Part 29

— Chevalier, said the duchess, you have given me no sign of life since our meeting at Fontainebleau, and I confess that your presence, on the day of the Franciscan's death, I confess that your initiation into certain secrets, gave me the keenest astonishment I have ever felt in my life.

— I can explain my presence, I can explain my initiation, said Aramis.

— But, above all, replied the duchess sharply, let us speak a little of ourselves. We have been good friends for a long time.

— Yes, madame, and, please God, we shall be so, if not for long, at least always.

— That is certain, chevalier, and my visit is proof of it.

— We no longer have, madame la duchesse, the same interests as before, said Aramis, smiling without fear in that half-light, for one could not guess that his smile was less pleasant and less fresh than of old.

— Today, chevalier, we have other interests. Each age brings its own, and since we understand each other today, in talking, as well as we once did without speaking, let us talk; will you?

— Duchess, at your orders. Ah! pardon, how did you come to find my address? And why?

— Why? I told you. Curiosity. I wanted to know what you were to that Franciscan, with whom I had dealings, and who died so strangely. You know that at our meeting at Fontainebleau, in that cemetery, at the foot of that recently closed tomb, we were both so moved that we confided nothing to each other.

— Yes, madame.

— Well! no sooner had I left you than I repented. I have always been eager to learn, you know that Mme de Longueville is a little like me, is she not?

— I do not know, said Aramis discreetly.

— I recalled, then, continued the duchess, that we had said nothing in that cemetery, neither you of what you were to that Franciscan whose burial you oversaw, nor I of what I was to him. So, all that seemed unworthy of two good friends like us, and I sought the occasion to draw near to you to give you proof that I am yours, and that Marie Michon, the poor dead woman, has left on earth a shadow full of memory.

Aramis bowed over the duchess's hand and deposited upon it a gallant kiss.

— You must have had some trouble finding me, said he.

— Yes, she said, vexed to be brought back to what Aramis wished to know; but I knew you were a friend of M. Fouquet, I inquired near M. Fouquet.

— Friend? oh! cried the chevalier, you say too much, madame. A poor priest favored by that generous protector, a heart full of gratitude and fidelity, that is all I am to M. Fouquet.

— He made you bishop?

— Yes, duchess.

— But, fine musketeer, that is your retirement.

"As intrigue is yours," thought Aramis.

— Now, added he, you inquired of M. Fouquet?

— Easily. You had been to Fontainebleau with him, you had made a little journey to your diocese, which is Belle-Île-en-Mer, I believe?

— Not so, not so, madame, said Aramis. My diocese is Vannes.

— That is what I meant to say. I only thought that Belle-Île-en-Mer...

— Is a house of M. Fouquet's, that is all.

— Ah! it is that I had been told Belle-Île-en-Mer was fortified; now, I know you for a man of war, my friend.

— I have unlearned all since I took orders, said Aramis, piqued.

— Enough... I thus learned that you had returned from Vannes, and I sent to a friend, M. le comte de La Fère.

— Ah! said Aramis.

— That one is discreet: he had me answered that he ignored your address.

"Always Athos," thought the bishop: "what is good is always good."

— Then... you know that I cannot show myself here, and that the queen mother still has something against me.

— But yes, and I wonder at it.

— Oh! it is due to all sorts of reasons. But let us pass... I am forced to hide; I therefore, by good fortune, encountered M. d'Artagnan, one of your old friends, is he not?

— One of my present friends, duchess.

He informed me, he; he sent me to M. de Baisemeaux, the governor of the Bastille.

Aramis shuddered, and his eyes released in the shadow a flame he could not hide from his clear-sighted friend.

— M. de Baisemeaux! said he; and why did d'Artagnan send you to M. de Baisemeaux?

— Ah! I do not know.

— What does this mean? said the bishop, summing up his intellectual forces to sustain the combat with dignity.

— M. de Baisemeaux was your obliged friend, d'Artagnan told me.

