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The Queen's Necklace
The Queen's Necklace
PROLOGUE. – THE PREDICTIONS
AN OLD NOBLEMAN AND AN OLD MAÎTRE-D'HÔTEL
It was the beginning of April, 1784, between twelve and one o'clock. Our old acquaintance, the Marshal de Richelieu, having with his own hands colored his eyebrows with a perfumed dye, pushed away the mirror which was held to him by his valet, the successor of his faithful Raffè and shaking his head in the manner peculiar to himself, "Ah!" said he, "now I look myself;" and rising from his seat with juvenile vivacity, he commenced shaking off the powder which had fallen from his wig over his blue velvet coat, then, after taking a turn or two up and down his room, called for his maître-d'hôtel.
In five minutes this personage made his appearance, elaborately dressed.
The marshal turned towards him, and with a gravity befitting the occasion, said, "Sir, I suppose you have prepared me a good dinner?"
"Certainly, your grace."
"You have the list of my guests?"
"I remember them perfectly, your grace; I have prepared a dinner for nine."
"There are two sorts of dinners, sir," said the marshal.
"True, your grace, but – "
The marshal interrupted him with a slightly impatient movement, although still dignified.
"Do you know, sir, that whenever I have heard the word 'but,' and I have heard it many times in the course of eighty-eight years, it has been each time, I am sorry to say, the harbinger of some folly."