The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [82]
“Ah, my dear M. Bonacieux! You are being generous, I can see, and I thank you for it. So, then, take this pouch, and you won’t go away too discontented?”
“I’ll go away enchanted, Monseigneur.”
“Good-bye, then, or rather, until we meet again, for I hope we shall meet again soon.”
“Whenever Monseigneur wishes, and I am entirely at His Eminence’s orders.”
“It will be often, rest assured, for I find great charm in your conversation.”
“Oh, Monseigneur!”
“Until then, M. Bonacieux, until then.”
And the cardinal made him a sign of the hand, to which Bonacieux responded by bowing to the ground; then he backed his way out, and when he was in the antechamber, the cardinal heard him shouting his head off in his enthusiasm: “Viva Monseigneur! Viva His Eminence! Viva the great cardinal!” The cardinal listened, smiling, to this brilliant display of Master Bonacieux’s enthusiastic feelings; then, when Bonacieux’s cries were lost in the distance, he said:
“Good. There’s a man who will henceforth get himself killed for me.”
And the cardinal set about examining with the greatest attention the map of La Rochelle, which, as we have said, was spread over his desk, tracing with a pencil the line where the famous dike would pass, which eighteen months later would close the port of the besieged city.
While he was sunk most profoundly in his strategic meditations, the door opened again and Rochefort came in.
“Well?” the cardinal said brusquely, standing up with a promptness that proved the degree of importance he attached to the mission he had entrusted to the count.
“Well!” said the latter, “a young woman of twenty-six to twenty-eight and a man of thirty-five to forty were indeed lodged, one for four days and the other for five, in the houses Your Eminence indicated. But the woman left last night and the man this morning.”
“It was them!” cried the cardinal, glancing at the clock. “And now,” he went on, “it’s too late to run after them: the duchess is in Tours and the duke in Boulogne. They will have to be overtaken in London.”
“What are Your Eminence’s orders?”
“Not a word about what’s happened; let the queen remain in perfect confidence; let her not know that we’ve learned her secret; let her believe that we’re looking for some sort of conspiracy. Send me Séguier, the keeper of the seals.”67
“And what has Your Eminence done with that man?”
“Which man?” asked the cardinal.
“That Bonacieux.”
“I’ve done all that could be done with him. I’ve made him his wife’s spy.”
The comte de Rochefort bowed, as one who recognizes the great superiority of his master, and withdrew.
Left alone, the cardinal sat down again, wrote a letter, which he sealed with his personal seal, then rang. The officer came in for the fourth time.
“Send for Vitray,”68 he said, “and tell him to prepare for a journey.”
A moment later, the man he had asked for was standing before him, all booted and spurred.
“Vitray,” he said, “you are to leave posthaste for London. You will not stop for a moment on the way. You will give this letter to Milady. Here is an order for two hundred pistoles; go to my paymaster and have him pay you. There is as much to be had again if you’re back here in six days and if you’ve properly carried out my commission.”
The messenger, without a single word of response, bowed, took the letter and the order for two hundred pistoles, and left.
Here are the contents of the letter:
Milady,
Be present at the first ball where the duke of Buckingham will be present. He will have twelve diamond pendants on his doublet. Approach him and cut off two.
Inform me as soon as these pendants are in your possession.
XV
MEN OF THE ROBE AND MEN OF THE SWORD
The day after these events took place, Athos not having reappeared yet, M. de Tréville was informed of his disappearance