Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas (desktop ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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“Hush!” said Porthos; “listen.”)
“Madame,” cried the cardinal, seizing hold of Anne and drawing her back, “Madame, what are you about?”
Then he added in Spanish, “Anne, are you mad? You, a queen to quarrel like a washerwoman! And do you not perceive that in the person of this priest is represented the whole people of Paris and that it is dangerous to insult him at this moment, and if this priest wished it, in an hour you would be without a crown? Come, then, on another occasion you can be firm and strong; but to-day is not the proper time; to-day, flatter and caress, or you are only a common woman.”
(At the first words of this address D’Artagnan had seized Porthos’s arm, which he pressed with gradually increasing force. When Mazarin ceased speaking he said to Porthos in a low tone:
“Never tell Mazarin that I understand Spanish, or I am a lost man and you are also.”
“All right,” said Porthos.)
This rough appeal, marked by the eloquence which characterized Mazarin when he spoke in Italian or Spanish and which he lost entirely in speaking French, was uttered with such impenetrable expression that Gondy, clever physiognomist as he was, had no suspicion of its being more than a simple warning to be more subdued.
The queen, on her part, thus chided, softened immediately and sat down, and in an almost weeping voice, letting her arms fall by her side, said:
“Pardon me, sir, and attribute this violence to what I suffer. A woman, and consequently subject to the weaknesses of my sex, I am alarmed at the idea of civil war; a queen, accustomed to be obeyed, I am excited at the first opposition.”
“Madame,” replied Gondy, bowing, “your majesty is mistaken in qualifying my sincere advice as opposition. Your majesty has none but submissive and respectful subjects. It is not the queen with whom the people are displeased; they ask for Broussel and are only too happy, if you release him to them, to live under your government.”
Mazarin, who at the words, “It is not the queen with whom the people are displeased,” had pricked up his ears, thinking that the coadjutor was about to speak of the cries, “Down with Mazarin,” and pleased with Gondy’s suppression of this fact, he said with his sweetest voice and his most gracious expression:
“Madame, credit the coadjutor, who is one of the most able politicians we have; the first available cardinal’s hat seems to belong already to his noble brow.”
“Ah! how much you have need of me, cunning rogue!” thought Gondy.
(“And what will he promise us?” said D’Artagnan. “Peste, if he is giving away hats like that, Porthos, let us look out and both demand a regiment to-morrow. Corbleu! let the civil war last but one year and I will have a constable’s sword gilt for me.”
“And for me?” put in Porthos.
“For you? I will give you the baton of the Marechal de la Meilleraie, who does not seem to be much in favor just now.”)
“And so, sir,” said the queen, “you are seriously afraid of a public tumult.”
“Seriously,” said Gondy, astonished at not having further advanced; “I fear that when the torrent has broken its embankment it will cause fearful destruction.”
“And I,” said the queen, “think that in such a case other embankments should be raised to oppose it. Go; I will reflect.”
Gondy looked at Mazarin, astonished, and Mazarin approached the queen to speak to her, but at this moment a frightful tumult arose from the square of the Palais Royal.
Gondy smiled, the queen’s color rose and Mazarin grew even paler.
“What is that again?” he asked.
At this moment Comminges rushed into the room.
“Pardon, your majesty,” he cried, “but the people have dashed the sentinels against the gates and they are now forcing the doors; what are your commands?”
“Listen, madame,” said Gondy.
The moaning of waves, the noise of thunder, the roaring of a volcano, cannot be compared with the tempest of cries heard at that moment.
“What are my commands?” said the queen.
“Yes, for time presses.”
“How many men have you about the Palais Royal?”
“Six hundred.”
“Place a hundred around the king and with the remainder sweep away this mob for me.”
“Madame,” cried Mazarin, “what are you about?”
“Go!” said the queen.
Comminges went out with a soldier’s passive obedience.
At this moment a monstrous battering was heard. One of the gates began to yield.
“Oh! madame,” cried Mazarin, “you have ruined us all--the king, yourself and me.”
At this cry from the soul of the frightened cardinal, Anne became alarmed in her turn and would have recalled Comminges.
“It is too late,” said Mazarin, tearing his hair, “too late!”
The gale had given way. Hoarse shouts were heard from the excited mob. D’Artagnan put his hand to his sword, motioning to Porthos to follow his example.
“Save the queen!” cried Mazarin to the coadjutor.
Gondy sprang to the window and threw it open; he recognized Louvieres at the head of a troop of about three or four thousand men.
“Not a step further,” he shouted, “the queen is signing!”
“What are you saying?” asked the queen.
“The truth, madame,” said Mazarin, placing a pen and a paper before her, “you must;” then he added: “Sign, Anne, I implore you--I command you.”
The queen fell into a chair, took the pen and signed.
The people, kept back by Louvieres, had not made another step forward; but the awful murmuring, which indicates an angry people, continued.
The queen had written, “The keeper of the prison at Saint Germain will set Councillor Broussel at liberty;” and she had signed it.
