Part 14

This threat somewhat reassured Bonacieux: if they were going to execute him at the Place de Grève, there would be no need to gag him, since they were almost at the place of execution. Indeed, the carriage crossed the fatal square without stopping. He now had only the Croix-du-Trahoir to fear; and the carriage was taking that very road.

This time there was no doubt: it was at the Croix-du-Trahoir that minor criminals were executed. Bonacieux had flattered himself in believing he was worthy of Saint-Paul or the Place de Grève; it was at the Croix-du-Trahoir that his journey and his destiny were to end! He could not yet see that ill-fated cross, but he felt it, as it were, coming toward him. When he was no more than twenty paces from it, he heard a murmur, and the carriage stopped. That was more than poor Bonacieux could bear, already crushed by the successive emotions he had experienced; he uttered a faint groan, which could have been taken for the last sigh of a dying man, and fainted.

CHAPTER XIV. THE MAN FROM MEUNG

This gathering was produced not by the expectation of a man who was to be hanged, but by the contemplation of a man who had been hanged.

The carriage, having stopped for a moment, therefore resumed its course, passed through the crowd, continued on its way, entered the Rue Saint-Honoré, turned into the Rue des Bons-Enfants, and stopped before a low door.

The door opened; two guards received Bonacieux in their arms, supported by the exempt; they pushed him into a passage, made him climb a staircase, and deposited him in an antechamber.

All these movements had been performed for him in a mechanical way.

He had walked as one walks in a dream; he had glimpsed objects through a mist; his ears had perceived sounds without understanding them; he could have been executed at that moment without making a gesture in his own defense, without uttering a cry to implore mercy.

He remained thus on the bench, his back against the wall and his arms hanging, at the very spot where the guards had placed him.

However, as he looked around and saw no threatening object, as nothing indicated that he was in any real danger, as the bench was well upholstered, as the wall was covered with fine Cordovan leather, as large red damask curtains hung before the window, held back by gold braid, he gradually understood that his fear was exaggerated, and he began to move his head from right to left and up and down.

At this movement, to which no one objected, he regained a little courage and ventured to draw up one leg, then the other; finally, supporting himself with both hands, he raised himself on the bench and found himself on his feet.

At that moment, a fine-looking officer opened a door, continued to exchange a few more words with a person who was in the next room, and turning to the prisoner:

"Are you the man who calls himself Bonacieux?" he said.

"Yes, Monsieur the Officer," stammered the mercer, more dead than alive, "at your service."

"Enter," said the officer.

And he stepped aside to let the mercer pass. The latter obeyed without a word and entered the room where he appeared to be expected.

It was a large study, its walls lined with offensive and defensive weapons, closed and stifling, and in which a fire was already burning, although it was hardly the end of September. A square table, covered with books and papers on which was unrolled an immense plan of the city of La Rochelle, occupied the center of the apartment.

Standing before the fireplace was a man of medium height, with a lofty and proud bearing, piercing eyes, a broad forehead, and a thin face, which was further lengthened by a royal beard surmounted by a pair of mustaches. Although this man was barely thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, his hair, mustache, and royal beard were turning gray. This man, except for the sword, had all the appearance of a man of war, and his buff boots, still lightly covered with dust, indicated that he had been on horseback that day.

This man was Armand-Jean Duplessis, Cardinal de Richelieu, not as he is usually represented to us, broken like an old man, suffering like a martyr, his body shattered, his voice extinguished, buried in a great armchair as in an early tomb, living only by the force of his genius and sustaining the struggle with Europe only by the eternal application of his thought; but as he really was at that period, that is to say, a skillful and gallant cavalier, already weak in body, but sustained by that moral power which made him one of the most extraordinary men who have ever existed; preparing himself, finally, after having supported the Duke of Nevers in his Duchy of Mantua, after having taken Nîmes, Castres, and Uzès, to drive the English from the Isle of Ré and to lay siege to La Rochelle.

At first sight, therefore, nothing denoted the cardinal, and it was impossible for those who did not know his face to guess before whom they stood.

