Part 24

Rochester hastened to repeat the princess’s command. A minute later, the boat touched the shore.

“Let us disembark, gentlemen,” said Lady Henriette, going to take the arm that Rochester offered her, although Buckingham was nearer to her and had presented his own.

Then Rochester, with a poorly disguised pride that pierced the heart of the unhappy Buckingham through and through, led the princess across the little bridge that the royal crew had thrown from the royal barge onto the bank.

“Where is Your Grace going?” asked Rochester.

“As you see, my lord, toward that good Parry who wanders, as Lord Buckingham said, and seeks me with eyes dimmed by the tears he has shed over our misfortunes.”

“Oh! my God!” said Rochester, “how sad Your Highness is today, madam! We truly seem to him like ridiculous fools.”

“Speak for yourself, my lord,” Buckingham interrupted with vexation; “I displease Her Highness so utterly that I seem to her to be absolutely nothing.”

Neither Rochester nor the princess answered; one merely saw Lady Henriette draw her cavalier along at a quicker pace. Buckingham remained behind and took advantage of this isolation to vent, upon his handkerchief, bites so furious that the batiste was in shreds at the third gnash of his teeth.

“Parry, good Parry,” said the princess in her little voice, “come this way; I see that you are looking for me, and I am waiting.”

“Ah! madam,” said Rochester, coming charitably to the aid of his companion, who, as we have said, had remained behind, “if Parry does not see Your Highness, the man who follows him is a sufficient guide, even for a blind man; for, in truth, he has eyes of flame; that man is a beacon with a double lamp.”

“Illuminating a very handsome and very martial face,” said the princess, resolved to pick a quarrel at every turn.

Rochester bowed.

“One of those vigorous soldier’s heads such as are seen only in France,” added the princess with the persistence of a woman sure of her impunity.

Rochester and Buckingham looked at one another as if to say: “But what is the matter with her?”

“See, Mr. Buckingham, what Parry wants,” said Lady Henriette; “go.”

The young man, who regarded this order as a favor, took heart again and ran to meet Parry, who, still followed by d’Artagnan, advanced slowly toward the noble company. Parry walked slowly because of his age. D’Artagnan walked slowly and nobly, as d’Artagnan doubled by a third of a million should walk, that is to say, without bravado, but also without timidity. When Buckingham, who had shown great eagerness to follow the princess’s wishes—she having stopped upon a marble bench, as if tired by the few steps she had just taken—when Buckingham, we say, was but a few paces from Parry, the latter recognized him.

“Ah! my lord,” he said, quite out of breath, “does Your Grace wish to obey the king?”

“In what, Mr. Parry?” asked the young man with a sort of coldness tempered by the desire to please the princess.

“Why, His Majesty begs Your Grace to present Monsieur to Lady Henriette Stuart.”

“Monsieur who, first?” asked the duke haughtily.

D’Artagnan, as we know, was easily startled; the tone of Lord Buckingham displeased him. He looked the courtier straight in the eyes, and two flashes shone beneath his frowning brows. Then, making an effort upon himself:

“The Chevalier d’Artagnan, my lord,” he answered tranquilly.

“Pardon, monsieur, but that name tells me your name, that is all.”

“That is to say?”

“That is to say that I do not know you.”

“I am happier than you, monsieur,” replied d’Artagnan, “for I have had the honor of knowing much of your family, and particularly the Lord Duke of Buckingham, your illustrious father.”

“My father?” said Buckingham. “Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me now that I recall… The Chevalier d’Artagnan, did you say?”

D’Artagnan bowed.

“In person,” said he.

“Pardon, are you not one of those Frenchmen who had certain secret dealings with my father?”

“Precisely, Monsieur le Duc, I am one of those Frenchmen.”

“Then, monsieur, allow me to tell you that it is strange that my father, in his lifetime, never heard tell of you.”

“No, monsieur, but he heard tell of me at the moment of his death; it was I who had passed to him, by the valet de chambre of Queen Anne of Austria, the warning of the danger he was running; unfortunately the warning arrived too late.”

