Part 40

And, without further delay, the captain leapt from the terrace down the staircase where he had recovered the pieces of Gourville's letter. Five minutes later, he was entering the inn where, according to the custom of all great officers who had lodgings in the château, he had taken what was called his town chamber.

But there, instead of laying aside his sword and cloak, he took up pistols, put his money into a large leather purse, sent for his horses from the château stables, and gave orders to make for Vannes during the night.

All fell out according to his wishes. At eight in the evening, he was putting his foot in the stirrup, when M. de Gesvres appeared at the head of twelve guards before the inn.

D'Artagnan saw everything out of the corner of his eye; he necessarily saw those thirteen men and those thirteen horses; but he pretended to notice nothing and continued mounting his horse. Gesvres came up to him.

— Monsieur d'Artagnan! he said aloud.

— Eh! Monsieur de Gesvres, good evening!

— One would say you are mounting your horse?

— More than that, I am mounted, as you see.

— It is fortunate that I meet you.

— You were looking for me?

— Why, yes.

— On the king's behalf, I wager?

— But yes.

— Like myself, two or three days ago, when I was looking for M. Fouquet?

— Oh!

— Come now, you are going to stand on ceremony with me? Lost labor, go on! tell me quickly that you have come to arrest me.

— Arrest you? Good heavens, no!

— Well then! what are you doing, accosting me with twelve men on horseback?

— I am on patrol.

— Not bad! And you pick me up in this patrol?

— I do not pick you up; I find you, and beg you to come with me.

— Where is that?

— To the king.

— Good! said d'Artagnan with a mocking air. The king then has nothing more to do?

— For mercy's sake, captain, said M. de Gesvres in a low voice to the musketeer, do not compromise yourself; these men hear you!

D'Artagnan began to laugh and replied:

— March on. Those who are arrested are between the first six and the last six.

— But, as I am not arresting you, said M. de Gesvres, you will march behind me, if you please.

— Well! said d'Artagnan, that is a fine proceeding, duke, and you are right; for, if ever I had had to do patrols near your town chamber, I should have been courteous toward you, I assure you, gentleman's word! Now, one more favor. What does the king want?

— Oh! the king is furious!

— Well! the king, who has taken the trouble to grow furious, will take the trouble to calm himself, that is all. I shall not die of it, I swear to you.

— No; but...

— But I shall be sent to keep company with that poor M. Fouquet? Zounds! he is a gallant gentleman. We shall live together, and quietly, I swear to you.

— Here we are arrived, said the duke. Captain, for mercy's sake! be calm with the king.

— Eh, but, how kind you are to me, duke! said d'Artagnan, looking at M. de Gesvres. I had been told you aspired to unite your guards with my musketeers; I believe this is a famous opportunity!

— I shall not take it, God forbid! captain.

— And why?

— For many reasons first; then for this one, that, if I were to succeed you among the musketeers after having arrested you...

— Ah! you admit you are arresting me?

— No, no!

— Then, say met. If, as you say, you were to succeed me after having met me?

— Your musketeers, at the first firing exercise, would fire on my side by mistake.

— Ah! as for that, I do not say no. Those rogues love me dearly.

Gesvres had d'Artagnan pass first, conducted him directly to the cabinet where the king was waiting for his captain of the musketeers, and placed himself behind his colleague in the antechamber. One could hear very distinctly the king speaking loudly with Colbert, in that same cabinet where Colbert had been able to hear, a few days before, the king speaking loudly with M. d'Artagnan.

The guards remained, in a mounted picket, before the principal door, and the noise spread little by little through the town that the captain of the musketeers had just been arrested by order of the king.

Then, all those men were seen to set in motion, as in the good times of Louis XIII and M. de Tréville; groups formed, the staircases filled; vague murmurs, rising from the courtyards, came mounting up to roll as far as the upper floors, like the hoarse lamentations of the waves at tide.

M. de Gesvres was uneasy. He looked at his guards, who, at first interrogated by the musketeers coming to mingle with their ranks, began to draw apart from them, showing also some uneasiness.

D'Artagnan was certainly far less uneasy than M. de Gesvres, the captain of the guards. From his entry, he had seated himself on the edge of a window, saw all things with his eagle's glance, and did not flinch.

None of the progress of the fermentation that had shown itself at the noise of his arrest had escaped him. He foresaw the moment when the explosion would take place; and we know his foresights were certain.

"It would be rather odd," he thought, "that, this evening, my praetorians should make me king of France. How I should laugh at that!"

But, at the finest moment, all stopped. Guards, musketeers, officers, soldiers, murmurs and uneasiness dispersed, vanished, faded; no more tempest, no more threat, no more sedition.

A word had calmed the waves.

The king had just had Brienne cry:

— Hush! gentlemen, you are hindering the king.