The poor mercer remained standing at the door, while the eyes of the personage we have just described fixed themselves upon him, and seemed to want to penetrate to the very depths of his past.

"Is this Bonacieux?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"Yes, Monseigneur," replied the officer.

"That's good; give me those papers and leave us."

The officer took the designated papers from the table, handed them to the one who had asked for them, bowed to the ground, and left.

Bonacieux recognized in these papers the records of his interrogations at the Bastille. From time to time, the man at the fireplace raised his eyes from the writings and plunged them like two daggers into the very heart of the poor mercer.

After ten minutes of reading and ten seconds of examination, the cardinal had made up his mind.

"That head has never conspired," he murmured; "but no matter, let us see anyway."

"You are accused of high treason," said the cardinal slowly.

"That is what I have already been told, Monseigneur," cried Bonacieux, giving his interrogator the title he had heard the officer give him; "but I swear to you that I knew nothing about it."

The cardinal repressed a smile.

"You have conspired with your wife, with Madame de Chevreuse, and with my Lord the Duke of Buckingham."

"Indeed, Monseigneur," replied the mercer, "I have heard her pronounce all those names."

"And on what occasion?"

"She said that the Cardinal de Richelieu had attracted the Duke of Buckingham to Paris to ruin him and to ruin the queen along with him."

"She said that?" cried the cardinal violently.

"Yes, Monseigneur; but I told her she was wrong to hold such language, and that His Eminence was incapable..."

"Be silent; you are an imbecile," said the cardinal.

"That is just what my wife answered me, Monseigneur."

"Do you know who abducted your wife?"

"No, Monseigneur."

"You have suspicions, however?"

"Yes, Monseigneur; but these suspicions seemed to displease Monsieur the Commissioner, and I no longer have them."

"Your wife escaped; did you know that?"

"No, Monseigneur; I only learned of it since I have been in prison, and always through the intervention of Monsieur the Commissioner, a most amiable man!"

The cardinal repressed a second smile.

"Then you do not know what has become of your wife since her flight?"

"Absolutely not, Monseigneur; but she must have returned to the Louvre."

"At one in the morning she had not yet returned."

"Ah, my God! What has become of her, then?"

"We shall know; be easy. Nothing is hidden from the cardinal; the cardinal knows everything."

"In that case, Monseigneur, do you think the cardinal will consent to tell me what has become of my wife?"

"Perhaps; but first you must confess all you know concerning your wife's relations with Madame de Chevreuse."

"But, Monseigneur, I know nothing about them; I have never seen her."

"When you went to fetch your wife at the Louvre, did she come straight home with you?"

"Almost never; she had business with linen merchants, to whose shops I took her."

"And how many linen merchants were there?"

"Two, Monseigneur."

"Where do they live?"

"One, Rue de Vaugirard; the other, Rue de La Harpe."

"Did you go into their houses with her?"

"Never, Monseigneur; I waited at the door."

"And what pretext did she give for going in alone like that?"

"She gave me none; she told me to wait, and I waited."

"You are an accommodating husband, my dear Monsieur Bonacieux!" said the cardinal.

"He calls me his dear sir!" said the mercer to himself. "Pest! Things are going well!"

"Would you recognize those doors?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the numbers?"

"Yes."

"What are they?"

"No. 25, Rue de Vaugirard; No. 75, Rue de La Harpe."

"That is good," said the cardinal.

At these words, he took a silver bell and rang; the officer returned.

"Go," he said in a low voice, "fetch me Rochefort; and let him come instantly, if he has returned."

"The Comte is here," said the officer; "he urgently requests to speak with Your Eminence."

"Your Eminence!" murmured Bonacieux, who knew that such was the title usually given to M. le Cardinal; "Your Eminence!"

"Let him come, then, let him come!" said Richelieu quickly.

The officer rushed out of the apartment with that speed which all the cardinal's servants ordinarily put into obeying him.

