Standing before the fireplace was a man of middle height, of a haughty, proud mien, with piercing eyes, a broad brow, and a thin face, which was made still longer by a royal (or imperial, as it is now called), surmounted by a pair of moustaches. Although this man was scarcely thirty-six or thirty-seven years of age, hair, moustaches, and royal all were growing grey. This man, though without a sword, had all the appearance of a soldier; and his buff leather boots, still slightly covered with dust, showed that he had been on horseback in the course of the day.
This man was Armand Jean Duplessis, Cardinal Richelieu.
At first sight nothing indicated the cardinal, and it was impossible for those who did not know his face to guess in whose presence they were.
“Is this Bonacieux?” asked he, after a moment of silence.
“Yes, monseigneur,” replied the officer.
“Very well. Give me those papers, and leave us.”
The officer took the papers pointed out from the table, gave them to him who asked for them, bowed to the ground, and retired.
“Do you know who carried off your wife?” said the cardinal.
“No, monseigneur.”
“You have suspicions, nevertheless?”
“Yes, monseigneur.”
“Your wife has escaped. Did you know that?”
“No, monseigneur.”
“When you went to fetch your wife from the Louvre, did you always return directly home?”
“Scarcely ever. She had business to transact with linen-drapers, to whose shops I escorted her.”
“And how many were there of these linen-drapers?”
“Two, monseigneur.”
“And where did they live?”
“One Rue de Vaugirard, the other Rue de la Harpe.”
“Did you go into these houses with her?”
“Never, monseigneur; I waited at the door.”
“And what excuse did she make for thus going in alone?”
“She gave me none. She told me to wait, and I waited.”
“Should you know those doors again?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the numbers?”
“Yes.”
“What are they?”
“No. 25 in the Rue de Vaugirard; 75 in the Rue de la Harpe.”
“Very well,” said the cardinal.
At these words he took up a silver bell and rang it. The officer entered.
“Go,” said he in a subdued voice, “and find Rochefort. Tell him to come to me immediately, if he has returned.”
“The Count is here,” said the officer, “and wishes to speak instantly with your Eminence.”
“Let him come in, then—let him come in, then!” said the cardinal eagerly.
The officer rushed out of the apartment with that alacrity which all the cardinal’s servants displayed in obeying him.
“To your Eminence!” murmured Bonacieux, rolling his eyes round in astonishment.
Five seconds had not elapsed after the disappearance of the officer when the door opened and a new personage entered.
“It is he!” cried Bonacieux.
“He! What he?” asked the cardinal.
“The man who took away my wife!”
The cardinal rang a second time. The officer reappeared.
“Place this man in the care of his two guards, and let him wait till I send for him.”
The officer took Bonacieux by the arm, and led him into the antechamber, where he found his two guards.
The newly-introduced personage followed Bonacieux impatiently with his eyes till he was gone out, and the moment the door closed he advanced eagerly toward the cardinal and said,
“They have seen each other.”
“Who?” asked his Eminence.
“He and she.”
“The queen and the duke?” cried Richelieu.
“Yes.”
“How did it take place?”
“At half-past twelve the queen was with her women—”
“Where?”
“In her bedchamber—”
“Go on.”
“When some one came and brought her a handkerchief from her dame de lingerie.”
“And then?”
“The queen immediately exhibited strong emotion, and, in spite of the rouge which covered her face, grew pale.”
“Go on, go on!”
“She, however, rose, and with a trembling voice, ‘Ladies,’ she said, ‘wait for me ten minutes; I shall soon return.’ She then opened the door of her alcove and went out.”
“Did none of her women accompany her?”
“Only Do?a Estefana.”
“And she afterwards returned?”
“Yes; but only to take a little rosewood casket, with her monogram upon it, and to go out again immediately.”
“And when she finally returned, did she bring that casket with her?”
“No.”
“Does Madame de Lannoy know what was in that casket?”
“Yes; the diamond studs which his Majesty gave the queen.”
“And she came back without this casket?”
“Yes.”
“Madame de Lannoy, then, is of the opinion that she gave them to Buckingham?”
“She is sure of it.”
“Do you know where the Duchesse de Chevreuse and the Duke of Buckingham were concealed?”
“No, monseigneur. My people could tell me nothing positive in regard to that.”
“But I know.”
“You, monseigneur?”