“No matter, monsieur,” said Buckingham, “I understand now that, having intended to render a service to the father, you come to claim the protection of the son.”

“First of all, my lord,” d’Artagnan replied phlegmatically, “I claim the protection of no one. His Majesty King Charles II, to whom I have had the honor of rendering some services (I must tell you, monsieur, that my life has been spent in that occupation), King Charles II, then, who is pleased to honor me with some benevolence, has desired that I be presented to Lady Henriette, his sister, to whom I may perhaps also have the happiness to be useful in the future. Now, the king knew you to be at this moment near Her Highness, and directed me to you, through the intermediation of Parry. There is no other mystery. I ask absolutely nothing of you, and if you will not present me to Her Highness, I shall have the sorrow of doing without you and the boldness to present myself.”

“At least, monsieur,” replied Buckingham, who was bent on having the last word, “you will not shrink from an explanation provoked by yourself.”

“I never shrink, monsieur,” said d’Artagnan.

“You must then know, since you had secret dealings with my father, some particular detail?”

“Those dealings are already far from us, monsieur, for you were not yet born, and for a few unhappy diamond studs that I received from his hands and carried back to France, it is truly not worth the trouble to awaken so many memories.”

“Ah! monsieur,” said Buckingham quickly, approaching d’Artagnan and offering his hand, “is it then you! You whom my father sought so much, and who might have expected so much from us!”

“To expect, monsieur! in truth, that is my strong point, and all my life I have expected.”

Meanwhile the princess, weary of not seeing the stranger come to her, had risen and drawn near.

“At least, monsieur,” said Buckingham, “you will not wait for that presentation which you claim of me.”

Then, turning and bowing before Lady Henriette:

“Madam,” said the young man, “the king your brother desires that I have the honor of presenting to Your Highness the Chevalier d’Artagnan.”

“So that Your Highness may have, should need arise, a solid support and a sure friend,” added Parry.

D’Artagnan bowed.

“Have you something further to say, Parry?” replied Lady Henriette, smiling at d’Artagnan, while addressing the old servant.

“Yes, madam, the king desires that Your Highness religiously keep in her memory the name and remember the merit of M. d’Artagnan, to whom His Majesty owes, she says, the recovery of his kingdom.”

Buckingham, the princess, and Rochester looked at one another in astonishment.

“That,” said d’Artagnan, “is another little secret of which, in all probability, I shall not boast to the son of His Majesty King Charles II, as I did to you regarding the diamond studs.”

“Madam,” said Buckingham, “Monsieur has, for the second time, recalled to my memory an event that excites my curiosity so greatly that I shall dare ask your permission to withdraw him from you a moment, to speak with him in private.”

“Do so, my lord,” said the princess, “but quickly return to the sister this friend so devoted to the brother.”

And she took Rochester’s arm again, while Buckingham took that of d’Artagnan.

“Oh! tell me then, chevalier,” said Buckingham, “all that affair of the diamonds, which no one knows in England, not even the son of him who was its hero.”

“My lord, a single person had the right to tell all that affair, as you call it, and that was your father; he judged it proper to be silent, and I shall ask your permission to imitate him.”

And d’Artagnan bowed like a man upon whom it is evident no entreaty will have any hold.

“Since it is thus, monsieur,” said Buckingham, “pardon me my indiscretion, I pray you; and if one day, I too, were to go to France…”

And he turned to give a last look at the princess, who cared little for him, wholly occupied or appearing to be with Rochester’s conversation.

Buckingham sighed.

“Well?” asked d’Artagnan.

“I was saying, then, that if one day I too were to go to France…”

“You will go, my lord,” said d’Artagnan smiling, “that I warrant you.”

“And why so?”

“Oh! I have strange ways of predicting, I; and once I predict, I rarely err. So, if you come to France?”

“Well! monsieur, you to whom kings ask that precious friendship which restores them crowns, I shall dare ask a little of that great interest you vowed to my father.”