"Your Eminence!" murmured Bonacieux, rolling his bewildered eyes.

Scarcely five seconds had elapsed since the officer's disappearance when the door opened and a new person entered.

"It is he!" cried Bonacieux.

"Who, he?" asked the cardinal.

"He who abducted my wife!"

The cardinal rang a second time. The officer reappeared.

"Return this man to the hands of his two guards, and let him wait until I call for him again."

"No, Monseigneur! no, it is not he!" cried Bonacieux; "no, I was mistaken; it is another who does not resemble him at all! Monsieur is an honest man."

"Take away this imbecile!" said the cardinal.

The officer took Bonacieux by the arm and led him back into the antechamber, where he found his two guards.

The new personage who had just been introduced impatiently followed Bonacieux with his eyes until he was gone, and as soon as the door was closed behind him:

"They have seen each other," he said, approaching the cardinal quickly.

"Who?" asked His Eminence.

"She and he."

"The queen and the duke?" cried Richelieu.

"Yes."

"And where?"

"At the Louvre."

"Are you sure?"

"Perfectly sure."

"Who told you?"

"Madame de Lannoy, who is wholly devoted to Your Eminence, as you know."

"Why did she not tell you sooner?"

"Either by chance or by mistrust, the queen had Madame de Fargis sleep in her room, and kept her there all day."

"That's good; we are beaten. Let us try to take our revenge."

"I will help you with all my soul, Monseigneur; be assured."

"How did it happen?"

"At half-past midnight, the queen was with her women..."

"Where was that?"

"In her bedchamber..."

"Good."

"When someone came to bring her a handkerchief from her lady of the wardrobe..."

"Afterwards?"

"The queen immediately manifested great emotion, and despite the rouge with which her face was covered, she turned pale."

"Afterwards! Afterwards!"

"Nevertheless, she rose, and in an altered voice said: 'Ladies, wait for me ten minutes, and I shall return.' Then she opened the door of her alcove and went out."

"Why did Madame de Lannoy not come to warn you at once?"

"Nothing was yet certain; besides, the queen had said: 'Ladies, wait for me,' and she dared not disobey the queen."

"And how long did the queen remain out of the room?"

"Three-quarters of an hour."

"Did none of her women accompany her?"

"Only Doña Estefania."

"And then she returned?"

"Yes, but only to take a small casket of rosewood with her monogram, and then she went out again immediately."

"And when she returned later, did she bring back the casket?"

"No."

"Did Madame de Lannoy know what was in that casket?"

"Yes; the diamond studs which His Majesty gave to the queen."

"And she returned without the casket?"

"Yes."

"Madame de Lannoy's opinion is that she gave them to Buckingham then?"

"She is certain of it."

"How so?"

"During the day, Madame de Lannoy, in her capacity as the queen's wardrobe woman, looked for that casket, seemed uneasy at not finding it, and finally asked the queen about it."

"And then the queen...?"

"The queen turned very red and answered that having broken one of her studs the day before, she had sent it to her jeweler to be repaired."

"We must go there and make sure whether the thing is true or not."

"I have been there."

"Well, the jeweler?"

"The jeweler has heard nothing about it."

"Good! good! Rochefort, all is not lost, and perhaps... perhaps everything is for the best!"

"The fact is, I do not doubt that Your Eminence's genius..."

"Will repair the blunders of my agent, is that it?"

"That is just what I was going to say, if Your Eminence had let me finish my sentence."

"Now, do you know where the Duchess de Chevreuse and the Duke of Buckingham were hiding?"

"No, Monseigneur; my people could tell me nothing positive on that point."

"I know, myself."

"You, Monseigneur?"

"Yes, or at least I suspect. They were staying, the one Rue de Vaugirard, No. 25, the other Rue de La Harpe, No. 75."

"Does Your Eminence wish me to have them both arrested?"

"It will be too late; they will have left."

"No matter; we can make sure."

"Take ten of my guards and search both houses."

"I am going, Monseigneur."

And Rochefort rushed out of the apartment.