The coadjutor, whose eyes devoured her slightest movements, seized the paper immediately the signature had been affixed to it, returned to the window and waved it in his hand.
“This is the order,” he said.
All Paris seemed to shout with joy, and then the air resounded with the cries of “Long live Broussel!” “Long live the coadjutor!”
“Long live the queen!” cried De Gondy; but the cries which replied to his were poor and few, and perhaps he had but uttered it to make Anne of Austria sensible of her weakness.
“And now that you have obtained what you want, go,” said she, “Monsieur de Gondy.”
“Whenever her majesty has need of me,” replied the coadjutor, bowing, “her majesty knows I am at her command.”
“Ah, cursed priest!” cried Anne, when he had retired, stretching out her arm to the scarcely closed door, “one day I will make you drink the dregs of the atrocious gall you have poured out on me to-day.”
Mazarin wished to approach her. “Leave me!” she exclaimed; “you are not a man!” and she went out of the room.
“It is you who are not a woman,” muttered Mazarin.
Then, after a moment of reverie, he remembered where he had left D’Artagnan and Porthos and that they must have overheard everything. He knit his brows and went direct to the tapestry, which he pushed aside. The closet was empty.
At the queen’s last word, D’Artagnan had dragged Porthos into the gallery. Thither Mazarin went in his turn and found the two friends walking up and down.
“Why did you leave the closet, Monsieur d’Artagnan?” asked the cardinal.
“Because,” replied D’Artagnan, “the queen desired every one to leave and I thought that this command was intended for us as well as for the rest.”
“And you have been here since----”
“About a quarter of an hour,” said D’Artagnan, motioning to Porthos not to contradict him.
Mazarin saw the sign and remained convinced that D’Artagnan had seen and heard everything; but he was pleased with his falsehood.
“Decidedly, Monsieur d’Artagnan, you are the man I have been seeking. You may reckon upon me and so may your friend.” Then bowing to the two musketeers with his most gracious smile, he re-entered his closet more calmly, for on the departure of De Gondy the uproar had ceased as though by enchantment.
Anne of Austria returned to her oratory, furious.
“What!” she cried, wringing her beautiful hands, “What! the people have seen Monsieur de Conde, a prince of the blood royal, arrested by my mother-in-law, Maria de Medicis; they saw my mother-in-law, their former regent, expelled by the cardinal; they saw Monsieur de Vendome, that is to say, the son of Henry IV., a prisoner at Vincennes; and whilst these great personages were imprisoned, insulted and threatened, they said nothing; and now for a Broussel--good God! what, then, is to become of royalty?”
The queen unconsciously touched here upon the exciting question. The people had made no demonstration for the princes, but they had risen for Broussel; they were taking the part of a plebeian and in defending Broussel they instinctively felt they were defending themselves.
During this time Mazarin walked up and down the study, glancing from time to time at his beautiful Venetian mirror, starred in every direction. “Ah!” he said, “it is sad, I know well, to be forced to yield thus; but, pshaw! we shall have our revenge. What matters it about Broussel--it is a name, not a thing.”
Mazarin, clever politician as he was, was for once mistaken; Broussel was a thing, not a name.
The next morning, therefore, when Broussel made his entrance into Paris in a large carriage, having his son Louvieres at his side and Friquet behind the vehicle, the people threw themselves in his way and cries of “Long live Broussel!” “Long live our father!” resounded from all parts and was death to Mazarin’s ears; and the cardinal’s spies brought bad news from every direction, which greatly agitated the minister, but was calmly received by the queen. The latter seemed to be maturing in her mind some great stroke, a fact which increased the uneasiness of the cardinal, who knew the proud princess and dreaded much the determination of Anne of Austria.
The coadjutor returned to parliament more a monarch than king, queen, and cardinal, all three together. By his advice a decree from parliament summoned the citizens to lay down their arms and demolish the barricades. They now knew that it required but one hour to take up arms again and one night to reconstruct the barricades.
Rochefort had returned to the Chevalier d’Humieres his fifty horsemen, less two, missing at roll call. But the chevalier was himself at heart a Frondist and would hear nothing said of compensation.
The mendicant had gone to his old place on the steps of Saint Eustache and was again distributing holy water with one hand and asking alms with the other. No one could suspect that those two hands had been engaged with others in drawing out from the social edifice the keystone of royalty.
Louvieres was proud and satisfied; he had taken revenge on Mazarin and had aided in his father’s deliverance from prison. His name had been mentioned as a name of terror at the Palais Royal. Laughingly he said to the councillor, restored to his family:
“Do you think, father, that if now I should ask for a company the queen would give it to me?”
D’Artagnan profited by this interval of calm to send away Raoul, whom he had great difficulty in keeping shut up during the riot, and who wished positively to strike a blow for one party or the other. Raoul had offered some opposition at first; but D’Artagnan made use of the Comte de la Fere’s name, and after paying a visit to Madame de Chevreuse, Raoul started to rejoin the army.
Rochefort alone was dissatisfied with the termination of affairs. He had written to the Duc de Beaufort to come and the duke was
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