Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 20

  “My Lord,” cried the queen, “you forget that I have never said that I loved you.”

  “But you have never told me that you did not love me; and truly, to speak such words to me would be, on the part of your Majesty, too great an ingratitude. For tell me, where can you find a love like mine—a love which neither time, nor absence, nor despair can extinguish, a love which contents itself with a lost ribbon, a stray look, or a chance word? It is now three years, madame, since I saw you for the first time, and during those three years I have loved you thus. Shall I tell you how you were dressed the first time I saw you? Shall I describe to you each ornament of your toilet? Mark! I see you now. You were seated upon cushions in the Spanish fashion; you wore a robe of green satin embroidered with gold and silver, hanging sleeves knotted upon your beautiful arms—those lovely arms—with large diamonds. You wore a close ruff, a small cap upon your head of the same color as your robe, and in that cap a heron’s feather. Hold, hold! I shut my eyes, and I can see you as you then were; I open them again, and I see what you are now—a hundred times more beautiful!”

  “What folly,” murmured Anne of Austria, who had not the courage to find fault with the duke for having so well preserved her portrait in his heart, “what folly to feed a useless passion with such remembrances!”

  “And upon what then must I live? I have nothing but memory. It is my happiness, my treasure, my hope. Every time I see you is a fresh diamond which I enclose in the casket of my heart. This is the fourth which you have let fall and I have picked up; for in three years, madame, I have only seen you four times—the first, which I have just described to you; the second, at the mansion of Madame de Chevreuse; the third, in the gardens of Amiens.”

  “Duke,” said the queen, blushing, “never speak of that evening.”

  “Oh, let us speak of it; on the contrary, let us speak of it! That is the most happy and brilliant evening of my life! You remember what a beautiful night it was? How soft and perfumed was the air; how lovely the blue heavens and star-enameled sky! Ah, then, madame, I was able for one instant to be alone with you. Then you were about to tell me all—the isolation of your life, the griefs of your heart. You leaned upon my arm—upon this, madame! I felt, in bending my head toward you, your beautiful hair touch my cheek; and every time that it touched me I trembled from head to foot. Oh, Queen, Queen! you do not know what felicity from heaven, what joys from paradise, are comprised in a moment like that. Take my wealth, my fortune, my glory, all the days I have to live, for such an instant, for a night like that. For that night, madame, that night you loved me, I will swear it.”

  “My Lord, yes; it is possible that the influence of the place, the charm of the beautiful evening, the fascination of your look—the thousand circumstances, in short, which sometimes unite to destroy a woman—were grouped around me on that fatal evening; but, my Lord, you saw the queen come to the aid of the woman who faltered. At the first word you dared to utter, at the first freedom to which I had to reply, I called for help.”

  “Yes, yes, that is true. And any other love but mine would have sunk beneath this ordeal; but my love came out from it more ardent and more eternal. You believed that you would fly from me by returning to Paris; you believed that I would not dare to quit the treasure over which my master had charged me to watch. What to me were all the treasures in the world, or all the kings of the earth! Eight days after, I was back again, madame. That time you had nothing to say to me; I had risked my life and favor to see you but for a second. I did not even touch your hand, and you pardoned me on seeing me so submissive and so repentant.”

  “Yes, but calumny seized upon all those follies in which I took no part, as you well know, my Lord. The king, excited by the cardinal, made a terrible clamor. Madame de Vernet was driven from me, Putange was exiled, Madame de Chevreuse fell into disgrace, and when you wished to come back as ambassador to France, the king himself—remember, my Lord—the king himself opposed it.”

  “Yes, and France is about to pay for her king’s refusal with a war. I am not allowed to see you, madame, but you shall every day hear of me. What object, think you, have this expedition to Ré18 and this league with the Protestants of La Rochelle which I am projecting? The pleasure of seeing you. I have no hope of penetrating, sword in hand, to Paris, I know that well. But this war may bring round a peace; this peace will require a negotiator; that negotiator will be me. They will not dare to refuse me then; and I will return to Paris, and will see you again, and will be happy for an instant. Thousands of men, it is true, will have to pay for my happiness with their lives; but what is that to me, provided I see you again! All this is perhaps folly—perhaps insanity; but tell me what woman has a lover more truly in love; what queen a servant more ardent?”

  “My Lord, my Lord, you invoke in your defense things which accuse you more strongly. All these proofs of love which you would give me are almost crimes.”

  “Because you do not love me, madame! If you loved me, you would view all this otherwise. If you loved me, oh, if you loved me, that would be too great happiness, and I should run mad. Ah, Madame de Chevreuse, of whom you spoke but now, Madame de Chevreuse was less cruel than you. Holland loved her, and she responded to his love.”

  “Madame de Chevreuse was not queen,” murmured Anne of Austria, overcome, in spite of herself, by the expression of so profound a passion.

  “You would love me, then, if you were not queen! Madame, say that you would love me then! I can believe that it is the dignity of your rank alone which makes you cruel to me; I can believe that if you had been Madame de Chevreuse, poor Buckingham might have hoped. Thanks for those sweet words! Oh, my beautiful sovereign, a hundred times, thanks!”

