The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [86]
“Kindly consider, Sire,” said the cardinal. “If we let the prisoner go like this, we will never be able to learn the truth.”
“M. Athos will always be there,” M. de Tréville picked up, “ready to answer when it pleases the men of the robe to question him. He will not desert, M. le cardinal; rest assured, I will answer for him myself.”
“In fact, he won’t desert,” said the king, “he can always be found, as M. de Tréville says. Besides,” he added, lowering his voice and casting a pleading glance at His Eminence, “let us give them a sense of security: it’s politic.”
This “politic” of Louis XIII made Richelieu smile.
“Give the order, Sire,” he said, “you have the right of pardon.”
“The right of pardon applies only to the guilty,” said Tréville, who wanted to have the last word, “and my musketeer is innocent. It is thus not pardon that you will be granting, Sire, but justice.”
“And he’s in the Fort-l’Évêque?” said the king.
“Yes, Sire, and in secret, in a cell, like the lowest of criminals.”
“Devil take it!” murmured the king. “What to do?”
“Sign the order to set him free, and all will be said,” the cardinal picked up. “I think, like Your Majesty, that M. de Tréville’s guarantee is more than sufficient.”
Tréville bowed respectfully, with a joy that was not without an admixture of fear. He would have preferred stubborn resistance from the cardinal to this sudden leniency.
The king signed the order for release, and Tréville took it without delay.
As he was leaving, the cardinal gave him a friendly smile and said to the king:
“A good harmony reigns between leaders and soldiers in your musketeers, Sire; that is something quite profitable to the service and quite honorable for all.”
“He’ll keep playing me some bad turn or other,” Tréville said to himself. “One never has the last word with such a man. But let’s hurry, for the king may change his mind at any moment; and in the end it’s harder to put a man back in the Bastille or the Fort-l’Évêque once he’s out than to keep a prisoner there when you already have him.”
M. de Tréville made a triumphal entry into the Fort-l’Évêque, where he freed the musketeer, whose peaceful indifference had never left him.
Then, the first time he saw d’Artagnan again, he said to him:
“You barely escaped. That pays you back for Jussac’s wound. There’s still Bernajoux’s, but you shouldn’t be too confident about that.”
Moreover, M. de Tréville was right to be wary of the cardinal and to think that all was not over, for the captain of the musketeers had no sooner closed the door behind him than His Eminence said to the king:
“Now that there are just the two of us, we can talk seriously, if it please Your Majesty. Sire, M. de Buckingham was in Paris for five days and only left this morning.”
XVI
IN WHICH THE KEEPER OF THE SEALS SÉGUIER SEARCHES MORE THAN ONCE FOR THE BELL IN ORDER TO RING IT THE WAY HE USED TO
It is impossible to have any idea of the impression that these few words made on Louis XIII. He alternately flushed and paled, and the cardinal saw at once that he had just won back at a single stroke all the terrain he had lost.
“M. de Buckingham in Paris!” he cried. “And what was he doing here?”
“Undoubtedly conspiring with our enemies the Huguenots and the Spanish.”
“No, pardieu, no! Conspiring against my honor with Mme de Chevreuse, Mme de Longueville, and the Condés!”72
“Oh, Sire, what an idea! The queen is too wise, and above all she loves Your Majesty too much.”
“Woman is weak, M. le cardinal,” said the king, “and as for loving me so much, I’ve formed my own opinion about that love.”
“I maintain nonetheless,” said the cardinal, “that the duke of Buckingham came to Paris for a wholly political scheme.”
“And I am sure that he came for something else, M. le cardinal; but if the queen is guilty, let her tremble!”
“By the way,” said the cardinal, “repugnant as it is for me to rest my mind on such a betrayal, Your Majesty reminds me of something: Mme de Lannoy, whom,