The Red Sphinx Read online

  ALEXANDRE DUMAS

  The Red Sphinx

  {or}

  The Comte de Moret

  A Sequel to The Three Musketeers

  EDITED AND TRANSLATED

  BY LAWRENCE ELLSWORTH

  Dedications

  Alexandre Dumas:

  To Monsieur Dmitri Pavlovitch Narischkine

  Lawrence Ellsworth:

  Dedicated to my son, Wyatt—and about time, too

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  PART I: The Red Sphinx

  I The Inn of the Painted Beard

  II What Came of the Proposition the Stranger Made to Étienne Latil

  III In Which the Gentleman Hunchback Realizes His Error in Desiring the Death of the Comte de Moret

  IV The Hotel de Rambouillet

  V What Occurred in the Hotel de Rambouillet as Souscarrières Was Disposing of His Third Hunchback

  VI Marina and Jacquelino

  VII Stairs and Corridors

  VIII His Majesty King Louis XIII

  IX What Passed in Queen Anne of Austria’s Bedchamber After the Departure of King Louis

  X Letters Read Aloud and Letters Read Alone

  XI The Red Sphinx

  XII His Gray Eminence

  XIII In Which Madame Cavois Becomes Partner to Monsieur Michel

  XIV In Which the Cardinal Begins to See the Chessboard Clearly

  XV The State of Europe in 1628

  XVI Marie de Gonzague

  XVII The Commencement of the Comedy

  XVIII Isabelle and Marina

  XIX In Which Monseigneur Gaston, Like King Charles IX, Puts On His Little Comedy

  XX Eve and the Serpent

  XXI In Which the Cardinal Uses, on His Own Behalf, the Invention for Which He’d Granted Souscarrières the Patent

  XXII The In Pace

  XXIII Her Story

  XXIV Maximilien de Béthune, Baron de Rosny, Duc de Sully

  XXV The Two Eagles

  XXVI The Cardinal in His Dressing Gown

  XXVII The Demoiselle de Gournay

  XXVIII Souscarrières’s Report

  XXIX The King Goes Larding

  XXX As the King Was Larding

  XXXI The Shop of Ildefonse Lopez

  XXXII Advice from a Jester

  XXXIII The Confession

  XXXIV In Which Cardinal Richelieu Writes a Comedy Without the Help of His Collaborators

  XXXV The King’s Council

  XXXVI Vautier’s Plan

  XXXVII The Overlooked Wisp of Straw, the Unnoticed Grain of Sand

  XXXVIII Richelieu’s Resolution

  XXXIX Birds of Prey

  XL The King Reigns

  XLI The Ambassadors

  XLII A Royal Intermission

  XLIII Et tu, Baradas?

  XLIV How Étienne Latil and the Marquis de Pisany, Each Making His First Outing, Happened to Encounter Each Other

  XLV The Cardinal at Chaillot

  XLVI Mirame

  XLVII News from the Court

  XLVIII Why Louis XIII Always Dressed in Black

  XLIX In Which the Cardinal Audits the King’s Accounts

  L The Avalanche

  LI Guillaume Coutet

  LII Marie Coutet

  LIII Why the Comte de Moret Went to Work on the Fortifications of Susa Pass

  LIV An Episode in the Mountains

  LV Souls and Stars

  LVI The Giacon Bridge

  LVII The Oath

  LVIII The Journal of Monsieur de Bassompierre

  LIX In Which the Reader Meets an Old Friend

  LX In Which the Cardinal Finds the Guide He Needs

  LXI Susa Pass

  LXII In Which It Is Shown That a Man is Never Hanged Until the Noose is Tightened

  LXIII The White Plume

  LXIV What l’Angely Thought of the Compliments of the Duke of Savoy

  LXV A Chapter of History

  LXVI One Year Later

  LXVII Old Lovers Reunited

  LXVIII The Cardinal Takes the Field

  LXIX The Empty Lair

  LXX In Which the Comte de Moret Offers to Take a Mule and a Million to Fort Pinerolo

