Part 13

"Oh! yes, yes, that is true, and another love than mine would have succumbed to that trial; but my love, my love, came out of it more ardent and more eternal. You thought to flee me by returning to Paris, you thought I would not dare to leave the treasure my master had charged me to watch over. Ah! what do I care for all the treasures of the world and all the kings of the earth! Eight days later, I was back, madame. This time, you had nothing to say to me: I had risked my favor, my life, to see you for a second, I did not even touch your hand, and you pardoned me, seeing me so submissive and so repentant."

"Yes, but calumny seized upon all those follies in which I had no part, you know that well, Milord. The king, urged by the cardinal, made a terrible scandal: Mme de Vernet was dismissed, Putange exiled, Mme de Chevreuse fell into disfavor, and when you wished to return as ambassador to France, the king himself, remember it, Milord, the king himself opposed it."

"Yes, and France will pay for her king's refusal with a war. I cannot see you now, madame; well, I wish every day that you hear speak of me.

"What do you think was the aim of that expedition to Ré and that league with the Protestants of La Rochelle that I am planning? The pleasure of seeing you!

"I have no hope of reaching Paris by force of arms, I know that well: but this war may bring about a peace, that peace will necessitate a negotiator, that negotiator will be me. They will no longer dare to refuse me then, and I will return to Paris, and I will see you again, and I will be happy for an instant. Thousands of men, it is true, will have paid for my happiness with their lives; but what will that matter to me, provided I see you again! All this is perhaps very mad, perhaps very senseless; but tell me, what woman has a more loving lover? what queen has had a more ardent servant?"

"Milord, Milord, you invoke in your defense things that accuse you still; Milord, all these proofs of love that you wish to give me are almost crimes."

"Because you do not love me, madame: if you loved me, you would see all this differently, if you loved me, oh! but, if you loved me, that would be too much happiness and I would go mad. Ah! Mme de Chevreuse, of whom you spoke just now, Mme de Chevreuse was less cruel than you; Holland loved her, and she responded to his love."

"Mme de Chevreuse was not a queen," murmured Anne of Austria, defeated despite herself by the expression of so deep a love.

"Then you would love me if you were not one, you, madame, tell me, you would love me then? I may therefore believe that it is only the dignity of your rank that makes you cruel to me; I may therefore believe that if you had been Mme de Chevreuse, poor Buckingham might have hoped? Thank you for those sweet words, O my beautiful Majesty, a hundred times thank you."

"Ah! Milord, you have misheard, misinterpreted; I did not mean to say…"

"Silence! Silence!" said the duke, "if I am happy in an error, do not have the cruelty to take it from me. You said it yourself, I was drawn into a trap, I will leave my life there perhaps, for, look, it is strange, for some time I have had presentiments that I am going to die." And the duke smiled a smile both sad and charming.

"Oh! my God!" cried Anne of Austria with an accent of terror that proved what greater interest than she wished to say she took in the duke.

"I do not say this to frighten you, madame, no; it is even ridiculous what I tell you, and believe that I do not trouble myself with such dreams. But that word you just said, that hope you almost gave me, will have paid for everything, even my life."

"Well then," said Anne of Austria, "I too, duke, I, I have presentiments, I too have dreams. I dreamed that I saw you lying bleeding, struck by a wound."

"On the left side, is it not, with a knife?" interrupted Buckingham.

"Yes, that is it, Milord, that is it, on the left side with a knife. Who could have told you that I had that dream? I confided it only to God, and even then in my prayers."

"I want no more, and you love me, madame, that is good."

"I love you, I?"

"Yes, you. Would God send you the same dreams as to me, if you did not love me? Would we have the same presentiments, if our two existences were not touching at the heart? You love me, O queen, and you will weep for me?"

"Oh! my God! my God!" cried Anne of Austria, "this is more than I can bear. Come, duke, in the name of Heaven, leave, withdraw; I do not know whether I love you or not; but what I know is that I will not be perjured. Take pity on me then, and leave. Oh! if you are struck in France, if you die in France, if I could suppose that your love for me was the cause of your death, I would never console myself, I would go mad. Leave then, leave, I implore you."

"Oh! how beautiful you are thus! Oh! how I love you!" said Buckingham.

"Leave! leave! I implore you, and come back later; come back as ambassador, come back as minister, come back surrounded by guards who will defend you, by servants who will watch over you, and then I will no longer fear for your days, and I will be happy to see you again."

"Oh! is what you say to me true?"

"Yes…"

"Well, a token of your indulgence, something that comes from you and that reminds me that I have not dreamed; something you have worn and that I can wear in my turn, a ring, a necklace, a chain."

"And will you leave, will you leave, if I give you what you ask?"

"Yes."

"Immediately?"

"Yes."

"Will you leave France, will you return to England?"

"Yes, I swear it!"