“Yes, or at least I suspect. They were, one in the Rue de Vaugirard, No. 25, the other in the Rue de la Harpe, No. 75.”
“Does your Eminence wish them both to be arrested?”
“It is too late; they will be gone.”
“But still we can make sure of it.”
“Take ten men of my guards, and search both houses thoroughly.”
“Instantly, monseigneur.”
The cardinal, upon being left alone, reflected for an instant, and then rang the bell a third time.
The same officer appeared.
“Bring the prisoner in again,” said the cardinal.
M. Bonacieux was introduced anew, and upon a sign from the cardinal the officer retired.
“You have deceived me!” said the cardinal sternly.
“I,” cried Bonacieux—“I deceive your Eminence!”
“Your wife, when going to Rue de Vaugirard and Rue de la Harpe, did not go to any linen-drapers.”
“Then where, in God’s name, did she go?”
“She went to the house of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and she went to the Duke of Buckingham’s.”
“Yes,” cried Bonacieux, recalling all the circumstances—“yes, that’s it. Your Eminence is right. I told my wife several times that it was surprising that linen-drapers should live in such houses—in houses that had no signs—and every time she began to laugh. Ah, monseigneur!” continued Bonacieux, throwing himself at his Eminence’s feet—“ah, how truly you are the cardinal, the great cardinal, the man of genius whom all the world reveres!”
However contemptible might be the triumph gained over so vulgar a being as Bonacieux, the cardinal did not the less enjoy it for an instant. Then, almost immediately, as if a new thought had entered his mind, a smile passed over his lips, and reaching out his hand to the mercer,
“Rise, my friend,” said he; “you are an honest man.”
“The cardinal has touched me with his 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 sometimes knew how to assume, but which deceived only those who did not know him; “and as you have been unjustly suspected—well, you must be indemnified. Here! take this purse of a hundred pistoles, and pardon me.”
“I pardon you, monseigneur!” said Bonacieux, hesitating to take the purse, fearing, doubtless, that this pretended gift was only a joke. “But you are free to have me arrested, you are free to have me tortured, you are free to have me hung. You are the master, and I should not have the least word to say about it. Pardon you, monseigneur! you cannot mean that.”
“Ah, my dear Monsieur Bonacieux, you are generous in this matter, and I thank you for it. So you will take this purse, and you will go away without being too much dissatisfied with your treatment?”
“I shall go away enchanted.”
“Farewell, then—that is to say, for the present, for I hope we shall meet again.”
“Whenever monseigneur wishes. I am always at his Eminence’s orders.”
“And that will be frequently, I assure you, for I have found something extremely agreeable in your conversation.”
“O monseigneur!”
“Au revoir, Monsieur Bonacieux, au revoir!”
And the cardinal made him a sign with his hand, to which Bonacieux replied by bowing to the ground. He then backed himself out, and when he was in the antechamber the cardinal heard him, in his enthusiasm, crying aloud, “Long life to monseigneur! Long life to his Eminence! Long life to the great cardinal!” The cardinal listened with a smile to this vociferous manifestation of M. Bonacieux’s enthusiasm; and then, when Bonacieux’s cries were no longer audible.
“Good!” said he; “here’s a man who, henceforward, would lay down his life for me.”
Left alone, the cardinal sat down again, wrote a letter, which he sealed with his private seal, then rang the bell. The officer entered for the fourth time.
“Have Vitray sent to me,” said he, “and tell him to be ready for a journey.”
An instant after the man he required was before him, booted and spurred.
“Vitray,” said he, “you will go with all speed to London. You must not stop an instant on the way. You will deliver this letter to milady. Here is an order for two hundred pistoles; call upon my treasurer and get the money. You shall have as much again if you are back within six days, and have executed your commission well.”
The messenger, without replying a single word, bowed, took the letter, with the order for the two hundred pistoles, and went out.
These were the contents of the letter:
“Milady,—Be at the first ball at which the Duke of Buckingham shall be present. He will wear on his doublet twelve diamond studs. Get as near to him as you can, and cut off two of them.
“As soon as these studs are in your possession, inform me.”
