Part 11

— You are right, sir, said Raoul, making a violent effort upon himself, I know only my father's name; but I know too well how truly Monsieur the Count de La Fère is a man of worth and honor, to fear for a single instant, as you seem to say, that there is a stain upon my birth. This ignorance in which I live as to my mother's name is therefore for me only a misfortune and not a disgrace. Now, you lack loyalty, sir; you lack courtesy in reproaching me with a misfortune. No matter, the insult exists, and this time I hold myself for insulted! Therefore, it is a settled thing: after you have settled your quarrel with Monsieur d'Artagnan, you will have to deal with me, if you please.

— Oh! oh! answered de Wardes with a bitter smile, I admire your prudence, sir; but a moment ago you promised me a thrust of the sword from Monsieur d'Artagnan, and it is after that thrust of the sword, already received by me, that you offer me yours.

— Do not trouble yourself, answered Raoul with smothered anger; Monsieur d'Artagnan is a skilled man in the use of arms, and I shall ask of him this favor, that he do for you what he did for your father, that is to say, that he not kill you outright, so that he may leave me the pleasure, when you are healed, of killing you in earnest, for you are a wicked-hearted man, Monsieur de Wardes, and one cannot, in truth, take too many precautions against you.

— Sir, I shall take precautions against yourself, said de Wardes, be assured.

— Sir, said Buckingham, allow me to translate your words by a piece of advice which I am about to give to Monsieur de Bragelonne: Monsieur de Bragelonne, wear a cuirass.

De Wardes clenched his fists.

— Ah! I understand, said he, these gentlemen are waiting for the moment when they shall have taken this precaution to measure themselves against me.

— Come! sir, said Raoul, since you absolutely will have it, let us make an end.

And he took a step toward de Wardes, extending his sword.

— What are you doing? asked Buckingham.

— Be at ease, said Raoul, it will not be long.

De Wardes fell into guard: the blades crossed. De Wardes sprang with such precipitancy upon Raoul, that at the first grating of the steel, it was evident to Buckingham that Raoul was sparing his adversary.

Buckingham stepped back a pace and watched the struggle. Raoul was calm as if he had been playing with a foil, instead of playing with a sword; he disengaged his weapon, which was locked to the hilt, by taking a step backward, parried with counter-thrusts the three or four blows that de Wardes aimed at him; then, upon a threat in low quart which de Wardes parried by the circle, he bound the sword and sent it twenty paces to the other side of the barrier.

Then, as de Wardes remained disarmed and stunned, Raoul returned his sword to its scabbard, seized him by the collar and belt, and flung him to the other side of the barrier, trembling and howling with rage.

— Farewell! farewell! murmured de Wardes, as he rose and picked up his sword.

— Eh! pardieu! said Raoul, I have been telling you nothing else for an hour.

Then, turning toward Buckingham:

— Duke, said he, not a word of all this, I beg of you; I am ashamed to have come to such an extremity, but anger carried me away. I ask your pardon for it, forget.

— Ah! dear vicomte, said the duke, pressing that hand at once so rough and so loyal, you will allow me, on the contrary, to remember, and to remember your deliverance; that man is dangerous, he will kill you.

— My father, answered Raoul, lived twenty years under the threat of a far more redoubtable enemy, and he is not dead. I am of a blood which God favors, Monsieur le Duc.

— Your father had good friends, vicomte.

— Yes, sighed Raoul, friends such as there are no more.

— Oh! say not that, I beg of you, at the moment when I offer you my friendship.

And Buckingham opened his arms to Bragelonne, who gladly received the proffered alliance.

— In my family, added Buckingham, one dies for those one loves, you know that, Monsieur de Bragelonne.

— Yes, duke, I know it, answered Raoul.

Chapter LXXXVIII — What the Chevalier de Lorraine Thought of Madame

Nothing further disturbed the security of the road. Under a pretext which made little noise, Monsieur de Wardes slipped away to go on ahead.

He took Manicamp with him, whose even and dreamy humor served him as a counterbalance.

