Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 4

  12 In seventeenth-century France, appointment to high religious office did not require an individual to have demonstrated either great piety or long and devoted service to the Church. Aramis’s rank as bishop, then, is plausible even if entirely fictitious. He is made general of the Jesuits in chapters just prior to those in this volume. He managed to persuade his dying predecessor (whom he may have poisoned) that he was the best man for the job because he knew the identity of a legitimate pretender to the French throne and could use that information to increase the power of the Jesuit order.

  13 Fouquet, too, displays a profound sense of loyalty, friendship, and honor—though he is not above enriching himself at the King’s expense—and while history requires him to be a loser in his contest with Louis XIV and Colbert, d’Artagnan eventually comes to respect and admire him. Likewise, although Dumas is obliged to point to the splendors of the age of Louis XIV, his feelings about absolutist monarchy seem less than sanguine.

  14 Royal and aristocratic marriages in this era were, of course, arranged. Love between the spouses, who often met for the first time just prior to their wedding, was neither expected nor required. Despite her name, Marie-Therese of Austria, like her mother-in-law, Anne of Austria, was a Spanish Hapsburg princess.

  15 The marriage between the duc d‘Orléans and Henriette was likewise arranged. Henriette is also a cousin, descended, like Louis and Philippe, from the French king Henri IV on her mother’s side; she spent part of her youth at the French court before returning to England after the restoration of her brother, Charles II (1630-1685), to the throne. Upon her death in 1670, she was eulogized by Jacques Bossuet in his famous Oraison funèbre de Henriette-Anne d’Angleterre (Funeral Oration for Henriette-Anne of England ).

  16 His most famous expression of that vision can be found in the statement “L‘état, c’est moi” (I am the state).

  17 See pages 399-400 and chapter 49 generally for a discussion of the idea that twins are one person in two bodies. While not exactly the same principle as the one articulated in Ernst H. Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (an examination of the theory of a physical and a spiritual incarnation of kingship), Dumas’s representation of twin sons contesting and of contested rights to the throne intersects with that theory in potentially interesting ways. This seems especially true given Philippe’s nobility of character and generally stoic acceptance of his fate versus Louis’s apparently self-centered concern with earthly power and privilege and his irate response to his incarceration.

  18 The use of twins and doubles in literature was by no means limited to the Romantic era. One need only think of the story of the sixteenth-century impostor Martin Guerre or of the twin princes in Pierre Corneille’s seventeenth-century tragedy Rodogune (1644). The treatment of the double in those works, as in some of Shakespeare’s plays, is, however, quite different from that found in Romantic literature. The earlier works do not deal with the psychological split of the self or the nation; instead, they involve impersonation or amorous rivalries.

  19 See the article by Pierre Tranouez and the book by Simone Domange for other perspectives on parent-child relationships in the trilogy.

  20 Athos, fearing just such an outcome, sent his valet Grimaud with Raoul to watch over him. Grimaud himself soon dies from grief over the deaths of Raoul and Athos and is buried near the two men. See chapters 60 and 61 and 84-88. Porthos’s valet, Mouston, likewise dies shortly after learning of his master’s death (chapter 83).

  21 Again, Dumas was not the only author of this period to exploit the theme of the bad mother or to condemn women ambitious for power. See, for example, the article by Odile Krakovitch, “Les Femmes de pouvoir dans le theatre romantique,” in Femmes de pouvoir: Mythes et fantasmes, pp. 97-118.

  22 Dumas gives La Vallière an antithetical double, Mademoiselle de Montalais, who is ambitious and scheming. In typical nineteenth-century fashion, one woman is blond and the other a brunette.

  23 Louise displays the classic symptoms of involuntary “love at first sight.” Although she and Raoul were childhood friends and he (Raoul) had come to consider her his fiancée, once she has seen Louis, Louise discovers that she has never loved Raoul the way she loves the King. She tries to explain herself to Raoul in chapter 22 but cannot find the words to express her feelings.

