her.

The people, meanwhile, were growing more and more unruly, and at last one day a mob of dressmakers, washerwomen, cooks, and the like, headed by a tall, red-faced laundress, almost as fierce as the old Countess of Floramour, began a round of domiciliary visits to persons who owed them money. They went to many hotels, including that of Madame de Valençay, who ordered all the doors to be double locked, and ran up to her bedroom, where she remained cowering and terrified, but unable to escape the menaces and shouts of the crowd of haggard, savage women in the courtyard, demanding their money to keep their children from starving. They got nothing, however.

Next, they visited the old Countess of Floramour, who came down boldly enough to them, but gave them a sermon instead of money. She exhorted them to live by Bible texts, and was indignant when the big red-faced laundress replied that they could neither eat nor wear the Bible. Thence the riotous women invaded the courtyard of the splendid Hôtel de Belgarde. They had grown more noisy and the dames de compagnie of the duchess begged her not to go down to them. But Trimousette was of all things least a coward, and taking from her escritoire the little bag of gold she had saved up to pay Victor’s debts, descended the grand staircase into the sunny courtyard, where the mob clamored and abused the powdered and silk-stockinged footmen. Something in the aspect of this pale, soft-eyed little duchess in her black gown, her hair tied with a black ribbon, moved the wild hearts of these savage women, and her voice, trembling and embarrassed, made them keep quiet in order to hear her.

“It is all I have,” she said, blushing and stammering as she handed the bag to the big red laundress; “it is only a little more than three hundred louis, and is not enough to pay you. If I had any more, I would be glad to give it to you.”

The crowd of women looked at her in surprise; she was the first great lady they had visited so far who had given them a franc. The fierce laundress became almost civil when she took the bag from Trimousette’s hands.

“We ask for our money, for we are starving. My little child died last week because I have not for a year past had money enough to give her good food. What do you think of that, madame?” she cried, her red face suddenly growing pale and fiercer.

“My little child died last year,” answered Trimousette, looking at the woman before her with the kinship of motherhood; and then covering her face with her hands, she burst into weeping.

The mob was hungry and savage and ragged and hated duchesses in general, but at the sight of the tears of this black-robed, pale young girl they remained silent. The washerwoman wiped her eyes with her apron, laid her hand on the arm of the weeping duchess, and said roughly:

“It is like this with all of us, we women, duchesses and washerwomen alike. Every one of us has a little pair of wooden shoes, or a cap, or something that belonged to a dead child. But ours died because we could not buy them enough to eat.”

The little duchess wept again at this, but presently drying her eyes, she said:

“I will do all I can to pay you.”

Trimousette did not think it necessary to mention this adventure to the duke. She did not see him every day even when he was in Paris, and besides, when she tried to tell him things, she always grew frightened and the words died upon her lips. The servants, however, told the duke of it when he came home in the evening. He had spent most of the intervening time trying to quiet Madame de Valençay, who was in paroxysms of terror. The duke grew every day more bored by his friend, and concluded to spend the evening at home, in order to escape Madame de Valençay and her scoundrelly running footmen, who watched his comings and goings as if he were a criminal.

For the third or fourth time since his marriage he sought, of his own free will, his wife’s society. She spent her evenings in a little room on the ground floor of the Hôtel de Belgarde which opened upon the garden. When Trimousette heard the duke’s knock, she thought it was Victor’s and ran to open the door. The sight of her husband disconcerted her so that she stopped and hesitated awkwardly, quite unlike Madame de Valençay, who could not be awkward if she tried.

Diane, the broken-legged hound, who was Trimousette’s constant companion, licked the duke’s hand, and gave a soft whine of delight. Trimousette, whose heart fluttered whenever she saw her husband, was undemonstrative and inarticulate. The duke, after politely greeting his duchess, and patting Diane’s head, walked to the fireplace, where a little blaze crackled. The time was September, and there was an autumn sharpness in the air.

“I am afraid you were alarmed to-day by that mob of wretched women,” said the duke presently, as he warmed his hands at the fire, the mantel mirror reflecting his handsome face and figure.

“No,” replied Trimousette timidly, “I was not frightened.”

The duke stroked his chin reflectively. Silent women like his duchess were sometimes preferable to those who shrieked and screamed at the least provocation, like his friend Madame de Valençay.

Having said so much Trimousette picked up her embroidery frame and, seating herself, began to embroider. The duke, looking at her, congratulated himself that she had lost the habit of blushing and starting every time he spoke to her, which, for a while after his marriage, made him apprehend that she might fall in love with him and that would have been excessively annoying. Meanwhile, Trimousette’s heart was palpitating faintly, and her black eyes were cast down because she was too embarrassed to look up.

“I think,” said the duke, “it would be as well to go to the Château de Belgarde a little earlier this year.”

He was thinking that he must get away for a time from Madame de Valençay’s cursed running footmen perpetually chasing him with her pink notes. Trimousette felt a sudden access of courage, which nerved her to say, almost boldly:

“Would it not be pleasanter to go to Boury?”

“That little dungeon in Brittany!” cried the duke, laughing.

“But it is so quiet and peaceful there,” continued Trimousette, blushing at her own boldness. “I think I—I—should like to go to Boury.”

It was the first time since their marriage that she had ever proffered a request; and the duke, like most imperial masters, was sometimes capable of a generous action. Besides, it occurred to him that Madame de Valençay would scarcely follow him to Boury.

All at once, while the duke stood hesitating, the duchess’s shyness vanished for one brief moment, and she became positively eloquent.

“I know all about it,” she said, clasping her hands eagerly; “it is by the sea, and there is a garden running to the cliffs, with plants so hardy that even the fierce sea winds cannot kill them. And there are beautiful woods and fields, and you—I—we could read in the mornings, and in the afternoons you could go out with your fowling piece, and in the evenings—” She stopped, trembling and quite unable to put into words the enchanting dream that rose before her. The quiet evenings tête-à-tête with the duke, he reading perhaps—he sometimes read the works of Monsieur Voltaire and Monsieur Rousseau. And she would sit by working at her tambour frame, with Diane, her faithful friend and sympathizer, at her feet. The vision that hovered in Trimousette’s mind was not reflected in the duke’s. He only saw that his quiet little duchess wished very much to go to Boury, and had made the longest and boldest speech he had ever heard from her lips.

“Then, madame,” he cried, “I will consider what you say. At all events, we will leave Paris, and possibly we may dwell, like a pair of turtle doves in a cage, for the space of a week at Boury.”

When the duke went out, banging the door after him, Trimousette actually danced about the room in her joy and triumph. She would have him at the little country place all to herself, and for one whole week. There would be no brazen intrusion of Madame de Valençay, and perhaps—perhaps the duke might forget her; and then would come true that dream of the honeymoon—for Trimousette had never had a honeymoon.