“My lord,” replied d’Artagnan, “believe that I shall hold myself for much honored, if, over there, you will deign still to remember that you saw me here. And now, permit…”

Turning then toward Lady Henriette:

“Madam,” he said, “Your Highness is a daughter of France, and, in that quality, I hope to see her again in Paris. One of my happy days will be that on which Your Highness gives me some order that recalls to me that she has not forgotten the recommendations of her august brother.”

And he bowed before the young princess, who gave him her hand to kiss with a wholly royal grace.

“Ah! madam,” said Buckingham in a low voice, “what would one have to do to obtain from Your Highness such a favor?”

“Why, my lord,” replied Lady Henriette, “ask M. d’Artagnan, he will tell you.”

Chapter XXXVI — How d’Artagnan, like a fairy, drew a pleasure-house from a deal box

The king’s words, touching Monck’s vanity, had inspired in d’Artagnan no small apprehension. The lieutenant had all his life the great art of choosing his enemies, and when he had taken them implacable and invincible, it was because he could not, under any pretext, do otherwise. But points of view change much in life. It is a magic lantern whose eye of man modifies each year the aspects. The result is that, from the last day of a year when one saw white, to the first day of the other when one will see black, there is but the space of a night. Now, d’Artagnan, when he departed from Calais with his ten rascals, cared as little to take to task Goliath, Nebuchadnezzar, or Holofernes, as to cross swords with a recruit, or to argue with his hostess. Then he resembled the hawk, fasting, attacking a ram. Hunger blinds. But d’Artagnan sated, d’Artagnan rich, d’Artagnan victorious, d’Artagnan proud of so difficult a triumph, d’Artagnan had too much to lose not to count digit by digit with probable ill fortune.

He was thinking, then, as he returned from his presentation, of but one thing: to spare a man as powerful as Monck, a man whom Charles spared also, king though he was; for, hardly established, the protégé might still have need of the protector, and would not refuse him, therefore, in due case, the slight satisfaction of deporting M. d’Artagnan, or of shutting him up in some tower of Middlesex, or of having him somewhat drowned on the sea passage from Dover to Boulogne. Such satisfactions are rendered from kings to viceroys, without further consequence.

It was not even needful that the king be active in this counterpart of the piece where Monck would take his revenge. The king’s role would be simply to pardon the viceroy of Ireland all he might have undertaken against d’Artagnan. Nothing else was required to set the conscience of the Duke of Albermale at rest than a _te absolvo_ said in laughter, or the scrawl of the Charles, _the king_, traced at the foot of a parchment; and with those two words spoken, or those three words written, poor d’Artagnan was forever buried beneath the ruins of his imagination. And then, a thing rather alarming for a man as farseeing as our musketeer was, he saw himself alone, and the friendship of Athos sufficed not to reassure him. Certainly, had it been a matter of a good distribution of sword-thrusts, the musketeer would have counted on his companion; but in delicacies with a king, when the perchance of an untoward chance should come to aid the justification of Monck or of Charles II, d’Artagnan knew Athos well enough to be sure he would give the fairest share to the loyalty of the survivor, and content himself with shedding floods of tears upon the tomb of the dead, ready, if the dead were his friend, to compose thereafter his epitaph with the most pompous superlatives.

“Decidedly,” thought the Gascon—and this thought was the result of the reflections he had just made silently, and which we have just made aloud—“decidedly I must reconcile myself with M. Monck, and acquire proof of his perfect indifference to the past. If, which God forbid, he is still sulky and reserved in the expression of that sentiment, I give my money to Athos to take away, I remain in England just long enough to unmask him; then, as I have a quick eye and a light foot, I seize the first hostile sign, I decamp, I hide at Lord Buckingham’s, who seems to me a good fellow at bottom, and in reward for his hospitality, I then tell him all that story of the diamonds, which can compromise no one now but an old queen, who, being the wife of a green miser like M. de Mazarin, may well pass for having been formerly the mistress of a handsome lord like Buckingham. Morbleu! it is said, and this Monck shall not get the better of me. Eh! besides, an idea!”