"Wait, then, wait."

And Anne of Austria re-entered her apartment and came out almost immediately, holding in her hand a little casket of rosewood engraved with her monogram, all inlaid with gold.

"Here, Milord duke, here," she said, "keep this in memory of me."

Buckingham took the casket and fell a second time to his knees.

"You have promised to leave," said the queen.

"And I keep my word. Your hand, your hand, madame, and I leave."

Anne of Austria held out her hand, closing her eyes and leaning with the other on Estefania, for she felt her strength was about to fail.

Buckingham pressed his lips passionately upon that beautiful hand, then, rising:

"Before six months," he said, "if I am not dead, I will have seen you again, madame, though I should turn the world upside down to do so."

And, faithful to the promise he had made, he rushed out of the apartment.

In the corridor, he met Mme Bonacieux, who was waiting for him, and who, with the same precautions and the same happiness, led him out of the Louvre.

CHAPTER XIII. MONSIEUR BONACIEUX

In all this, as may have been observed, there was one person concerning whom, despite his precarious position, very little concern had seemed to be shown; that person was M. Bonacieux, the respectable martyr of the political and amorous intrigues that interwove so well with each other in that age at once so chivalrous and so gallant.

Fortunately—the reader may or may not remember—fortunately we have promised not to lose sight of him.

The henchmen who had arrested him led him straight to the Bastille, where they made him pass, all trembling, before a squad of soldiers who were loading their muskets.

From there, introduced into a half-subterranean gallery, he was, on the part of those who had brought him, the object of the grossest insults and the harshest treatment. The sbirri saw that they had not to deal with a gentleman, and they treated him like a mere yokel.

At the end of about half an hour, a clerk came to put an end to his tortures, but not to his anxieties, by giving the order to conduct M. Bonacieux to the interrogation chamber. Ordinarily prisoners were interrogated in their own cells, but with M. Bonacieux they did not use so many ceremonies.

Two guards seized the mercer, made him cross a courtyard, made him enter a corridor where there were three sentinels, opened a door and pushed him into a low room, where the only furniture was a table, a chair, and a commissioner. The commissioner was seated on the chair and busy writing at the table.

The two guards led the prisoner before the table and, at a sign from the commissioner, withdrew out of earshot.

The commissioner, who had until then kept his head bent over his papers, raised it to see whom he had to deal with. This commissioner was a man with a forbidding look, a pointed nose, yellow and prominent cheekbones, small but searching and lively eyes, a physiognomy partaking at once of the weasel and the fox. His head, supported by a long and mobile neck, emerged from his wide black robe, swaying with a movement almost similar to that of a tortoise drawing its head out of its shell.

He began by asking M. Bonacieux his name and surnames, his age, his profession, and his dwelling.

The accused answered that his name was Jacques-Michel Bonacieux, that he was fifty-one years old, a retired mercer, and that he lived in the Rue des Fossoyeurs, No. 11.

The commissioner then, instead of continuing to interrogate him, made him a long speech on the danger there is for an obscure bourgeois to meddle in public affairs.

He complicated this exordium with an exposition in which he recounted the power and the deeds of M. the cardinal, that incomparable minister, that conqueror of past ministers, that example for ministers to come: deeds and power which no one thwarted with impunity.

After this second part of his speech, fixing his hawk-like gaze upon the poor Bonacieux, he invited him to reflect upon the gravity of his situation.

The mercer's reflections were already made: he cursed the moment when M. de La Porte had had the idea of marrying him to his goddaughter, and especially the moment when that goddaughter had been received as lady of the linen-room to the queen.

The foundation of Master Bonacieux's character was a profound egoism mingled with a sordid avarice, the whole seasoned with extreme cowardice. The love his young wife had inspired in him, being a quite secondary sentiment, could not struggle with the primary sentiments we have just enumerated.

Bonacieux reflected, indeed, upon what had just been said to him.

"But, Monsieur Commissioner," he said timidly, "believe that I know and appreciate more than anyone the merit of the incomparable Eminence by whom we have the honor to be governed."

"Truly?" asked the commissioner in a tone of doubt; "but if it were really so, how would you be in the Bastille?"

"How I am here, or rather why I am here," replied M. Bonacieux, "that is what it is perfectly impossible for me to tell you, seeing that I myself do not know; but, certainly, it is not for having displeased, knowingly at least, M. the cardinal."

"You must, however, have committed a crime, since you are here accused of high treason."

"High treason!" cried Bonacieux, terrified, "high treason! and how do you expect a poor mercer who detests the Huguenots and abhors the Spaniards to be accused of high treason? Reflect, monsieur, the thing is materially impossible."

"Monsieur Bonacieux," said the commissioner, looking at the accused as if his little eyes had the faculty of reading to the very depths of hearts, "Monsieur Bonacieux, you have a wife?"