The cardinal, left alone, reflected for a moment and rang a third time.

The same officer reappeared.

"Let the prisoner be brought in," said the cardinal.

Master Bonacieux was introduced again, and at a sign from the cardinal, the officer withdrew.

"You have deceived me," said the cardinal severely.

"I!" cried Bonacieux; "I, deceive Your Eminence!"

"Your wife, in going to the Rue de Vaugirard and the Rue de La Harpe, was not going to linen merchants."

"Where was she going, then, good God?"

"She was going to the Duchess de Chevreuse and the Duke of Buckingham."

"Yes," said Bonacieux, recalling all his memories; "yes, that's it, Your Eminence is right. I said several times to my wife that it was astonishing that linen merchants should live in such houses, in houses that had no signs, and each time my wife began to laugh. Ah! Monseigneur," continued Bonacieux, throwing himself at the feet of His Eminence, "ah! how truly you are the cardinal, the great cardinal, the man of genius whom everyone reveres!"

The cardinal, however mediocre was the triumph gained over so vulgar a being as Bonacieux, nevertheless enjoyed it for a moment; then, almost immediately, as if a new thought had presented itself to his mind, a smile puckered his lips, and holding out his hand to the mercer:

"Rise, my friend," he said to him; "you are an honest man."

"The cardinal has touched my hand! I have touched the hand of the great man!" cried Bonacieux; "the great man has called me his friend!"

"Yes, my friend, yes!" said the cardinal, with that paternal tone which he knew how to assume at times, but which deceived only those who did not know him; "and since you have been unjustly suspected, well, you must have some compensation; there! take this bag of a hundred pistoles, and forgive me."

"That I should forgive you, Monseigneur!" said Bonacieux, hesitating to take the bag, fearing, no doubt, that this pretended gift was only a jest. "But you were perfectly free to have me arrested, you are perfectly free to have me tortured, you are perfectly free to have me hanged; you are the master, and I should not have had the least word to say. Forgive you, Monseigneur! For goodness sake, you cannot be thinking of it!"

"Ah! my dear Monsieur Bonacieux! you show generosity in this, I see, and I thank you for it. So, you take this bag, and you go away without being too dissatisfied?"

"I go away delighted, Monseigneur."

"Farewell, then, or rather au revoir, for I hope we shall see each other again."

"Whenever Monseigneur wishes, and I am entirely at His Eminence's orders."

"It will be often, be assured, for I have found extreme charm in your conversation."

"Oh! Monseigneur!"

"Au revoir, Monsieur Bonacieux, au revoir."

And the cardinal made a sign to him with his hand, to which Bonacieux replied by bowing to the ground; then he went out backwards, and when he was in the antechamber, the cardinal heard him shouting at the top of his voice, in his enthusiasm: "Long live Monseigneur! Long live His Eminence! Long live the great cardinal!" The cardinal listened, smiling, to this brilliant manifestation of Master Bonacieux's enthusiastic sentiments; then, when Bonacieux's cries had died away in the distance:

"Good," said he; "here, from now on, is a man who would let himself be killed for me."

And the cardinal began to examine with the greatest attention the map of La Rochelle which, as we have said, was spread out on his desk, tracing with a pencil the line where the famous dike was to pass which, eighteen months later, was to close the port of the besieged city.

As he was at the deepest of his strategic meditations, the door opened again, and Rochefort returned.

"Well?" said the cardinal quickly, rising with a promptness that proved the degree of importance he attached to the commission with which he had charged the count.

"Well," said the latter, "a young woman of twenty-six to twenty-eight years and a man of thirty-five to forty have indeed lodged, the one for four days and the other for five, in the houses indicated by Your Eminence; but the woman left last night, and the man this morning."

"They were they!" cried the cardinal, looking at the clock; "and now," he continued, "it is too late to give chase; the duchess is at Tours, and the duke at Boulogne. It is in London they must be overtaken."

"What are Your Eminence's orders?"