  LXXI The Foster-Brother

  LXXII The Eagle and the Fox

  LXXIII “Aurora”

  LXXIV The Letter and the Lure

  PART II: The Dove

  Translator’s Notes

  Publication History

  Dramatis Personae: Historical Character Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  Everyone has heard of the great French writer Alexandre Dumas, and of his most famous creations, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. You’ve most likely read The Three Musketeers or at least seen one of its many film or TV adaptations, and are therefore familiar with the dashing d’Artagnan and his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. You’re probably aware that the novel spawned a series of sequels, culminating in the most famous, The Man in the Iron Mask, likewise filmed many times over.

  So why, until now, have you never heard of The Red Sphinx—especially if, as advertised, it qualifies as “a sequel to The Three Musketeers”?

  Let me tell you a story.

  Our tale’s protagonist is a man of endless energy and talent, a bigger-than-life personality whose work was an international sensation, who lived large and loved without limit, earning fortune after fortune and squandering it all, on theaters and publishing houses, on mansions and mistresses, reveling in drama, haute cuisine, and revolutionary politics.

  His name, of course, was Alexandre Dumas.

  The young Dumas began his writing career in the late 1820s as a poet and playwright; his first melodrama, in 1829, was a hit big enough to enable him to write full time, and throughout the 1830s he turned out play after play, each more shocking and lurid than the one before. At first he gave his dramas contemporary settings, but then he turned to historical sources, and late in the decade he began turning his stories into prose. At that time, periodicals publishing serial fiction were just coming into vogue, and the episodic format was perfect for Dumas, trained by writing for the theater to create vivid scenes punctuated by pithy dialogue.

  After a few modest successes with prose serials, in 1844 he knocked it out of the park with The Three Musketeers, followed the next year by The Count of Monte Cristo. Both books were worldwide sensations, and for the next fifteen years he could do no wrong; he wrote novel after successful novel, including such famous tales as The Corsican Brothers, The Women’s War, The Queen’s Necklace, The Black Tulip, the Valois trilogy, and a story called The Dove, about the half-brother of King Louis XIII, the Comte de Moret. These books were translated into over a dozen languages and were bestsellers in every publishing market, including Great Britain and, especially, the United States.

  But Dumas was a social animal who couldn’t resist involving himself in politics, and his sharp and impulsive wit made him many enemies. In 1851 his patron, King Louis-Philippe, was ousted by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte; the new President of France was no friend to Dumas, and the author thought it wise to leave the country for other climes. He moved to Belgium, then Russia, and finally Italy, where he involved himself in the tumult of Italian independence. He never stopped writing, but his output dwindled, and even in France his sales declined to a trickle. In his home country, the great social lion had become . . . unfashionable.

  In 1864, he returned to Paris, determined to recoup his reputation and fortunes. He’d been writing books about his travels in Russia and Italy, but thought he should return to historical adventure tales, the source of his greatest successes. In 1865, Jules Noriac, editor of the weekly paper Les Nouvelles, obliged by asking Dumas if he would write a serial revisiting the setting of his earliest success,
The Three Musketeers. Dumas, who had not lost his fascination with the reign of Louis XIII and his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was quick to accept. The result was a new serial titled Le Comte de Moret, a swashbuckling tale of King Louis, his adventurous half-brother Moret, Moret’s love Isabelle de Lautrec, and the great statesman Cardinal Richelieu.

  Especially Cardinal Richelieu; the novel is as much about Richelieu as it is about the Comte de Moret, and eventually it came to be known better as The Red Sphinx. The focus on the Cardinal explains why Dumas refused to include appearances by d’Artagnan and his three Musketeer friends, as they would surely have walked away with the story. Besides, Dumas had already written over a million words about d’Artagnan and company. Why repeat himself?

  So Dumas returned to the court of Louis XIII and got down to business. Writing rapidly, for six months he spun out a tale of adventure, politics, and romance in the classic manner—but the decades had taken their toll, the writer was ailing, and Les Nouvelles stuttered and then stopped. And so, at that point, did the story: after writing nine-tenths of the novel, Dumas never completed it.

