The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [93]
“The State? Do you know what this State you speak of actually is?” Madame Bonacieux shrugged her shoulders. “Be satisfied with living as a plain, straightforward bourgeois; turn to that side which holds out the greatest advantages.”
“Well, well!” Bonacieux slapped a plump round bag which jingled at his touch, “what do you say of this, Madame Preacher?”
“Where does that money come from?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“From the Cardinal?”
“From him and from my friend the Comte de Rochefort.”
“The Comte de Rochefort! Why, it was he who carried me off!”
“That is quite possible, Madame.”
“And you accept money from that man?”
“Why not? You yourself seem scarcely worried about your abduction. I suppose you were carried off for political reasons.”
“Yes, I was. They carried me off in order to make me betray my sovereign; they hoped by torturing me to wring from me confessions that might compromise the honor and perhaps the very life of my august mistress.”
“Madame, your august mistress is a perfidious Spaniard. What the Cardinal has done, was well done.”
“Monsieur, I knew you for a coward, a miser and an idiot. But I never supposed you were infamous.”
Bonácieux, who had never seen his wife angry, retreated before this outburst of conjugal wrath:
“Madame, what are you saying?” he asked, incredulous.
“I am saying that you are a wretched creature!” she insisted, as she noted that she was regaining some influence over her husband. “You meddle with politics, do you? You? And with Cardinalist politics at that? Why, you are selling yourself body and soul to the Devil—for money!”
“No, it’s the Cardinal.”
“It is all one and the same thing! Who says Richelieu, says Satan.”
“Hold your tongue, Madame, hold your tongue, we may be overheard.”
“Yes, you are right. I should be ashamed to have anyone know of your cowardice.”
“But what on earth do you want me to do? Tell me!”
“I have told you already. I want you to leave instantly, Monsieur, and faithfully to carry out the mission with which I have deigned to charge you. If you do this, I shall forgive and forget everything, and—” she held out her hand to him,—“I will give you my love again.”
Bonacieux was a coward and a miser but he loved his wife. He was touched. A man of fifty cannot long bear a grudge against a wife of twenty-three. Madame Bonacieux saw he was hesitating.
“Well, have you made up your mind?” she asked.
“But, my love, think of what you require of me! London is far away, very far away! And the mission you suggest may well offer considerable danger.”
“What matter, if you avoid it?”
“No, Madame Bonacieux,” the haberdasher decided, “No, no, no, I positively refuse. Intrigues terrify me. I have seen the Bastille, yes, Madame, that I have! Ugh, it’s a ghastly place; the very thought of it gives me gooseflesh. I was threatened with torture; do you know what torture is? Wooden blocks wedged in between your legs till the bones burst! No, I shan’t go; decidedly not! By Heaven, why don’t you go yourself? Upon my word, I think I have been mistaken about you; you sound like a man and a madman at that!”
“And you—you’re a woman, a miserable, stupid and besotted woman! So you are scared, are you? Well, if you do not leave immediately, I shall have you arrested by order of the Queen and clapped into that Bastille you dread so much.”
Bonacieux carefully weighed the respective angers of Queen and Cardinal; the latter easily won the day.
“You have me arrested by order of the Queen,” he threatened, “and I shall appeal to His Eminence.”
Madame Bonacieux saw she had gone too far; she was terrified at her boldness. For a moment, lost in dread, she contemplated his stupid countenance and read in it all the invincible resolution of a fool overcome by fear.
“Well, so be it,” she said, “perhaps you are right after all. A man knows more about politics than a woman, especially a man like you, Monsieur Bonacieux, who have met the Cardinal. And yet it is very hard,” she added, “that my husband, upon whose affection I thought I could rely, treats me so ungraciously