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

“Well, let us see,” said Mazarin; “isn’t there still time to repair the evil? Search among your friends, your oldest friends.”

“What do you mean, monsieur?”

“Nothing else than I say--search.”

“Alas, I look around me in vain! I have no influence with any one. Monsieur is, as usual, led by his favorite; yesterday it was Choisy, to-day it is La Riviere, to-morrow it will be some one else. Monsieur le Prince is led by the coadjutor, who is led by Madame de Guemenee.”

“Therefore, madame, I ask you to look, not among your friends of to-day, but among those of other times.”

“Among my friends of other times?” said the queen.

“Yes, among your friends of other times; among those who aided you to contend against the Duc de Richelieu and even to conquer him.”

“What is he aiming at?” murmured the queen, looking uneasily at the cardinal.

“Yes,” continued his eminence; “under certain circumstances, with that strong and shrewd mind your majesty possesses, aided by your friends, you were able to repel the attacks of that adversary.”

“I!” said the queen. “I suffered, that is all.”

“Yes,” said Mazarin, “as women suffer in avenging themselves. Come, let us come to the point. Do you know Monsieur de Rochefort?”

“One of my bitterest enemies--the faithful friend of Cardinal Richelieu.”

“I know that, and we sent him to the Bastile,” said Mazarin.

“Is he at liberty?” asked the queen.

“No; still there, but I only speak of him in order that I may introduce the name of another man. Do you know Monsieur d’Artagnan?” he added, looking steadfastly at the queen.

Anne of Austria received the blow with a beating heart.

“Has the Gascon been indiscreet?” she murmured to herself, then said aloud:

“D’Artagnan! stop an instant, the name seems certainly familiar. D’Artagnan! there was a musketeer who was in love with one of my women. Poor young creature! she was poisoned on my account.”

“That’s all you know of him?” asked Mazarin.

The queen looked at him, surprised.

“You seem, sir,” she remarked, “to be making me undergo a course of cross-examination.”

“Which you answer according to your fancy,” replied Mazarin.

“Tell me your wishes and I will comply with them.”

The queen spoke with some impatience.

“Well, madame,” said Mazarin, bowing, “I desire that you give me a share in your friends, as I have shared with you the little industry and talent that Heaven has given me. The circumstances are grave and it will be necessary to act promptly.”

“Still!” said the queen. “I thought that we were finally quit of Monsieur de Beaufort.”

“Yes, you saw only the torrent that threatened to overturn everything and you gave no attention to the still water. There is, however, a proverb current in France relating to water which is quiet.”

“Continue,” said the queen.

“Well, then, madame, not a day passes in which I do not suffer affronts from your princes and your lordly servants, all of them automata who do not perceive that I wind up the spring that makes them move, nor do they see that beneath my quiet demeanor lies the still scorn of an injured, irritated man, who has sworn to himself to master them one of these days. We have arrested Monsieur de Beaufort, but he is the least dangerous among them. There is the Prince de Conde----”

“The hero of Rocroy. Do you think of him?”

“Yes, madame, often and often, but pazienza, as we say in Italy; next, after Monsieur de Conde, comes the Duke of Orleans.”

“What are you saying? The first prince of the blood, the king’s uncle!”

“No! not the first prince of the blood, not the king’s uncle, but the base conspirator, the soul of every cabal, who pretends to lead the brave people who are weak enough to believe in the honor of a prince of the blood--not the prince nearest to the throne, not the king’s uncle, I repeat, but the murderer of Chalais, of Montmorency and of Cinq-Mars, who is playing now the same game he played long ago and who thinks that he will win the game because he has a new adversary--instead of a man who threatened, a man who smiles. But he is mistaken; I shall not leave so near the queen that source of discord with which the deceased cardinal so often caused the anger of the king to rage above the boiling point.”

Anne blushed and buried her face in her hands.

“What am I to do?” she said, bowed down beneath the voice of her tyrant.

“Endeavor to remember the names of those faithful servants who crossed the Channel, in spite of Monsieur de Richelieu, tracking the roads along which they passed by their blood, to bring back to your majesty certain jewels given by you to Buckingham.”

Anne arose, full of majesty, and as if touched by a spring, and looking at the cardinal with the haughty dignity which in the days of her youth had made her so powerful: “You are insulting me!” she said.

“I wish,” continued Mazarin, finishing, as it were, the speech this sudden movement of the queen had cut; “I wish, in fact, that you should now do for your husband what you formerly did for your lover.”

