Part 1
Alexandre Dumas THE VISCOUNT OF BRAGELONNE VOLUME III
(1848 — 1850)
Table of Contents
Chapter CXXXII — Royal Psychology Chapter CXXXIII — What Neither Naiad nor Dryad Had Foreseen Chapter CXXXIV — The New General of the Jesuits Chapter CXXXV — The Storm Chapter CXXXVI — The Rain Chapter CXXXVII — Tobias Chapter CXXXVIII — Madame's Four Chances Chapter CXXXIX — The Lottery Chapter CXL — Malaga Chapter CXLI — Monsieur de Baisemeaux's Letter Chapter CXLII — Where the Reader Will Pleasantly See That Porthos Has Lost None of His Strength Chapter CXLIII — The Rat and the Cheese Chapter CXLIV — Planchet's Campaign Chapter CXLV — What Is Seen from Planchet's House Chapter CXLVI — How Porthos, Trüchen, and Planchet Parted Friends, Thanks to d'Artagnan Chapter CXLVII — Porthos's Presentation Chapter CXLVIII — Explanations Chapter CXLIX — Madame and de Guiche Chapter CL — Montalais and Malicorne Chapter CLI — How de Wardes Was Received at Court Chapter CLII — The Duel Chapter CLIII — The King's Supper Chapter CLIV — After Supper Chapter CLV — How d'Artagnan Carried Out the Mission with Which the King Had Charged Him Chapter CLVI — The Ambush Chapter CLVII — The Physician Chapter CLVIII — Where d'Artagnan Acknowledges That He Was Mistaken, and That Manicamp Was Right Chapter CLIX — How Good It Is to Have Two Strings to One's Bow Chapter CLX — Monsieur Malicorne, Archivist of the Kingdom of France Chapter CLXI — The Journey Chapter CLXII — Trium-Femina Chapter CLXIII — The First Quarrel Chapter CLXIV — Despair Chapter CLXV — The Flight Chapter CLXVI — How Louis, for His Part, Had Spent the Time from Half Past Ten to Midnight Chapter CLXVII — The Ambassadors Chapter CLXVIII — Chaillot Chapter CLXIX — At Madame's Chapter CLXX — Mademoiselle de La Vallière's Handkerchief Chapter CLXXI — Wherein Is Treated of Gardeners, Ladders, and Maids of Honor Chapter CLXXII — Wherein Is Treated of Carpentry and Wherein Are Given Some Details on the Way of Piercing Staircases Chapter CLXXIII — The Torchlight Walk Chapter CLXXIV — The Apparition Chapter CLXXV — The Portrait Chapter CLXXVI — Hampton Court Chapter CLXXVII — Madame's Courier Chapter CLXXVIII — Saint-Aignan Follows Malicorne's Advice Chapter CLXXIX — Two Old Friends Chapter CLXXX — Wherein Is Seen That a Bargain Which Cannot Be Made with the One May Be Made with the Other Chapter CLXXXI — The Bear's Skin Chapter CLXXXII — At the Queen Mother's Chapter CLXXXIII — Two Friends Chapter CLXXXIV — How Jean de La Fontaine Made His First Tale Chapter CLXXXV — La Fontaine Negotiator Chapter CLXXXVI — The Plate and Diamonds of Madame de Bellière Chapter CLXXXVII — Monsieur de Mazarin's Receipt Chapter CLXXXVIII — Monsieur Colbert's Minute Chapter CLXXXIX — Wherein the Author Seems to Think It Time to Return to the Viscount of Bragelonne Chapter CXC — Bragelonne Continues His Questioning Chapter CXCI — Two Jealousies Chapter CXCII — House Visit Chapter CXCIII — Porthos's Method Chapter CXCIV — The Moving, the Trapdoor, and the Portrait Chapter CXCV — Political Rivals Chapter CXCVI — Romantic Rivals
Chapter CXXXII — Royal Psychology
The king entered his apartments with a rapid step.
Perhaps Louis XIV walked so fast so as not to stagger. He left behind him something like the trace of a mysterious mourning.
That gaiety which everyone had remarked in his bearing upon his arrival, and at which everyone had rejoiced, no one had perhaps fathomed in its true sense; but this stormy departure, this troubled countenance, everyone understood it, or at least believed they understood it easily.
