well; but there is a clock striking! Why, it is half-past four!" cried the marshal.
"Yes, your grace; and there is the courier entering the courtyard with my bottle of tokay."
"May I continue for another twenty years to be served in this manner!" said the marshal, turning again to his looking-glass, while the maître-d'hôtel ran down-stairs.
"Twenty years!" said a laughing voice, interrupting the marshal in his survey of himself; "twenty years, my dear duke! I wish them you; but then I shall be sixty – I shall be very old."
"You, countess!" cried the marshal, "you are my first arrival, and, mon Dieu! you look as young and charming as ever."
"Duke, I am frozen."
"Come into the boudoir, then."
"Oh! tête-à-tête, marshal?"
"Not so," replied a somewhat broken voice.
"Ah! Taverney!" said the marshal; and then whispering to the countess, "Plague take him for disturbing us!"
Madame Dubarry laughed, and they all entered the adjoining room.
II. – M. DE LA PEROUSE
At the same moment, the noise of carriages in the street warned the marshal that his guests were arriving; and soon after, thanks to the punctuality of his maître-d'hôtel, nine persons were seated round the oval table in the dining-room. Nine lackeys, silent as shadows, quick without bustle, and attentive without importunity, glided over the carpet, and passed among the guests, without ever touching their chairs, which were surrounded with furs, which were wrapped round the legs of the sitters. These furs, with the heat from the stoves, and the odors from the wine and the dinner, diffused a degree of comfort, which manifested itself in the gaiety of the guests, who had just finished their soup.
No sound was heard from without, and none within, save that made by the guests themselves; for the plates were changed, and the dishes moved round, with the most perfect quiet. Nor from the maître d'hôtel could a whisper be heard; he seemed to give his orders with his eyes.
The guests, therefore, began to feel as though they were alone. It seemed to them that servants so silent must also be deaf.
M. de Richelieu was the first who broke the silence, by saying to the guest on his right hand, "But, count, you drink nothing."
This was addressed to a man about thirty-eight years of age, short, fair-haired, and with high shoulders; his eye a clear blue, now bright, but oftener with a pensive expression, and with nobility stamped unmistakably on his open and manly forehead.
"I only drink water, marshal," he replied.
"Excepting with Louis XV.," returned the marshal; "I had the honor of dining at his table with you, and you deigned that day to drink wine."
"Ah! you recall a pleasing remembrance, marshal; that was in 1771. It was tokay, from the imperial cellar."
"It was like that with which my maître-d'hôtel will now have the honor to fill your glass," replied Richelieu, bowing.
Count Haga raised his glass, and looked through it. The wine sparkled in the light like liquid rubies. "It is true," said he; "marshal, I thank you."
These words were uttered in a manner so noble, that the guests, as if by a common impulse, rose, and cried, —
"Long live the king!"
"Yes," said Count Haga, "long live his majesty the King of France. What say you, M. de la Pérouse?"
"My lord," replied the captain, with that tone, at once flattering and respectful, common to those accustomed to address crowned heads, "I have just left the king, and his majesty has shown me so much kindness, that no one will more willingly cry 'Long live the king' than I. Only, as in another hour I must leave you to join the two ships which his majesty has put at my disposal, once out of this house, I shall take the liberty of saying, 'Long life to another king, whom I should be proud to serve, had I not already so good a master.'"
"This health that you propose," said Madame Dubarry, who sat on the marshal's left hand, "we are all ready to drink, but the oldest of us should take the lead."
"Is it you, that that concerns, or me, Taverney?" said the marshal, laughing.
"I do not believe," said another on the opposite side, "that M. de Richelieu is the senior of our party."
"Then it is you, Taverney," said the duke.
"No, I am eight years younger than you! I was born in 1704," returned he.
"How rude," said the marshal, "to expose my eighty-eight years."
"Impossible, duke! that you are eighty-eight," said M. de Condorcet.
"It is, however, but too true; it is a calculation easy to make, and therefore unworthy of an algebraist like you, marquis. I am of the last century – the great century, as we call it. My date is 1696."
"Impossible!" cried De Launay.
"Oh, if your father were here, he would not say impossible, he, who, when governor of the Bastile, had me for a lodger in 1714."
"The senior in age, here, however," said M. de Favras, "is the wine Count Haga is now drinking."
"You are right, M. de Favras; this wine is a hundred and twenty years old; to the wine, then, belongs the honor – "
"One moment, gentlemen," said Cagliostro, raising his eyes, beaming with intelligence and vivacity; "I claim the precedence."
"You claim precedence over the tokay!" exclaimed all the guests in chorus.
"Assuredly," returned Cagliostro, calmly; "since it was I who bottled it."
"You?"
"Yes, I; on the day of the victory won by Montecucully over the Turks in 1664."
A burst of laughter followed these words, which Cagliostro had pronounced with perfect gravity.
"By this calculation, you would be something like one hundred and thirty years old," said Madame Dubarry; "for you must have been at least ten years old when you bottled the wine."
"I was more than ten when I performed that operation, madame, as on the following day I had the honor of being deputed by his majesty the Emperor of Austria to congratulate Montecucully, who by the victory of St. Gothard had avenged the day at Especk, in Sclavonia, in which the infidels treated the imperialists so roughly, who were my friends and companions in arms in 1536."
"Oh," said Count Haga, as coldly as Cagliostro himself, "you must have been at least ten years old, when you were at that memorable battle."
"A terrible defeat, count," returned Cagliostro.
"Less terrible than Cressy, however," said Condorcet, smiling.
"True, sir, for at the battle of Cressy, it was not only an army, but all France, that was beaten; but then this defeat was scarcely a fair victory to the English; for King Edward had cannon, a circumstance of which Philip de Valois was ignorant, or rather, which he would not believe, although I warned him that I had with my own eyes seen four pieces of artillery which Edward had bought from the Venetians."