D'Artagnan sighed.

— It is over, he said, the musketeers of today are not those of His Majesty Louis XIII. It is over.

— Monsieur d'Artagnan with the king! cried an usher.

Chapter CCLIX — King Louis XIV

The king was seated in his cabinet, his back turned to the entrance door. Facing him was a mirror in which, while shuffling his papers, it sufficed him to cast a glance to see those who arrived before him.

He did not stir at d'Artagnan's arrival, and folded over his letters and his plans the great green silk cloth that served him to hide his secrets from intruders.

D'Artagnan understood the game and remained in the rear; so that after a moment the king, who heard nothing and saw only out of the corner of his eye, was obliged to cry:

— Is he not there, M. d'Artagnan?

— Here I am, replied the musketeer, advancing.

— Well! monsieur, said the king, fixing his clear eye on d'Artagnan, what have you to say to me?

— I, Sire? replied the latter, who was watching for the adversary's first blow to make a good riposte; I? I have nothing to say to Your Majesty, save that you have had me arrested and that here I am.

The king was about to reply that he had not had d'Artagnan arrested; but that phrase seemed to him an excuse and he held his tongue.

D'Artagnan kept an obstinate silence.

— Monsieur, resumed the king, what had I charged you to go and do at Belle-Île? Tell me, I pray you.

The king, in pronouncing these words, looked fixedly at his captain.

Here, d'Artagnan was too happy; the king was giving him so fair a game!

— I believe, he replied, that Your Majesty does me the honor of asking me what I went to do at Belle-Île?

— Yes, monsieur.

— Well! Sire, I know nothing of it; it is not of me one should ask that, it is of that infinite number of officers of every sort, to whom had been given an infinite number of orders of all kinds, while to me, chief of the expedition, nothing precise had been ordered.

The king was wounded; he showed it by his reply.

— Monsieur, he replied, orders were given only to those who were judged faithful.

— Which is why I am astonished, Sire, retorted the musketeer, that a captain like myself, who is worth a marshal of France, should have found himself under the orders of five or six lieutenants or majors, good for making spies, that is possible, but in no way good for conducting war expeditions. It is on this that I came to ask Your Majesty for explanations, when the door was refused me; which, last outrage to a brave man, led me to quit the service of Your Majesty.

— Monsieur, replied the king, you always believe yourself living in a century where kings were, as you complain of having been, under the orders and at the discretion of their inferiors. You seem to me to forget too much that a king owes account of his actions to God alone.

— I forget nothing at all, Sire, said the musketeer, wounded in turn by the lesson. Besides, I do not see wherein an honest man, when he asks the king wherein he has ill served him, offends.

— You have ill served me, monsieur, in taking the part of my enemies against me.

— Who are your enemies, Sire?

— Those whom I sent you to fight.

— Two men! enemies of the army of Your Majesty! It is not credible, Sire.

— You have not to judge my will.

— I have to judge my friendships, Sire.

— He who serves his friends serves not his master.

— I had so well understood it, Sire, that I respectfully offered my resignation to Your Majesty.

— And I accepted it, monsieur, said the king. Before parting from you, I wished to prove to you that I knew how to keep my word.

— Your Majesty has kept more than your word; for Your Majesty had me arrested, said d'Artagnan with his coldly railing air; you had not promised me that.

The king disdained this pleasantry, and, coming to the serious:

— Let us see, monsieur, he said, to what your disobedience has forced me.

— My disobedience? cried d'Artagnan, red with anger.

— It is the gentlest name I could find, pursued the king. My idea, mine, was to take and punish rebels; had I to trouble myself whether the rebels were your friends?

— But I had to trouble myself about it, I, answered d'Artagnan. It was a cruelty in Your Majesty to send me to take my friends to bring them to your gallows.

— It was, monsieur, a trial I had to make upon the pretended servants who eat my bread and must defend my person. The trial has ill succeeded, Monsieur d'Artagnan.

— For a bad servant that Your Majesty loses, said the musketeer with bitterness, there are ten who, that same day, proved themselves. Listen to me, Sire; I am not used to that sort of service, I. I am a rebellious sword when it is a question of doing evil. It was ill in me to go pursue, to the death, two men whose life M. Fouquet, the savior of Your Majesty, had asked you for. Moreover, those two men were my friends. They were not attacking Your Majesty; they were succumbing under the weight of a blind anger. Besides, why were they not let flee? What crime had they committed? I admit that you dispute my right to judge their conduct. But, why suspect me before the act? why surround me with spies? why dishonor me before the army! why, I, in whom you have until now shown the most entire confidence, I who, for thirty years, am attached to your person and have given you a thousand proofs of devotion — for I must say it, today that I am accused — why reduce me to seeing three thousand soldiers of the king march in battle array against two men?

