Part 15
**CHAPTER XV**
But when the cardinal added that not only had Mme de Chevreuse come to Paris, but that the queen had resumed relations with her by means of one of those mysterious correspondences which at that time were called a cabal; when he affirmed that he, the cardinal, was about to untangle the most obscure threads of this intrigue, when, at the moment of catching in the very act, flagrante delicto, armed with all the proofs, the queen’s emissary to the exiled woman, a musketeer had dared to violently interrupt the course of justice by falling, sword in hand, upon honest men of law charged with examining the whole affair impartially to lay it before the king—Louis XIII could contain himself no longer; he took a step toward the queen’s apartment with that pale and mute indignation which, when it burst forth, led this prince to the coldest cruelty.
And yet, in all this, the cardinal had not yet said a word about the Duke of Buckingham.
It was then that M. de Tréville entered, cold, polite, and in irreproachable attire.
Warned of what had just taken place by the cardinal’s presence and by the alteration in the king’s face, M. de Tréville felt as strong as Samson before the Philistines.
Louis XIII already had his hand on the doorknob; at the noise M. de Tréville made upon entering, he turned around.
“You arrive just in time, monsieur,” said the king, who, when his passions had risen to a certain point, could not dissemble, “for I am hearing fine things about your musketeers.”
“And I,” said M. de Tréville coldly, “have fine things to tell Your Majesty about your men of the robe.”
“How is that?” said the king haughtily.
“I have the honor to inform Your Majesty,” continued M. de Tréville in the same tone, “that a party of attorneys, commissioners, and police officers—very estimable people but very bitter, it seems, against the uniform—has taken it upon itself to arrest in a house, to carry off in the middle of the street, and to throw into the For-l'Évêque, all this upon an order which they refused to show me, one of my musketeers, or rather of yours, Sire, of irreproachable conduct, of almost illustrious reputation, and whom Your Majesty knows favorably: M. Athos.”
“Athos,” said the king mechanically; “yes, in fact, I know that name.”
“Let Your Majesty recall,” said M. de Tréville, “M. Athos is that musketeer who, in the unfortunate duel you know of, had the misfortune to gravely wound M. de Cahusac. —By the way, Monseigneur,” continued Tréville, addressing the cardinal, “M. de Cahusac is quite recovered, is he not?”
“Thank you!” said the cardinal, pinching his lips with anger.
“M. Athos had therefore gone to visit one of his friends then absent,” continued M. de Tréville, “a young Béarnais, a cadet in His Majesty’s Guards, in the company of des Essarts; but scarcely had he settled at his friend’s and taken up a book while waiting, when a cloud of bailiffs and soldiers mixed together came to besiege the house, broke down several doors—”
The cardinal made a sign to the king which meant: “This is for the affair I told you about.”
“We know all that,” replied the king, “for all that was done in our service.”
“Then,” said Tréville, “it is also in Your Majesty’s service that one of my innocent musketeers was seized, placed between two guards like a malefactor, and paraded through the midst of an insolent populace—this gallant man, who has shed his blood ten times for Your Majesty’s service and is ready to shed it again.”
“Bah!” said the king, shaken, “did things happen that way?”
“M. de Tréville does not say,” replied the cardinal with the greatest phlegm, “that this innocent musketeer, this gallant man, had, an hour earlier, struck with his sword four examining commissioners delegated by me to investigate an affair of the highest importance.”
“I defy His Eminence to prove it,” cried M. de Tréville with all his Gascon frankness and all his military bluntness, “for, an hour earlier, M. Athos, who, I will confide to Your Majesty, is a man of the highest quality, did me the honor, after dining with me, of conversing in the salon of my residence with M. the Duke de La Trémouille and M. the Comte de Châlus, who were there.”
The king looked at the cardinal.
“A signed deposition is legally valid,” said the cardinal, answering aloud to His Majesty’s mute question, “and the maltreated men have drawn up the following one, which I have the honor to present to Your Majesty.”
“Is a deposition by men of the robe worth the word of honor,” replied Tréville proudly, “of a man of the sword?”