— That is true.

— And one always knows the address of a creditor as that of a debtor.

— That is true again. Then, Baisemeaux indicated to you?

— Saint-Mandé, where I had a letter delivered to you.

— Which is here, and which is precious to me, said Aramis, since I owe to it the pleasure of seeing you.

The duchess, satisfied to have thus skirted without mishap all the difficulties of that delicate exposition, breathed.

Aramis did not breathe.

— We were, said he, at your visit to Baisemeaux?

— No, said she laughing, further on.

— Then, it is to your grudge against the queen mother?

— Further still, she resumed, further still; we are at the relations... It is simple, resumed the duchess, making up her mind. You know that I live with M. de Laicques?

— Yes, madame.

— A quasi-husband?

— So it is said.

— At Brussels?

— Yes.

— You know that my children ruined and despoiled me?

— Ah! what misery, duchess!

— It is frightful! I had to contrive to live, and above all not to vegetate.

— That is understandable.

— I had hatreds to exploit, friendships to serve; I no longer had credit, nor protectors.

— You who have protected so many, said Aramis suavely.

— It is always thus, chevalier. I saw, in those times, the king of Spain.

— Ah!

— Who had just named a general of the Jesuits, as is the custom.

— Ah! it is the custom?

— You were ignorant of it?

— Pardon, I was distracted.

— Indeed, you should know that, you who were in such close intimacy with the Franciscan.

— With the general of the Jesuits, you mean?

— Precisely... So I saw the king of Spain. He wished me well and could do me no good. He recommended me, however, in the Flanders, me and Laicques, and had a pension given me from the funds of the order.

— Of the Jesuits?

— Yes. The general, I mean the Franciscan, was sent to me.

— Very well.

— And as, to regularize the situation, according to the statutes of the order, I was to be supposed to render services... You know that is the rule?

— I was unaware of it.

Mme de Chevreuse stopped to look at Aramis; but it was dark night.

— Well! it is the rule, she resumed. I was therefore to appear to have some utility. I proposed to travel for the order, and they ranked me among the traveling affiliates. You understand that it was an appearance and a formality.

— Marvelously.

— Thus I drew my pension, which was quite decent.

— My God! duchess, what you tell me there is a dagger thrust for me. You, obliged to receive a pension from the Jesuits!

— No, chevalier, from Spain.

— Ah! saving the case of conscience, duchess, you will admit that it is much the same thing.

— No, no, not at all.

— But finally, of that fine fortune, there remains well...

— There remains Dampierre to me. That is all.

— That is still very fine.

— Yes, but Dampierre encumbered, Dampierre mortgaged, Dampierre a little ruined like its owner.

— And the queen mother sees all this with a dry eye? said Aramis with a curious glance that met only darkness.

— Yes, she has forgotten everything.

— You have, it seems to me, duchess, tried to regain favor?

— Yes; but, by a singularity without a name, see if it is not that the little king inherits the antipathy his dear father had for my person. Ah! you will say to me, I am indeed one of those women who are hated, I am no longer one of those who are loved.

— Dear duchess, let us come quickly, I pray you, to what brings you, for I believe we may be useful to one another.

— I thought so. I therefore came to Fontainebleau with a double purpose. First, I was summoned there by that Franciscan whom you know... By the way, how do you know him? for I have told you my story, and you have not told me yours.

— I knew him in a quite natural way, duchess. I studied theology with him at Parma; we had become friends, and now business, now travels, now war had separated us.

— Did you well know he was general of the Jesuits?

— I suspected as much.

— But, finally, by what strange chance did you also come to that inn where the traveling affiliates gathered?

— Oh! said Aramis in a calm voice, it is a pure chance. I, I was going to Fontainebleau to M. Fouquet's to have an audience with the king; I, I was passing; I, I was unknown; I saw by the road that poor dying man and recognized him. You know the rest, he expired in my arms.

