Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas (good story books to read txt) 📕

After a pause, which appeared an age to Rochefort, Mazarin took from a bundle of papers a letter, and showing it to the count, he said:

“I find here a letter in which you sue for liberty, Monsieur de Rochefort. You are in prison, then?”

Rochefort trembled in every limb at this question. “But I thought,” he said, “that your eminence knew that circumstance better than any one----”

“I? Oh no! There is a congestion of prisoners in the Bastile, who were cooped up in the time of Monsieur de Richelieu; I don’t even know their names.”

“Yes, but in regard to myself, my lord, it cannot be so, for I was removed from the Chatelet to the Bastile owing to an order from your eminence.”

“You think you were.”

“I am certain of it.”

“Ah, stay! I fancy I remember it. Did you not once refuse to undertake a journey to Brussels for the queen?”

“Ah! ah!” exclaimed Rochefort. “There is the true reason! Idiot that I am, though I have been trying to find it out for five years, I never found it out.”

“But I do not say it was the cause of your imprisonment. I merely ask you, did you not refuse to go to Brussels for the queen, whilst you had consented to go there to do some service for the late cardinal?”

“That is the very reason I refused to go back to Brussels. I was there at a fearful moment. I was sent there to intercept a correspondence between Chalais and the archduke, and even then, when I was discovered I was nearly torn to pieces. How could I, then, return to Brussels? I should injure the queen instead of serving her.”

“Well, since the best motives are liable to misconstruction, the queen saw in your refusal nothing but a refusal--a distinct refusal she had also much to complain of you during the lifetime of the late cardinal; yes, her majesty the queen----”

Rochefort smiled contemptuously.

“Since I was a faithful servant, my lord, to Cardinal Richelieu during his life, it stands to reason that now, after his death, I should serve you well, in defiance of the whole world.”

“With regard to myself, Monsieur de Rochefort,” replied Mazarin, “I am not, like Monsieur de Richelieu, all-powerful. I am but a minister, who wants no servants, being myself nothing but a servant of the queen’s. Now, the queen is of a sensitive nature. Hearing of your refusal to obey her she looked upon it as a declaration of war, and as she considers you a man of superior talent, and consequently dangerous, she desired me to make sure of you; that is the reason of your being shut up in the Bastile. But your release can be managed. You are one of those men who can comprehend certain matters and having understood them, can act with energy----”

“Such was Cardinal Richelieu’s opinion, my lord.”

“The cardinal,” interrupted Mazarin, “was a great politician and therein shone his vast superiority over me. I am a straightforward, simple man; that’s my great disadvantage. I am of a frankness of character quite French.”

Rochefort bit his lips in order to prevent a smile.

“Now to the point. I want friends; I want faithful servants. When I say I want, I mean the queen wants them. I do nothing without her commands--pray understand that; not like Monsieur de Richelieu, who went on just as he pleased. So I shall never be a great man, as he was, but to compensate for that, I shall be a good man, Monsieur de Rochefort, and I hope to prove it to you.”

Rochefort knew well the tones of that soft voice, in which sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of young vipers.

“I am disposed to believe your eminence,” he replied; “though I have had but little evidence of that good-nature of which your eminence speaks. Do not forget that I have been five years in the Bastile and that no medium of viewing things is so deceptive as the grating of a prison.”

“Ah, Monsieur de Rochefort! have I not told you already that I had nothing to do with that? The queen--cannot you make allowances for the pettishness of a queen and a princess? But that has passed away as suddenly as it came, and is forgotten.”

“I can easily suppose, sir, that her majesty has forgotten it amid the fetes and the courtiers of the Palais Royal, but I who have passed those years in the Bastile----”

“Ah! mon Dieu! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort! do you absolutely think that the Palais Royal is the abode of gayety? No. We have had great annoyances there. As for me, I play my game squarely, fairly, and above board, as I always do. Let us come to some conclusion. Are you one of us, Monsieur de Rochefort?”

“I am very desirous of being so, my lord, but I am totally in the dark about everything. In the Bastile one talks politics only with soldiers and jailers, and you have not an idea, my lord, how little is known of what is going on by people of that sort; I am of Monsieur de Bassompierre’s party. Is he still one of the seventeen peers of France?”

“He is dead, sir; a great loss. His devotion to the queen was boundless; men of loyalty are scarce.”

“I think so, forsooth,” said Rochefort, “and when you find any of them, you march them off to the Bastile. However, there are plenty in the world, but you don’t look in the right direction for them, my lord.”

“Indeed! explain to me. Ah! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort, how much you must have learned during your intimacy with the late cardinal! Ah! he was a great man.”

“Will your eminence be angry if I read you a lesson?”

“I! never! you know you may say anything to me. I try to be beloved, not feared.”

