The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [71]
“I shall be true to my word, Madame; your hand and I go.”
Her eyes closed, the Queen offered him one hand, resting heavily with the other upon Dona Estefana, for she felt about to faint. Passionately Buckingham pressed his lips to the Queen’s fingertips, then rose.
“If I am still alive within six months,” he vowed, “I shall see Your Majesty again though I upset the universe to do so.” Then faithful to his promise, he stumbled from the room.
Madame Bonacieux was awaiting him; with the same caution and the same luck they made their way successfully out of the Louvre.
XIII
OF MONSIEUR BONACIEUX
By now the perspicacious reader will have perceived that the author seems to have paid but scant attention to one of his characters, despite the latter’s precarious plight. What of Monsieur Bonacieux, that worthy martyr to the political and amorous intrigues of an age when political and amorous intrigues went cheek by jowl?
The officers who had arrested him led him straight to the Bastille . . . shuddering with fright, he was marched past a platoon of soldiers who were loading their muskets . . . then he was taken down a subterranean gallery where he met with the bawdiest insults and the harshest of physical treatment. . . . No one could have supposed him to be a gentleman; he was therefore handled as the veriest clodhopper.
After a half-hour or so, a clerk arrived to put an end to his tortures if not to his disquiet with orders to lead Monsieur Bonacieux to the Bureau of Investigation. Usually prisoners were questioned in their cells, but Monsieur Bonacieux’s presence in jail did not warrant such niceties. Two guards seized him, trundled him across a court, propelled him down a corridor flanked by sentinels, thrust open a door and pushed him into a small room to face a table, a chair and a Commissioner. The Commissioner was seated on the chair and busy writing at a table. The guards led the prisoner to the table, and at a wave of the Commissioner’s hand moved out of earshot. The Commissioner continued sedulously to examine the papers before him, then suddenly looked up, and Bonacieux glimpsed a surly mouth . . . a pointed nose . . . a pair of yellow protruding cheeks . . . a pair of tiny eyes, bright and piercing . . . a man half-ferret, half-fox . . . a head emerging atop an exaggerated neck much as a turtle’s head emerges from its shell. . . .
The Commissioner asked Monsieur Bonacieux his family name, his Christian name, his age, his profession and his domicile, to which the accused replied:
“Joseph-Michel Bonacieux; fifty years old; haberdasher (retired); residence, Number 11 Rue des Fossoyeurs.” This settled, there was no more questioning; instead, the Commissioner read a long lecture on the dangers an obscure bourgeois might incur by interfering with public affairs, topping this exordium with a lengthier exposition celebrating the deeds and power of His Eminence the Cardinal:
“An incomparable minister, hum! The conqueror of previous ministries, hum! An exemplar of ministers to come, hum! A statesman whose acts no sane man, hum! would oppose.”
Part Two of his speech done, Monsieur le Commissaire fixed his hawk eyes on poor Bonacieux, inviting him to ponder upon the extreme gravity of his plight. Our haberdasher needed no such invitation, his mind was already made up; he swiftly consigned Monsieur de La Porte to the Devil for marrying him off to Constance, especially since Constance was a servant in the Queen’s Household. At bottom Bonacieux’s character was a mixture of profound egoism and sordid avarice, flavored with a dash of extreme cowardice; any love he might bear his young wife was secondary to selfishness, greed and fear. Carefully he thought over what his questioner had said, then replied coolly:
“Monsieur le Commissaire, I beg you to believe I yield to none in admiration for the personality and merit of His Incomparable Eminence whom we have the honor to serve.”
“If that is so, why are you in the Bastille?”
“Why am I here? How am I here? I simply cannot tell you, Monsieur, because I do not know