The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [111]
“Did Milord lose them, or does he think they were stolen from him?”
“They were stolen from me,” the duke picked up, “and it is the cardinal’s work. Here, you see, the ribbons that held them have been cut with scissors.”
“If Milord has any suspicion of who committed the theft…Perhaps the person still has hold of them.”
“Wait, wait!” cried the duke. “The only time I wore these pendants was at the king’s ball eight days ago at Windsor. The countess de Winter, with whom I was on bad terms, approached me at that ball. This reconciliation was a jealous woman’s vengeance. I haven’t seen her since that day. This woman is an agent of the cardinal.”
“He has them all over the world, then!” cried d’Artagnan.
“Oh, yes, yes!” said Buckingham, clenching his teeth with wrath. “Yes, he’s a terrible opponent. But anyhow, when is this ball to take place?”
“Next Monday.”
“Next Monday? Another five days; that’s more time than we need. Patrick!” cried the duke, opening the door to the chapel. “Patrick!”
His confidential valet appeared.
“My jeweler and my secretary!”
The valet left with a promptness and a silence that bore witness to the habit he had acquired of obeying blindly and without reply.
But, though the jeweler had been summoned first, the secretary was the first to appear. He found Buckingham sitting at a table in his bedroom and writing out some orders with his own hand.
“Mr. Jackson,” he said to him, “you will go at once to the lord chancellor and tell him that I entrust him with the carrying out of these orders. I want them to be issued at once.”
“But, My Lord, if the lord chancellor asks me about the motives that have led Your Grace to so extraordinary a measure, what shall I reply?”
“That such is my good pleasure, and that I account to no one for my will.”
“Would that be the answer he should transmit to His Majesty,” the secretary picked up with a smile, “if perchance His Majesty were curious to know why no vessel may leave the ports of Great Britain?”
“You’re right, sir,” replied Buckingham. “In that case, he should say to the king that I have decided on war, and that this measure is my first act of hostility against France.”
The secretary bowed and left.
“We can rest assured on that side,” said Buckingham, turning back to d’Artagnan. “If the pendants have not left for France already, they will not arrive before you do.”
“How is that?”
“I have just placed an embargo on all ships that are presently in His Majesty’s ports, and without specific permission, not one of them will dare to raise anchor.”
D’Artagnan gazed with stupefaction at this man who put the unlimited power vested in him by the king’s confidence at the service of his love life. Buckingham saw, from the expression on the young man’s face, what was going on in his thoughts, and he smiled.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, Anne d’Autriche is my true queen. On a word from her, I would betray my country, I would betray my king, I would betray my God. She has asked me not to send the Protestants of La Rochelle the help I promised them, and I have not done so. I have broken my word, but what matter! I have obeyed her wish. Tell me, have I not been greatly rewarded for my obedience? For it is to that obedience that I owe her portrait.”
D’Artagnan wondered at the fragile and unknown threads from which the fates of nations and the lives of men are sometimes hung.
He was in the depths of these reflections when the goldsmith came in. This was an Irishman, among the most skilled in his art, and who admitted himself that he earned a hundred thousand livres a year from the duke of Buckingham.
“Mr. O’Reilly,” the duke of Buckingham said to him as he led him to the chapel, “look at these diamond pendants and tell me what they are worth apiece.”
The goldsmith cast one glance at the elegant way they were mounted, added in the value of the diamonds, and replied without any hesitation:
“Fifteen hundred pistoles apiece, Milord.”
“How many days would it take to make two pendants like these?