Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas (desktop ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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He knocked and the door was opened. The vicar himself awaited him, conducted him to the top of the tower, and when there pointed to a little door, placed the light which he had brought with him in a corner of the wall, that the coadjutor might be able to find it on his return, and went down again. Although the key was in the door the coadjutor knocked.
“Come in,” said a voice which he recognized as that of the mendicant, whom he found lying on a kind of truckle bed. He rose on the entrance of the coadjutor, and at that moment ten o’clock struck.
“Well,” said Gondy, “have you kept your word with me?”
“Not exactly,” replied the mendicant.
“How is that?”
“You asked me for five hundred men, did you not? Well, I have ten thousand for you.”
“You are not boasting?”
“Do you wish for a proof?”
“Yes.”
There were three candles alight, each of which burnt before a window, one looking upon the city, the other upon the Palais Royal, and a third upon the Rue Saint Denis.
The man went silently to each of the candles and blew them out one after the other.
“What are you doing?” asked the coadjutor.
“I have given the signal.”
“For what?”
“For the barricades. When you leave this you will behold my men at work. Only take care you do not break your legs in stumbling over some chain or your neck by falling in a hole.”
“Good! there is your money, the same sum as that you have received already. Now remember that you are a general and do not go and drink.”
“For twenty years I have tasted nothing but water.”
The man took the bag from the hands of the coadjutor, who heard the sound of his fingers counting and handling the gold pieces.
“Ah! ah!” said the coadjutor, “you are avaricious, my good fellow.”
The mendicant sighed and threw down the bag.
“Must I always be the same?” said he, “and shall I never succeed in overcoming the old leaven? Oh, misery, oh, vanity!”
“You take it, however.”
“Yes, but I make hereby a vow in your presence, to employ all that remains to me in pious works.”
His face was pale and drawn, like that of a man who had just undergone some inward struggle.
“Singular man!” muttered Gondy, taking his hat to go away; but on turning around he saw the beggar between him and the door. His first idea was that this man intended to do him some harm, but on the contrary he saw him fall on his knees before him with his hands clasped.
“Your blessing, your holiness, before you go, I beseech you!” he cried.
“Your holiness!” said Gondy; “my friend, you take me for some one else.”
“No, your holiness, I take you for what you are, that is to say, the coadjutor; I recognized you at the first glance.”
Gondy smiled. “And you want my blessing?” he said.
“Yes, I have need of it.”
The mendicant uttered these words in a tone of such humility, such earnest repentance, that Gondy placed his hand upon him and gave him his benediction with all the unction of which he was capable.
“Now,” said Gondy, “there is a communion between us. I have blessed you and you are sacred to me. Come, have you committed some crime, pursued by human justice, from which I can protect you?”
The beggar shook his head. “The crime which I have committed, my lord, has no call upon human justice, and you can only deliver me from it by blessing me frequently, as you have just done.”
“Come, be candid,” said the coadjutor, “you have not all your life followed the trade which you do now?”
“No, my lord. I have pursued it for six years only.”
“And previously, where were you?”
“In the Bastile.”
“And before you went to the Bastile?”
“I will tell you, my lord, on the day when you are willing to hear my confession.”
“Good! At whatsoever hour of the day or night you may present yourself, remember that I shall be ready to give you absolution.”
“Thank you, my lord,” said the mendicant in a hoarse voice. “But I am not yet ready to receive it.”
“Very well. Adieu.”
“Adieu, your holiness,” said the mendicant, opening the door and bending low before the prelate.
It was about eleven o’clock at night. Gondy had not walked a hundred steps ere he perceived the strange change which had been made in the streets of Paris.
The whole city seemed peopled with fantastic beings; silent shadows were seen unpaving the streets and others dragging and upsetting great wagons, whilst others again dug ditches large enough to ingulf whole regiments of horsemen. These active beings flitted here and there like so many demons completing some unknown labor; these were the beggars of the Court of Miracles--the agents of the giver of holy water in the Square of Saint Eustache, preparing barricades for the morrow.
Gondy gazed on these deeds of darkness, on these nocturnal laborers, with a kind of fear; he asked himself, if, after having called forth these foul creatures from their dens, he should have the power of making them retire again. He felt almost inclined to cross himself when one of these beings happened to approach him. He reached the Rue Saint Honore and went up it toward the Rue de la Ferronnerie; there the aspect changed; here it was the tradesmen who were running from shop to shop; their doors seemed closed like their shutters, but they were only pushed to in such a manner as to open and allow the men, who seemed fearful of showing what they carried, to enter, closing immediately. These men were shopkeepers, who had arms to lend to those who had none.
