The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [75]
He walked as a somnambulist, dimly perceiving objects as through a mist, apprehending sounds that he could not identify. Had his life depended upon it, he could have summoned no gesture of apology, no cry for mercy. He occupied a hard wooden bench, a dazed man, his back glued to the wall, his arms hanging limply at his sides, in exactly the place where the guards had deposited him.
Presently he looked about him. There seemed to be no sign of danger . . . he saw no object threatening his life . . . he realized that he sat on a comfortably upholstered bench . . . the walls were lined with handsome Cordovan leather . . . great red damask curtains, fastened by gold clasps, fluttered at the window. . . .
Gradually, convinced that his fears were exaggerated, he proceeded to wag his head up and down, right and left. As nobody seemed to object to this, he gathered sufficient courage to pull back first his right leg, then his left; finally, with the help of both hands, he lifted himself from the bench and rose to his feet.
Just then an officer—a man of pleasant mien—opened a door, said a few words to somebody within, and turning to the haberdasher:
“Are you Bonacieux?”
“Yes, Monsieur l’Officier,” Bonacieux stammered, more dead than alive. “At your service, Monsieur.”
“Step in here, please,” said the officer, effacing himself to allow a startled, silent Bonacieux to enter a room where he sensed that he was being expected. It was a large room, set aside from the rest of the mansion and richly tapestried; weapons of all kinds adorned the walls; a fire burned in the grate though it was but late September. A square table stood conspicuously in the middle of the room, covered with books and papers, and over them a huge map of the city of La Rochelle.
A man stood with his back to the fireplace. Of medium size, of proud and haughty mien, he had a noble brow, piercing eyes, and a thin face, its thinness emphasized by a slight mustache and a short tapering beard. Though he was scarcely thirty-six or at most thirty-seven, his hair, mustache and beard were turning gray. He wore no sword but otherwise he looked every inch a soldier. A patina of dust on his buff boots indicated that he had been riding on horseback that day.
It was Armand-Jean Duplessis, Cardinal de Richelieu. But nothing in his appearance suggested the man as he is represented today. Here was no broken-down old man, suffering like a martyr, his body bent, his voice failing, his frame buried in an armchair as in a tomb, a being still alive only by virtue of his genius and standing up to all Europe only by virtue of his inflexible will. No, here was the Cardinal as he really looked at this period, a gallant and gifted cavalier, already frail, physically, but sustained by that moral power which made him one of the most extraordinary men who ever lived. Here was the statesman who had upheld the Duc de Nevers in his Duchy of Mantua, who had captured Nîmes, Castres and Uzès, and who, even now, was preparing to drive the British from the Isle de Ré and to besiege La Rochelle.
At first glance nothing in his appearance denoted a prince of the Church; only those who knew him could have guessed who he was.
The unhappy haberdasher stood by the door; the man by the fireplace gazed at him piercingly as though to read every circumstance of his past. After a moment of silence, he asked:
“Is this the man Bonacieux?”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“Good. Give me those papers, please. Thank you; you may withdraw.”
The officer picked up a sheaf of papers from the table, handed them to the gentleman, bowed low and retired. Bonacieux recognized these papers as the record of his examination at the Bastille. From time to time, the gentleman by the fireside raised his eyes from the script and plunged them, daggerlike, through Bonacieux’s heart. After ten minutes of reading and ten seconds of scrutiny the Cardinal must have decided