It is worthy of remark that quarrelsome and restless spirits always find an association to make with gentle and timid characters, as if the ones sought in the contrast a repose for their humor, the others a defense for their own weakness.

Buckingham and Bragelonne, initiating de Guiche into their friendship, formed all along the road a concert of praises in honor of the princess.

Only Bragelonne had obtained that this concert be given in trios instead of proceeding by solos, as de Guiche and his rival seemed to have the dangerous habit of doing.

This method of harmony pleased greatly Madame Henriette, the queen mother; it was perhaps not so much to the taste of the young princess, who was coquettish as a demon, and who, without fear for her voice, sought occasions of peril. She had, indeed, one of those brave and reckless hearts which take pleasure in the extremes of delicacy and seek the steel with a certain appetite for the wound. Thus her glances, her smiles, her attire, inexhaustible projectiles, rained down upon the three young men, riddled them through; and from that bottomless arsenal still issued ogles, blown kisses, and a thousand other delights which went to strike at a distance the gentlemen of the escort, the burghers, the officers of the towns they passed through, the pages, the people, the lackeys: it was a general ravage, a universal devastation.

When Madame arrived at Paris, she had made by the way a hundred thousand lovers, and brought back to Paris half a dozen madmen and two lunatics.

Raoul alone, divining all the seduction of this woman, and because he had his heart full, offering no void where a dart might place itself, Raoul arrived cold and distrustful in the capital of the kingdom. Sometimes, on the road, he talked with the queen of England of that intoxicating charm which Madame left around her, and the mother, whom so many misfortunes and disappointments left experienced, answered him:

— Henriette was destined to be an illustrious woman, whether she were born upon the throne, or whether she were born in obscurity; for she is a woman of imagination, of caprice, and of will.

De Wardes and Manicamp, scouts and couriers, had announced the arrival of the princess. The cortège saw, at Nanterre, appear a brilliant escort of horsemen and carriages.

It was Monsieur, who, followed by the Chevalier de Lorraine and his favorites, themselves followed by a part of the king's military household, came to salute his royal betrothed.

From Saint-Germain, the princess and her mother had changed the travelling coach, a little heavy, a little wearied by the road, for an elegant and rich coupé drawn by six horses, harnessed in white and gold. In this sort of calash appeared, as upon a throne beneath the parasol of embroidered silk with long feather fringes, the young and beautiful princess, whose radiant face received the rosy reflections so soft upon her nacre skin.

Monsieur, arriving near the carriage, was struck by this brilliance; he testified his admiration in terms sufficiently explicit for the Chevalier de Lorraine to shrug his shoulders in the group of courtiers, and for the Comte de Guiche and Buckingham to be struck to the heart. After the civilities were paid and the ceremonial accomplished, the whole cortège resumed more slowly the road to Paris. The presentations had taken place lightly. Monsieur de Buckingham had been pointed out to Monsieur with the other English gentlemen. Monsieur had given to all but a rather slight attention. But on the way, as he saw the duke busy with the same ardor as usual at the doors of the calash:

— Who is that cavalier? he asked the Chevalier de Lorraine, his inseparable.

— He was presented but now to Your Highness, replied the Chevalier de Lorraine; it is the handsome Duke of Buckingham.

— Ah! it is true.

— The knight of Madame, added the favorite with a turn and a tone which only the envious can give to the simplest phrases.

— How! what would you say? replied the prince still riding.

— I said the knight.

— Has Madame then a sworn knight?

— Why! it seems to me you see him as I do; only look at them laughing, and frolicking, and playing Cyrus both together.

— All three.

— How, all three?

— Doubtless; you see well that de Guiche is of it.

— Certainly!… Yes, I see it well… But what does that prove?… That Madame has two knights instead of one.

— You embitter everything, viper.

— I embitter nothing. Ah! my lord, what a badly made mind you have! Here they are doing the honors of the kingdom of France to your wife and you are not content.

The Duke of Orléans dreaded the satirical vein of the chevalier, when he felt it mounted to a certain degree of vigor. He cut it short.

— The princess is pretty, said he negligently as if it were a stranger.

— Yes, replied the chevalier in the same tone.