— One would say you forget what those men did to me? said the king in a muffled voice, and that it was not their fault that I was not lost.

— Sire, one would say you forget that I was there!

— Enough, Monsieur d'Artagnan, enough of those dominating interests that come to steal the sun from my interests. I am founding a State in which there shall be but one master, I promised you that of old; the moment is come to keep my promise. You wish to be, according to your tastes and your friendships, free to entangle my plans and to save my enemies? I break you or I quit you. Seek a more complaisant master. I know well another king would not conduct himself as I do, and that he would let himself be dominated by you, risking some day to send you to keep company with M. Fouquet and the others; but I have good memory, and, for me, services are sacred titles to gratitude, to impunity. You shall have, Monsieur d'Artagnan, but this lesson to punish your indiscipline, and I shall not imitate my predecessors in their anger, not having imitated them in their favor. And then other reasons make me act gently toward you: it is that, first, you are a man of sense, man of great sense, man of heart, and that you will be a good servant for whoever shall have tamed you; it is next that you are going to cease having motives for insubordination. Your friends are destroyed or ruined by me. Those points of support on which, instinctively, your capricious mind reposed, I have made them disappear. At this hour, my soldiers have taken or killed the rebels of Belle-Île.

D'Artagnan grew pale.

— Taken or killed? he cried. Oh! Sire, if you thought what you are saying there, and if you were sure of telling me the truth, I should forget all that is just, all that is magnanimous in your words, to call you a barbarous king and an unnatural man. But I pardon you those words, he said, smiling with pride; I pardon them to the young prince who knows not, who cannot understand what are men such as M. d'Herblay, such as M. du Vallon, such as myself. Taken or killed? Ah! ah! Sire, tell me, if the news be true, how many men and how much money it costs you. We shall count afterward whether the gain was worth the stake.

As he was still speaking, the king approached him in anger, and said to him:

— Monsieur d'Artagnan, those are answers of a rebel! Be so good as to tell me, if you please, who is the king of France? Do you know another?

— Sire, replied coldly the captain of the musketeers, I remember that one morning you addressed that question, at Vaux, to many people who knew not how to answer it, while I answered it. If I recognized the king that day, when the thing was not easy, I believe it would be useless to ask me, today that Your Majesty is alone with me.

At these words, Louis XIV lowered his eyes. It seemed to him that the shade of the unhappy Philippe had just passed between d'Artagnan and him, to evoke the memory of that terrible adventure.

Almost at the same moment, an officer entered, handed a dispatch to the king, who in turn changed color in reading it.

D'Artagnan noticed it. The king remained motionless and silent, after having read it a second time. Then, suddenly taking his resolve:

— Monsieur, he said, what I am told, you would learn later; better that I tell you and that you learn it from the mouth of the king. A combat has taken place at Belle-Île.

— Ah! ah! made d'Artagnan with a calm air, while his heart beat as if to burst his breast. Well! Sire?

— Well! monsieur, I have lost a hundred and six men.

A flash of joy and of pride shone in d'Artagnan's eyes.

— And the rebels? said he.

— The rebels have fled, said the king.

D'Artagnan uttered a cry of triumph.

— Only, added the king, I have a fleet that closely blocks Belle-Île, and I have certainty that not a single boat shall escape.

— So that, said the musketeer returned to his dark thoughts, if those two gentlemen are taken?...

— They will be hanged, said the king tranquilly.

— And they know it? replied d'Artagnan, who repressed a shudder.

— They know it, since you were to tell them, and all the country knows it.

— Then, Sire, they will not be taken alive, I warrant you.

— Ah! made the king with negligence and taking up his letter again. Well! they will be taken dead, Monsieur d'Artagnan, and that will come to the same, since I took them only to have them hanged.

D'Artagnan wiped the sweat that flowed from his brow.

— I told you, pursued Louis XIV, that I should be to you one day an affectionate, generous and constant master. You are today the only man of former times worthy of my anger or of my friendship. I shall spare you neither the one nor the other according to your conduct. Would you understand, Monsieur d'Artagnan, to serve a king who should have a hundred other kings, his equals, in the realm?

"Could I, tell me, do with that weakness the great things I meditate? Have you ever seen the artist practice solid works with a rebellious instrument? Far from us, monsieur, those old leavens of feudal abuses! The Fronde, which was to ruin the monarchy, has emancipated it. I am master in my own house, Captain d'Artagnan, and I shall have servants who, perhaps lacking your genius, shall push devotion and obedience to heroism. What matters, I ask you, what matters that God has not given genius to arms and legs? It is to the head that he gives it, and to the head, you know, the rest obeys. I am the head, I!

D'Artagnan trembled. Louis continued as if he had seen nothing, though that trembling had not escaped him.

