The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [88]
“Very well, Cardinal, very well; but meanwhile send someone to fetch M. the keeper of the seals. I will go to the queen.”
And Louis XIII, opening the connecting door, stepped into the corridor that led from his apartments to those of Anne d’Autriche.
The queen was in the midst of her women—Mme de Guitaut, Mme de Sablé, Mme de Montbazon, and Mme de Guéménée.74 In a corner was the Spanish lady-in-waiting, Doña Estefania, who had followed her from Madrid. Mme de Guéménée was reading, and everyone was listening attentively to the reader, with the exception of the queen, who, on the contrary, had called for this reading so that, while pretending to listen, she could follow the thread of her own thoughts.
These thoughts, all gilded as they were by a last glimmer of love, were no less sad for that. Anne d’Autriche, deprived of her husband’s trust, pursued by the hatred of the cardinal, who could not forgive her for having spurned a more tender feeling, having before her eyes the example of the queen mother, whom that hatred had tormented all her life—though Marie de Medicis, if we are to believe the memoirs of the time,75 had begun by granting the cardinal the feeling that Anne d’Autriche always ended by refusing him—Anne d’Autriche had seen her most devoted servants, her most intimate confidants, her dearest favorites fall around her. Like those unfortunates who are endowed with a baneful gift, she brought misfortune to all she touched; her friendship was a fatal sign that called down persecution. Mme de Chevreuse and Mme de Vernet were in exile; finally, La Porte did not conceal from his mistress that he expected to be arrested any moment.
It was just when she was plunged in the deepest and darkest of these reflections that the door opened and the king came in.
The reader stopped that same instant, all the ladies stood up, and a profound silence fell.
As for the king, he made no demonstration of civility; he merely planted himself before the queen.
“Madame,” he said in an altered voice, “you will receive a visit from M. le chancelier, who will communicate to you certain matters which I have entrusted to him.”
The unfortunate queen, who was ceaselessly threatened with divorce, exile, and even court proceedings, paled behind her rouge, and could not help saying:
“But why this visit, Sire? What will M. le chancelier tell me that Your Majesty cannot tell me himself?”
The king turned on his heel without replying, and at almost that same instant the captain of the guards, M. de Guitaut, announced the visit of M. le chancelier.
When the chancelier appeared, the king had already left by another door.
The chancelier came in half smiling, half blushing. As we will probably come upon him again in the course of this story, it will do no harm if our readers make his acquaintance as this point.
The chancelier was a pleasant man. It was Des Roches le Masle,76 canon of Notre Dame, and formerly the cardinal’s valet, who had proposed him to His Eminence as a completely devoted man. The cardinal trusted him and found he had done well.
Certain stories were told about him, among them this one:
After a stormy youth, he had withdrawn to a monastery to expiate, at least for a time, the follies of his adolescence.
But, on entering that holy place, the poor penitent had not managed to close the door quickly enough for the passions he was fleeing not to enter with him. He was relentlessly obsessed with them, and the superior, to whom he had confided this disgrace, wishing to defend him against them as far as he could, had recommended to him that he exorcise the tempting demon by running for the bell rope and ringing a full peal. At the denunciatory sound, the monks would be warned that temptation was besieging one of their brothers, and the whole community would start praying.
The advice seemed good to the future chancelier. He exorcised the evil spirit with a great reinforcement of prayers from the monks. But the devil does not let himself be dispossessed easily of a place where he has set up a garrison.