Chapter 14 - Magistrates and Soldiers
It is well known how violent the king’s prejudices were against the queen, and how skilfully these prejudices were kept up by the cardinal, who, in affairs of intrigue, mistrusted women much more than men. One of the principal causes of this prejudice was the friendship of Anne of Austria for Madame de Chevreuse. These two women gave him more uneasiness than the war with Spain, the quarrel with England, or the embarrassment of the finances. In his eyes and to his perfect conviction, Madame de Chevreuse not only served the queen in her political intrigues, but—and this troubled him still more—in her love affairs.
At the first word the cardinal uttered concerning Madame de Chevreuse—who, though exiled to Tours, and believed to be in that city, had come to Paris, remained there five days, and had outwitted the police—the king flew into a furious passion. Although capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will have a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reasonings.
But when the cardinal added that not only Madame de Chevreuse had been in Paris, but also that the queen had communicated with her by the means of one of those mysterious correspondences which at that time was called a cabal, Louis XIII could contain himself no longer; he took a step toward the queen’s apartment, showing that pale and mute indignation which, when it broke out, led this prince to the commission of the coldest cruelty.
And yet, in all this, the cardinal had not yet said a word about the Duke of Buckingham. But deeming that the moment was now right, he said: “Sire, Buckingham has been in Paris five days, and left it only this morning.”
It is impossible to form an idea of the impression these few words made upon Louis XIII. He grew pale and red alternately.
“Buckingham in Paris!” cried he; “and what does he come to do there?”
“To conspire, no doubt, with your enemies, the Huguenots and the Spaniards.”
“No, zounds, no! To conspire against my honour with Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Longueville, and the Condés.”
“O sire, what an idea! The queen is too prudent, and, besides, loves your Majesty too well.”
“Woman is weak, cardinal,” said the king; “and as to loving me much, I have my own opinion respecting that love.”
“I none the less maintain,” said the cardinal, “that the Duke of Buckingham came to Paris for a project purely political.”
“And I am sure that he came for quite another purpose, cardinal. But if the queen be guilty, let her tremble!”
“I believe, and I repeat it to your Majesty, that the queen conspires against her king’s power, but I have not said against his honour.”
“And I—I tell you against both; I tell you the queen does not love me; I tell you she loves another; I tell you she loves that infamous Buckingham! Why did you not have him arrested while he was in Paris?”
“Arrest the duke! arrest the prime minister of King Charles I! Can you think of it, sire? What a scandal! And suppose, then, the suspicions of your Majesty, which I still continue to doubt, should prove to have any foundation, what a terrible disclosure, what a fearful scandal!”
“But since he played the part of a vagabond or a thief, he should have been—”
Louis XIII stopped, terrified at what he was to say; while Richelieu, stretching out his neck, waited in vain for the word which had died on the lips of the king.
“He should have been—”
“Nothing,” said the king, “nothing. But all the time he was in Paris you, of course, did not lose sight of him?”
“No, sire.”
“Where did he lodge?”
“Rue de la Harpe, No. 75.”
“Where is that?”
“Towards the Luxembourg.”
“And you are certain that the queen and he did not see each other?”
“I believe the queen to have too high a sense of her duty, sire. And there is a simple way to make sure.”
“What is that?”
“Give a ball; you know how much the queen loves dancing.” Then the cardinal added,—“By the way, sire, do not forget to tell her Majesty, the evening before the ball, that you would like to see how her diamond studs become her.”
Chapter 15 - Bonacieux’s Household
When the cardinal mentioned the diamond studs, Louis XIII was struck with his insistence, and began to fancy that this recommendation concealed some mystery.
He went, then, to the queen, and, according to his custom, approached her with new threats against those who surrounded her. Anne of Austria hung down her head, allowed the torrent to flow on without replying, and hoped that it would finally cease of itself. But this was not what Louis XIII wanted. Louis XIII wanted a discussion, from which some light or other might break, convinced as he was that the cardinal was practising some dissimulation, and was preparing for him one of those terrible surprises which his Eminence was so skilful in getting up. He arrived at this end by his persistence in accusation.
“But,” cried Anne of Austria, tired of these vague attacks—“but, sire, you do not tell me all that you have in your heart. What have I done, then? Let me know what crime I have committed.”
The king, attacked in so direct a manner, did not know what to answer. He thought that this was the moment to express the desire which he was to make only on the eve of the ball.
“Madame,” said he, with dignity, “there will shortly be a ball at the City Hall. I wish that, in honour to our worthy provosts, you should appear at it in state dress, and particularly ornamented with the diamond studs which I gave you on your birthday. That is my answer.”
