X. Le petit cabinet des Tuileries.

X

The small study at the Tuileries.

Let us leave Villefort on the road to Paris, where, thanks to the triple postilions he pays, he is burning up the miles, and let us pass through the two or three salons that precede it into that small study at the Tuileries, with its arched window, so well known for having been the favorite study of Napoleon and of Louis XVIII, and for being today that of Louis-Philippe.

There, in that study, seated before a walnut table that he had brought back from Hartwell, and that, by one of those fancies familiar to great personages, he particularly cherished, King Louis XVIII was listening rather lightly to a man of fifty to fifty-two years, with gray hair, an aristocratic face, and scrupulous dress, while noting in the margin of a volume of Horace, a Gryphius edition, rather incorrect though esteemed, and which lent much to His Majesty's sagacious philological observations.

"You were saying, sir?" said the king.

"That I am exceedingly uneasy, Sire."

"Indeed? Have you seen in a dream seven fat kine and seven lean?"

"No, Sire, for that would announce to us only seven years of plenty and seven years of famine, and, with a king as provident as Your Majesty, famine is not to be feared."

"Of what other scourge, then, is it a question, my dear Blacas?"

"Sire, I believe, I have every reason to believe that a storm is gathering from the direction of the Midi."

"Well, my dear duke," answered Louis XVIII, "I think you are ill-informed, and I know positively, on the contrary, that the weather is very fine on that side."

Witty man that he was, Louis XVIII loved easy jesting.

"Sire," said M. de Blacas, "if only to reassure a faithful servant, could not Your Majesty send into Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiné trustworthy men who would report to you on the spirit of those three provinces?"

"Conimus surdis," answered the king, continuing all the while to annotate his Horace.

"Sire," replied the courtier, laughing so as to seem to understand the hemistich of the poet of Venusia, "Your Majesty may be perfectly right in counting on the good spirit of France; but I think I am not altogether wrong in fearing some desperate attempt."

"On whose part?"

"On the part of Bonaparte, or at least of his party."

"My dear Blacas," said the king, "you are preventing me from working with your terrors."

"And I, Sire, you are preventing me from sleeping with your security."

"Wait, my dear fellow, wait; I have a very happy note on the Pastor quum traheret; wait, and you shall continue afterward."

There was a moment of silence, during which Louis XVIII inscribed, in a hand as small as possible, a new note in the margin of his Horace; then, this note inscribed:

"Continue, my dear duke," said he, with the satisfied air of a man who believes he has had an idea when he has merely commented on another's idea. "Continue, I am listening."

"Sire," said Blacas, who had for an instant hoped to secure Villefort to his own advantage, "I am forced to tell you that it is not mere unfounded rumors, not mere floating reports, that trouble me. It is a right-thinking man, worthy of all my confidence, and charged by me with watching the Midi"—the duke hesitated in pronouncing these words—"who has arrived post-haste to tell me: A great peril threatens the king. Thereupon, I hurried to you, Sire."

"Mala ducis agi domum," continued Louis XVIII, annotating.

"Does Your Majesty order me to insist no further on this subject?"

"No, my dear duke, but stretch out your hand."

"Which one?"

"Whichever you please, there, to the left."

"Here, Sire?"

"I say to the left and you look to the right; it is to my left that I mean: there; you have it; you should find the report of the minister of police dated yesterday.... But, here is M. Dandré himself... is it not, you say M. Dandré?" interrupted Louis XVIII, addressing the usher who had in fact just announced the minister of police.

"Yes, Sire, M. le baron Dandré," replied the usher.

"That is right, baron," resumed Louis XVIII with an imperceptible smile; "enter, baron, and relate to the duke what you know most recent concerning M. de Bonaparte. Hide nothing of the situation from us, however grave it may be. Come, is the island of Elba a volcano, and are we to see flaming and bristling war issue from it: belle, horrida bella?"

M. Dandré balanced himself very gracefully on the back of an armchair to which he pressed both hands, and said:

"Has Your Majesty been pleased to consult yesterday's report?"

"Yes, yes, but tell the duke himself, who cannot find it, what the report contained; detail to him what the usurper is doing on his island."

"Monsieur," said the baron to the duke, "all the servants of His Majesty should rejoice at the recent news reaching us from the island of Elba. Bonaparte..."

M. Dandré looked at Louis XVIII, who, busy writing a note, did not even raise his head.

"Bonaparte," continued the baron, "is mortally bored; he spends whole days watching his miners at Porto-Longone at work."

"And he scratches himself for diversion," said the king.

"He scratches himself?" asked the duke; "what does Your Majesty mean?"

"Why yes, my dear duke; have you forgotten that this great man, this hero, this demigod is afflicted with a skin disease that devours him, prurigo?"

"There is more, Monsieur le duc," continued the minister of police, "we are almost certain that before long the usurper will be mad."

"Mad?"