  “Oh, my Lord! you have ill understood, wrongly interpreted; I did not mean to say—”

  “Silence, silence!” cried the duke. “If I am happy in an error, do not have the cruelty to lift me from it. You have told me yourself, madame, that I have been drawn into a snare; I, perhaps, may leave my life in it—for, although it be strange, I have for some time had a presentiment that I should shortly die.” And the duke smiled, with a smile at once sad and charming.

  “Oh, my God!” cried Anne of Austria, with an accent of terror which proved how much greater an interest she took in the duke than she ventured to tell.

  “I do not tell you this, madame, to terrify you; no, it is even ridiculous for me to name it to you, and, believe me, I take no heed of such dreams. But the words you have just spoken, the hope you have almost given me, will have richly paid all—were it my life.”

  “Oh, but I,” said Anne, “I also, duke, have had presentiments; I also have had dreams. I dreamed that I saw you lying bleeding, wounded.”

  “In the left side, was it not, and with a knife?” interrupted Buckingham.

  “Yes, it was so, my Lord, it was so—in the left side, and with a knife. Who can possibly have told you I had had that dream? I have imparted it to no one but my God, and that in my prayers.

  “I ask for no more. You love me, madame; it is enough.”

  “I love you, I?”

  “Yes, yes. Would God send the same dreams to you as to me if you did not love me? Should we have the same presentiments if our existences did not touch at the heart? You love me, my beautiful queen, and you will weep for me?”

  “Oh, my God, my God!” cried Anne of Austria, “this is more than I can bear. In the name of heaven, Duke, leave me, go! I do not know whether I love you or love you not; but what I know is that I will not be perjured. Take pity on me, then, and go! Oh, if you are struck in France, if you die in France, if I could imagine that your love for me was the cause of your death, I could not console myself; I should run mad. Depart then, depart, I implore you!”

  “Oh, how beautiful you are thus! Oh, how I love you!” said Buckingham.

  “Go, go, I implore you, and return hereafter! Come back as ambassador, come back as minister, come back surrounded with guards who will defend you, with servants who
will watch over you, and then I shall no longer fear for your days, and I shall be happy in seeing you.”

  “Oh, is this true that you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, then, some pledge of your indulgence, some object which came from you, and may remind me that I have not been dreaming; something you have worn, and that I may wear in my turn—a ring, a necklace, a chain.”

  “Will you depart—will you depart, if I give you that you demand?”

  “Yes.”

  “This very instant?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will leave France, you will return to England?”

  “I will, I swear to you.”

  “Wait, then, wait.”

  Anne of Austria re-entered her apartment, and came out again almost immediately, holding a rosewood casket in her hand, with her cipher encrusted with gold.

  “Here, my Lord, here,” said she, “keep this in memory of me.” Buckingham took the casket, and fell a second time on his knees.

  “You have promised me to go,” said the queen.

  “And I keep my word. Your hand, madame, your hand, and I depart!”

  Anne of Austria stretched forth her hand, closing her eyes, and leaning with the other upon Estafania, for she felt that her strength was about to fail her.

  Buckingham pressed his lips passionately to that beautiful hand, and then rising, said, “Within six months, if I am not dead, I shall have seen you again, madame—even if I have to overturn the world.” And faithful to the promise he had made, he rushed out of the apartment.

  In the corridor he met Mme. Bonacieux, who waited for him, and who, with the same precautions and the same good luck, conducted him out of the Louvre.

  13

  MONSIEUR BONACIEUX

  There was in all this, as may have been observed, one personage concerned, of whom, notwithstanding his precarious position, we have appeared to take but very little notice. This personage was M. Bonacieux, the respectable martyr of the political and amorous intrigues which entangled themselves so nicely together at this gallant and chivalric period.

  Fortunately, the reader may remember, or may not remember—fortunately we have promised not to lose sight of him.

  The officers who arrested him conducted him straight to the Bastille, where he passed trembling before a party of soldiers who were loading their muskets. Thence, introduced into a half-subterranean gallery, he became, on the part of those who had brought him, the object of the grossest insults and the harshest treatment. The officers perceived that they had not to deal with a gentleman, and they treated him like a very peasant.

  At the end of half an hour or thereabouts, a clerk came to put an end to his tortures, but not to his anxiety, by giving the order to conduct M. Bonacieux to the Chamber of Examination. Ordinarily, prisoners were interrogated in their cells; but they did not do so with M. Bonacieux.

  Two guards attended the mercer who made him traverse a court and enter a corridor in which were three sentinels, opened a door and pushed him unceremoniously into a low room, where the only furniture was a table, a chair, and a commissary. The commissary was seated in the chair, and was writing at the table.

  The two guards led the prisoner toward the table, and upon a sign from the commissary drew back so far as to be unable to hear anything.

  The commissary, who had till this time held his head down over his papers, looked up to see what sort of person he had to do with. This commissary was a man of very repulsive mien, with a pointed nose, with yellow and salient cheek bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at once the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell. He began by asking M. Bonacieux his name, age, condition, and abode.