"Not a word of what has happened; let the queen remain in perfect security; let her not know that we know her secret; let her believe that we are in search of some conspiracy. Send me the Keeper of the Seals, Séguier."

"And that man, what has Your Eminence done with him?"

"What man?" asked the cardinal.

"This Bonacieux?"

"I have made of him all that could be made. I have made him the spy of his own wife."

The Comte de Rochefort bowed as a man who acknowledges the great superiority of his master, and withdrew.

Left alone, the cardinal sat down again, wrote a letter which he sealed with his private seal, and then rang. The officer entered for the fourth time.

"Send for Vitray," said he, "and tell him to get ready for a journey."

An instant later, the man he had asked for was standing before him, fully booted and spurred.

"Vitray," said he, "you will set off at full speed for London. You will not stop an instant on the road. You will deliver this letter to Milady. Here is a draft for two hundred pistoles; go to my treasurer and have yourself paid. There is as much more to receive if you are back here in six days and have done my commission well."

The messenger, without answering a single word, bowed, took the letter and the draft for two hundred pistoles, and left.

This is what the letter contained:

"Milady,

"Be present at the first ball at which the Duke of Buckingham is present. He will have on his doublet twelve diamond studs; go close to him and cut off two.

"As soon as these studs are in your possession, inform me."

CHAPTER XV. MEN OF THE ROBE AND MEN OF THE SWORD

The day after the events we have just related had taken place, Athos not having reappeared, Monsieur de Tréville had been informed by d'Artagnan and Porthos of his disappearance.

As for Aramis, he had asked for five days' leave, and was at Rouen, it was said, on family business.

Monsieur de Tréville was the father of his soldiers. The least and the most unknown of them, as soon as he wore the uniform of the company, was as certain of his help and support as his own brother might have been.

He therefore went at once to the lieutenant criminel. The officer who commanded the guard at the Croix-Rouge was sent for, and the successive pieces of information showed that Athos was temporarily lodged at the For-l'Évêque.

Athos had passed through all the ordeals that we have seen Bonacieux undergo.

We have witnessed the scene of confrontation between the two captives. Athos, who had said nothing up to that moment for fear that d'Artagnan, being troubled in his turn, might not have the time he needed, Athos declared from that moment onward that his name was Athos, and not d'Artagnan.

He added that he knew neither Monsieur nor Madame Bonacieux, that he had never spoken to either; that he had come about ten o'clock in the evening to visit Monsieur d'Artagnan, his friend, but that until that hour he had been at Monsieur de Tréville's, where he had dined; twenty witnesses, he added, could attest to the fact, and he named several distinguished gentlemen, among others Monsieur the Duke de La Trémouille.

The second commissioner was as astounded as the first by the simple and firm declaration of this musketeer, over whom he would have liked to gain the revenge that men of the robe love so much to win over men of the sword; but the name of Monsieur de Tréville and that of Monsieur the Duke de La Trémouille deserved consideration.

Athos was also sent to the cardinal, but unfortunately the cardinal was at the Louvre with the king.

It was precisely at that moment that Monsieur de Tréville, having left the house of the lieutenant criminel and the governor of the For-l'Évêque without having been able to find Athos, arrived at His Majesty's.

As captain of the Musketeers, Monsieur de Tréville had free entry to the king at any hour.

We know what the king's prejudices against the queen were, prejudices skillfully maintained by the cardinal, who, in matters of intrigue, distrusted women infinitely more than men. One of the great causes of this prejudice, above all, was Anne of Austria's friendship for Madame de Chevreuse. These two women worried him more than the wars with Spain, the quarrels with England, and the financial embarrassments. In his eyes and in his conviction, Madame de Chevreuse served the queen not only in her political intrigues, but, what tormented him still more, in her amorous intrigues.

At the first word of what Monsieur the Cardinal had said, that Madame de Chevreuse, exiled to Tours and believed to be in that city, had come to Paris and, during the five days she had stayed there, had baffled the police, the king had flown into a furious rage. Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will have difficulty understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reasoning.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”