“Again that accusation!” cried the queen. “I thought that calumny was stifled or extinct; you have spared me till now, but since you speak of it, once for all, I tell you----”

“Madame, I do not ask you to tell me,” said Mazarin, astounded by this returning courage.

“I will tell you all,” replied Anne. “Listen: there were in truth, at that epoch, four devoted hearts, four loyal spirits, four faithful swords, who saved more than my life--my honor----”

“Ah! you confess it!” exclaimed Mazarin.

“Is it only the guilty whose honor is at the sport of others, sir? and cannot women be dishonored by appearances? Yes, appearances were against me and I was about to suffer dishonor. However, I swear I was not guilty, I swear it by----”

The queen looked around her for some sacred object by which she could swear, and taking out of a cupboard hidden in the tapestry, a small coffer of rosewood set in silver, and laying it on the altar:

“I swear,” she said, “by these sacred relics that Buckingham was not my lover.”

“What relics are those by which you swear?” asked Mazarin, smiling. “I am incredulous.”

The queen untied from around her throat a small golden key which hung there, and presented it to the cardinal.

“Open, sir,” she said, “and look for yourself.”

Mazarin opened the coffer; a knife, covered with rust, and two letters, one of which was stained with blood, alone met his gaze.

“What are these things?” he asked.

“What are these things?” replied Anne, with queen-like dignity, extending toward the open coffer an arm, despite the lapse of years, still beautiful. “These two letters are the only ones I ever wrote to him. This knife is the knife with which Felton stabbed him. Read the letters and see if I have lied or spoken the truth.”

But Mazarin, notwithstanding this permission, instead of reading the letters, took the knife which the dying Buckingham had snatched out of the wound and sent by Laporte to the queen. The blade was red, for the blood had become rust; after a momentary examination during which the queen became as white as the cloth which covered the altar on which she was leaning, he put it back into the coffer with an involuntary shudder.

“It is well, madame, I believe your oath.”

“No, no, read,” exclaimed the queen, indignantly; “read, I command you, for I am resolved that everything shall be finished to-night and never will I recur to this subject again. Do you think,” she said, with a ghastly smile, “that I shall be inclined to reopen this coffer to answer any future accusations?”

Mazarin, overcome by this determination, read the two letters. In one the queen asked for the ornaments back again. This letter had been conveyed by D’Artagnan and had arrived in time. The other was that which Laporte had placed in the hands of the Duke of Buckingham, warning him that he was about to be assassinated; that communication had arrived too late.

“It is well, madame,” said Mazarin; “nothing can gainsay such testimony.”

“Sir,” replied the queen, closing the coffer and leaning her hand upon it, “if there is anything to be said, it is that I have always been ungrateful to the brave men who saved me--that I have given nothing to that gallant officer, D’Artagnan, you were speaking of just now, but my hand to kiss and this diamond.”

As she spoke she extended her beautiful hand to the cardinal and showed him a superb diamond which sparkled on her finger.

“It appears,” she resumed, “that he sold it---he sold it in order to save me another time--to be able to send a messenger to the duke to warn him of his danger--he sold it to Monsieur des Essarts, on whose finger I remarked it. I bought it from him, but it belongs to D’Artagnan. Give it back to him, sir, and since you have such a man in your service, make him useful.”

“Thank you, madame,” said Mazarin. “I will profit by the advice.”

“And now,” added the queen, her voice broken by her emotion, “have you any other question to ask me?”

“Nothing,”--the cardinal spoke in his most conciliatory manner--“except to beg of you to forgive my unworthy suspicions. I love you so tenderly that I cannot help being jealous, even of the past.”

A smile, which was indefinable, passed over the lips of the queen.

“Since you have no further interrogations to make, leave me, I beseech you,” she said. “I wish, after such a scene, to be alone.”

Mazarin bent low before her.

“I will retire, madame. Do you permit me to return?”

“Yes, to-morrow.”

The cardinal took the queen’s hand and pressed it with an air of gallantry to his lips.

Scarcely had he left her when the queen went into her son’s room, and inquired from Laporte if the king was in bed. Laporte pointed to the child, who was asleep.

Anne ascended the steps side of the bed and softly kissed the placid forehead of her son; then she retired as silently as she had come, merely saying to Laporte:

“Try, my dear Laporte, to make the king more courteous to Monsieur le Cardinal, to whom both he and I are under such important obligations.”