Part 6

— Because there is at present no sick prisoner at the Bastille, my lord.

Aramis shrugged his shoulders.

— What do you know of it? said he.

— But it seems to me...

— Monsieur de Baisemeaux, said Aramis, leaning back in his armchair, there is your valet who wishes to speak to you.

At that very moment, indeed, Baisemeaux's valet appeared on the threshold of the door.

— What is it? asked Baisemeaux quickly.

— Monsieur the governor, said the valet, it is the report of the house physician that is being brought to you.

Aramis looked at M. de Baisemeaux with his clear and assured eye.

— Well! have the messenger shown in, said he.

The messenger entered, bowed, and handed over the report.

Baisemeaux cast his eyes upon it, and, raising his head:

— The second Bertaudière is ill! said he with surprise.

— What were you saying then, dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux, that everyone in your house was in good health? said Aramis negligently.

And he took a sip of muscat wine, without ceasing to look at Baisemeaux. Then the governor, having made a sign with his head to the messenger, and the latter having gone out:

— I believe, said he, still trembling, that there is in the paragraph: "At the prisoner's request"?

— Yes, there is that, answered Aramis; but see what is wanted of you, dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux.

Indeed, a sergeant was passing his head through the half-open door.

— What now? cried Baisemeaux. Can I not be left ten minutes in peace?

— Monsieur the governor, said the sergeant, the sick man of the second Bertaudière has charged his jailer to ask you for a confessor.

Baisemeaux nearly fell backward.

Aramis disdained to reassure him, as he had disdained to frighten him.

— What must be answered? asked Baisemeaux.

— Why, whatever you wish, replied Aramis, pinching his lips; that concerns you; I am not governor of the Bastille, I.

— Tell him, cried Baisemeaux quickly, tell the prisoner he shall have what he asks for.

The sergeant went out.

— Oh! my lord, my lord! murmured Baisemeaux, how should I have suspected?... how should I have foreseen?

— Who told you to suspect? who begged you to foresee? answered Aramis disdainfully. Order suspects, order knows, order foresees: is that not enough?

— What do you command? added Baisemeaux.

— I? Nothing. I am but a poor priest, a simple confessor. Do you command me to go see the sick man?

— Oh! my lord, I do not command you, I beg you.

— Very well. Then, lead me.

Chapter CCVII — Prisoner

Since that strange transformation of Aramis into confessor of the order, Baisemeaux was no longer the same man.

Until then, Aramis had been for the worthy governor a prelate to whom he owed respect, a friend to whom he owed gratitude; but, from the revelation which had just overturned all his ideas, he was the inferior and Aramis was a chief.

He lit a lantern himself, called a turnkey, and, turning toward Aramis:

— At your orders, my lord, said he.

Aramis contented himself with a nod of the head which meant: "Very well!" and a sign of the hand which meant: "March ahead!" Baisemeaux set out. Aramis followed him.

It was a fine starry night; the steps of the three men echoed upon the flagstones of the terraces, and the clinking of the keys hanging at the turnkey's belt rose even to the upper stories of the towers, as if to remind the prisoners that liberty was beyond their reach.

One would have said that the change which had come over Baisemeaux had extended even to the turnkey. This turnkey, the same who, at Aramis's first visit, had shown himself so curious and so full of questions, had become not only silent, but even impassive. He lowered his head and seemed afraid to open his ears.

They thus arrived at the foot of the Bertaudière, whose two stories were climbed silently and with a certain slowness; for Baisemeaux, while obeying, was far from showing great eagerness to obey.

At last they arrived at the door; the turnkey had no need to search for the key, he had it ready. The door opened.

Baisemeaux was preparing to enter the prisoner's room; but, stopping him on the threshold:

— It is not written, said Aramis, that the governor shall hear the prisoner's confession.

Baisemeaux bowed and let Aramis pass, who took the lantern from the turnkey's hands and entered; then with a gesture he signed that the door should be closed behind him.

For an instant he stood upright, his ear strained, listening whether Baisemeaux and the turnkey were moving away; then, when he had assured himself, by the diminishing of the noise, that they had left the tower, he set the lantern on the table and looked around him.

Upon a bed of green serge, in every way like the other beds of the Bastille, except that it was newer, beneath ample curtains half drawn, rested the young man near whom, once already, we have introduced Aramis.

According to prison custom, the captive was without light. At the hour of curfew, he had been obliged to extinguish his candle. One sees how favored the prisoner was, since he had this rare privilege of keeping light until the hour of curfew.

Near this bed, a large leather armchair, with twisted legs, supported garments of remarkable freshness. A small table, without pens, without books, without papers, without ink, was abandoned sadly near the window. Several plates, still full, attested that the prisoner had scarce touched his last meal.