— You say that yes like a no. She has very beautiful black eyes, it seems to me.

— Small ones.

— That is true, but brilliant. She is of an advantageous height.

— The figure is a little spoiled, my lord.

— I do not say no. The air is noble.

— But the face is thin.

— The teeth seemed to me admirable.

— One sees them. The mouth is rather large. God be thanked! decidedly, my lord, I was wrong; you are handsomer than your wife.

— And do you find also that I am handsomer than Buckingham? Tell me.

— Oh! yes, and he feels it well, rely on that; for, see him, he redoubles his attentions near Madame so that you may not eclipse him.

Monsieur made a movement of impatience; but, as he saw a smile of triumph pass upon the lips of the chevalier, he put his horse back to a walk.

— After all, said he, why should I occupy myself any longer with my cousin? Do I not know her? was I not brought up with her? did I not see her quite a child at the Louvre?

— Ah! pardon, my prince, there is a change wrought in her, said the chevalier. At the epoch of which you speak, she was a little less brilliant, and above all much less proud; that evening especially, do you remember it, my lord, when the king would not dance with her, because he found her ugly and ill-dressed?

These words made the Duke of Orléans frown. It was, in fact, but little flattering for him to marry a princess of whom the king had made but small account in her youth.

Perhaps he was going to answer, but at this moment de Guiche left the carriage to draw near the prince. From afar he had seen the prince and the chevalier, and he seemed, with anxious ear, to seek to divine the words which had just been exchanged between Monsieur and his favorite.

The latter, whether from perfidy or impudence, did not take the trouble to dissemble.

— Count, said he, you have good taste.

— Thanks for the compliment, answered de Guiche; but why do you say that to me?

— Why! I appeal to His Highness.

— Doubtless, said Monsieur, and Guiche knows well that I think he is a perfect cavalier.

— This granted, I resume, count; you have been near Madame for eight days, have you not?

— Doubtless, answered de Guiche, blushing in spite of himself.

— Well! tell us frankly what you think of her person.

— Of her person? repeated de Guiche, stupefied.

— Yes, of her person, of her mind, of her, in short…

Dazzled by this question, de Guiche hesitated to answer.

— Come now! come now, de Guiche! resumed the chevalier laughing, say what you think, be frank: Monsieur commands it.

— Yes, yes, be frank, said the prince.

De Guiche stammered some unintelligible words.

— I know well it is delicate, resumed Monsieur; but, after all, you know that one may tell me everything, to me. How do you find her?

To hide what was passing within him, de Guiche had recourse to the only defense in the power of a man taken by surprise: he lied.

— I find Madame, said he, neither well nor ill, but however rather better than ill.

— Eh! dear count, cried the chevalier, you who had made such ecstasies and cries at the sight of her portrait!

De Guiche blushed to the ears. Happily his somewhat lively horse served him, by a swerve, to hide this redness.

— The portrait!… murmured he, drawing near, what portrait?

The chevalier had not left him with his eyes.

— Yes, the portrait. Was the miniature then not like her?

— I know not. I have forgotten that portrait; it has faded from my mind.

— It had nevertheless made a very vivid impression upon you, said the chevalier.

— It is possible.

— Has she wit, at least? asked the duke.

— I believe so, my lord.

— And Monsieur de Buckingham, has he any? said the chevalier.

— I know not.

— I am of the opinion that he has, replied the chevalier, for he makes Madame laugh, and she seems to take great pleasure in his society, which never happens to a woman of wit when she finds herself in the company of a fool.

— Then it is that he has wit, said naively de Guiche, to whose aid Raoul suddenly came, seeing him at grips with that dangerous interlocutor, whom he seized and thus forced to change the conversation.

The entry was brilliant and joyful. The king, to fête his brother, had ordered that things should be magnificently handled. Madame and her mother descended at the Louvre, at that Louvre where, during the times of exile, they had so painfully endured obscurity, misery, and privation. That palace inhospitable to the unhappy daughter of Henri IV, those bare walls, those sunken parquets, those ceilings hung with cobwebs, those vast chimneys with their chipped marbles, those cold hearths which the alms of the Parliament had scarce warmed for them, all had changed face.

