The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [203]
Athos divided them into three groups, took command of one and assigned the other two respectively to Porthos and Aramis. Each group took its stand in the darkness close to one of the side entrances to the palace. D’Artagnan, for his part, boldly entered through the main gate.
Though he felt himself ably supported, the young Gascon was not wholly at ease as he ascended the great staircase, step by step. His behavior toward Milady had been pretty close to treachery and he strongly suspected the political relations which existed between her and His Eminence. Worse still, de Vardes, whom he had treated so ill, was a henchman of the Cardinal’s, and D’Artagnan knew that Richelieu was as passionately attached to his friends as he was implacable toward his enemies.
“If de Vardes has told the Cardinal about our differences, which seems certain, and if he recognized me, which is probable, then I must consider myself practically doomed,” D’Artagnan thought. He shook his head ruefully. “But why has he waited till now?” he wondered. Then: “It is all crystal clear, Milady must have complained about me with all the hypocritical grief that makes her so interesting, and this, my latest crime, has made the pot boil over!”
Yet there was some consolation. “Luckily my loyal friends are down yonder,” he mused. “They would never allow me to be taken away without a battle royal!” But his confidence was short-lived as he reflected that Monsieur de Tréville’s musketeers could not wage a private war against the Cardinal who commanded the armed forces of all France, reduced the Queen to impotence, and crippled the King’s will.
“D’Artagnan, my friend, you are brave and you have excellent qualities,” he soliloquized, “but women will ruin you in the end!”
Having reached this melancholy conclusion, he entered the antechamber, presented his letter to the usher on duty, was shown into a vestibule and then passed into the interior of the palace. In the vestibule he saw five or six of the Cardinal’s guardsmen who recognized him as the man who had wounded Jussac. It seemed to D’Artagnan that they smiled significantly as he went by.
This augured poorly, he thought. But he was not one to be easily intimidated. Or rather, with the colossal pride of a native Gascon, he refused to betray his thoughts when those thoughts were close akin to fear. Smiling, too, he stood smartly up to the Cardinal’s guardsmen, his hand on his hip, every inch a gentleman, a soldier and a man.
Returning, the usher motioned to D’Artagnan to follow him. As D’Artagnan did so he thought he heard the Cardinal’s guardsmen whispering among themselves. The usher led him down a corridor, across a vast salon and into a library where he found a man seated at a desk, writing. He heard the usher announce him, then bow his way out silently. D’Artagnan stood on the threshold, waiting.
At first he thought he was up against some magistrate who was looking over the record, prior to questioning him. On closer examination, he saw that the man seated at the desk was writing or rather correcting a text with lines of unequal length and counting syllables on his fingers. Here then was a poet!
Suddenly the poet snapped his manuscript within a portfolio whose covers bore the legend:
MIRAME
A Tragedy in Five Acts
It was the Cardinal.
XL
WHEREIN D’ARTAGNAN MEETS HIS EMINENCE AND MILADY SPEEDS HIM OFF TO WAR
The Cardinal’s elbow rested on his manuscript, his chin rested in the palm of his hand. He looked very intently at the young man. D’Artagnan, marveling at the intensity of this scrutiny, was hard put to it to hide his nervousness. His Eminence’s glance was piercing as a drill.
But the Gascon kept