  24 Another trapdoor and portrait—this time depicting Louise—reveals to Bragelonne the liaison between the young woman and the King and the intensity of her passion for Louis (see chapters 14 and 15, among others).

  25 Honoré de Balzac offers a similar surprise in his novel Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions, published 1836-1843) when he has the master criminal Vautrin, a.k.a. Jacques Colin and Trompe-la-Mort (Cheat-Death), return to France in the guise of a Spanish churchman named Abbé Carlos Herrera and save Lucien de Rubempré from suicide. There are other examples of this in works by Dumas, as well.

  26 As Claude Schopp, in his edition of Bragelonne, shows by means of correspondence from the period, Dumas did not originally intend to kill off d’Artagnan. The editor of Le Siècle insisted, however, that readers would expect such a conclusion, and the final installment was added at his request.

  1

  Two Old Friends

  WHILST EVERY ONE AT court was busily engaged upon his own affairs, a man mysteriously entered a house situated behind the Place de Grève.a The principal entrance of this house was in the Place Baudoyer; it was tolerably large, surrounded by gardens, enclosed in the Rue Saint-Jean by the shops of tool-makers, which protected it from prying looks, and was walled in by a triple rampart of stone, noise, and verdure, like an embalmed mummy in its triple coffin. The man we have just alluded to walked along with a firm step, although he was no longer in his early prime. His dark cloak and long sword plainly revealed one who seemed in search of adventures; and, judging from his curling moustaches, his fine and smooth skin, which could be seen beneath his sombrero, it would not have been difficult to pronounce that the gallantry of his adventures was unquestionable. In fact, hardly had the cavalier entered the house, when the clock struck eight; and ten minutes afterwards a lady, followed by a servant armed to the teeth, approached and knocked at the same door, which an old woman immediately opened for her. The lady raised her veil as she entered; though no longer beautiful or young, she was still active and of an imposing carriage. She concealed beneath a rich toilette and the most exquisite taste, an age which Ninon de l’Enclos alone could have smiled at with impunity.1 Hardly had she reached the vestibule, than the cavalier, whose features we have only roughly sketched, advanced towards her, holding out his hand.

  “Good-day, my dear Duchesse,” he said.

  “How do you do, my dear Aramis,” replied the Duchesse. He led her to a most elegantly furnished apartment, on whose high windows were reflected the expiring rays of the setting sun, which filtered through the dark crests of some adjoining firs. They sat down side by side. Neither of them thought of asking for additional light in the room, and they buried themselves as it were in the shadow, as if they wished to bury themselves in forgetfulness.

  “Chevalier,” said the Duchesse, “you have never given me a single sign of life since our interview at Fontainebleau, and I confess that your presence there on the day of the Franciscan’s death, and your initiation in certain secrets, caused me the liveliest astonishment I ever experienced in my whole life.”

  “I can explain my presence there to you, as well as my initiation,” said Aramis.

  “But let us, first of all,” said the Duchesse, “talk a little of ourselves, for our friendship is by no means of recent date.”

  “Yes, madame; and if Heaven wills it, we shall continue to be friends, I will not say for a long time, but for ever.”

  “That is quite certain, Chevalier, and my visit is a proof of it.”

  “Our interests, Duchesse, are no longer the same as they used to be,” said Aramis smiling, without apprehension in the gloom in which the room was c
ast, for it could not reveal that his smile was less agreeable and less bright than formerly.

  “No, Chevalier, at the present day we have other interests. Every period of life brings its own; and, as we now understand each other in conversing, as perfectly as we formerly did without saying a word, let us talk, if you like.”

  “I am at your orders, Duchesse. Ah! I beg your pardon, how did you obtain my address, and what was your object?”

  “You ask me why? I have told you. Curiosity in the first place. I wished to know what you could have to do with the Franciscan, with whom I had certain business transactions, and who died so singularly. You know that on the occasion of our interview at Fontainebleau, in the cemetery, at the foot of the grave so recently closed, we were both so much overcome by our emotions that we omitted to confide to each other what we may have had to say.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Well then, I had no sooner left you than I repented, and have ever since been most anxious to ascertain the truth. You know that Madame de Longueville and myself are almost one, I suppose?”