It is known that, in general, ideas were not what d’Artagnan lacked. It was that, during his monologue, d’Artagnan had just buttoned himself up to the chin, and nothing excited his imagination like this preparation for some combat, named by the Romans accinctio. He arrived quite heated at the dwelling of the Duke of Albermale. He was introduced to the viceroy with a celerity that proved he was regarded as belonging to the house. Monck was in his study.

“My lord,” said d’Artagnan to him, with that expression of frankness which the Gascon knew so well how to spread upon his crafty face, “my lord, I come to ask a counsel of Your Grace.”

Monck, as much buttoned up morally as his adversary was physically, Monck replied:

“Ask, my dear.”

And his face presented an expression no less open than that of d’Artagnan.

“My lord, before all else, promise me secrecy and indulgence.”

“I promise you whatever you wish. What is it? speak!”

“It is, my lord, that I am not altogether content with the king.”

“Ah! indeed! And in what, if you please, my dear lieutenant?”

“In that His Majesty sometimes gives himself up to jests most compromising for his servants, and jesting, my lord, is a weapon that wounds sorely men of the sword like us.”

Monck made every effort not to betray his thought; but d’Artagnan watched him with too sustained an attention not to perceive an imperceptible redness upon his cheeks.

“But as for me,” said Monck with the most natural air in the world, “I am no enemy to jesting, my dear M. d’Artagnan; my soldiers would tell you even that many a time, in camp, I listened quite indifferently, and with a certain taste even, to the satirical songs which, from Lambert’s army, passed into mine, and which certainly would have flayed the ears of a general more susceptible than I am.”

“Oh! my lord,” said d’Artagnan, “I know that you are a complete man, I know that you have long been placed above human miseries, but there are jests and jests, and certain ones, as for me, have the privilege of irritating me beyond all expression.”

“May one know which, _my dear_?”

“Those directed against my friends or against the people I respect, my lord.”

Monck made an imperceptible movement that d’Artagnan perceived.

“And in what,” asked Monck, “in what can the pin-prick that grazes another tickle your skin? Tell me that, come now!”

“My lord, I shall explain it to you in a single phrase; it was a question of you.”

Monck took a step toward d’Artagnan.

“Of me?” said he.

“Yes, and that is what I cannot explain to myself; but also perhaps it is for want of knowing his character. How can the king have the heart to rally a man who has rendered him so many and such great services? How to understand that he amuses himself with setting a lion like you against a gnat like me?”

“Also I see that in no way,” said Monck.

“Indeed! Why, the king, who owed me a reward, could have rewarded me as a soldier, without imagining this story of ransom that touches you, my lord.”

“No,” said Monck, laughing, “it touches me in no way, I swear to you.”

“Not as regards me, I understand; you know me, my lord, I am so discreet that the tomb would seem garrulous beside me; but… do you understand, my lord?”

“No,” Monck persisted in saying.

“If another knew the secret that I know…”

“What secret?”

“Why, my lord, that unhappy secret of Newcastle.”

“Ah! the million of the Count de La Fère?”

“No, my lord, no; the enterprise undertaken upon Your Grace.”

“It was well played, chevalier, that is all; and there was nothing to say; you are a man of war, brave and cunning at once, which proves that you unite the qualities of Fabius and Hannibal. So, you used your means, force and ruse; there is nothing to say to that, and it was for me to guard myself.”

“Eh! I know it, my lord, and I expected no less of your impartiality; also, if there were only the abduction in itself, morbleu! it would be nothing; but there is…”

“What?”

“The circumstances of that abduction.”

“What circumstances?”

“You know well, my lord, what I mean.”

“No, God damn me!”

“There is… it is that in truth it is very difficult to say.”

“There is?”

“Why, there is that devil of a box.”

Monck reddened visibly.

“That indignity of a box,” continued d’Artagnan, “of a deal box, you know?”

“Bah! I had forgotten.”

