"I shall apologize to—the lady when the matter has been cleared up. Let the Comtesse de Gachet be admitted."
Watching the woman to whom she owed her recent unpleasant experiences sweep into the room like a great actress taking the stage, Marianne saw red and could have hurled herself at the impudent creature. She came forward more powdered and plumed than ever and leaning on one of the tall beribboned canes which Marie-Antoinette had made the fashion walking in the gardens of the Trianon, the skirts of her purple gown brushing the ground. After curtsying urbanely to the duke, she sat down without waiting to be asked on a coarse wooden chair. The glance that rested briefly on Marianne and on the unremarkable little priest standing beside her showed precisely what she thought of them.
She arranged her silken skirts around her as she had done in Marianne's bedchamber and uttered a tiny laugh.
"Have you sealed the fate of this unhappy creature already, Duke? I see that you have fetched a priest to her, to prepare her no doubt for the proper punishment of her kind. I really think, however, that Siberia will do well enough for the girl and that you will not—"
"That will do, Madame," the cardinal broke in curtly. "You are here to answer questions, not to pass judgment on what does not concern you. Or to lay down the correct punishment for theft. That is a matter in which you have some experience, have you not? I believe it must be almost twenty-six years since—"
"My dear sir," the governor began, but the cardinal silenced him with a lift of his hand, although his eyes never left the countess's.
She had paled visibly under her paint and Marianne saw to her surprise that there were beads of sweat along the line of the powdered hair, while the white fingers emerging from her black lace mittens had tightened on the cane.
Madame de Gachet turned her head, clearly unwilling to meet the calm blue gaze fastened so steadily on her. She laughed again, lightly, and shrugged her shoulders with an assumption of indifference.
"Naturally I have experience, Monsieur l'Abbé, but indeed I am at a loss to understand your meaning."
"I think you understand me very well. The fact that you are here at all you owe to some of my own order, as well as to the unwitting kindness of the tsar. Nevertheless, those few drops of royal blood that run in your veins do not authorize you to make fresh victims."
Marianne had been following this strange and incomprehensible exchange eagerly. Now she saw the countess's eyes start from her head. She put a shaking hand to her throat as if she were choking, made an effort to rise and sank back heavily onto her chair as though her legs refused to bear her.
"Who—who are you?" she whispered almost inaudibly. "How could you know that—unless you are the devil?"
Gauthier de Chazay smiled.
"Nothing so illustrious, and my dress should tell you I have not even the honor to represent him. But we are not here to play at riddles or to uncover secrets. I have said what I have solely in order to persuade you to withdraw a charge which you know very well is false."
The fear had not left her eyes but she said at once with a kind of desperate haste that she withdrew the charge, that it was all a dreadful misunderstanding.
But this Marianne would not have.
"That does not satisfy me," she said. "I mean this woman to confess the truth, the whole truth. Witnesses saw the officer who arrested me take the diamond drop from my reticule, so how can anyone say the woman was mistaken? She gave me the stone as surety for a loan of five thousand rubles which she needed to pay her gambling debts and was to pay back the same evening. I suppose she lost it all and made up this shameful story as a way of getting back her diamond without repaying the money."
This time it was the Duc de Richelieu who interrupted.
"Is this true, Madame?" he asked sternly, turning to the countess, who was looking the picture of guilt.
She nodded, not daring to raise her eyes. A heavy silence fell on the room as they regarded her. The duke tapped out his pipe mechanically on a corner of the table. His face was strangely blank and he was evidently torn between his sense of justice and the pressing instructions which had come to him from Petersburg. Justice prevailed.
"Then I have no choice but to place you under arrest…"
She looked up at that, but before she could speak the cardinal had forestalled her.
"No," he said with unexpected authority. "You will do nothing of the kind, Duke. You have had instructions from the imperial chancellery to assist the Comtesse de Gachet to settle in the Crimea—where she is to reside for the remainder of her natural life, with Colonel Ivanoff to—er, look after her. You will do just that."
Now it was the duke's turn to bang his fist on the table.
"Your Eminence," he said forcibly, "I yield to no one in respect for your cloth, but this is not a matter for the Church. It is a matter for the state. I shall inform the tsar of what has occurred and I am sure His Majesty will agree with me. The woman must be tried and sentenced."
The cardinal did not answer at once. Instead he took Richelieu by the arm and drew him aside into the embrasure of the single narrow window, which at this hour of night was in deep shadow. But Gauthier de Chazay was not after light. Marianne, watching him intently, saw him lift his hand palm upward and display the ring he wore turned inward on his finger to the governor's eyes. Richelieu whitened visibly and rewarded the little cardinal with a glance of mingled awe and apprehension.
"The general—" he breathed.
"Well?" the priest said.
"I shall obey, Monseigneur."
"You will earn the order's gratitude. And now, Madame—" He turned back to the defeated countess, who had been watching this scene without understanding but with alternate hope and dread. "You may return to your hotel where you will announce your departure for tomorrow morning. Colonel Ivanoff shall hear within the hour to which Crimean city he is to escort you and he will receive the appropriate papers. After that we must consider how best to establish the truth in the best interests of all."
Madame de Gachet rose with an effort and stood leaning on her ridiculous cane like a wounded soldier on his musket. All her arrogance had left her. She looked now like a very old woman.
And it was in a tone almost of humility that she murmured: "I do not know who you are, Monseigneur, but I should like to thank you—yet I do not know how."
"Very easily. By honoring the bargain you made with Mademoiselle d'Asselnat. You agreed, did you not, that the diamond drop should be hers if you failed to return her five thousand rubles? Can you return them?"
"No—but if someone were to lend me the money I might—"
"You might do nothing of the sort. Your repentance is a fragile thing, Madame, and deceit is second nature to you. On your return to the hotel you will have the stone delivered to the governor's palace and he will see that it is handed to your victim. That will be safer—"
"But I don't want it," Marianne protested.
"You will keep it, however. That is my order. You will keep it—in memory of your mother, who died on the scaffold for having tried to save the queen. Do not try to understand. I will explain later. But now you too should go back to the hotel and rest, for you stand in great need of it."
"I won't go without my friend Jolival."
Before she had finished speaking, the door opened and Jolival appeared. His eyes were closed and he was supported by a jailer, for he seemed to have difficulty in walking. Marianne saw to her horror that there was a bandage around his head and that it was stained with blood.
"What have they done to him?" she cried, and ran to him.
But as she took his other arm to help guide him to a chair, he opened one eye and smiled at her.