Twenty Years After - Alexandre Dumas (reading an ebook .txt) 📗

I much fear it will do nothing for English, even if it does not harm them. This is recent news, sir,” continued she, “and I thank you for having made such haste to bring it to me; without this letter I should not have heard till to-morrow, perhaps after to-morrow — the last of all Paris.”

“Madame,” said Raoul, “the Louvre is but the second palace this news has reached; it is as yet unknown to all, and I had sworn to the Count de Guiche to remit this letter to your majesty before even I should embrace my guardian.”

“Your guardian! is he, too, a Bragelonne?” asked Lord de Winter. “I once knew a Bragelonne — is he still alive?”

“No, sir, he is dead; and I believe it is from him my guardian, whose near relation he was, inherited the estate from which I take my name.”

“And your guardian, sir,” asked the queen, who could not help feeling some interest in the handsome young man before her, “what is his name?”

“The Comte de la Fere, madame,” replied the young man, bowing.

De Winter made a gesture of surprise and the queen turned to him with a start of joy.

“The Comte de la Fere!” she cried. “Have you not mentioned that name to me?”

As for De Winter he could scarcely believe that he had heard aright. “The Comte de la Fere!” he cried in his turn. “Oh, sir, reply, I entreat you — is not the Comte de la Fere a noble whom I remember, handsome and brave, a musketeer under Louis XIII., who must be now about forty-seven or forty-eight years of age?”

“Yes, sir, you are right in every particular!”

“And who served under an assumed name?”

“Under the name of Athos. Latterly I heard his friend, Monsieur d’Artagnan, give him that name.”

“That is it, madame, that is the same. God be praised! And he is in Paris?” continued he, addressing Raoul; then turning to the queen: “We may still hope. Providence has declared for us, since I have found this brave man again in so miraculous a manner. And, sir, where does he reside, pray?”

“The Comte de la Fere lodges in the Rue Guenegaud, Hotel du Grand Roi Charlemagne.”

“Thanks, sir. Inform this dear friend that he may remain within, that I shall go and see him immediately.”

“Sir, I obey with pleasure, if her majesty will permit me to depart.”

“Go, Monsieur de Bragelonne,” said the queen, “and rest assured of our affection.”

Raoul bent respectfully before the two princesses, and bowing to De Winter, departed.

The queen and De Winter continued to converse for some time in low voices, in order that the young princess should not overhear them; but the precaution was needless: she was in deep converse with her own thoughts.

Then, when De Winter rose to take leave:

“Listen, my lord,” said the queen; “I have preserved this diamond cross which came from my mother, and this order of St. Michael which came from my husband. They are worth about fifty thousand pounds. I had sworn to die of hunger rather than part with these precious pledges; but now that this ornament may be useful to him or his defenders, everything must be sacrificed. Take them, and if you need money for your expedition, sell them fearlessly, my lord. But should you find the means of retaining them, remember, my lord, that I shall esteem you as having rendered the greatest service that a gentleman can render to a queen; and in the day of my prosperity he who brings me this order and this cross shall be blessed by me and my children.”

“Madame,” replied De Winter, “your majesty will be served by a man devoted to you. I hasten to deposit these two objects in a safe place, nor should I accept them if the resources of our ancient fortune were left to us, but our estates are confiscated, our ready money is exhausted, and we are reduced to turn to service everything we possess. In an hour hence I shall be with the Comte de la Fere, and to-morrow your majesty shall have a definite reply.”

The queen tendered her hand to Lord de Winter, who, kissing it respectfully, went out and traversed alone and unconducted those large, dark and deserted apartments, brushing away tears which, blase as he was by fifty years spent as a courtier, he could not withhold at the spectacle of royal distress so dignified, yet so intense.

40

Uncle and Nephew.

 

The horse and servant belonging to De Winter were waiting for him at the door; he proceeded toward his abode very thoughtfully, looking behind him from time to him to contemplate the dark and silent frontage of the Louvre. It was then that he saw a horseman, as it were, detach himself from the wall and follow him at a little distance. In leaving the Palais Royal he remembered to have observed a similar shadow.

“Tony,” he said, motioning to his groom to approach.

“Here I am, my lord.”

“Did you remark that man who is following us?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Who is he?”

“I do not know, only he has followed your grace from the Palais Royal, stopped at the Louvre to wait for you, and now leaves the Louvre with you.”

“Some spy of the cardinal,” said De Winter to him, aside. “Let us pretend not to notice that he is watching us.”

And spurring on he plunged into the labyrinth of streets which led to his hotel, situated near the Marais, for having for so long a time lived near the Place Royale, Lord de Winter naturally returned to lodge near his ancient dwelling.