The lightness of Madame, her jests somewhat rough for a touchy character, and above all for the character of a king; the too familiar, no doubt, assimilation of this king to an ordinary man; these were the reasons the assembly gave for the precipitate and unexpected departure of Louis XIV.
Madame, more clear-sighted moreover, did not at first see anything else in it. It was enough for her to have inflicted some small torture of self-love upon him who, forgetting so quickly contracted engagements, seemed to have taken it upon himself to scorn without cause the noblest and most illustrious conquests.
It was not without a certain importance for Madame, in the situation in which things stood, to show the king the difference there was between loving in high places or running after amorous trifles like a provincial cadet.
With those great loves, feeling their loyalty and their omnipotence, having as it were their etiquette and their ostentation, a king not only did not demean himself, but moreover found repose, security, mystery, and general respect.
In the degradation of vulgar loves, on the contrary, he met, even among the humblest subjects, gossip and sarcasm; he lost his character of infallible and inviolable. Descended into the region of poor human miseries, he endured their paltry storms.
In a word, to make of the king-god a simple mortal by touching him to the heart, or rather even to the face, like the least of his subjects, was to deal a terrible blow to the pride of that generous blood: Louis was captivated even more by self-love than by love. Madame had wisely calculated her revenge; accordingly, as has been seen, she had avenged herself.
Let it not be thought, however, that Madame had the terrible passions of the heroines of the Middle Ages and that she saw things under their dark aspect; Madame, on the contrary, young, graceful, witty, coquettish, loving rather from fancy, imagination, or ambition than from the heart; Madame, on the contrary, inaugurated that era of easy and fleeting pleasures which marked the hundred and twenty years elapsed between the middle of the seventeenth century and the three-quarters of the eighteenth.
Madame therefore saw, or rather believed she saw, things under their true aspect; she knew that the king, her august brother-in-law, had laughed first at the humble La Vallière, and that, according to his habits, it was not probable he would ever adore the person of whom he had been able to laugh, were it but for an instant.
Besides, was not self-love there, that whispering demon who plays so great a role in that dramatic comedy called the life of a woman; did not self-love say aloud, under its breath, in half-voice, in every possible tone, that she truly could not, she, a princess, young, beautiful, rich, be compared to poor La Vallière, as young as she, true, but much less pretty, but entirely poor? And let that not astonish on Madame's part; it is known that the greatest characters are those who flatter themselves most in the comparison they make of themselves to others, of others to them.
Perhaps it will be asked what Madame wanted with this so shrewdly combined attack? Why so many forces deployed, if it was not to dislodge seriously the king from a quite fresh heart in which he counted on lodging! Did Madame then need to give such importance to La Vallière, if she did not fear La Vallière?
No, Madame did not fear La Vallière, from the point of view where a historian who knows things sees the future, or rather the past; Madame was no prophet or sibyl; Madame could no more than another read in that terrible and fatal book of the future which keeps in its most secret pages the most serious events.
No, Madame purely and simply wanted to punish the king for having played her a wholly feminine trick; she wanted clearly to prove to him that if he made use of that kind of offensive weapons, she, a woman of wit and of breed, would certainly find in the arsenal of her imagination defensive arms proof even against the blows of a king.
And besides, she wanted to prove to him that, in these sorts of war, there are no more kings, or at least that kings, fighting on their own account like ordinary men, may see their crown fall at the first shock; that finally, if he had hoped to be adored at once, on trust, at his mere aspect, by all the women of his court, it was a human, rash pretension, insulting to certain ones placed higher than the others, and that the lesson, falling opportunely upon that royal head, too high and too proud, would be efficacious.
These certainly were Madame's reflections with regard to the king.
The event remained outside.
Thus, one sees that she had acted upon the minds of her maids of honor and had prepared in all its details the comedy which had just been played.
The king was quite stunned by it. Since he had escaped Monsieur de Mazarin, he saw himself for the first time treated as a man.
Such severity, on the part of his subjects, would have furnished him matter for resistance. Powers grow in struggle.
But to attack women, to be attacked by them, to have been fooled by little provincials arrived from Blois expressly for that, was the height of dishonor for a young king full of the vanity inspired in him alike by his personal advantages and his royal power.