“Come, come, Tréville, be quiet,” said the king.
“If His Eminence has any suspicion against one of my musketeers,” said Tréville, “the justice of M. the cardinal is well enough known for me to request an inquiry myself.”
“In the house where this descent of justice was made,” continued the cardinal, impassive, “lodges, I believe, a Béarnais, a friend of the musketeer.”
“His Eminence means M. d'Artagnan?”
“I mean a young man whom you protect, Monsieur de Tréville.”
“Yes, Your Eminence, that is the one.”
“Do you not suspect this young man of having given bad advice—”
“To M. Athos? To a man twice his age?” interrupted M. de Tréville. “No, Monseigneur. Besides, M. d'Artagnan spent the evening at my house.”
“Ah, indeed!” said the cardinal. “So everyone spent the evening at your house?”
“Would His Eminence doubt my word?” said Tréville, the flush of anger rising to his brow.
“No, God forbid!” said the cardinal. “But only, at what hour was he at your house?”
“Oh! I can tell that to Your Eminence knowingly, for as he entered, I noticed that it was half past nine by the clock, although I had thought it later.”
“And at what hour did he leave your residence?”
“At half past ten: an hour after the event.”
“But finally,” replied the cardinal, who did not for a moment suspect Tréville’s loyalty and felt that victory was slipping from him, “but finally, Athos was arrested in that house in the Rue des Fossoyeurs.”
“Is a friend forbidden to visit a friend? A musketeer of my company to fraternize with a guardsman of M. des Essarts’ company?”
“Yes, when the house where he fraternizes with that friend is suspect.”
“So that house is suspect, Tréville?” said the king. “Perhaps you did not know it?”
“Indeed, Sire, I was ignorant of it. In any case, it may be suspect everywhere; but I deny that it is in the part inhabited by M. d'Artagnan; for I can assure you, Sire, that if I am to believe what he has said, there exists no more devoted servant of Your Majesty, no more profound admirer of M. the cardinal.”
“Is it not this d'Artagnan who wounded Jussac one day in that unfortunate encounter which took place near the convent of the Discalced Carmelites?” asked the king, looking at the cardinal, who reddened with spite.
“And the next day, Bernajoux. Yes, Sire, yes, that is the very one, and Your Majesty has a good memory.”
“Come, what do we decide?” said the king.
“That concerns Your Majesty more than me,” said the cardinal. “I would affirm the guilt.”
“And I deny it,” said Tréville. “But His Majesty has judges, and his judges will decide.”
“That’s it,” said the king; “let us refer the case to the judges: it is their business to judge, and they will judge.”
“Only,” resumed Tréville, “it is very sad that in these unhappy times in which we live, the purest life, the most incontestable virtue, does not exempt a man from infamy and persecution. So the army will be little pleased, I can answer for that, to be subjected to harsh treatment over police affairs.”
The word was imprudent; but M. de Tréville had uttered it knowingly. He wanted an explosion, because in that the mine gives fire, and fire illuminates.
“Police affairs!” cried the king, picking up M. de Tréville’s words; “police affairs! And what do you know about that, monsieur? Mind your own musketeers, and do not break my head. To hear you, one would think that if by misfortune a musketeer is arrested, France is in danger. What a fuss over a musketeer! I would have ten arrested, ventrebleu! a hundred, even! the whole company! and I will not have a word said about it.”
“From the moment they are suspect to Your Majesty,” said Tréville, “the musketeers are guilty; so you see me, Sire, ready to surrender my sword to you; for after accusing my soldiers, M. the cardinal, I have no doubt, will end by accusing me myself; so it is better that I give myself up as a prisoner with M. Athos, who is already arrested, and M. d'Artagnan, who will no doubt be arrested soon.”
“Gascon head, will you have done?” said the king.
“Sire,” replied Tréville, without lowering his voice in the least, “order my musketeer to be given back to me, or let him be judged.”
“He will be judged,” said the cardinal.