— Yes, but leaving you in heaven and on earth so great a power, that you gave, in his name, sovereign orders.

— He did indeed charge me with some commissions.

— And for me?

— I told you. A sum of twelve thousand livres to pay. I believe I gave you the necessary signature to collect. Did you not collect?

— Yes, yes. Oh! my dear prelate, you give those orders, I have been told, with such mystery and such august majesty, that you were generally believed to be the successor of the dear deceased.

Aramis blushed with impatience. The duchess continued:

— I inquired, said she, of the king of Spain, and he cleared my doubts on that point. Every general of the Jesuits is, upon his nomination, and must be, Spanish according to the statutes of the order. You are not Spanish and you were not named by the king of Spain.

Aramis replied nothing but these words:

— You see well, duchess, that you were in error, since the king of Spain told you that.

— Yes, dear Aramis; but there is something else that I thought, myself.

— What then?

— You know that I think a little of everything.

— Oh! yes, duchess.

— Do you know Spanish?

— Every Frenchman who did his Fronde knows Spanish.

— You lived in the Flanders?

— Three years.

— You passed through Madrid?

— Fifteen months.

— You are therefore in a position to be naturalized Spanish whenever you wish.

— You believe so? said Aramis with a simplicity that deceived the duchess.

— Doubtless... Two years of residence and knowledge of the language are indispensable rules. You have three years and a half... fifteen months too many.

— Where do you mean to arrive, dear lady?

— To this: I am on good terms with the king of Spain.

"I am not badly so," thought Aramis.

— Will you, continued the duchess, that I ask for you, of the king, the succession of the Franciscan?

— Oh! duchess!

— You perhaps have it? said she.

— No, upon my word!

— Well! I can render you that service.

— Why did you not render it to M. de Laicques, duchess? He is a man full of talent and whom you love.

— Yes, certainly; but that did not happen. In short, answer, Laicques or no Laicques, will you?

— Duchess, no, thank you!

"He is named," she thought.

— If you refuse me thus, resumed Mme de Chevreuse, that is not to embolden me to ask for myself.

— Oh! ask, ask.

— Ask!... I cannot, if you have not the power to grant me.

— Little as I may be able, ask anyway.

— I need a sum of money to repair Dampierre.

— Ah! replied Aramis coldly, money?... Let us see, duchess, how much would it be?

— Oh! a round sum.

— So much the worse! You know that I am not rich?

— You, no; but the order. If you had been general...

— You know that I am not general.

— Then, you have a friend who, he, must be rich: M. Fouquet.

— M. Fouquet? madame, he is more than half ruined.

— It was said, and I would not believe it.

— Why, duchess?

— Because I have from cardinal Mazarin some letters, that is to say Laicques has them, which establish strange accounts.

— What accounts?

— It is about rents sold, loans made, I no longer well remember. Be that as it may, the sub-intendant, according to letters signed Mazarin, would have drawn some thirty millions from the coffers of the State. The case is grave.

Aramis dug his nails into his hand.

— What! said he, you have such letters and you have not made them known to M. Fouquet?

— Ah! replied the duchess, such things are reserves one keeps. The day of need come, one draws them from the cabinet.

— And the day of need has come? said Aramis.

— Yes, my dear.

— And you are going to show these letters to M. Fouquet?

— I prefer to speak of them to you.

— It must be that you are in great need of money, poor friend, to think of such things, you who held in such poor esteem the prose of M. de Mazarin.

— I have, indeed, need of money.

— And then, continued Aramis in a cold tone, you must have caused yourself pain in having recourse to that resource. It is cruel.

— Oh! if I had wished to do ill and not good, said Mme de Chevreuse, instead of asking of the general of the order or of M. Fouquet the five hundred thousand livres I need...

— Five hundred thousand livres!

— No more. Do you find that much? That is the least needed to repair Dampierre.

— Yes, madame.