Nothing to be done, neither reproaches, nor exile, nor even sulking.
To sulk would have been to admit one had been touched, like Hamlet, by a blunted weapon, the weapon of ridicule.
To sulk at women! what humiliation! especially when those women have laughter for vengeance.
Oh! if, instead of leaving all the responsibility to women, some courtier had meddled in this intrigue, with what joy Louis XIV would have seized this occasion to make use of the Bastille!
But there again royal anger stopped, repelled by reasoning.
To have an army, prisons, an almost divine power, and to put that omnipotence at the service of a miserable grudge, was unworthy, not only of a king, but even of a man.
It was therefore purely and simply a matter of swallowing this affront in silence and of displaying upon one's face the same mildness, the same urbanity.
It was a matter of treating Madame as a friend. As a friend!... And why not?
Either Madame was the instigator of the event, or the event had found her passive.
If she had been the instigator, it was bold indeed of her, but after all was it not her natural role?
Who had gone to seek her in the sweetest moment of conjugal moonlight to speak to her a loving language? Who had dared calculate the chances of adultery, still more of incest? Who, entrenched behind his royal omnipotence, had said to that young woman: "Fear nothing, love the King of France, he is above all, and a gesture of his arm armed with the scepter will protect you against all, even against your remorse?"
Thus, the young woman had obeyed that royal word, had yielded to that corrupting voice, and now that she had made the moral sacrifice of her honor, she saw herself paid for that sacrifice by an infidelity all the more humiliating in that it had for its cause a woman far inferior to her who had first believed herself loved.
Thus, even had Madame been the instigator of the revenge, Madame would have been right.
If, on the contrary, she was passive in all this event, what ground had the king to bear her ill will?
Ought she, or rather could she, arrest the flight of some provincial tongues? ought she, by an excess of ill-understood zeal, repress, at the risk of embittering it, the impertinence of those three little girls?
All these reasonings were so many sensible pricks to the king's pride; but, when he had well gone over all these grievances in his mind, Louis XIV wondered, reflections made, that is to say after the wound was dressed, at feeling other dull, insupportable, unknown pains.
And this was what he dared not avow to himself, that these lancinating strokes had their seat in the heart.
And indeed, the historian must confess it to the readers, as the king confessed it to himself: he had let himself be tickled at the heart by that naive declaration of La Vallière; he had believed in pure love, in love for the man, in love stripped of all interest; and his soul, younger and above all more naive than he supposed, had leapt to meet that other soul which had just revealed itself to him by its aspirations.
The least ordinary thing in the so complex history of love is the double inoculation of love in two hearts: no more simultaneity than equality; the one almost always loves before the other, as the one almost always finishes loving after the other. Thus the electric current establishes itself in proportion to the intensity of the first passion that is kindled. The more Mlle de La Vallière had shown love, the more the king had felt it.
And this was precisely what astonished the king.
For it was well demonstrated to him that no sympathetic current could have carried away his heart, since that avowal was not of love, since that avowal was but an insult made to the man and to the king, since finally it was, and the word above all burned like a red-hot iron, since finally it was a mystification.
Thus that little girl to whom, strictly speaking, one could refuse everything, beauty, birth, wit, thus that little girl, chosen by Madame herself by reason of her humility, had not only provoked the king, but moreover scorned the king, that is to say a man who, like a sultan of Asia, had but to seek with his eyes, to extend his hand, to let fall his handkerchief.
And, since the day before, he had been so preoccupied with that little girl as to think only of her, to dream only of her; since the day before, his imagination had amused itself with adorning her image with all the charms she did not possess; he had finally, he whom so many affairs claimed, whom so many women called, he had, since the day before, consecrated every minute of his life, every beat of his heart, to that unique reverie.
Truly, it was too much or too little.
And the king's indignation making him forget all things, and among others that de Saint-Aignan was there, the king's indignation exhaled itself in the most violent imprecations.
It is true that Saint-Aignan was crouched in a corner, and from that corner watched the storm pass.
His own disappointment seemed miserable to him beside the royal anger.
He compared to his little self-love the immense pride of that offended king, and, knowing the hearts of kings in general and of the powerful in particular, he asked himself if soon this weight of fury, suspended hitherto over the void, would not end by falling upon him, by the very fact that others were guilty and he innocent.