“Well, so much the better; for in that case, I will ask His Majesty’s permission to plead for him.”
The king feared an outburst.
“If His Eminence,” said he, “did not have personal motives—”
The cardinal saw the king coming and went to meet him:
“Pardon,” said he, “but from the moment Your Majesty sees in me a biased judge, I withdraw.”
“Come now,” said the king, “do you swear to me, by my father, that M. Athos was at your house during the event, and that he took no part in it?”
“By your glorious father and by yourself, whom I love and revere most in the world, I swear it!”
“Be so good as to reflect, Sire,” said the cardinal. “If we release the prisoner in this way, we will never be able to know the truth.”
“M. Athos will always be there,” replied M. de Tréville, “ready to answer whenever it pleases the men of the robe to interrogate him. He will not desert, Monsieur le Cardinal; rest assured, I answer for him, myself.”
“In fact, he will not desert,” said the king; “he will always be found, as M. de Tréville says. Besides,” he added in a lowered voice, looking at His Eminence with a suppliant air, “let us give them some security; that is good policy.”
This policy of Louis XIII made Richelieu smile.
“Order, Sire,” said he; “you have the right of pardon.”
“The right of pardon applies only to the guilty,” said Tréville, who wanted to have the last word, “and my musketeer is innocent. It is not, therefore, a pardon you are granting, Sire, but justice.”
“And he is at the For-l'Évêque?” said the king.
“Yes, Sire, and in solitary confinement, in a dungeon, like the lowest of criminals.”
“The devil! The devil!” murmured the king. “What must be done?”
“Sign the order for release, and all will be said,” replied the cardinal. “I believe, like Your Majesty, that M. de Tréville’s guarantee is more than sufficient.”
Tréville bowed respectfully, with a joy not unmixed with fear; he would have preferred an obstinate resistance from the cardinal to this sudden facility.
The king signed the order for release, and Tréville carried it off without delay.
Just as he was about to leave, the cardinal gave him a friendly smile and said to the king:
“A good harmony reigns between the officers and the soldiers in your musketeers, Sire; that is very profitable to the service and very honorable to all.”
“He will play me some nasty trick shortly,” Tréville said to himself; “one never has the last word with such a man. But let us hurry, for the king may change his mind presently; and after all, it is harder to put back in the Bastille or the For-l'Évêque a man who has come out of them, than to keep a prisoner there whom one holds.”
M. de Tréville made a triumphal entrance into the For-l'Évêque, where he released the musketeer, whose peaceful indifference had not abandoned him.
Then, the first time he saw d'Artagnan again:
“You had a narrow escape,” he said to him; “there is your sword-thrust at Jussac paid for. That of Bernajoux still remains, but you must not trust too much to that.”
Besides, M. de Tréville was right to distrust the cardinal and to think that all was not over; for scarcely had the captain of the musketeers closed the door behind him, than His Eminence said to the king:
“Now that we are alone, we shall talk seriously, if it please Your Majesty. Sire, M. de Buckingham was in Paris for five days and only left this morning.”
**CHAPTER XVI** **WHERE M. THE KEEPER OF THE SEALS SÉGUIER MORE THAN ONCE LOOKED FOR THE BELL TO RING IT, AS HE USED TO DO**
It is impossible to form an idea of the impression these few words produced on Louis XIII. He flushed and grew pale successively; and the cardinal saw at once that he had just recovered at a single stroke all the ground he had lost.
“M. de Buckingham in Paris!” he cried. “And what did he come to do?”
“No doubt to conspire with our enemies the Huguenots and the Spaniards.”
“No, by God, no! To conspire against my honor with Mme de Chevreuse, Mme de Longueville, and the Condés!”
“Oh, Sire! What an idea! The queen is too virtuous, and above all loves Your Majesty too much.”
“Woman is weak, Monsieur le Cardinal,” said the king; “and as for loving me very much, I have my own opinion about that love.”
“I nevertheless maintain,” said the cardinal, “that the Duke of Buckingham came to Paris for a purely political project.”