One individual went from door to door, bending under the weight of swords, guns, muskets and every kind of weapon, which he deposited as fast as he could. By the light of a lantern the coadjutor recognized Planchet.
The coadjutor proceeded onward to the quay by way of the Rue de la Monnaie; there he found groups of bourgeois clad in black cloaks or gray, according as they belonged to the upper or lower bourgeoisie. They were standing motionless, while single men passed from one group to another. All these cloaks, gray or black, were raised behind by the point of a sword, or before by the barrel of an arquebuse or a musket.
On reaching the Pont Neuf the coadjutor found it strictly guarded and a man approached him.
“Who are you?” asked the man. “I do not know you for one of us.”
“Then it is because you do not know your friends, my dear Monsieur Louvieres,” said the coadjutor, raising his hat.
Louvieres recognized him and bowed.
Gondy continued his way and went as far as the Tour de Nesle. There he saw a lengthy chain of people gliding under the walls. They might be said to be a procession of ghosts, for they were all wrapped in white cloaks. When they reached a certain spot these men appeared to be annihilated, one after the other, as if the earth had opened under their feet. Gondy, edged into a corner, saw them vanish from the first until the last but one. The last raised his eyes, to ascertain, doubtless, that neither his companions nor himself had been watched, and, in spite of the darkness, he perceived Gondy. He walked straight up to him and placed a pistol to his throat.
“Halloo! Monsieur de Rochefort,” said Gondy, laughing, “are you a boy to play with firearms?”
Rochefort recognized the voice.
“Ah, it is you, my lord!” said he.
“The very same. What people are you leading thus into the bowels of the earth?”
“My fifty recruits from the Chevalier d’Humieres, who are destined to enter the light cavalry and who have only received as yet for their equipment their white cloaks.”
“And where are you going?”
“To the house of one of my friends, a sculptor, only we enter by the trap through which he lets down his marble.”
“Very good,” said Gondy, shaking Rochefort by the hand, who descended in his turn and closed the trap after him.
It was now one o’clock in the morning and the coadjutor returned home. He opened a window and leaned out to listen. A strange, incomprehensible, unearthly sound seemed to pervade the whole city; one felt that something unusual and terrible was happening in all the streets, now dark as ocean’s most unfathomable caves. From time to time a dull sound was heard, like that of a rising tempest or a billow of the sea; but nothing clear, nothing distinct, nothing intelligible; it was like those mysterious subterraneous noises that precede an earthquake.
The work of revolt continued the whole night thus. The next morning, on awaking, Paris seemed to be startled at her own appearance. It was like a besieged town. Armed men, shouldering muskets, watched over the barricades with menacing looks; words of command, patrols, arrests, executions, even, were encountered at every step. Those bearing plumed hats and gold swords were stopped and made to cry, “Long live Broussel!” “Down with Mazarin!” and whoever refused to comply with this ceremony was hooted at, spat upon and even beaten. They had not yet begun to slay, but it was well felt that the inclination to do so was not wanting.
The barricades had been pushed as far as the Palais Royal. From the Rue de Bons Enfants to that of the Ferronnerie, from the Rue Saint Thomas-du-Louvre to the Pont Neuf, from the Rue Richelieu to the Porte Saint Honore, there were more than ten thousand armed men; those who were at the front hurled defiance at the impassive sentinels of the regiment of guards posted around the Palais Royal, the gates of which were closed behind them, a precaution which made their situation precarious. Among these thousands moved, in bands numbering from one hundred to two hundred, pale and haggard men, clothed in rags, who bore a sort of standard on which was inscribed these words: “Behold the misery of the people!” Wherever these men passed, frenzied cries were heard; and there were so many of these bands that the cries were to be heard in all directions.
The astonishment of Mazarin and of Anne of Austria was great when it was announced to them that the city, which the previous evening they had left entirely tranquil, had awakened to such feverish commotion; nor would either the one or the other believe the reports that were brought to them, declaring they would rather rely on the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Then a window was opened and when they saw and heard they were convinced.
Mazarin shrugged his shoulders and pretended to despise the populace; but he turned visibly pale and ran to his closet, trembling all over, locked up his gold and jewels in his caskets and put his finest diamonds on his fingers. As for the queen, furious, and left to her own guidance, she went for the Marechal de la Meilleraie and desired him to take as many men as he pleased and to go and see what was the meaning of this pleasantry.
The marshal was ordinarily very adventurous and was wont to hesitate at nothing; and he had that lofty contempt for the populace which army officers usually profess. He took a hundred and fifty men and attempted to go out by the Pont du Louvre, but there he met Rochefort and his fifty horsemen, attended by more than five hundred
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