— Now, let us conclude between us two this bargain that I promised you to make, one day when you found me very small, at Blois. Be grateful to me, monsieur, for making no one pay the tears of shame that I then shed. Look around you: the great heads are bowed. Bow yourself like them, or choose the exile that shall best suit you. Perhaps, on reflection, you will find that this king is a generous heart who counts enough on your loyalty to leave you, knowing you discontented, when you possess the secret of the State. You are a brave man, I know it. Why did you judge me before the term? Judge me from this day, d'Artagnan, and be severe as long as it shall please you.

D'Artagnan remained stunned, mute, floating for the first time in his life. He had just found an adversary worthy of him. It was no longer ruse, it was calculation; it was no longer violence, it was force; it was no longer anger, it was will; it was no longer bragging, it was counsel. That young man, who had overthrown Fouquet, and who could do without d'Artagnan, disarranged all the somewhat stubborn calculations of the musketeer.

— Come, what stops you? said the king to him with gentleness. You have given your resignation; do you wish me to refuse it? I grant that it will be hard for an old captain to go back on his ill humor.

— Oh! replied d'Artagnan melancholically, that is not my gravest care. I hesitate to take back my resignation, because I am old facing you and have habits hard to lose. Henceforth, there will be need of courtiers who know how to amuse you, of fools who know how to get themselves killed for what you call your great works. Great, they will be, I feel it; but, if by chance I were to end by not finding them such? I have seen war, Sire; I have seen peace; I have served Richelieu and Mazarin; I have been singed with your father at the fire of La Rochelle, riddled with blows like a sieve, having renewed my skin more than ten times, like serpents. After affronts and injustices, I have a commandment which was formerly something, because it gave the right to speak as one wished to the king. But your captain of the musketeers shall henceforth be an officer guarding the low gates. Truly, Sire, if such must thenceforth be the employment, profit by our being well together to take it from me. Do not go believing I have kept rancor; no, you have tamed me, as you say; but, it must be owned, in dominating me, you have diminished me, in bowing me you have convinced me of weakness. If you knew how well it goes to carry the head high, and how piteous a figure I shall cut sniffing the dust of your carpets! oh! Sire, I sincerely regret, and you will regret like me, that time when the king of France saw in his vestibules all those insolent gentlemen, lean, ever grumbling, surly, mastiffs who bit mortally on battle days. Those folk are the best courtiers for the hand that feeds them, they lick it; but, for the hand that strikes them, oh! the fine bite! A little gold on the braids of those cloaks, a little belly in the breeches, a little gray in those dry hairs, and you shall see the fine dukes and peers, the proud marshals of France! But why say all that? The king is my master, he wills that I make verses, he wills that I polish, with satin shoes, the mosaics of his antechambers; zounds! it is difficult, but I have done more difficult than that. I shall do it. Why shall I do it? Because I love money? I have some. Because I am ambitious? My career is bounded. Because I love the Court? No. I shall stay, because I have the habit, for thirty years, of going to take the password from the king, and of hearing myself say: 'Good evening, d'Artagnan,' with a smile I did not sue for. That smile, I shall sue for. Are you content, Sire?

And d'Artagnan slowly bowed his silver head, on which the king, smiling, placed his white hand with pride.

— Thanks, my old servant, my faithful friend, said he. Since, from today, I have no more enemy, in France, it remains for me to send you upon a foreign field to gather your marshal's baton. Count on me to find the occasion. Meanwhile, eat my best bread and sleep in peace.

— That's right! said d'Artagnan, moved. But those poor folk of Belle-Île? the one especially, so good and so brave?

— Are you asking me their pardon?

— On my knees, Sire.

— Well! go bear it to them, if there be yet time. But you pledge yourself for them!

— I pledge my life!

— Go. Tomorrow I leave for Paris. Be returned; for I will no longer that you leave me.

— Be tranquil, Sire, cried d'Artagnan, kissing the king's hand.

And he darted, his heart swollen with joy, out of the château, on the road to Belle-Île.

Chapter CCLX — The Friends of M. Fouquet

The king had returned to Paris, and with him d'Artagnan, who, in twenty-four hours, having taken with the greatest care all his information at Belle-Île, knew nothing of the secret so well kept by the heavy rock of Locmaria, heroic tomb of Porthos.

The captain of the musketeers knew only what those two valiant men, what those two friends, whose life he had so nobly defended and tried to save, aided by three faithful Bretons, had accomplished against an entire army. He had been able to see, flung upon the neighboring moor, the human debris that had stained with blood the flints scattered in the heather.

He knew also that a shallop had been sighted far out at sea, and that, like a bird of prey, a royal vessel had pursued, overtaken and devoured that poor little bird fleeing at full wing.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”