"Yes, monsieur," answered the mercer, all trembling, feeling that it was there that matters were going to become entangled; "that is, I had one."

"How? you had one! what have you done with her, if you no longer have her?"

"She has been taken from me, monsieur."

"Taken from you?" said the commissioner. "Ah!"

Bonacieux felt at this "Ah!" that the affair was becoming more and more tangled.

"Taken from you!" resumed the commissioner, "and do you know the man who committed this abduction?"

"I think I know him."

"Who is he?"

"Consider that I affirm nothing, Monsieur Commissioner, and that I only suspect."

"Whom do you suspect? Come, answer frankly."

M. Bonacieux was in the greatest perplexity: should he deny everything or tell everything? In denying everything, they might think he knew too much to confess; in telling everything, he gave proof of good will. He therefore decided to tell everything.

"I suspect," he said, "a tall dark man, of high bearing, who has very much the air of a great lord; he has followed us several times, it seemed to me, when I was waiting for my wife at the wicket of the Louvre to take her home."

The commissioner seemed to experience some uneasiness.

"And his name?" he said.

"Oh! as for his name, I know nothing of it, but if I ever meet him, I will recognize him instantly, I answer for it, were he among a thousand people."

The commissioner's brow darkened.

"You would recognize him among a thousand, you say?" he continued…

"That is to say," resumed Bonacieux, who saw that he had taken the wrong track, "that is to say…"

"You answered that you would recognize him," said the commissioner; "it is well, that is enough for today; before we go further, someone must be informed that you know the abductor of your wife."

"But I did not tell you that I knew him!" cried Bonacieux in despair. "I told you, on the contrary…"

"Take the prisoner away," said the commissioner to the two guards.

"And where must we take him?" asked the clerk.

"Into a dungeon."

"Which one?"

"Oh! my God, the first that comes, provided it locks well," answered the commissioner with an indifference that penetrated poor Bonacieux with horror.

"Alas! alas!" he said to himself, "misfortune is upon my head; my wife must have committed some frightful crime; they think me her accomplice, and they will punish me with her: she will have spoken, she will have confessed that she told me everything; a woman is so weak! A dungeon, the first that comes! that's it! a night is soon over; and tomorrow, the wheel, the gallows! Oh! my God! my God! have pity on me!"

Without in the least listening to Master Bonacieux's lamentations, lamentations to which, moreover, they must have been accustomed, the two guards took the prisoner by an arm, and led him away, while the commissioner hastily wrote a letter which his clerk was waiting for.

Bonacieux did not close his eyes, not because his dungeon was too disagreeable, but because his anxieties were too great. He remained all night on his stool, starting at the slightest sound; and when the first rays of day stole into his room, the dawn seemed to him to have taken on funereal tints.

Suddenly, he heard the bolts drawn, and he gave a terrible start. He thought they were coming to fetch him to lead him to the scaffold; so, when he saw simply appear, instead of the executioner he expected, his commissioner and his clerk of the day before, he was very near throwing himself upon their necks.

"Your affair has become much complicated since last evening, my good man," said the commissioner to him, "and I advise you to tell the whole truth; for your repentance alone can conjure the cardinal's anger."

"But I am ready to tell everything," cried Bonacieux, "at least everything I know. Question me, I pray you."

"Where is your wife, first?"

"But since I told you she was taken from me."

"Yes, but since yesterday at five o'clock in the afternoon, thanks to you, she has escaped."

"My wife has escaped!" cried Bonacieux. "Oh! the wretch! monsieur, if she has escaped, it is not my fault, I swear to you."

"What were you doing then at M. d'Artagnan's, your neighbor, with whom you had a long conference during the day?"

"Ah! yes, Monsieur Commissioner, yes, that is true, and I confess I was wrong. I went to M. d'Artagnan's."

"What was the purpose of that visit?"

"To beg him to help me find my wife. I thought I had a right to reclaim her; I was mistaken, it appears, and I beg your pardon for it."

"And what did M. d'Artagnan answer?"

"M. d'Artagnan promised me his aid; but I soon perceived that he was betraying me."

"You are imposing upon justice! M. d'Artagnan made a pact with you, and by virtue of that pact he put to flight the police officers who had arrested your wife, and removed her from all pursuit."

"M. d'Artagnan abducted my wife! Why, what are you telling me there?"

"Fortunately M. d'Artagnan is in our hands, and you are going to be confronted with him."

"Ah! upon my word, I ask nothing better," cried Bonacieux; "I should not be sorry to see a familiar face."

"Bring in M. d'Artagnan," said the commissioner to the two guards.

The two guards brought in Athos.

"Monsieur d'Artagnan," said the commissioner, addressing Athos, "declare what has passed between you and this gentleman."

"But!" cried Bonacieux, "that is not M. d'Artagnan you are showing me there!"