Aramis saw, upon the bed, the young man stretched out, his face half hidden beneath his two arms.

The arrival of the visitor did not make him change his posture; he was waiting or sleeping. Aramis lit the candle by aid of the lantern, gently pushed back the armchair and approached the bed with a visible mixture of interest and respect.

The young man raised his head.

— What do you want of me? asked he.

— Did you not desire a confessor?

— Yes.

— Because you are ill?

— Yes.

— Very ill?

The young man fixed penetrating eyes upon Aramis, and said:

— I thank you.

Then, after a silence:

— I have already seen you, continued he.

Aramis bowed. No doubt the examination the prisoner had just made, this revelation of a cold, cunning, and dominating character, imprinted upon the physiognomy of the Bishop of Vannes, was little reassuring in the young man's situation; for he added:

— I am better.

— Then? asked Aramis.

— Then, being better, I no longer have the same need of a confessor, it seems to me.

— Not even of the hair shirt announced to you in the note you found in your bread?

The young man started; but, before he had answered or denied:

— Not even, continued Aramis, of that ecclesiastic from whose mouth you have an important revelation to await?

— If that be so, said the young man, falling back upon his pillow, it is different; I listen.

Aramis then looked at him more attentively and was surprised at that air of simple and easy majesty which one never acquires, unless God has put it in the blood or in the heart.

— Sit down, sir, said the prisoner.

Aramis obeyed, bowing.

— How do you find yourself at the Bastille? asked the bishop.

— Very well.

— You do not suffer?

— No.

— You regret nothing?

— Nothing.

— Not even liberty?

— What do you call liberty, sir, asked the prisoner with the accent of a man preparing for a struggle.

— I call liberty, flowers, air, daylight, stars, the happiness of running wherever your nervous twenty-year-old legs carry you.

The young man smiled; it would have been difficult to say whether it was from resignation or disdain.

— Look, said he, I have there, in that Japanese vase, two roses, two beautiful roses, gathered yesterday evening in bud in the governor's garden; they opened this morning and unfolded beneath my eyes their vermilion calyx; with each fold of their leaves, they opened the treasure of their perfume; my room is all embalmed with it. These two roses, see them: they are beautiful among roses; and roses are the most beautiful of flowers. Why then would you have me desire other flowers, since I have the most beautiful of all?

Aramis looked at the young man with surprise.

— If flowers are liberty, resumed the captive melancholically, then I have liberty, since I have flowers.

— Oh! but the air! cried Aramis; the air so necessary to life?

— Well! sir, approach the window, continued the prisoner; it is open. Between heaven and earth, the wind rolls its whirlwinds of ice, of fire, of tepid vapors or of gentle breezes. The air that comes from there caresses my face, when, mounted on this armchair, seated on the back, my arm passed around the bar that supports me, I imagine that I swim in the void.

Aramis's brow grew dark as the young man spoke.

— Daylight? continued he. I have better than daylight, I have the sun, a friend who comes every day to visit me without the governor's permission, without the turnkey's company. He enters by the window, he traces in my room a long square which starts from the window itself and goes to bite the hangings of my bed even to the fringes. This luminous square grows from ten o'clock to noon, and decreases from one to three, slowly, as if, having been in haste to come, he regretted to leave me. When his last ray disappears, I have enjoyed four hours of his presence. Is that not enough? I have been told there were unhappy men who dug quarries, workmen who labored in the mines, and who never saw him.

Aramis wiped his brow.

— As for the stars, which are sweet to behold, continued the young man, they all resemble one another, save in brightness and greatness. I, I am favored; for, had you not lit this candle, you might have seen the beautiful star that I was seeing from my bed before your arrival, and whose radiance caressed my eyes.

Aramis lowered his head: he felt himself submerged, beneath the bitter flood of that sinister philosophy which is the religion of captivity.

— So much for the flowers, for the air, for the daylight and for the stars, said the young man with the same tranquillity. Remains the walking. Is it not that, all day long, I walk in the governor's garden if it is fine, here if it rains, in the cool if it is hot, in the warm if it is cold, thanks to my chimney during the winter? Ah! believe me, sir, added the prisoner with an expression not exempt from a certain bitterness, men have done for me all that a man can hope, all that a man can desire.

— Men, be it so! said Aramis, raising his head; but it seems to me you forget God.

— I have, indeed, forgotten God, answered the prisoner without emotion; but, why do you say that to me? What good is it to speak of God to prisoners?

Aramis looked full in the face this singular young man who had the resignation of a martyr with the smile of an atheist.

— Is not God in all things? murmured he in a tone of reproach.

— Say at the end of all things, answered the prisoner firmly.