Splendid hangings, thick carpets, gleaming flagstones, fresh paintings with broad borders of gold; everywhere candelabra, mirrors, sumptuous furniture; everywhere guards of proud bearing, with floating plumes, a people of valets and courtiers in the antechambers and on the staircases.

In those courts where but lately the grass still grew, as if that ingrate Mazarin had judged it good to prove to the Parisians that solitude and disorder ought to be, with misery and despair, the cortège of fallen monarchies; in those immense courts, mute, desolate, paraded cavaliers whose horses struck from the bright pavements thousands of sparks.

Carriages were peopled with beautiful and young women, who waited, to salute her as she passed, the daughter of that daughter of France who, during her widowhood and her exile, had sometimes not found a stick of wood for her hearth, and a morsel of bread for her table, and whom the humblest servants of the castle disdained.

Thus Madame Henriette re-entered the Louvre with a heart more swollen with sorrow and bitter memories than her daughter, a forgetful and changeable nature, re-entered it with triumph and joy.

She knew well that the brilliant welcome was addressed to the happy mother of a king replaced upon the second throne of Europe, while the ill welcome had been addressed to her, daughter of Henri IV, punished for having been unhappy.

After the princesses had been installed, after they had taken some repose, the men, who had also recovered from their fatigues, resumed their habits and their labors. Bragelonne began by going to see his father.

Athos had set out again for Blois.

He wished to go see Monsieur d'Artagnan.

But he, occupied with the organization of a new military household of the king, had become impossible to find.

Bragelonne fell back upon de Guiche.

But the count had with his tailors and with Manicamp conferences which absorbed his entire day. It was far worse with the Duke of Buckingham. He bought horse upon horse, diamond upon diamond. All that Paris contains of embroiderers, of lapidaries, of tailors, he monopolized.

It was between him and de Guiche a more or less courteous contest for the success of which the duke wished to spend a million, while the Marshal de Grammont had given but sixty thousand livres to de Guiche.

Buckingham laughed and spent his million. De Guiche sighed and would have torn his hair without the counsels of de Wardes.

— A million! repeated de Guiche every day; I shall succumb to it. Why will not the marshal advance me my share of the inheritance?

— Because you would devour it, said Raoul.

— Eh! what matters it to him! If I must die of it, I shall die of it. Then I shall need nothing more.

— But what need to die? said Raoul.

— I will not be vanquished in elegance by an Englishman.

— My dear count, said then Manicamp, elegance is not a costly thing, it is only a difficult thing.

— Yes, but difficult things cost very dear, and I have but sixty thousand livres.

— Pardieu! said de Wardes, you are much embarrassed; spend as much as Buckingham; it is only nine hundred forty thousand livres difference.

— Where to find them?

— Run into debt.

— I already have.

— So much the more reason.

These counsels ended by so exciting de Guiche, that he committed follies when Buckingham was only committing expenses.

The noise of these prodigalities broadened the countenance of all the merchants of Paris, and from the hôtel de Buckingham to the hôtel de Grammont they dreamt of marvels.

During this time, Madame rested, and Bragelonne wrote to Mlle de La Vallière.

Four letters had already escaped his pen, and not one answer arrived, when on the very morning of the ceremony of the marriage, which was to take place at the Palais-Royal, in the chapel, Raoul, at his toilet, heard his valet announce:

— Monsieur de Malicorne.

"What can this Malicorne want with me?" thought Raoul.

— Bid him wait, said he to the lackey.

— It is a gentleman who comes from Blois, said the valet.

— Ah! show him in! cried Raoul eagerly.

Malicorne entered, handsome as a star and bearer of a superb sword.

After having graciously saluted:

— Monsieur de Bragelonne, said he, I bring you a thousand courtesies from a lady.

Raoul blushed.

— From a lady, said he, a lady of Blois?

— Yes, sir, from Mlle de Montalais.

— Ah! thanks, sir, I recognize you now, said Raoul. And what does Mlle de Montalais desire of me?

Malicorne drew from his pocket four letters which he offered to Raoul.