"How! it is not M. d'Artagnan?" cried the commissioner.

"Not in the least," answered Bonacieux.

"What is this gentleman's name?" asked the commissioner.

"I cannot tell you, I do not know him."

"How! you do not know him?"

"No."

"You have never seen him?"

"Yes, I have; but I do not know what his name is."

"Your name?" asked the commissioner.

"Athos," answered the musketeer.

"But that is not a man's name, that is a mountain's name!" cried the poor interrogator, who began to lose his head.

"That is my name," said Athos calmly.

"But you said your name was d'Artagnan."

"I?"

"Yes, you."

"That is to say, I was told: 'You are M. d'Artagnan?' I answered: 'You think so?' My guards cried out that they were sure of it. I did not wish to contradict them. Besides, I might be mistaken."

"Monsieur, you are insulting the majesty of justice."

"Not at all," said Athos calmly.

"You are M. d'Artagnan."

"You see you are still telling me so."

"But," cried M. Bonacieux in his turn, "I tell you, Monsieur Commissioner, that there is not a moment's doubt to be had. M. d'Artagnan is my lodger, and consequently, although he does not pay me my rent, and for that very reason, I ought to know him. M. d'Artagnan is a young man of scarcely nineteen or twenty, and monsieur is at least thirty. M. d'Artagnan is in M. des Essarts' Guards, and monsieur is in the company of M. de Tréville's Musketeers: look at the uniform, Monsieur Commissioner, look at the uniform."

"That is true," murmured the commissioner; "by Heaven, that is true."

At that moment the door was opened quickly, and a messenger, introduced by one of the turnkeys of the Bastille, handed a letter to the commissioner.

"Oh! the wretch!" cried the commissioner.

"How? what do you say? of whom do you speak? It is not of my wife, I hope!"

"On the contrary, it is of her. Your affair is in good shape, go on."

"Why then," cried the exasperated mercer, "do me the pleasure of telling me, monsieur, how my affair can be worsened by what my wife does while I am in prison!"

"Because what she does is the result of a plan settled between you, an infernal plan!"

"I swear to you, Monsieur Commissioner, that you are in the profoundest error, that I know nothing in the world of what my wife was to do, that I am entirely a stranger to what she has done, and that if she has done foolish things, I disown her, I contradict her, I curse her."

"Why then," said Athos to the commissioner, "if you have no further need of me here, send me somewhere; your M. Bonacieux is very tedious."

"Take the prisoners back to their dungeons," said the commissioner, designating Athos and Bonacieux with the same gesture, "and let them be guarded more strictly than ever."

"However," said Athos with his habitual calm, "if it is M. d'Artagnan you have to deal with, I do not exactly see how I can take his place."

"Do as I have said!" cried the commissioner, "and the most absolute secrecy! Do you hear!"

Athos followed his guards, shrugging his shoulders, and M. Bonacieux, uttering lamentations enough to rend the heart of a tiger.

The mercer was brought back to the same dungeon where he had passed the night, and they left him there all day. All day Bonacieux wept like a true mercer, not being at all a man of the sword, as he himself told us.

In the evening, about nine o'clock, just as he was about to decide to go to bed, he heard steps in his corridor. These steps approached his dungeon, his door opened, guards appeared.

"Follow me," said an exempt who came after the guards.

"Follow you!" cried Bonacieux; "follow you at this hour! and where to, my God?"

"Where we have orders to take you."

"But that is not an answer, that."

"It is, however, the only one we can give you."

"Ah! my God, my God," murmured the poor mercer, "this time I am lost!"

And he followed mechanically and without resistance the guards who had come to fetch him.

He took the same corridor he had already taken, crossed a first courtyard, then a second building; finally, at the gate of the entrance court, he found a carriage surrounded by four mounted guards. They made him get into this carriage, the exempt placed himself beside him, the door was locked, and both found themselves in a moving prison.

The carriage set off, slow as a funeral hearse. Through the padlocked grating, the prisoner perceived the houses and the pavement, that was all; but, as a true Parisian that he was, Bonacieux recognized each street by the milestones, the shop signs, the street lamps. At the moment of arriving at Saint-Paul, the place where the condemned of the Bastille were executed, he nearly fainted and crossed himself twice. He had thought the carriage was to stop there. The carriage, however, passed on.

Further on, a great terror seized him again, when he skirted the cemetery of Saint-Jean, where state criminals were buried. One thing only reassured him a little, which was that before burying them they generally cut off their heads, and that his head was still on his shoulders. But when he saw that the carriage was taking the road to the Grève, when he perceived the sharp roofs of the city hall, when the carriage passed under the archway, he thought all was over for him, wanted to confess to the exempt, and, upon his refusal, uttered such pitiful cries that the exempt declared that if he continued to deafen him thus, he would gag him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”