The Vicomte de Bragelonne; Or, Ten Years Later<br />Being the completion of "The Three Musketeers" a by Alexandre Dumas (reading strategies book .TXT) 📗

"What orders? Let me know," said the king.

"Orders to turn a house inside out, to beat M. Fouquet's servants, to force the drawers, to give over a peaceful house to pillage! Mordioux! these are savage orders!"

"Monsieur!" said Colbert, becoming pale.

"Monsieur," interrupted D'Artagnan, "the king alone, understand—the king alone has a right to command my musketeers; but, as to you, I forbid you to do it, and I tell you so before his majesty; gentlemen who wear swords are not fellows with pens behind their ears."

"D'Artagnan! D'Artagnan!" murmured the king.

"It is humiliating," continued the musketeer; "my soldiers are disgraced. I do not command reítres, thank you, nor clerks of the intendance, mordioux!"

"Well! but what is all this about?" said the king, with authority.

"About this, sire; monsieur—monsieur, who could not guess your majesty's orders, and consequently could not know I was gone to arrest M. Fouquet; monsieur, who has caused the iron cage to be constructed for his patron of yesterday—has sent M. de Roncherat to the lodgings of M. Fouquet, and under pretense of taking away the surintendant's papers, they have taken away the furniture. My musketeers have been placed round the house all the morning; such were my orders. Why did any one presume to order them to enter? Why, by forcing them to assist in this pillage, have they been made accomplices in it? Mordioux! we serve the king, we do, but we do not serve M. Colbert!"

"Monsieur d'Artagnan," said the king, sternly, "take care; it is not in my presence that such explanations, and made in this tone, should take place."

"I have acted for the good of the king," said Colbert, in a faltering voice; "it is hard to be so treated by one of your majesty's officers, and that without vengeance, on account of the respect I owe the king."

"The respect you owe the king!" cried D'Artagnan, whose eyes flashed fire, "consists, in the first place, in making his authority respected, and making his person beloved. Every agent of a power without control represents that power, and when people curse the hand which strikes them, it is to the royal hand that God makes the reproach, do you hear? Must a soldier, hardened by forty years of wounds and blood, give you this lesson, monsieur? Must mercy be on my side, and ferocity on yours? You have caused the innocent to be arrested, bound, and imprisoned!"

"The accomplices, perhaps, of M. Fouquet," said Colbert.

"Who told you that M. Fouquet had accomplices, or even that he was guilty? The king alone knows that, his justice is not blind! When he shall say, 'Ar[Pg 473]rest and imprison' such and such people, then he shall be obeyed. Do not talk to me then any more of the respect you owe the king, and be careful of your words, that they may not chance to convey any menace; for the king will not allow those to be threatened who do him service by others who do him disservice; and if in case I should have, which God forbid! a master so ungrateful, I would make myself respected."

Thus saying, D'Artagnan took his station haughtily in the king's cabinet, his eye flashing, his hand on his sword, his lips trembling, affecting much more anger than he really felt. Colbert, humiliated and devoured with rage, bowed to the king as if to ask his permission to leave the room. The king, crossed in his pride and in his curiosity, knew not which part to take. D'Artagnan saw him hesitate. To remain longer would have been an error; it was necessary to obtain a triumph over Colbert, and the only means was to touch the king so near and so strongly to the quick, that his majesty would have no other means of extricating himself but choosing between the two antagonists. D'Artagnan then bowed as Colbert had done; but the king, who, in preference to everything else was anxious to have all the exact details of the arrest of the surintendant of the finances from him who had made him tremble for a moment—the king, perceiving that the ill-humor of D'Artagnan would put off for half an hour at least the details he was burning to be acquainted with—Louis, we say, forgot Colbert, who had nothing new to tell him, and recalled his captain of the musketeers.

"In the first place," said he, "let me see the result of your commission, monsieur; you may repose afterward."

D'Artagnan, who was just passing through the door, stopped at the voice of the king, retraced his steps, and Colbert was forced to leave the closet. His countenance assumed almost a purple hue, his black and threatening eyes shone with a dark fire beneath their thick brows; he stepped out, bowed before the king, half drew himself up in passing D'Artagnan,[Pg 474] and went away with death in his heart. D'Artagnan, on being left alone with the king, softened immediately, and composing his countenance: "Sire," said he, "you are a young king. It is by the dawn that people judge whether the day will be fine or dull. How, sire, will the people whom the hand of God has placed under your law, argue of your reign, if, between them and you, you allow angry and violent ministers to act? But let us speak of me, sire, let us leave a discussion that may appear idle, and perhaps inconvenient to you. Let us speak of me. I have arrested M. Fouquet."

"You took plenty of time about it," said the king sharply.

D'Artagnan looked at the king. "I perceive that I have expressed myself badly. I announced to your majesty that I had arrested Monsieur Fouquet."

"You did; and what then?"

"Well! I ought to have told your majesty that M. Fouquet had arrested me; that would have been more just. I re-establish the truth, then; I have been arrested by M. Fouquet."

It was now the turn of Louis XIV. to be surprised. His majesty was astonished in his turn. D'Artagnan, with his quick glance, appreciated what was passing in the heart of his master. He did not allow him time to put any questions. He related, with that poetry, that picturesqueness, which perhaps he alone possessed at that period, the evasion of Fouquet, the pursuit, the furious race, and, lastly, the inimitable generosity of the surintendant, who might have fled ten times over, who might have killed the adversary attached to the pursuit of him, and who had preferred imprisonment, and perhaps worse, to the humiliation of him who wished to ravish his liberty from him. In proportion as the tale advanced, the king became agitated, devouring the narrator's words, and knocking his finger-nails against each other.