— I say then that instead of asking that sum, I would have gone to my old friend, the queen mother; the letters of her husband, the signor Mazarini, would have served me as introduction, and I would have asked her that trifle, saying to her: "Madame, I wish to have the honor of receiving Your Majesty at Dampierre; permit me to put Dampierre in order."

Aramis replied not a word.

— Well! said she, what are you thinking of?

— I am making additions, said Aramis.

— And M. Fouquet makes subtractions. I try to multiply. Fine calculators we are! how well we might understand each other!

— Will you permit me to reflect? said Aramis.

— No... For such an opening, between people like us, it is yes or no that must be answered, and that at once.

"It is a trap," thought the bishop; "it is impossible that such a woman be heeded by Anne of Austria."

— Well? said the duchess.

— Well! madame, I should be much surprised if M. Fouquet could dispose of five hundred thousand livres at this hour.

— We must then speak of it no more, said the duchess, and Dampierre shall restore itself as it can.

— Oh! you are not, I suppose, embarrassed to that point?

— No, I am never embarrassed.

— And the queen will certainly do for you, continued the bishop, what the superintendent cannot do.

— Oh! but yes... Tell me, you do not wish, for example, that I speak myself to M. Fouquet of these letters?

— You will do, in that regard, duchess, all that pleases you; but M. Fouquet feels himself guilty or does not; if he is, I know him proud enough not to confess it; if he is not, he will take great offense at that threat.

— You always reason like an angel.

And the duchess rose.

— So, you are going to denounce M. Fouquet to the queen? said Aramis.

— Denounce?... Oh! ugly word. I shall not denounce, my dear friend; you know politics too well to ignore how such things are executed; I shall take sides against M. Fouquet, that is all.

— That is just.

— And, in a party war, a weapon is a weapon.

— Without doubt.

— Once well restored with the queen mother, I may be dangerous.

— It is your right, duchess.

— I shall use it, my dear friend.

— You are not unaware that M. Fouquet is on the best of terms with the king of Spain, duchess?

— Oh! I suppose so.

— M. Fouquet, if you make a party war as you say, will make another.

— Ah! what would you have!

— It will be his right also, will it not?

— Certainly.

— And, as he is well with Spain, he will make a weapon of that friendship.

— You mean that he will be well with the general of the order of the Jesuits, my dear Aramis.

— That may happen, duchess.

— And that then they will suppress the pension I draw thereby.

— I much fear it.

— One will console oneself. Eh! my dear, after Richelieu, after the Fronde, after exile, what is there to dread for Mme de Chevreuse?

— The pension, you know, is of forty-eight thousand livres.

— Alas! I know it well.

— Moreover, when one makes a party war, one strikes, you are not unaware, at the friends of the enemy.

— Ah! you mean that they will fall upon poor Laicques?

— It is almost inevitable, duchess.

— Oh! he draws only twelve thousand livres of pension.

— Yes; but the king of Spain has credit; consulted by M. Fouquet, he can have M. Laicques locked in some fortress.

— I am not much afraid of that, my good friend, because, thanks to a reconciliation with Anne of Austria, I shall obtain that France demand the liberty of Laicques.

— That is true. Then, you will have something else to dread.

— What? said the duchess, feigning surprise and fright.

— You know and you know that once affiliated with the order, one does not leave it without difficulties. The secrets one may have penetrated are unwholesome, they carry with them germs of misfortune for whoever reveals them.

The duchess reflected a moment.

— That is more serious, said she; I shall look to it.

And, despite the deep obscurity, Aramis felt a glance burning like a red-hot iron escape from his friend's eyes to plunge into his heart.

— Let us recapitulate, said Aramis, who then kept on his guard and slipped his hand under his doublet, where he had a hidden stylet.

— That is it, recapitulate: good accounts make good friends.

— The suppression of your pension...

— Forty-eight thousand livres, and that of Laicques twelve, make sixty thousand livres; that is what you mean, is it not?

— Precisely, and I seek the counterweight you find to that?

— Five hundred thousand livres that I shall have from the queen.