“And I am sure he came for something else, Monsieur le Cardinal; but if the queen is guilty, let her tremble!”
“In fact,” said the cardinal, “whatever repugnance I have to fix my mind on such a betrayal, Your Majesty makes me think of it: Mme de Lannoy, whom, by Your Majesty’s order, I have questioned several times, told me this morning that the night before last, Her Majesty had sat up very late, that this morning she had wept a great deal, and that she had been writing all day.”
“That’s it,” said the king; “to him, no doubt. Cardinal, I must have the queen’s papers.”
“But how to take them, Sire? It seems to me that it is neither I nor Your Majesty who can charge ourselves with such a mission.”
“How was it done for the Maréchale d’Ancre?” cried the king, at the highest pitch of anger. “They searched her wardrobes, and finally they searched her very person.”
“The Maréchale d’Ancre was only the Maréchale d’Ancre, a Florentine adventuress, Sire, that is all; while the august spouse of Your Majesty is Anne of Austria, Queen of France, that is to say, one of the greatest princesses in the world.”
“She is all the more guilty, Monsieur le Duc! The more she has forgotten the high position where she was placed, the lower she has fallen. Besides, I have long been determined to have done with all these petty intrigues of politics and love. She also has near her a certain La Porte—”
“Whom I believe to be the mainspring of all this, I confess,” said the cardinal.
“You think, then, as I do, that she deceives me?” said the king.
“I believe, and I repeat it to Your Majesty, that the queen conspires against the power of her king, but I have not said against his honor.”
“And I tell you against both; I tell you that the queen does not love me; I tell you that she loves another; I tell you that she loves that infamous Duke of Buckingham! Why did you not have him arrested while he was in Paris?”
“Arrest the duke! Arrest the first minister of King Charles I! Do you think of it, Sire? What a scandal! And if then the suspicions of Your Majesty, which I continue to doubt, had any foundation, what a terrible scandal! What a despairing uproar!”
“But since he exposed himself like a vagabond and a thief, it was necessary—”
Louis XIII stopped himself, frightened at what he was about to say, while Richelieu, craning his neck, waited in vain for the word that had remained on the king’s lips.
“It was necessary?”
“Nothing,” said the king, “nothing. But, during all the time he was in Paris, you did not lose sight of him?”
“No, Sire.”
“Where did he lodge?”
“Rue de La Harpe, No. 75.”
“Where is that?”
“On the side of the Luxembourg.”
“And you are sure that the queen and he did not see each other?”
“I believe the queen too attached to her duties, Sire.”
“But they have corresponded; it is to him the queen has been writing all day; Monsieur le Duc, I must have those letters!”
“Sire, nevertheless—”
“Monsieur le Duc, at any price, I will have them.”
“I will, however, observe to Your Majesty—”
“Do you, too, betray me, Monsieur le Cardinal, that you always thus oppose my wishes? Are you also in league with the Spaniard and the Englishman, with Mme de Chevreuse and the queen?”
“Sire,” replied the cardinal, sighing, “I believed myself safe from such a suspicion.”
“Monsieur le Cardinal, you have heard me; I will have those letters.”
“There is only one way.”
“Which?”
“It would be to charge M. the Keeper of the Seals Séguier with this mission. The matter falls completely within the duties of his office.”
“Let him be sent for instantly!”
“He must be at my house, Sire; I had asked him to call, and when I came to the Louvre, I left orders, if he presented himself, to have him wait.”
“Let him be fetched instantly!”
“Your Majesty’s orders shall be executed; but—”
“But what?”
“But the queen may perhaps refuse to obey.”
“My orders?”
“Yes, if she does not know that these orders come from the king.”
“Well, so that she may not doubt it, I will warn her myself.”
“Your Majesty will not forget that I have done all I could to prevent a rupture.”
“Yes, Duke, I know you are very indulgent toward the queen, too indulgent perhaps; and we shall have, I warn you, to speak of that later.”
“Whenever it pleases Your Majesty; but I shall always be happy and proud, Sire, to sacrifice myself to the good harmony which I wish to see reign between you and the Queen of France.”