"Stark mad: his head is weakening; now he weeps tears, now he laughs at full throat; at other times he spends hours on the shore throwing pebbles into the water, and when the pebble has made five or six skips, he seems as satisfied as if he had won another Marengo or a new Austerlitz. There, you will agree, are signs of madness."

"Or of wisdom, Monsieur le baron, or of wisdom," said Louis XVIII, laughing; "it was by throwing pebbles into the sea that the great captains of Antiquity diverted themselves; see Plutarch, in the life of Scipio Africanus."

M. de Blacas remained thoughtful between these two unconcerns. Villefort, who had not wished to tell him everything, so that another might not carry off from him the whole benefit of his secret, had nevertheless told him enough to give him grave uneasiness.

"Come, come, Dandré," said Louis XVIII, "Blacas is not yet convinced; pass to the conversion of the usurper."

The minister of police bowed.

"Conversion of the usurper!" murmured the duke, looking at the king and Dandré, who alternated like two shepherds of Virgil. "Is the usurper converted?"

"Absolutely, my dear duke."

"To good principles; explain that, baron."

"This is what it is, Monsieur le duc," said the minister with the utmost seriousness in the world: "lately Napoleon held a review, and as two or three of his old grumblers, as he calls them, manifested the desire to return to France, he gave them their discharge, exhorting them to serve their good king; those were his own words, Monsieur le duc, I have certainty of it."

"Well, Blacas, what think you of that?" said the king triumphantly, ceasing for an instant to thumb the voluminous scholiast open before him.

"I say, Sire, that either the minister of police or I am mistaken; but as it is impossible that it should be the minister of police, since he has in his charge the safety and honor of Your Majesty, it is probable that it is I who am in error. However, Sire, in Your Majesty's place, I should wish to interrogate the person of whom I spoke to you; I shall even insist that Your Majesty do him this honor."

"Willingly, duke; under your auspices I shall receive whom you will; but I wish to receive him with arms in hand. Monsieur le ministre, have you a report more recent than this one! for this one already bears the date of February 20, and we are at March 3!"

"No, Sire, but I was expecting one hour by hour. I have been out since morning, and perhaps since my absence one has arrived."

"Go to the prefecture, and if there is none, well, well," continued Louis XVIII, laughing, "make one; is not that the practice?"

"Oh! Sire!" said the minister, "God be thanked, in that regard there is no need to invent anything; each day our offices are encumbered with the most detailed denunciations, which come from a host of poor wretches who hope for a little gratitude for services they do not render, but would like to render. They bet on chance, and hope that one day some unexpected event will give a kind of reality to their predictions."

"Very well; go, Monsieur," said Louis XVIII, "and remember that I await you."

"I but go and come, Sire; in ten minutes I am back."

"And I, Sire," said M. de Blacas, "am going to fetch my messenger."

"Wait, wait," said Louis XVIII. "Truly, Blacas, I must change your arms; I shall give you an eagle with outspread wings, holding between its talons a prey that vainly tries to escape, with this motto: Tenax."

"Sire, I listen," said M. de Blacas, gnawing his fists with impatience.

"I should like to consult you on this passage: Molli fugiens anhelitu; you know, it is of the stag fleeing before the wolf. Are you not a hunter and grand wolf-hunter? How do you find, by that double title, the molli anhelitu?"

"Admirable, Sire; but my messenger is like the stag of which you speak, for he has come 220 leagues post-haste, and that in barely three days."

"That is taking much fatigue and much trouble, my dear duke, when we have the telegraph which takes but three or four hours, and that without its breath suffering in the least."

"Ah! Sire, you reward very ill that poor young man, who arrives from so far and with such ardor to give Your Majesty useful counsel; if only for M. de Salvieux, who recommends him to me, receive him well, I beg you."

"M. de Salvieux, my brother's chamberlain?"

"Himself."

"Indeed, he is at Marseille."

"It is from there he writes to me."

"Does he speak to you then also of this conspiracy?"

"No, but he recommends M. de Villefort to me, and charges me to introduce him to Your Majesty."

"M. de Villefort?" cried the king; "does this messenger then call himself M. de Villefort?"

"Yes, Sire."

"And it is he who comes from Marseille?"

"In person."

"Why did you not tell me his name at once!" resumed the king, letting appear on his face a beginning of uneasiness.

"Sire, I thought that name unknown to Your Majesty."

"Not so, not so, Blacas; he is a serious mind, elevated, ambitious above all; and, by God, you know his father by name."

"His father?"

"Yes, Noirtier."

"Noirtier the Girondin? Noirtier the senator?"

"Yes, exactly."

"And Your Majesty has employed the son of such a man?"

"Blacas, my friend, you understand nothing of it; I told you Villefort was ambitious: to advance, Villefort will sacrifice all, even his father."

"Then, Sire, I should have him enter?"

"This instant, duke. Where is he?"

"He should be waiting for me below, in my carriage."