  One would think that in such dire need, and after so much good work, surely Dumas could have mustered the effort to finish the novel so it could find book publication, like so many novels before it. But he just never found an ending for it.

  It’s speculation on this editor’s part, but I think I know one compelling reason why. To my mind it’s because it’s a problem Dumas had already solved when he wrote his novella The Dove fifteen years earlier. In that self-contained, standalone tale, he’d already presented his ending to the story of Richelieu, the Comte de Moret, and his lady love Isabelle de Lautrec. The Dove, though little known because its shortness made it inconvenient for book publication, gave the question of the fate of Moret and Isabelle a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.

  So he’d been there and done that. Why repeat himself?

  In this edition, for the first time, the reader can find Alexandre Dumas’s late, great novel The Red Sphinx completed by the inclusion of The Dove. I think you’ll like it.

  PART I

  The Red Sphinx

  I

  The Inn of the Painted Beard

  Toward the end of the year of our Lord 1628, the traveler who came, for business or pleasure, to spend a few days in the capital of what was poetically called the Realm of the Lilies could depend on hospitality, with or without a letter of introduction, at the Inn of the Painted Beard. There in the Rue de l’Homme-Armé, in the house of Maître Soleil, he was sure to find good cheer, good food, and a good room.

  Though next door to a wretched cabaret on the corner that had, since some time in the Middle Ages, given the lane its name thanks to its sign depicting an Arméd man, there was no mistaking the Painted Beard. That inn, to which we now introduce our readers, was far more prominent, and attracted travelers by a sign so majestic that, once seen, none would go farther.

  There, squeaking in the tiniest breeze on a rod tipped with a gilded crescent, was a tinplate sign that depicted a Grand Turk sporting a beard of the brightest hue, justifying the strange name of the Inn of the Painted Beard.

  Add to this the rebus adorning the front of the house above the entrance:

  Which meant, taking into account both sign and rebus:

  AT THE PAINTED BEARD

  SOLEIL HOSTS BOTH YOU AND YOUR HORSE

  The Painted Beard would vie, if it could, for seniority with the Armed Man Cabaret—but in the interest of honesty, we must admit the latter was there first.

  Barely two years earlier, the inn’s former owner, Claude-Cyprien Mélangeoie, had sold his establishment to Master Blaise-Guillaume Soleil for the sum of a thousand pistoles. And the moment the contract was settled, this new owner had called in the painters and the decorators, despite the exterior rights of the nesting swallows and the interior rights of the secret spiders. He refurbished the façade, renovated the guest chambers, and finally, to the surprise of his astonished neighbors, who wondered where Maître Soleil could have found the money for it, emblazoned that rebus we’ve had the honor to present to our readers.

  Shaking their heads from right to left, the old women of Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie and of Rue des Blancs-Manteaux had predicted, in accord with the sibylline qualities of their advanced age, that these embellishments would be unlucky for the inn, whose customs and appearance had been established for centuries. But despite these old ladies, and to the astonishment of those who took them for oracles, their predictions of disaster were false. On the contrary, the establishment thrived, thanks to an entirely new clientele which, though without meaning to disrespect the old ways, nonetheless increased and even doubled the trade of the Inn of the Painted Beard. Meanwhile, the swallows quietly built new nests in the corners of the windows, and the spiders no less quietly wove new webs in the corners of the chambers.

  Gradually, light was cast on this great mystery: the rumor went around that Madame Marthe-Pélagie Soleil—alert, charming, selfpossessed, still young and pretty at barely thirty years old—was the foster sister of one of the great ladies of the Court, whose funds—or the funds of another, even more powerful lady—had been advanced to help establish Maître Soleil. Furthermore, it was this foster sister who sent the Inn of the Painted Beard its new clientele: noble foreigners who now frequented the streets of the glassmakers’ quarter around Rue Sainte-Avoye, previously almost deserted.

  What was truth and what was invention in these rumors? This story will tell us.