  “I am not aware,” said Aramis discreetly.

  “I remembered, therefore,” continued the Duchesse, “that neither of us said anything to the other in the cemetery; that you did not speak of the relationship in which you stood to the Franciscan, whose burial you had superintended, and that I did not refer to the position in which I stood to him; all which seemed very unworthy of two such old friends as ourselves, and I have sought an opportunity of an interview with you in order to give you some information that I have recently acquired, and to assure you that Marie Michon,b now no more, has left behind her one who has preserved her recollection of events.”

  Aramis bowed over the Duchesse’s hand, and pressed his lips upon it. “You must have had some trouble to find me again,” he said.

  “Yes,” she answered, annoyed to find the subject taking a turn which Aramis wished to give it; “but I knew you were a friend of M. Fouquet’s,2 and so I inquired in that direction.”

  “A friend! oh!” exclaimed the Chevalier. “I can hardly pretend to be that. A poor priest who has been favoured by so generous a protector, and whose heart is full of gratitude and devotion to him, is all that I pretend to be to M. Fouquet.”

  “He made you a bishop?”

  “Yes, Duchesse.”

  “A very good retiring pension for so handsome a musketeer.”

  “Yes; in the same way that political intrigue is for yourself,” thought Aramis. “And so,” he added, “you inquired after me at M. Fouquet’s?”

  “Easily enough. You had been to Fontainebleau with him, and had undertaken a voyage to your diocese, which is Belle-Île-en-Mer, I believe.”

  “No, madame,” said Aramis. “My diocese is Vannes.”

  “I meant that. I only thought that Belle-Ile-en-Mer—”

  “Is a property belonging to M. Fouquet, nothing more.”

  “Ah! I had been told that Belle-Île was fortified; besides, I know how great the military knowledge is you possess.”

  “I have forgotten everything of the kind since I entered the Church,” said Aramis, annoyed.

  “Suffice it to know that I learnt you had returned from Vannes, and I sent to one of our friends, M. le Comte de la Fère,3 who is discretion itself, in order to ascertain it, but he answered that he was not aware of your address.”

  “So like Athos,” thought the Bishop; “that which is actually good never alters.”

  “Well, then, you know that I cannot venture to show myself here, and that the Queen-Mother has always some grievance or other against me.”

  “Yes, indeed, and I am surprised at it.”

  “Oh! there are various reasons for it. But, to continue, being obliged to conceal myself, I was fortunate enough to meet with M. d’Artagnan, who was formerly one of your old friends, I believe?”

  “A friend of mine still, Duchesse.”

  “He gave me some information, and sent me to M. Baisemeaux, the governor of the Bastille.”

  Aramis was somewhat agitated at this remark, and a light flashed from his eyes in the darkness of the room, which he could not conceal from his keen-sighted friend. “M. de Baisemeaux!” he said; “why did d’Artagnan send you to M. de Baisemeaux?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “What can this possibly mean?” said the Bishop, summoning all the resources of his mind to his aid, in order to carry on the combat in a befitting manner.

  “M. de Baisemeaux is greatly indebted to you, d’Artagnan told me.”

  “True, he is so.”

  “And the address of a creditor is as easily ascertained as that of a debtor.”

  “Very true; and so Baisemeaux indicated to you—”

  “Saint-Mandé, where I forwarded a letter to you.”

  “Which I have in my hand, and which is most precious to me,” said Aramis, “because I am indebted to it for the pleasure of seeing you here.” The Duchesse, satisfied at having successfully alluded to the various difficulties of so delicate an explanation, began to breathe freely again, which Aramis, however, could not succeed in doing. “We had got as far as your visit to M. Baisemeaux, I believe?”

  “Nay,” she said, laughing, “further than that.”