“In deal,” continued d’Artagnan, “with holes for the nose and mouth. In truth, my lord, all the rest was well; but the box, the box! decidedly, it was a poor jest.”

Monck writhed in every direction.

“And yet, that I should have done that,” resumed d’Artagnan, “I, a captain of adventures, is quite simple, because, beside the somewhat light action I committed, but which the gravity of the situation may excuse, I have circumspection and reserve.”

“Oh!” said Monck, “believe that I know you well, M. d’Artagnan, and that I appreciate you.”

D’Artagnan lost not Monck from sight, studying all that passed in the general’s mind as he spoke.

“But it is not a question of me,” he resumed.

“Finally, of whom is it a question then?” asked Monck, who was beginning to lose patience.

“It is a question of the king, who will never hold his tongue.”

“Eh well! if he were to speak, after all?” said Monck, stammering.

“My lord,” resumed d’Artagnan, “do not dissemble, I beg you, with a man who speaks as frankly as I do. You have the right to bristle your susceptibilities, however mild they be. The deuce! it is not the place of a serious man like you, of a man who plays with crowns and sceptres like a Bohemian with balls; it is not the place of a serious man, I say, to be shut up in a box, like a curious object of natural history; for, after all, you understand, it would make all your enemies die of laughing, and you are so great, so noble, so generous, that you must have many. That secret might make half the human race die of laughing, if one represented you in that box. Now, it is not decent that one should thus laugh at the second personage of this realm.”

Monck quite lost his composure at the idea of seeing himself represented in his box.

Ridicule, as d’Artagnan had judiciously foreseen, did with him what neither the chances of war, nor the desires of ambition, nor the fear of death had been able to do.

“Good!” thought the Gascon; “he is afraid; I am saved.”

“Oh! as for the king,” said Monck, “fear nothing, dear M. d’Artagnan; the king will not jest with Monck, I swear to you!”

The flash of his eyes was intercepted on the way by d’Artagnan. Monck softened at once.

“The king,” he continued, “is of too noble a nature, the king has a heart too highly placed to wish ill to him who does him good.”

“Oh! certainly,” cried d’Artagnan. “I am entirely of your opinion as to the king’s heart, but not as to his head; he is good, but he is light.”

“The king will not be light with Monck, be tranquil.”

“So, you are tranquil, you, my lord?”

“On that side at least, yes, perfectly.”

“Oh! I understand you, you are tranquil on the king’s side.”

“I told you so.”

“But you are not as tranquil on mine?”

“I thought I had affirmed to you that I believed in your loyalty and your discretion.”

“Doubtless, doubtless; but you will reflect upon one thing…”

“Upon which?…”

“It is that I am not alone, it is that I have companions; and what companions!”

“Oh! yes, I know them.”

“Unfortunately, my lord, and they know you also.”

“Well?”

“Well! they are over there, at Boulogne, they await me.”

“And you fear…?”

“Yes, I fear that in my absence… Parbleu! If I were near them, I should answer well for their silence.”

“Had I not reason to tell you that the danger, if there were danger, would not come from His Majesty, however much disposed to jesting she might be, but from your companions, as you say… To be rallied by a king is still tolerable, but by army blackguards… Goddam!”

“Yes, I understand, it is insupportable; and that is why, my lord, I came to say to you: ‘Do you not believe it would be well that I depart for France as soon as possible?’”

“Certainly, if you believe that your presence…”

“Imposes upon all those knaves? Of that, oh! I am sure, my lord.”

“Your presence will not prevent the rumor from spreading if it has already transpired.”

“Oh! it has not transpired, my lord, I warrant you. In any case, believe that I am quite determined upon a great thing.”

“Which?”

“To break the head of the first who shall have propagated that rumor and of the first who shall have heard it. After which, I return to England to seek an asylum and perhaps employment near Your Grace.”

“Oh! return, return!”

“Unfortunately, my lord, I know no one here but you, and I shall not find you again, or you will have forgotten me in your greatness.”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”