Indeed, suddenly the king stopped in his immoderate pacing, and, fixing upon de Saint-Aignan an angry look.
"And you, de Saint-Aignan?" he cried.
De Saint-Aignan made a movement which signified:
"Well! Sire?"
"Yes, you were as foolish as I, were you not?"
"Sire," stammered de Saint-Aignan.
"You let yourself be taken in by that coarse jest."
"Sire," said de Saint-Aignan, whose shiver began to shake his limbs, "let not Your Majesty grow angry: women, she knows it, are imperfect creatures created for evil; therefore, to ask good of them is to demand of them the impossible."
The king, who had a profound respect for himself, and who began to take over his passions that mastery which he kept over them all his life, the king felt that he discredited himself in showing so much ardor for so slight an object.
"No," he said quickly, "no, you are mistaken, Saint-Aignan, I am not growing angry; I only admire that we were fooled with such skill and audacity by those two little girls. I admire above all that, being able to inform ourselves, we had the folly to trust to our own heart."
"Oh! the heart, Sire, the heart, is an organ that must absolutely be reduced to its physical functions, but that must be stripped of all moral functions. I confess, for my part, that, when I saw the heart of Your Majesty so much preoccupied with that little..."
"Preoccupied, I? my heart preoccupied? My mind, perhaps; but as for my heart... it was..."
Louis perceived, this time again, that to cover an emptiness, he was going to disclose another.
"Besides," he added, "I have nothing to reproach that child with. I knew she loved another."
"The Viscount of Bragelonne, yes. I had warned Your Majesty of it."
"No doubt. But you were not the first. The Count de La Fère had asked me for Mlle de La Vallière's hand for his son. Well! on his return from England, I shall marry them since they love each other."
"Truly, I recognize there all the generosity of the king."
"Come, Saint-Aignan, believe me, let us no longer occupy ourselves with these sorts of things," said Louis.
"Yes, let us digest the affront, Sire," said the resigned courtier.
"Besides, that will be an easy thing," said the king, modulating a sigh.
"And to begin, I..." said Saint-Aignan.
"Well?"
"Well! I am going to make some good epigram on the trio. I shall call it: _Naiad and Dryad_; that will please Madame."
"Do, Saint-Aignan, do," murmured the king. "You shall read me your verses, that will distract me. Ah! no matter, no matter, Saint-Aignan," added the king like a man who breathes with difficulty, "the blow demands a superhuman strength to be worthily sustained."
And, as the king thus finished, giving himself the airs of the most angelic patience, one of the serving valets came to scratch at the chamber door.
De Saint-Aignan withdrew out of respect.
"Enter," said the king.
The valet half-opened the door.
"What is wanted?" asked Louis.
The valet showed a letter folded in the shape of a triangle.
"For His Majesty," said he.
"From whom?"
"I know not; it was delivered by one of the officers on duty."
The king made a sign, the valet brought the note.
The king approached the candles, opened the note, read the signature and let escape a cry.
Saint-Aignan was respectful enough not to look; but, without looking, he saw and heard.
He ran up.
The king, with a gesture, dismissed the valet.
"Oh! my God!" said the king, reading.
"Does Your Majesty find yourself indisposed?" asked Saint-Aignan, arms extended.
"No, no, Saint-Aignan; read!"
And he passed him the note.
Saint-Aignan's eyes fell upon the signature.
"La Vallière!" he cried. "Oh! Sire!"
"Read! read!"
And Saint-Aignan read:
"Sire, pardon my importunity, pardon me above all the lack of formalities that accompanies this letter; a note seemed to me more urgent and more pressing than a dispatch; I therefore take the liberty of addressing a note to Your Majesty.
I return home broken with sorrow and fatigue, Sire, and I implore of Your Majesty the favor of an audience in which I may tell the truth to my king.
Signed: Louise de La Vallière."
"Well?" asked the king, taking back the letter from the hands of Saint-Aignan, quite stunned by what he had just read.
"Well?" repeated Saint-Aignan.
"What do you think of that?"
"I hardly know."
"But finally?"
"Sire, the little one will have heard the thunder roll, and she will have been afraid."