  We start by recounting what took place in the common room of the Inn of the Painted Beard on December 5, 1628—that is, four days after the return of Cardinal Richelieu from the famous siege of La Rochelle, which provided one of the episodes of our novel The Three Musketeers. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, which, given the height of the houses and the way they leaned toward each other, meant that twilight was already falling in the Rue de l’Homme-Armé.

  At that time, the common room was occupied by only one person, a regular of the house—but this person occupied as much space as four ordinary drinkers.

  He had already emptied one mug of wine and was halfway through a second, lying across three chairs and shredding with his spurs the wicker seat of the fourth, while with the point of his dagger he carved a miniature hopscotch pattern into the table. His rapier, whose pommel was never far from his hand, extended along his thigh and between his crossed legs.

  His face was just visible, thanks to the last ray of light that filtered through the narrow mullioned window and found its way under his broad hat. He was in his late thirties, with the dark hair, eyebrows, and mustache of the sun-touched men of the South. There was steel in his eye and scorn on his lips, which curled like those of a tiger to reveal bright white teeth. His straight nose and prominent chin indicated a strong will. His animal jaw reflected a reckless courage that wasn’t a matter of choice, but rather the heritage of the carnivore. Finally his face, rather handsome, displayed a brutal and frightening candor that was immune to lies, tricks, or treason, and was no stranger to anger or violence.

  His costume was that of the petty gentility of the time: half civil, half military, doublet open to show the sleeves, shirt puffing out over the belt, with broad knee-breeches and tall boots from the knees down. All clean and, though not luxurious, worn with ease and—almost—elegance.

  Two or three times the host, Maître Soleil, passed through the common room. Doubtless in hopes of avoiding an outburst of anger or violence, he didn’t complain about the double devastation in which the man seemed so absorbed. On the contrary, he smiled as agreeably as he could—easy for this host, whose face was as placid as that of the drinker was mobile and irritable.

  However, appearing for his third or fourth time, Maître Soleil could no longer refrain from addressing his customer. “Well, my gentleman,” he said in a benevolent tone, “it seems to me that lately your business has suffered; if that goes on, this merry fellow, as you call him”—
he pointed at the regular’s sword—“risks rusting in his sheath.”

  “Indeed,” replied the drinker in a mocking tone, “and that worries you because of the ten or twelve bottles I owe you for?”

  “Jesus above, Monsieur! I swear you could owe me for fifty bottles, or even a hundred, and I wouldn’t lose sleep over it! I know you well! For eighteen months you’ve frequented my inn, and I wouldn’t think of worrying about you. But you know, in every trade there are ups and downs, and the return of His Eminence the cardinal-duke means that, for a few weeks at least, all swords must remain in their sheaths. I say for a few weeks, because no such limit lasts long in Paris, and soon he and the king will set out again to carry the war beyond the mountains. Once more it will be as it was during the siege of La Rochelle: to the devil with the edicts! And gold will once more fill your purse.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Maître Soleil. Because yesterday and today I plied my honorable trade as usual, though each time as the day faded, Phoebe declined to bless me. But as for the cash that so concerns you, you see, or rather you hear”—the drinker jingled his pouch—“there are still a few coins in my purse, if the sound is to be believed. So if I don’t pay my bill right here and now, it’s only because I hope to have it settled by the first gentleman who comes to engage my services. And perhaps,” he continued, turning from Maître Soleil and peering out the stained glass of the window, “perhaps my new employer will be that one there coming from the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, nose in the air, like a man looking for the sign of the Painted Beard. In fact, he’s seen it, and couldn’t be happier. Eclipse yourself, Maître Soleil, as it’s clear this gentleman wants to speak with me. Back to your kitchen, and leave men of the sword to their business! But first light the lamps—within a few minutes this place will be dark as a tomb, and I like to see the faces of those I do business with.”

  The drinker was not mistaken, because just as his host, hastening to obey him, disappeared through the kitchen door, a figure, silhouetted by the last light of the day, appeared in the street doorway.