“Well, there is on the wall of my cell, scratched with a nail, a proverb, which says, ‘Like master, like servant.’”

“Pray, what does that mean?”

“It means that Monsieur de Richelieu was able to find trusty servants, dozens and dozens of them.”

“He! the point aimed at by every poniard! Richelieu, who passed his life in warding off blows which were forever aimed at him!”

“But he did ward them off,” said De Rochefort, “and the reason was, that though he had bitter enemies he possessed also true friends. I have known persons,” he continued--for he thought he might avail himself of the opportunity of speaking of D’Artagnan--“who by their sagacity and address have deceived the penetration of Cardinal Richelieu; who by their valor have got the better of his guards and spies; persons without money, without support, without credit, yet who have preserved to the crowned head its crown and made the cardinal crave pardon.”

“But those men you speak of,” said Mazarin, smiling inwardly on seeing Rochefort approach the point to which he was leading him, “those men were not devoted to the cardinal, for they contended against him.”

“No; in that case they would have met with more fitting reward. They had the misfortune to be devoted to that very queen for whom just now you were seeking servants.”

“But how is it that you know so much of these matters?”

“I know them because the men of whom I speak were at that time my enemies; because they fought against me; because I did them all the harm I could and they returned it to the best of their ability; because one of them, with whom I had most to do, gave me a pretty sword-thrust, now about seven years ago, the third that I received from the same hand; it closed an old account.”

“Ah!” said Mazarin, with admirable suavity, “could I but find such men!”

“My lord, there has stood for six years at your very door a man such as I describe, and during those six years he has been unappreciated and unemployed by you.”

“Who is it?”

“It is Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

“That Gascon!” cried Mazarin, with well acted surprise.

“‘That Gascon’ has saved a queen and made Monsieur de Richelieu confess that in point of talent, address and political skill, to him he was only a tyro.”

“Really?”

“It is as I have the honor of telling it to your excellency.”

“Tell me a little about it, my dear Monsieur de Rochefort.”

“That is somewhat difficult, my lord,” said Rochefort, with a smile.

“Then he will tell it me himself.”

“I doubt it, my lord.”

“Why do you doubt it?”

“Because the secret does not belong to him; because, as I have told you, it has to do with a great queen.”

“And he was alone in achieving an enterprise like that?”

“No, my lord, he had three colleagues, three brave men, men such as you were wishing for just now.”

“And were these four men attached to each other, true in heart, really united?”

“As if they had been one man--as if their four hearts had pulsated in one breast.”

“You pique my curiosity, dear Rochefort; pray tell me the whole story.”

“That is impossible; but I will tell you a true story, my lord.”

“Pray do so, I delight in stories,” cried the cardinal.

“Listen, then,” returned Rochefort, as he spoke endeavoring to read in that subtle countenance the cardinal’s motive. “Once upon a time there lived a queen--a powerful monarch--who reigned over one of the greatest kingdoms of the universe; and a minister; and this minister wished much to injure the queen, whom once he had loved too well. (Do not try, my lord, you cannot guess who it is; all this happened long before you came into the country where this queen reigned.) There came to the court an ambassador so brave, so magnificent, so elegant, that every woman lost her heart to him; and the queen had even the indiscretion to give him certain ornaments so rare that they could never be replaced by any like them.

“As these ornaments were given by the king the minister persuaded his majesty to insist upon the queen’s appearing in them as part of her jewels at a ball which was soon to take place. There is no occasion to tell you, my lord, that the minister knew for a fact that these ornaments had sailed away with the ambassador, who was far away, beyond seas. This illustrious queen had fallen low as the least of her subjects--fallen from her high estate.”

“Indeed!”

“Well, my lord, four men resolved to save her. These four men were not princes, neither were they dukes, neither were they men in power; they were not even rich. They were four honest soldiers, each with a good heart, a good arm and a sword at the service of those who wanted it. They set out. The minister knew of their departure and had planted people on the road to prevent them ever reaching their destination. Three of them were overwhelmed and disabled by numerous assailants; one of them alone arrived at the port, having either killed or wounded those who wished to stop him. He crossed the sea and brought back the set of ornaments to the great queen, who was able to wear them on her shoulder on the appointed day; and this very nearly ruined the minister. What do you think of that exploit, my lord?”

“It is magnificent!” said Mazarin, thoughtfully.

“Well, I know of ten such men.”

Mazarin made no reply; he reflected.

Five or six minutes elapsed.

“You have nothing more to ask of me, my lord?” said Rochefort.

“Yes. And you say that Monsieur d’Artagnan was one of those four men?”

“He led the enterprise.”

“And who were the others?”

“I leave it to Monsieur d’Artagnan to name them, my lord.