"Afraid of what?" asked Louis nobly.
"Why! what would you have, Sire! Your Majesty has a thousand reasons to bear ill will to the author or authors of so wicked a jest, and the memory of Your Majesty, opened in the wrong sense, is an eternal threat to the imprudent."
"Saint-Aignan, I do not see it as you do."
"The king must see better than I."
"Well! I see in those lines: sorrow, constraint, and now especially that I recall certain particulars of the scene which took place this evening at Madame's... In short..."
The king stopped on that suspended sense.
"In short," resumed Saint-Aignan, "Your Majesty is going to give audience, that is what is clearest in all this."
"I shall do better, Saint-Aignan."
"What will you do, Sire?"
"Take your cloak."
"But, Sire..."
"You know where the chamber of Madame's girls is?"
"Certainly."
"You know a means of penetrating there?"
"Oh! as for that, no."
"But after all you must know someone around there?"
"Truly, Your Majesty is the source of every good idea."
"You know someone?"
"Yes."
"Whom do you know? Let us see."
"I know a certain lad who is on the best of terms with a certain girl."
"Upon my word?"
"Yes, upon my word, Sire."
"With Tonnay-Charente?" asked Louis, laughing.
"No, unfortunately; with Montalais."
"His name is?"
"Malicorne."
"Good! And can you count on him?"
"I believe so, Sire. He must have some key... And if he has one, as I did him a service... he will share it with me."
"That is excellent. Let us go!"
"I am at the orders of Your Majesty."
The king threw his own cloak over the shoulders of Saint-Aignan and asked him for his. Then both gained the vestibule.
Chapter CXXXIII — What Neither Naiad nor Dryad Had Foreseen
De Saint-Aignan stopped at the foot of the staircase which led to the entresols of the maids of honor, on the first floor at Madame's. Thence, by a valet who was passing, he had Malicorne warned, who was still at Monsieur's.
At the end of ten minutes, Malicorne arrived nose to the wind and sniffing in the shadow.
The king drew back, gaining the most obscure part of the vestibule.
On the contrary, de Saint-Aignan advanced.
But, at the first words by which he formulated his desire, Malicorne recoiled outright.
"Oh! oh!" said he, "you ask to be introduced into the chambers of the maids of honor?"
"Yes."
"You understand that I cannot do such a thing without knowing for what purpose you desire it."
"Unfortunately, dear Monsieur Malicorne, it is impossible for me to give any explanation; you must therefore trust me as a friend who pulled you out of a scrape yesterday and who begs you to pull him out of one today."
"But I, Monsieur, was telling you what I wanted; what I wanted was not to sleep under the open sky, and any honest man may avow such a desire; whereas you avow nothing."
"Believe, my dear Monsieur Malicorne," insisted de Saint-Aignan, "that, if I were permitted to explain myself, I would explain myself."
"Then, my dear Monsieur, impossible that I permit you to enter Mlle de Montalais's."
"Why?"
"You know it better than anyone, since you caught me on a wall, courting Mlle de Montalais; now, it would be complaisant of me, you will agree, while courting her, to open to you the door of her chamber."
"Eh! who tells you it is for her that I ask you for the key?"
"For whom then?"
"She does not lodge alone, it seems to me?"
"No, doubtless."
"She lodges with Mlle de La Vallière?"
"Yes, but you have no more real business with Mlle de La Vallière than with Mlle de Montalais, and there are but two men to whom I would give that key: it is to Monsieur de Bragelonne, if he begged me to give it him; it is to the king, if he ordered me to."
"Well! give me that key, Monsieur, I order you to," said the king, advancing out of the obscurity and half-opening his cloak. "Mlle de Montalais will come down to you, while we go up to Mlle de La Vallière: it is, indeed, with her alone that we have business."
"The king!" cried Malicorne, bending to the king's knees.
"Yes, the king," said Louis, smiling, "the king who is as grateful to you for your resistance as for your capitulation. Rise, Monsieur; render us the service we ask of you."
"Sire, at your orders," said Malicorne, mounting the staircase.
"Have Mlle de Montalais come down," said the king, "and breathe not a word of my visit to her."
Malicorne inclined in sign of obedience and continued to mount.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”