— Or that you shall not have.

— I know the means to have them, said the duchess rashly.

These words made the chevalier's ear prick up. From that fault of the adversary, his mind was so much on guard, that it always profited him, and she, consequently, lost the advantage.

— I admit that you have that money, he resumed, you will lose the double, having a hundred thousand francs of pension to draw instead of sixty thousand, and that for ten years.

— No, for I shall suffer that diminution of revenue only during the duration of M. Fouquet's ministry; now, that duration, I estimate at two months.

— Ah! said Aramis.

— I am frank, as you see.

— I thank you, duchess, but you would be wrong to suppose that after M. Fouquet's disgrace, the order would begin again to pay you your pension.

— I know the means to make the order finance, as I know the means to make the queen mother contribute.

— Then, duchess, we are all forced to lower the flag before you; to you the victory! to you the triumph! Be merciful, I pray you. Sound, clarions!

— How is it possible, resumed the duchess, without heeding the irony, that you recoil before five hundred unhappy thousand livres, when it is a question of sparing yourself, I mean your friend, pardon, your protector, a disagreeableness such as that caused by a party war?

— Duchess, here is why: it is that after the five hundred thousand livres, M. de Laicques will ask his share, which will also be five hundred thousand livres, will it not? it is that after M. de Laicques's share and yours will come the share of your children, that of your poor, of everybody, and that letters, compromising as they may be, are not worth three or four millions. True God! duchess, the queen of France's ferrets were worth better than those rags signed Mazarin, and yet they did not cost the quarter of what you ask for yourself.

— Ah! that is true, that is true; but the merchant prices his wares as he will. It is for the buyer to acquire or refuse.

— See here, duchess, will you that I tell you why I shall not buy your letters?

— Say.

— Your Mazarin letters are false.

— Come now!

— Doubtless; for it would be at least strange that, being on bad terms with the queen through M. Mazarin, you should have maintained an intimate commerce with the latter; that would smell of passion, of espionage, of... faith! I will not say the word.

— Say on.

— Of complaisance.

— All that is true; but, what is no less so, is what is in the letter.

— I swear to you, duchess, that you will not be able to make use of them with the queen.

— Oh! but yes, I can make use of all with the queen.

"Good!" thought Aramis. "Sing then, shrike! hiss then, viper!"

But the duchess had said enough; she took two steps toward the door.

Aramis kept for her a disgrace... the imprecation uttered by the vanquished behind the chariot of the triumphant.

He rang.

Lights appeared in the salon.

Then the bishop found himself in a circle of lights that shone upon the duchess's wasted face.

Aramis fixed a long and ironic gaze upon her pale and dried cheeks, upon those eyes whose spark escaped from two bare eyelids, upon that mouth whose lips carefully enclosed blackened and sparse teeth.

He, for his part, affected to pose gracefully his pure and nervous leg, his luminous and proud head; he smiled to let glimpse his teeth, which, in the light, still had a sort of brilliance. The aged coquette understood the gallant mocker; she was just placed before a great mirror where all her decrepitude, so carefully dissimulated, appeared manifest by contrast.

Then, without even saluting Aramis, who bowed supple and charming as the musketeer of old, she departed with a vacillating step, made heavy by haste.

Aramis glided like a zephyr over the parquet to conduct her to the door.

Mme de Chevreuse made a sign to her tall lackey, who took up the musket, and she left that house where two such tender friends had not understood each other for having too well understood.

Chapter CLXXX — Wherein it is seen that a bargain which cannot be made with one may be made with the other

Aramis had guessed rightly: scarcely out of the house in the Place Baudoyer, Mme la duchesse de Chevreuse had herself conveyed to her home.

She feared, no doubt, to be followed, and sought thus to innocent her walk; but, scarcely returned to the hotel, scarcely sure that no one would follow her to trouble her, she had opened the garden door giving onto another street, and went to the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, where M. Colbert lived.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”