No picnic could have been more free and easy. The Queen herself looked a Venus-like dairymaid in straw hat and flowered skirt, and it was announced that the game of the afternoon should be that called "Descampativos." The guests trooped like children from the Little Trianon to a sequestered spot where lofty woods combined to cast a Druid shade upon the lawn. Here Vaudreuil was elected high priest.
Assuming a white robe and mock-heroic solemnity, and standing out in the centre of the grass, he sang forth in a strikingly rich voice--
"Let us raise an altar to Venus the goddess of these groves."
Four attendants, moving quickly forward in response, carrying squares of turf, piled them into an altar as rapidly as possible. The party arranged themselves in a quadrangle around it.
The altar being completed, Pontiff Vaudreuil proceeded with the mystery thus--
"Listen, dryads and demi-gods, to the oracles of the divinity. The decree of Aphrodite hath it that for the space of one hour there shall be fair amity between----" Here he named the company off in pairs, carefully pre-meditated. As pair after pair were called, they stepped forward on the lawn amid a chorus of laughter, and swelled a procession facing the priest and altar.
Lecour wondered as he saw the remaining number dwindle, who should be paired with himself. Strict rules of precedence he knew would govern it. At length, to his astonishment, he heard the words--
"Madame la Baronne de la Roche-Vernay, and Monsieur de Répentigny."
It was then that two ladies were seen hurrying into the arena from the direction of the Trianon. One was the Duchess de Mouchy; the other, of the same age and dressed in a simple cloud of white tulle, came behind her, and Germain, as if in an apparition, saw his Cyrène. Her obeisances to the Queen and company over, she turned and courtesied very deeply to her lover, who trembled with delight under her smile.
He was quickly recalled by the voice of de Vaudreuil, this time crying--
"Her Majesty of France, and her Majesty's servant and subject the High Priest of the goddess."
It was the invariable custom of the ambitious and confident courtier to appropriate the Queen to himself.
Pausing at the close, he raised his arm ritually towards the trees and rested thus a moment speechless.