“Well, Cardinal, well; but in the meantime send for M. the Keeper of the Seals; I am going to the queen.”
And Louis XIII, opening the communicating door, entered the corridor which led from his apartments to those of Anne of Austria.
The queen was in the midst of her ladies, Mme de Guitaut, Mme de Sablé, Mme de Montbazon, and Mme de Guéménée. In a corner was that Spanish waiting-woman Doña Estefania, who had followed her from Madrid. Mme de Guéménée was reading, and everyone was listening attentively to the reader, except the queen, who had, on the contrary, prompted this reading in order to be able, while pretending to listen, to follow the thread of her own thoughts.
These thoughts, however gilded they were by a last reflection of love, were nevertheless sad. Anne of Austria, deprived of her husband’s confidence, pursued by the cardinal’s hatred, who could not forgive her for having repulsed a softer feeling, having before her eyes the example of the queen mother, whom this hatred had tormented all her life—although Marie de Médicis, if we are to believe the memoirs of the time, had begun by granting the cardinal the feeling that Anne of Austria always ended by refusing him—Anne of Austria had seen fall around her her most devoted servants, her most intimate confidants, her dearest favorites. Like those unfortunates endowed with a fatal gift, she brought misfortune upon everything she touched; her friendship was a fatal sign that called down persecution. Mme de Chevreuse and Mme de Vernel were exiled; finally, La Porte did not hide from his mistress that he expected to be arrested from one moment to another.
It was at the moment when she was plunged into the deepest and darkest of these reflections that the door of the room opened and the king entered.
The reader stopped at once; all the ladies rose, and a profound silence ensued.
As for the king, he showed no sign of politeness; only, stopping before the queen:
“Madame,” said he, in an altered voice, “you are about to receive a visit from M. the Chancellor, who will communicate to you certain affairs with which I have charged him.”
The unfortunate queen, who was constantly threatened with divorce, exile, and even judgment, grew pale beneath her rouge and could not help saying:
“But why this visit, Sire? What can M. the Chancellor tell me that Your Majesty cannot tell me yourself?”
The king turned on his heels without answering, and almost at the same instant the captain of the guards, M. de Guitaut, announced the visit of M. the Chancellor.
When the chancellor appeared, the king had already gone out by another door.
The chancellor entered half-smiling, half-blushing. As we shall probably meet him again in the course of this history, it is no harm that our readers should make his acquaintance at once.
This chancellor was a droll fellow. It was Des Roches le Masle, a canon of Notre-Dame, and who had formerly been the cardinal’s valet de chambre, who proposed him to His Eminence as a man entirely devoted. The cardinal trusted him and found it good.
Certain stories were told about him, among others this one:
After a stormy youth, he had retired into a convent to expiate there, at least for a time, the follies of adolescence.
But, on entering that holy place, the poor penitent could not shut the door so quickly that the passions he was fleeing did not enter with him. He was incessantly beset by them, and the superior, to whom he had confided this disgrace, wishing to protect him from it as much as was in his power, had recommended him, to conjure the tempting demon, to have recourse to the bell-rope and to ring it with all his might. At the denouncing noise, the monks would be warned that temptation was besieging a brother, and the whole community would betake itself to prayers.
The advice seemed good to the future chancellor. He conjured the evil spirit with a great reinforcement of prayers made by the monks; but the devil does not easily allow himself to be dispossessed from a place where he has placed a garrison; as the exorcisms were redoubled, he redoubled the temptations, so that day and night the bell rang with all its might, announcing the extreme desire for mortification that the penitent felt.
The monks had not a moment’s rest. By day, they did nothing but go up and down the stairs leading to the chapel; by night, besides compline and matins, they were obliged twenty times to jump out of their beds and prostrate themselves on the tiles of their cells.
It is not known whether it was the devil who let go or the monks who grew weary; but at the end of three months, the penitent reappeared in the world with the reputation of the most terrible possessed man that had ever existed.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”