— My letters! is it possible! said the latter, turning pale; my letters still sealed!

— Sir, these letters no longer found at Blois the persons to whom you addressed them; they are returned to you.

— Mlle de La Vallière has left Blois? cried Raoul.

— A week ago.

— And where is she?

— She must be at Paris, sir.

— But how is it known that these letters came from me?

— Mlle de Montalais recognized your writing and your seal, said Malicorne.

Raoul blushed and smiled.

— It is very kind of Mlle Aure, said he; she is always good and charming.

— Always, sir.

— She might well have given me precise information as to Mlle de La Vallière. I should not be searching in this immense Paris.

Malicorne drew from his pocket another packet.

— Perhaps, said he, you will find in this letter what you wish to know.

Raoul broke the seal precipitately. The writing was Mlle Aure's, and this is what the letter contained:

"Paris, Palais-Royal, day of the nuptial blessing."

— What does that mean? asked Raoul of Malicorne; you know it, you, sir?

— Yes, Monsieur le Vicomte.

— For pity's sake, tell me then.

— Impossible, sir.

— Why?

— Because Mlle Aure forbade me to say it.

Raoul looked at this singular personage and remained mute.

— At least, resumed he, is it happy or unhappy for me?

— You will see.

— You are severe in your discretions.

— Sir, a favor.

— In exchange for the one you do not do me?

— Precisely.

— Speak!

— I have the liveliest desire to see the ceremony and I have no admission ticket, despite all the steps I have taken to procure one. Could you get me in?

— Certainly.

— Do that for me, Monsieur le Vicomte, I beg of you.

— I shall do it willingly, sir; accompany me.

— Sir, I am your humble servant.

— I thought you were a friend of Monsieur de Manicamp?

— Yes, sir. But, this morning, as I watched him dress, I let a bottle of varnish fall upon his new coat, and he charged me, sword in hand, so well that I had to flee. That is why I did not ask him for a ticket. He would have killed me.

— That is understandable, said Raoul. I know Manicamp capable of killing the man unhappy enough to commit the crime you have to reproach yourself with in his eyes, but I shall repair the wrong toward you; I fasten my cloak, and I am ready to serve you as guide and introducer.

Chapter LXXXIX — Mademoiselle de Montalais's Surprise

Madame was married at the Palais-Royal, in the chapel, before a world of courtiers severely chosen.

However, despite the high favor indicated by an invitation, Raoul, faithful to his promise, brought in Malicorne, desirous of enjoying that curious spectacle.

When he had discharged this obligation, Raoul drew near de Guiche, who, in contrast with his splendid clothes, showed a face so overturned by grief, that the Duke of Buckingham alone could dispute with him the excess of pallor and dejection.

— Take care, count, said Raoul, approaching his friend and preparing to support him at the moment when the archbishop was blessing the two spouses.

Indeed, one saw Monsieur le Prince de Condé looking with a curious eye upon those two images of desolation, standing like caryatides on the two sides of the nave. The count watched himself more carefully. The ceremony ended, the king and queen passed into the grand salon, where they had Madame and her suite presented to them.

It was observed that the king, who had appeared very enraptured at the sight of his beautiful sister, paid her the most sincere compliments. It was observed that the queen mother, fixing upon Buckingham a long and dreamy glance, leaned toward Mme de Motteville to say to her:

— Do you not find that he resembles his father?

It was observed, finally, that Monsieur observed everybody and appeared rather discontented.

After the reception of the princes and ambassadors, Monsieur asked the king permission to present to him, as well as to Madame, the persons of his new household.

— Do you know, vicomte, asked Monsieur the prince softly of Raoul, whether the household was formed by a person of taste, and whether we shall have some faces tolerably fair?

— I am absolutely ignorant of it, my lord, answered Raoul.

— Oh! you play the ignorant.

— How so, my lord?

— You are the friend of de Guiche, who is of the friends of the prince.

— That is true, my lord: but the thing not interesting me, I have put no question to de Guiche, and, on his side, de Guiche, being not interrogated, has not opened himself to me.

— But Manicamp?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”