"Go fetch him."

"I run."

The duke went out with the briskness of a young man; the ardor of his sincere royalism gave him twenty years.

Louis XVIII remained alone, turning his eyes back to his half-open Horace and murmuring:

Justum et tenacem propositi virum.

M. de Blacas came back up with the same rapidity with which he had gone down; but in the antechamber he was forced to invoke the authority of the king. Villefort's powdered coat, his dress, in which nothing conformed to court attire, had excited the susceptibility of M. de Brézé, who was quite astonished to find in this young man the pretension to appear thus clad before the king. But the duke removed all difficulties with a single word: Order of His Majesty; and despite the observations the master of ceremonies continued to make, for the honor of the principle, Villefort was introduced.

The king was seated in the same place where the duke had left him. On opening the door, Villefort found himself exactly facing him: the first movement of the young magistrate was to stop.

"Enter, Monsieur de Villefort," said the king, "enter."

Villefort bowed and took a few steps forward, waiting for the king to question him.

"Monsieur de Villefort," continued Louis XVIII, "here is the Duke de Blacas, who maintains that you have something important to tell us."

"Sire, the duke is right, and I hope Your Majesty will recognize it yourself."

"First, and before all things, Monsieur, is the evil, in your opinion, as great as I am made to believe?"

"Sire, I believe it pressing; but, thanks to the diligence I have made, it is not irreparable, I hope."

"Speak at length if you will, Monsieur," said the king, who was beginning to give way himself to the emotion that had troubled the face of M. de Blacas, and that altered the voice of Villefort; "speak, and above all begin at the beginning: I love order in all things."

"Sire," said Villefort, "I shall make to Your Majesty a faithful report, but I shall beg him nevertheless to excuse me if the trouble I am in casts some obscurity into my words."

A glance cast on the king after this insinuating exordium assured Villefort of the goodwill of his august listener, and he continued:

"Sire, I arrived as rapidly as possible at Paris to teach Your Majesty that I have discovered within the jurisdiction of my functions, not one of those vulgar and inconsequential plots, such as are daily hatched in the lowest ranks of the people and the army, but a true conspiracy, a tempest that threatens nothing less than the throne of Your Majesty. Sire, the usurper is arming three vessels; he meditates some project, perhaps senseless, but perhaps also terrible, senseless though it be. At this hour, he must have left the island of Elba to go where? I know not, but certainly to attempt a landing either at Naples, or on the coasts of Tuscany, or even in France. Your Majesty is not ignorant that the sovereign of the island of Elba has preserved relations with Italy and with France."

"Yes, Monsieur, I know it," said the king, much moved, "and, as recently as lately, word was had that Bonapartist gatherings were taking place in the rue Saint-Jacques; but continue, I pray you; how did you obtain these details?"

"Sire, they result from an interrogation I caused to be undergone by a man from Marseille whom I had long watched and whom I had arrested on the very day of my departure; this man, a turbulent sailor and of a Bonapartism that was suspect to me, has been secretly to the island of Elba; he saw there the grand marshal, who charged him with a verbal mission for a Bonapartist in Paris, whose name I could never make him tell; but this mission was to charge this Bonapartist with preparing minds for a return"—remark that it is the interrogation which speaks, Sire—"for a return that cannot fail to be soon."

"And where is this man?" asked Louis XVIII.

"In prison, Sire."

"And the thing appeared grave to you?"

"So grave, Sire, that this event having surprised me in the midst of a family feast, the very day of my betrothal, I abandoned all, betrothed and friends, postponed all to another time, to come deposit at the feet of Your Majesty both the fears that had seized me and the assurance of my devotion."

"It is true," said Louis XVIII; "was there not a project of union between you and Mlle de Saint-Méran?"

"The daughter of one of the most faithful servants of Your Majesty."

"Yes, yes; but let us return to this plot, Monsieur de Villefort."

"Sire, I fear it is more than a plot, I fear it is a conspiracy."

"A conspiracy in these times," said the king, smiling, "is a thing easy to meditate, but more difficult to conduct to its end, by that very fact that, restored but yesterday to the throne of our ancestors, we have our eyes open at once upon the past, the present, and the future; for ten months my ministers have redoubled surveillance so that the coast of the Mediterranean be well guarded. If Bonaparte lands at Naples, the whole coalition would be on foot before he was yet at Piombino; if he lands in Tuscany, he sets foot in enemy country; if he lands in France, it will be with a handful of men, and we shall easily get the better of him, execrated as he is by the population. Reassure yourself, then, Monsieur; but count no less upon our royal gratitude."

"Ah! here is M. Dandré!" cried the Duke de Blacas.

At this moment, there appeared indeed upon the threshold of the door M. le ministre de la Police, pale, trembling, and whose look wavered, as if he had been struck with dizziness.

Villefort took a step to withdraw; but a handclasp from M. de Blacas held him back.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”