The unknown spurred his horse to a gallop.

De Winter dismounted at his hotel and went up into his apartment, intending to watch the spy; but as he was about to place his gloves and hat on a table, he saw reflected in a glass opposite to him a figure which stood on the threshold of the room. He turned around and Mordaunt stood before him.

There was a moment of frozen silence between these two.

“Sir,” said De Winter, “I thought I had already made you aware that I am weary of this persecution; withdraw, then, or I shall call and have you turned out as you were in London. I am not your uncle, I know you not.”

“My uncle,” replied Mordaunt, with his harsh and bantering tone, “you are mistaken; you will not have me turned out this time as you did in London — you dare not. As for denying that I am your nephew, you will think twice about it, now that I have learned some things of which I was ignorant a year ago.”

“And how does it concern me what you have learned?” said De Winter.

“Oh, it concerns you very closely, my uncle, I am sure, and you will soon be of my opinion,” added he, with a smile which sent a shudder through the veins of him he thus addressed. “When I presented myself before you for the first time in London, it was to ask you what had become of my fortune; the second time it was to demand who had sullied my name; and this time I come before you to ask a question far more terrible than any other, to say to you as God said to the first murderer: `Cain, what hast thou done to thy brother Abel?’ My lord, what have you done with your sister — your sister, who was my mother?”

De Winter shrank back from the fire of those scorching eyes.

“Your mother?” he said.

“Yes, my lord, my mother,” replied the young man, advancing into the room until he was face to face with Lord de Winter, and crossing his arms. “I have asked the headsman of Bethune,” he said, his voice hoarse and his face livid with passion and grief. “And the headsman of Bethune gave me a reply.”

De Winter fell back in a chair as though struck by a thunderbolt and in vain attempted a reply.

“Yes,” continued the young man; “all is now explained; with this key I open the abyss. My mother inherited an estate from her husband, you have assassinated her; my name would have secured me the paternal estate, you have deprived me of it; you have despoiled me of my fortune. I am no longer astonished that you knew me not. I am not surprised that you refused to recognize me. When a man is a robber it is hard to call him nephew whom he has impoverished; when one is a murderer, to recognize the man whom one has made an orphan.”

These words produced a contrary effect to that which Mordaunt had anticipated. De Winter remembered the monster that Milady had been; he rose, dignified and calm, restraining by the severity of his look the wild glance of the young man.

“You desire to fathom this horrible secret?” said De Winter; “well, then, so be it. Know, then, what manner of woman it was for whom to-day you call me to account. That woman had, in all probability, poisoned my brother, and in order to inherit from me she was about to assassinate me in my turn. I have proof of it. What say you to that?”

“I say that she was my mother.”

“She caused the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham to be stabbed by a man who was, ere that, honest, good and pure. What say you to that crime, of which I have the proof?”

“She was my mother.”

“On our return to France she had a young woman who was attached to one of her opponents poisoned in the convent of the Augustines at Bethune. Will this crime persuade you of the justice of her punishment — for of all this I have the proofs?”

“She was my mother!” cried the young man, who uttered these three successive exclamations with constantly increasing force.

“At last, charged with murders, with debauchery, hated by every one and yet threatening still, like a panther thirsting for blood, she fell under the blows of men whom she had rendered desperate, though they had never done her the least injury; she met with judges whom her hideous crimes had evoked; and that executioner you saw — that executioner who you say told you everything — that executioner, if he told you everything, told you that he leaped with joy in avenging on her his brother’s shame and suicide. Depraved as a girl, adulterous as a wife, an unnatural sister, homicide, poisoner, execrated by all who knew her, by every nation that had been visited by her, she died accursed by Heaven and earth.”

A sob which Mordaunt could not repress burst from his throat and his livid face became suffused with blood; he clenched his fists, sweat covered his face, his hair, like Hamlet’s, stood on end, and racked with fury he cried out:

“Silence, sir! she was my mother! Her crimes, I know them not; her disorders, I know them not; her vices, I know them not. But this I know, that I had a mother, that five men leagued against one woman, murdered her clandestinely by night — silently — like cowards. I know that you were one of them, my uncle, and that you cried louder than the others: `She must die.’ Therefore I warn you, and listen well to my words, that they may be engraved upon your memory, never to be forgotten: this murder, which has robbed me of everything — this murder, which has deprived me of my name — this murder, which has impoverished me — this murder, which has made me corrupt, wicked, implacable — I shall summon you to account for it first and then those who were your accomplices, when I