The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [74]
“Oh, my God! my God!” cried Anne d’Autriche, “it’s more than I can bear. Listen, Duke, in the name of heaven, go away now, withdraw. I don’t know whether I love you or not, but what I do know is that I will never be unfaithful. Take pity on me, then, and go away. Oh! if you are struck down in France, if you die in France, if I could suppose that your love for me were the cause of your death, I would never be consoled, I would go mad from it. Go away, then, go away, I beg you.”
“Oh, how beautiful you are like this! Oh, how I love you!” said Buckingham.
“Go away, go away, I beg you, and come back later; come back as an ambassador, come back as a minister, come back surrounded by guards who will defend you, with servants who will watch over you, and then I will no longer fear for your days, and I will be happy to see you again.”
“Oh, is it really true what you are saying to me?”
“Yes…”
“Well, then, give me a pledge of your indulgence, an object of yours to remind me that I am not dreaming; something you have worn and that I can wear in my turn, a ring, a necklace, a chain.”
“And you will go away, you will go away if I give you what you ask?”
“Yes.”
“That same instant?”
“Yes.”
“You will leave France, you will go back to England?”
“Yes, I swear it!”
“Wait, then.”
And Anne d’Autriche went to her apartment and returned almost at once, holding in her hand a little rosewood box with her initial, all inlaid with gold.
“Here, Milord, here,” she said, “keep this in memory of me.”
Buckingham took the box and fell to his knees a second time.
“You promised me to go away,” said the queen.
“And I will keep my word. Your hand, your hand, Madame, and I will go.”
Anne d’Autriche held out her hand, closing her eyes and leaning with the other hand on Estefania, for she felt her strength was about to fail.
Buckingham pressed his lips to that beautiful hand with passion, then stood up and said:
“Within six months, if I am not dead, I will have seen you again, Madame, though I have to overturn the whole world to do it.”
And, faithful to the promise he had made, he rushed from the apartment.
In the corridor he met Mme Bonacieux, who was waiting for him, and who, with the same precautions and the same luck, brought him out of the Louvre.
XIII
MONSIEUR BONACIEUX
There was in all this, as the reader may have noticed, a character about whom, despite his precarious position, we seem to have worried very little. This character was M. Bonacieux, a respectable martyr of the political and amorous intrigues that became so easily entangled in that at once so chivalric and so gallant age.
Fortunately—the reader may or may not remember it—fortunately we have promised not to lose sight of him.
The men-at-arms who had arrested him took him straight to the Bastille, where he passed all atremble before a squad of soldiers loading their muskets.
From there he was ushered into a half-subterranean gallery, where he was made the butt of the grossest insults and the most savage treatment on the part of those who had brought him. The beagles saw they were not dealing with a gentleman and treated him as a veritable boor.
After about half an hour, a court clerk came to put an end to his tortures, but not to his worries, by giving orders to take M. Bonacieux to the interrogation room. Ordinarily prisoners were interrogated in their cells, but with M. Bonacieux they did not stand on such ceremony.
Two guards took charge of the mercer, made him cross a courtyard, made him enter a corridor where there were three sentries, opened a door, and pushed him into a low room in which the only furnishings were a table, a chair, and a commissary. The commissary was sitting on the chair and was busy writing at the table.
The two guards brought the prisoner before the table and, at a sign from the commissary, withdrew out of earshot.
The commissary, who until then had kept his head bent over his papers, raised it to see whom he had to deal with. This commissary was a repulsive-looking