The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [295]
To His Eminence Monseigneur Cardinal de Richelieu at his camp before La Rochelle:
Monseigneur:
Your Eminence need have no cause for alarm. His Grace the Duke of Buckingham cannot possibly set out for France. Boulogne, the evening of the 25th.
Lady Clark
P.S. In accordance with the wishes of Your Eminence, I am leaving for the Convent of the Carmelites at Béthune where I await further orders.
Traveling rapidly that day, Milady spent one night at an inn on the road, and after a journey of three hours next morning, reached Béthune at eight o’clock. At the Carmelite convent, she was received by the Mother Superior, produced her order from the Cardinal, was immediately assigned to a chamber and given a hearty breakfast. As she partook of it cheerfully, every detail of her past faded into oblivion; the roseate perspective of the future beckoned as she basked in the aura of favors to come from the Cardinal she had served so well. Best of all, the name of Richelieu had not been mentioned in the whole murderous affair. Surely then her discretion merited the highest recompense in His Eminence’s gift? In her body and her heart, passion succeeded passion, consuming her ever anew; her life took on the color and movement of clouds that float across the firmament, tinged now with azure, now with fire, and now with the blackness of a tempest which leaves in its wake no trace of aught but devastation and death.
After breakfast the Mother Superior paid Milady a visit. In general there are few distractions in a convent and a new arrival, particularly one as attractive as Milady, provides considerable entertainment. The good nun sought her out with anticipatory relish. Milady, on her part, used all her wiles in order to please the Mother Superior; this was not difficult, what with the grace of her person and the variety and ease of her conversation.
The Mother Superior was of noble birth . . . she welcomed all manner of Court gossip which so rarely travels to the confines of the realm . . . she was awed by the type of tidings which infrequently scale the walls of convents . . . and she was dazzled by these secular rumors which burst upon the godly silence of her little world. . . .
Milady, on the contrary, was thoroughly conversant with all the aristocratic intrigues amid which she had constantly lived for the past few years. She therefore made it her business to amuse the worthy nun with an abundance of anecdotes about the French Court. Discreetly she unfolded the mundane practices of the great lords and ladies whom the Mother Superior knew perfectly well by name . . . skilfully she retailed the exaggerated devoutness and eccentric devotions of the King . . . lightly she exposed the scandals of this or that amour between this or that noble . . . airily she told of the love affair between Her Majesty and Buckingham. . . . In brief she spoke a great deal with assumed candor in order to move her auditor to speak ever so little.
But the Mother Superior simply sat back listening avidly, vouchsafing no word and smiling encouragement. Milady, aware that this type of conversation pleased the nun, developed various themes of Court chatter, endeavoring slowly and warily, to bring the Cardinal into the discussion.
Her problem was a thorny one, for she did not know whether the Mother Superior was a royalist or a cardinalist. Accordingly she steered a safe middle-course. Meanwhile the nun maintained an even more cautious reserve, nodding her head gravely whenever Milady chanced to mention the Cardinal by name.
As the conversation continued, Milady, beginning to feel that conventual life promised to prove extremely tedious, resolved to take a risk in order to ascertain how matters stood. To test the discretion of the nun, she related an ugly rumor about the Cardinal, circumspectly at first, then thoroughly circumstantiated. It concerned Monseigneur’s reputed liai-son with Madame d’Aiguillon, his niece, which afforded the fillip of