— Be it so! said Aramis; but let us return to the point from which we started.

— I ask nothing better, said the young man.

— I am your confessor.

— Yes.

— Well! as my penitent, you owe me the truth.

— I ask nothing better than to tell it you.

— Every prisoner has committed the crime which caused him to be put in prison. What crime have you committed, you?

— You have already asked me that, the first time you saw me, said the prisoner.

— And you eluded my answer, that time, as today.

— And why, today, do you think I shall answer you?

— Because, today, I am your confessor.

— Then, if you wish me to tell you what crime I have committed, explain to me what a crime is. Now, as I know nothing in myself that reproaches me, I say that I am not criminal.

— One is criminal sometimes in the eyes of the great ones of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because one knows that crimes have been committed.

The prisoner lent an extreme attention.

— Yes, said he after a moment of silence, I understand; yes, you are right, sir; it could well be that, in this way, I am criminal in the eyes of the great.

— Ah! you know something then? said Aramis, who believed he had glimpsed, not the flaw, but the joint of the cuirass.

— No, I know nothing, answered the young man; but I sometimes think, and I say to myself, at those moments...

— What do you say to yourself?

— That, if I wished to think more, either I should go mad, or I should guess many things.

— Well then? asked Aramis with impatience.

— Then, I stop.

— You stop?

— Yes, my head is heavy, my ideas become sad, I feel the boredom that takes me; I desire...

— What?

— I know not what, for I will not let myself be caught by the desire for things I do not have, I who am so content with what I have.

— You fear death? said Aramis with a slight uneasiness.

— Yes, said the young man smiling.

Aramis felt the cold of that smile and shuddered.

— Oh! since you fear death, you know more than you say, cried he.

— But you, answered the prisoner, you who make me speak to ask of you, you who, when I asked of you, enter here promising me a whole world of revelations, how comes it that it is you now who are silent and I who speak? Since we each wear a mask, either let us both keep it, or let us lay it down together.

Aramis felt at once the force and the justness of this reasoning.

— I have not to do with an ordinary man, thought he. Let us see, have you ambition? said he aloud without having prepared the prisoner for the transition.

— What is that, ambition? asked the young man.

— It is, answered Aramis, a sentiment which pushes a man to desire more than he has.

— I said I was content, sir, but it is possible that I deceive myself. I know not what ambition is, but it is possible that I have some. Come, open my mind, I ask nothing better.

— An ambitious man, said Aramis, is one who covets beyond his estate.

— I covet nothing beyond my estate, said the young man with an assurance which, again, made the Bishop of Vannes start.

He was silent. But, to see the ardent eyes, the furrowed brow, the reflective attitude of the captive, one felt well that he awaited something other than silence. This silence, Aramis broke it.

— You lied to me, the first time I saw you, said he.

— Lied? cried the young man, raising himself on his bed, with such an accent in his voice, with such a flash in his eyes, that Aramis recoiled in spite of himself.

— I mean, resumed Aramis, bowing, that you hid from me what you know of your childhood.

— A man's secrets are his own, sir, said the prisoner, and not the first comer's.

— That is true, said Aramis, bowing lower than the first time, that is true, forgive me, but today, am I still for you the first comer? I beseech you, answer, _my lord!_

This title caused a slight trouble to the prisoner; however he seemed not astonished that it was given him.

— I do not know you, sir, said he.

— Oh! if I dared, I would take your hand, and I would kiss it.

The young man made a movement as if to give his hand to Aramis, but the flash which had sprung from his eyes went out at the edge of his eyelid, and his hand withdrew cold and distrustful.

— Kiss the hand of a prisoner! said he, shaking his head, what good?

— Why did you tell me, asked Aramis, that you found yourself well here? why did you tell me you aspired to nothing? why finally in speaking to me thus, do you prevent me from being frank in my turn?

The same flash reappeared for the third time in the young man's eyes, but, as the two other times, it expired without bringing anything.

— You distrust me? said Aramis.

— To what purpose, sir?

— Oh! for a very simple reason: it is that, if you know what you ought to know, you must distrust everyone.

— Then, do not wonder that I distrust, since you suspect me of knowing what I do not know.

Aramis was struck with admiration for this energetic resistance.

— Oh! you despair me, my lord! cried he, striking his fist upon the armchair.

— And I, I do not understand you, sir.

— Well! try to understand me.

The prisoner looked fixedly at Aramis.

— It seems to me at times, continued the latter, that I have before my eyes the man I seek... and then...

— And then... that man disappears, does he not? said the prisoner smiling. So much the better!

— Decidedly, resumed he, I have nothing to say to a man who distrusts me to the point you do.

— And I, added the prisoner in the same tone, nothing to say to the man who will not understand that a prisoner must distrust everything.