  The accused replied that his name was Jacques Michel Bonacieux, that he was fifty-one years old, a retired mercer, and lived at Rue des Fossoyeurs, No. 14.19

  The commissary then, instead of continuing to interrogate him, made him a long speech upon the danger there is for an obscure citizen to meddle with public matters. He complicated this exordium by an exposition in which he painted the power and the deeds of the cardinal, that incomparable minister, that conqueror of past ministers, that example for ministers to come—deeds and power which none could thwart with impunity.

  After this second part of his discourse, fixing his hawk’s eye upon poor Bonacieux, he bade him reflect upon the gravity of his situation.

  The reflections of the mercer were already made; he cursed the instant when M. Laporte formed the idea of marrying him to his goddaughter, but more particularly that instant in which that goddaughter had been received as Lady of the Linen to her Majesty.

  At bottom the character of M. Bonacieux was one of profound selfishness mixed with sordid avarice, the whole seasoned with extreme cowardice. The love with which his young wife had inspired him was a secondary sentiment, and was not strong enough to contend with the primitive feelings we have just enumerated. Bonacieux indeed reflected upon what had just been said to him.

  “But, Monsieur Commissary,” said he, calmly, “believe that I know and appreciate, more than anybody, the merit of the incomparable eminence by whom we have the honor to be governed.”

  “Indeed?” asked the commissary, with an air of doubt. “If that is really so, how came you in the Bastille?”

  “How I came there, or rather why I am there,” replied Bonacieux, “that is entirely impossible for me to tell you, because I don’t know myself; but to a certainty it is not for having, knowingly at least, disobliged Monsieur the Cardinal.”

  “You must, nevertheless, have committed a crime, since you are here and are accused of high treason.”

  “Of high treason!” cried Bonacieux, terrified; “of high treason! How is it possible for a poor mercer, who detests Huguenots and who abhors Spaniards, to be accused of high treason? Consider, monsieur, the thing is absolutely impossible.”

  “Monsieur Bonacieux,” said the commissary, looking at the accused as if his little eyes had the faculty of reading to the very depths of hearts, “you have a wife?”

  “Yes, monsieur, replied the mercer, in a tremble, feeling that it was at this point affairs were likely to become perplexing; ”that is to say, I had one.”

  “What, you ‘had one’? What have you done with her, then, if you have her no longer?”

  “They have abducted her, monsieur.”

  “They have abducted her? Ah!”

  Bonacieux inferred from this “Ah” that the affair grew more and more intricate.

  “They have abducted her,” added the commissary; “and do you know the man who has committed this deed?”

  “I think I know him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Remember that I affirm nothing, Monsieur the Commissary, and that I only suspect.”

  “Whom do you suspect? Come, answer freely.” M. Bonacieux was in the greatest perplexity possible. Had he better deny everything or tell everything? By denying all, it might be suspected that he must know too much to avow; by confessing all he might prove his good will. He decided, then, to tell all.

  “I suspect,” said he, “a tall, dark man, of lofty carriage, who has the air of a great lord. He has followed us several times, as I think, when I have waited for my wife at the wicket of the Louvre to escort her home.”

  The commissary now appeared to experience a little uneasiness.

  “And his name?” said he.

  “Oh, as to his name, I know nothing about it; but if I were ever to meet him, I should recognize him in an instant, I will answer for it, were he among a thousand persons.”

  The face of the commissary grew still darker.

  “You should recognize him among a thousand, say you?” continued he.

  “That is to say,” cried Bonacieux, who saw he had taken a false step, “that is to say—�
��

  “You have answered that you should recognize him,” said the commissary. “That is all very well, and enough for today; before we proceed further, someone must be informed that you know the ravisher of your wife.”

  “But I have not told you that I know him!” cried Bonacieux, in despair. “I told you, on the contrary—”

  “Take away the prisoner,” said the commissary to the two guards.

  “Where must we place him?” demanded the chief.

  “In a dungeon.”

  “Which?”

  “Good Lord! in the first one handy, provided it is safe,” said the commissary, with an indifference which penetrated poor Bonacieux with horror.

  “Alas, alas!” said he to himself, “misfortune is over my head; my wife must have committed some frightful crime. They believe me her accomplice, and will punish me with her. She must have spoken; she must have confessed everything—a woman is so weak! A dungeon! The first he comes to! That’s it! A night is soon passed; and tomorrow to the wheel, to the gallows! Oh, my God, my God, have pity on me!”

  Without listening the least in the world to the lamentations of M. Bonacieux—lamentations to which, besides, they must have been pretty well accustomed—the two guards took the prisoner each by an arm, and led him away, while the commissary wrote a letter in haste and dispatched it by an officer in waiting.

  Bonacieux could not close his eyes; not because his dungeon was so very disagreeable, but because his uneasiness was so great. He sat all night on his stool, starting at the least noise; and when the first rays of the sun penetrated into his chamber, the dawn itself appeared to him to have taken funereal tints.

  All at once he heard his bolts drawn, and made a terrified bound. He believed they were come to conduct him to the scaffold; so that when he saw merely and simply, instead of the executioner he expected, only his commissary of the preceding evening, attended by his clerk, he was ready to embrace them both.