The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [96]
“So he mistreated you? He made threats against you?”
“He held out his hand to me and called me his friend—his friend! Do you hear, Madame? I am a friend of the great cardinal!”
“Of the great cardinal!”
“Would you perchance deny him the title, Madame?”
“I don’t deny him anything, but I tell you that a minister’s favor is ephemeral, and one has to be mad to attach oneself to a minister. There are powers above his, which do not rest on the caprice of a man or the outcome of an event. It is to those powers that one must rally.”
“I am sorry, Madame, but I know no other power than that of the great man I have the honor of serving.”
“You serve the cardinal?”
“Yes, Madame, and as his servant, I will not allow you to involve yourself in plots against the security of the State, or to assist the intrigues of a woman who is not French and who has a Spanish heart. Fortunately, the great cardinal is there; his vigilant eye keeps watch and penetrates to the bottom of the heart.”
Bonacieux repeated word for word a phrase he had heard uttered by the comte de Rochefort. But the poor woman, who had counted on her husband, and who, in that hope, had answered for him to the queen, shuddered at it nonetheless, and at the danger she had almost thrown herself into, and at the powerlessness in which she found herself. However, knowing the weakness and above all the greediness of her husband, she did not despair of bringing him around to her purposes.
“So you are a cardinalist, Monsieur!” she cried. “You serve the party of those who ill-treat your wife and insult your queen!”
“Private interests are nothing in the face of the interests of all. I am for those who preserve the State,” Bonacieux said emphatically.
This was another of the comte de Rochefort’s phrases, which he had memorized and found occasion to drop.
“And do you know what this State you’re talking about really is?” asked Mme Bonacieux, shrugging her shoulders. “Content yourself with being a bourgeois without any subtlety, and turn to the side that offers you the most advantages.”
“Heh, heh!” said Bonacieux, patting a round-bellied pouch that gave out a silvery sound. “What do you say to that, Madame Preacher?”
“Where did that money come from?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“From the cardinal?”
“From him and from my friend the comte de Rochefort.”
“The comte de Rochefort! But he’s the one who abducted me!”
“Maybe so, Madame.”
“And you take money from that man?”
“Didn’t you tell me that the abduction was entirely political?”
“Yes, but the purpose of that abduction was to make me betray my mistress, to extract statements from me by torture that might compromise the honor and perhaps even the life of my august mistress.”
“Madame,” Bonacieux picked up, “your august mistress is a perfidious Spaniard, and what the cardinal does is well done.”
“Monsieur,” said the young woman, “I knew you to be a coward, a miser, and an imbecile, but I did not know you to be dishonorable!”
“Madame,” said Bonacieux, who had never seen his wife angry, and who retreated before such conjugal wrath, “Madame, what are you saying?”
“I am saying that you are a scoundrel!” Mme Bonacieux went on, seeing that she was regaining some influence over her husband. “So you’re involved in politics, are you! and cardinalist politics at that! So you’ve sold yourself body and soul to the devil for the sake of money!”
“No, to the cardinal.”
“It’s the same thing!” cried the young woman. “Whoever says Richelieu says Satan.”
“Be quiet, Madame, be quiet, you might be heard!”
“Yes, you’re right, and I’d be ashamed for you in your cowardice.”
“But, see here, what are you asking of me?”
“I told you: that you leave this very instant, Monsieur, that you faithfully carry out the commission I deign to entrust to you, and on that condition I will forget everything, I will forgive, and more than that”—she held out her hand to him—“I will be your friend again.”
Bonacieux was a poltroon and a miser, but he loved his wife. He was moved. A man of fifty does not hold a grudge for very long