"It results from this, then, sire, in my eyes at least, that the man who conducts himself thus is a gallant man, and cannot be an enemy to the king. That is my opinion, and I repeat it to your majesty. I know what the king will say to me, and I bow to it; reasons of state—so be it! That in my eyes is very respectable. But I am a soldier, I have received my orders, my orders are executed—very unwillingly on my part, it is true, but they are executed. I say no more."

"Where is M. Fouquet at this moment?" asked Louis, after a short silence.

"M. Fouquet, sire," replied D'Artagnan, "is in the iron cage that M. Colbert had prepared for him, and is going, as fast as four vigorous horses can drag him, toward Angers."

"Why did you leave him on the road?"

"Because your majesty did not tell me to go to Angers. The proof, the best proof of what I advance, is that the king desired me to be sought for but this minute. And then I have another reason."

"What is that?"

"While I was with him, poor M. Fouquet would never attempt to escape."

"Well!" cried the king, with stupefaction.

"Your majesty ought to understand, and does understand, certainly, that my warmest wish is to know that M. Fouquet is at liberty. I have given him one of my brigadiers, the most stupid I could find among my musketeers, in order that the prisoner might have a chance of escaping."

"Are you mad, Monsieur d'Artagnan!" cried the king, crossing his arms on his breast. "Do people speak such enormities, even when they have the misfortune to think them?"

"Ah! sire, you cannot expect that I should be the enemy of M. Fouquet, after what he has just done for you and me. No, no; if you desire that he should remain under your locks and bolts, never give him in charge to me; however closely wired might be the cage, the bird would, in the end, fly away."

"I am surprised," said the king, in a stern tone, "you have not followed the fortunes of him whom M. Fouquet wished to place upon my throne. You had in him all you want—affection and gratitude. In my service, monsieur, you only find a master."

"If M. Fouquet had not gone to seek you in the Bastille, sire," replied D'Artagnan, with a deeply impressive manner, "one single man would have gone there, and that man would have been me—you know that right well, sire."

The king was brought to a pause. Before that speech of his captain of the musketeers, so frankly spoken and so true, the king had nothing to offer. On hearing D'Artagnan, Louis remembered the D'Artagnan of former times; him who, at the Palais Royal, held himself concealed behind the curtains of his bed, when the people of Paris, led on by Cardinal de Retz, came to assure themselves of the presence of the king, the D'Artagnan whom he saluted with his hand at the door of his carriage, when repairing to Notre-Dame on his return to Paris; the soldier who had quitted his service at Blois; the lieutenant whom he had recalled near his person when the death of Mazarin restored him his power; the man he had always found loyal, courageous, and devoted. Louis advanced toward the door and called Colbert. Colbert had not left the corridor where the secretaries were at work. Colbert appeared.

"Colbert, have you made a perquisition at the house of M. Fouquet?"

"Yes, sire."

"What has it produced?"

"M. de Roncherat, who was sent with your majesty's musketeers, has remitted me some papers," replied Colbert.

"I will look at them. Give me your hand."

"My hand, sire!"

"Yes, that I may place it in that of M. d'Artagnan. In fact, M. d'Artagnan," added he with a smile, turning toward the soldier, who, at the sight of the clerk, had resumed his haughty attitude, "you do not know this man; make his acquaintance." And he pointed to Colbert. "He has been but a moderate servant in subaltern positions, but he will be a great man if I raise him to the first rank."

"Sire!" stammered Colbert, confused with pleasure and fear.

"I have understood why," murmured[Pg 475] D'Artagnan in the king's ear; "he was jealous."

"Precisely, and his jealousy confined his wings."

"He will henceforth be a winged serpent," grumbled the musketeer, with a remains of hatred against his recent adversary.

But Colbert, approaching him, offered to his eyes a physiognomy so different from that which he had been accustomed to see him wear; he appeared so good, so mild, so easy; his eyes took the expression of an intelligence so noble, that D'Artagnan, a connoisseur in physiognomies, was moved, and almost changed in his convictions. Colbert pressed his hand.

"That which the king has just told you, monsieur, proves how well his majesty is acquainted with men. The inveterate opposition I have displayed, up to this day, against abuses and not against men, proves that I had it in view to prepare for my king a great reign, for my country a great blessing. I have many ideas, M. d'Artagnan; you will see them expand in the sun of public peace; and if I have not the certainty and good fortune to conquer the friendship of honest men, I am at least certain, monsieur, that I shall obtain their esteem. For their admiration, monsieur, I would give my life."

This change, this sudden elevation, this mute approbation of the king, gave the musketeer matter for much reflection. He bowed civilly to Colbert, who did not take his eyes off him. The king, when he saw they were reconciled, dismissed them. They left the room together. As soon as they were out of the cabinet, the new minister, stopping the captain, said:

"Is it possible, M. d'Artagnan, that with such an eye as yours, you have not, at the first glance, at the first inspection, discovered what sort of man I am?"

"Monsieur Colbert," replied the musketeer, "the ray of the sun which we have in our eyes prevents us from seeing the most ardent flames. The man in