— Even his old friends? said Aramis. Oh! that is too much prudence, my lord!

— My old friends? you are one of my old friends, you?

— Come, said Aramis, do you not remember having seen formerly, in the village where your first childhood was spent?...

— Do you know the name of that village? asked the prisoner.

— Noisy-le-Sec, my lord, answered Aramis firmly.

— Continue, said the young man, without his face confessing or denying.

— See here, my lord, said Aramis, if you absolutely wish to continue this game, let us stop there. I come to tell you many things, it is true; but you must let me see that these things, you have, on your side, the desire to know them. Before speaking, before declaring the things so important that I hold within me, admit that I should have needed a little help if not frankness, a little sympathy if not confidence. Well! you keep yourself shut up in a pretended ignorance which paralyzes me... Oh! not for what you believe; for, however ignorant you may be, or however indifferent you may feign to be, you are none the less what you are, my lord, and nothing, nothing! do you understand well, shall make it that you are not.

— I promise you, answered the prisoner, to listen without impatience. Only, it seems to me I have the right to repeat to you this question I have already put: Who are you?

— Do you remember, fifteen or eighteen years ago, having seen at Noisy-le-Sec a horseman who came with a lady, ordinarily dressed in black silk, with ribbons the color of fire in her hair?

— Yes, said the young man: once I asked the name of that horseman, and I was told he was called the Abbé d'Herblay. I wondered that this abbe looked so warlike, and I was answered that there was nothing astonishing in that, seeing that he was a musketeer of King Louis XIII.

— Well! said Aramis, that musketeer formerly, that abbe then, bishop of Vannes since, your confessor today, it is I.

— I know it. I had recognized you.

— Well! my lord, if you know that, I must add something you do not know: it is that if the presence here of this musketeer, of this abbe, of this bishop, of this confessor were known to the king, this evening, tomorrow, he who has risked all to come see you would see the headsman's axe gleam at the bottom of a dungeon darker and more lost than is yours.

In listening to these firmly accented words, the young man had raised himself on his bed, and had plunged glances more and more eager into Aramis's glances.

The result of this examination was that the prisoner seemed to take some confidence.

— Yes, murmured he, yes, I remember perfectly. The woman of whom you speak came once with you, and two other times with the woman...

He stopped.

— With the woman who came to see you every month, is it not, my lord?

— Yes.

— Do you know what that lady was?

A flash seemed near to spring from the prisoner's eye.

— I know that she was a lady of the Court, said he.

— You recall her well, that lady?

— Oh! my memories cannot be very confused in that regard, said the young prisoner; I saw once that lady with a man of forty-five years, about, I saw once that lady with you and with the lady in the black robe and ribbons the color of fire; I saw her twice since with the same person. These four persons with my governor and old Perronnette, my jailer and the governor, are the only persons to whom I have ever spoken, and, in truth, almost the only persons I have ever seen.

— But you were then in prison?

— If I am in prison here, relatively I was free there, though my liberty was much restricted; a house out of which I did not go, a large garden surrounded by walls which I could not cross: that was my dwelling; you know it, since you have been there. For the rest, accustomed to live within the limits of those walls and that house, I have never desired to go out. Therefore you understand, sir, having seen nothing of this world I can desire nothing, and, if you tell me something, you will be forced to explain it all to me.

— So shall I do, my lord, said Aramis bowing; for it is my duty.

— Well! begin then by telling me what my governor was.

— A good gentleman, my lord, an honest gentleman above all, a tutor at once for your body and for your soul. Have you ever had cause to complain of him?

— Oh! no, sir, quite the contrary; but this gentleman told me often that my father and mother were dead; did this gentleman lie or speak the truth?

— He was forced to follow the orders given him.

— Then he lied, did he not?

— On one point. Your father is dead.

— And my mother?

— She is dead to you.

— But, to others, she lives, does she not?

— Yes.

— And I, the young man looked at Aramis, I am condemned to live in the obscurity of a prison?

— Alas! I believe it.

— And that, continued the young man, because my presence in the world would reveal a great secret?

— A great secret, yes.

— To have a child such as I was shut up in the Bastille, my enemy must be very powerful.

— He is so.

— More powerful than my mother, then?

— Why so?

— Because my mother would have defended me.

Aramis hesitated.

— More powerful than your mother, yes, my lord.

— For my nurse and the gentleman to have been taken away and for me to have been separated from them thus, I was then or they were then a very great danger to my enemy?

— Yes, a danger of which your enemy delivered himself by making the gentleman and the nurse disappear, answered Aramis tranquilly.

— Disappear? asked the prisoner. But in what way did they disappear?

— In the surest way, answered Aramis: they are dead.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”