  “In that case we must have been speaking about the grudge you have against the Queen-Mother.”c

  “Further still,” she returned,—“further still; we were talking of the connection—”

  “Which existed between you and the Franciscan,” said Aramis, interrupting her eagerly; “well, I am listening to you very attentively.”

  “It is easily explained,” returned the Duchesse. “You know that I am living at Brussels with M. de Laicques?”

  “I have heard so.”

  “You know that my children have ruined and stripped me of everything.”

  “How terrible, dear Duchesse.”

  “Terrible indeed; this obliged me to resort to some means of obtaining a livelihood, and, particularly, to avoid vegetating the remainder of my existence away, I had old hatreds to turn to account, old friendships to serve; I no longer had either credit or protectors.”

  “You, too, who had extended protection towards so many persons,” said Aramis softly.

  “It is always the case, Chevalier. Well, at the present time I am in the habit of seeing the King of Spain very frequently.”

  “Ah!”

  “Who has just nominated a general of the Jesuits,d according to the usual custom.”

  “Is it usual, indeed?”

  “Were you not aware of it?”

  “I beg your pardon; I was inattentive.”

  “You must be aware of that—you who were on such good terms with the Franciscan.”

  “With the general of the Jesuits, you mean?”

  “Exactly. Well, then, I have seen the King of Spain, who wished to do me a service, but was unable. He gave me recommendations, however, to Flanders, both for myself and for Laicques too; and conferred a pension on me out of the funds belonging to the order.”

  “Of Jesuits?”

  “Yes. The general—I mean the Franciscan—was sent to me; and, for the purpose of conforming with the requisitions of the statutes of the order, and of entitling me to the pension, I was reputed to be in a position to render certain services. You are aware that that is the rule?”

  “No, I did not know it,” said Aramis.

  Madame de Chevreuse paused to look at Aramis, but it was perfectly dark. “Well, such is the rule, however,” she resumed. “I ought, therefore, to seem to possess a power of usefulness of some kind or other. I proposed to travel for the order, and I was placed on the list of affiliated travellers. You understand it was a formality, by means of which I received my pension, which was very convenient for me.”

  “Good heavens! Duchesse, what you tell me is like a dagger thrust into me. You obliged to receive a pension from the Jesuits?”

  “No, Chevalier; from Spain.”

  “Exce
pt as a conscientious scruple, Duchesse, you will admit that it is pretty nearly the same thing.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “But surely, of your magnificent fortune there must remain—”

  “Dampierre is all that remains.”

  “And that is handsome enough.”

  “Yes; but Dampierre is burdened, mortgaged, and almost fallen to ruin, like its owner.”

  “And can the Queen-Mother know and see all that, without shedding a tear?” said Aramis with a penetrating look, which encountered nothing but the darkness.

  “Yes, she has forgotten everything.”

  “You have, I believe, attempted to get restored to favour?”

  “Yes; but, most singularly, the young King inherits the antipathy that his dear father had for me. You will, too, tell me that I am indeed a woman to be hated, and that I am no longer one who can be loved.”

  “Dear Duchesse, pray arrive soon at the circumstance which brought you here; for I think we can be of service to each other.”

  “Such has been my own thought. I came to Fontainebleau with a double object in view. In the first place, I was summoned there by the Franciscan whom you knew. By the bye, how did you know him?—for I have told you my story, and have not yet heard yours.”

  “I knew him in a very natural way, Duchesse. I studied theology with him at Parma. We became fast friends; and it happened, from time to time, that business, or travels, or war, separated us from each other.”

  “You were, of course, aware that he was the general of the Jesuits? ”

  “I suspected it.”

  “But by what extraordinary chance did it happen that you were at the hotel where the affiliated travellers had met together ?”

  “Oh!” said Aramis in a calm voice, “it was the merest chance in the world. I was going to Fontainebleau to see M. Fouquet, for the purpose of obtaining an audience of the King. I was passing by unknown; I saw the poor dying monk in the road, and recognised him immediately. You know the rest—he died in my arms.”