Louise de la Valliere, Alexandre Dumas [smallest ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Alexandre Dumas
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At this part of her recital, the Beguine paused, observing how intensely the queen was suffering; she had thrown herself back in her chair, and with her head bent forward and her eyes fixed, listened without seeming to hear, and her lips moving convulsively, either breathing a prayer to Heaven or imprecations on the woman standing before her.
“Ah! I do not believe that, if, because there could be but one dauphin in France,” exclaimed the Beguine, “the queen allowed that child to vegetate, banished from his royal parents’ presence, she was on that account an unfeeling mother. Oh, no, no; there are those alive who have known and witnessed the passionate kisses she imprinted on that innocent creature in exchange for a life of misery and gloom to which state policy condemned the twin brother of Louis XIV.”
“Oh! Heaven!” murmured the queen feebly.
“It is admitted,” continued the Beguine, quickly, “that when the king perceived the effect which would result from the existence of two sons, equal in age and pretensions, he trembled for the welfare of France, for the tranquillity of the state; and it is equally well known that Cardinal de Richelieu, by the direction of Louis XIII., thought over the subject with deep attention, and after an hour’s meditation in his majesty’s cabinet, he pronounced the following sentence:—‘One prince means peace and safety for the state; two competitors, civil war and anarchy.’”
The queen rose suddenly from her seat, pale as death, and her hands clenched together:
“You know too much,” she said, in a hoarse, thick voice, “since you refer to secrets of state. As for the friends from whom you have acquired this secret, they are false and treacherous. You are their accomplice in the crime which is being now committed. Now, throw aside your mask, or I will have you arrested by my captain of the guards. Do not think that this secret terrifies me! You have obtained it, you shall restore it to me. Never shall it leave your bosom, for neither your secret nor your own life belong to you from this moment.”
Anne of Austria, joining gesture to the threat, advanced a couple of steps towards the Beguine.
“Learn,” said the latter, “to know and value the fidelity, the honor, and secrecy of the friends you have abandoned.” And, then, suddenly she threw aside her mask.
“Madame de Chevreuse!” exclaimed the queen.
“With your majesty, the sole living confidante of the secret.”
“Ah!” murmured Anne of Austria; “come and embrace me, duchesse. Alas! you kill your friend in thus trifling with her terrible distress.”
And the queen, leaning her head upon the shoulder of the old duchesse, burst into a flood of bitter tears. “How young you are—still!” said the latter, in a hollow voice; “you can weep!”
Chapter XLIV. Two Friends.
The queen looked steadily at Madame de Chevreuse, and said: “I believe you just now made use of the word ‘happy’ in speaking of me. Hitherto, duchesse, I had thought it impossible that a human creature could anywhere be found more miserable than the queen of France.”
“Your afflictions, madame, have indeed been terrible enough. But by the side of those great and grand misfortunes to which we, two old friends, separated by men’s malice, were just now alluding, you possess sources of pleasure, slight enough in themselves it may be, but greatly envied by the world.”
“What are they?” said Anne of Austria, bitterly. “What can induce you to pronounce the word ‘pleasure,’ duchesse—you who, just now, admitted that my body and my mind both stood in need of remedies?”
Madame de Chevreuse collected herself for a moment, and then murmured, “How far removed kings are from other people!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that they are so far removed from the vulgar herd that they forget that others often stand in need of the bare necessities of life. They are like the inhabitant of the African mountains, who, gazing from the verdant tableland, refreshed by the rills of melted snow, cannot comprehend that the dwellers in the plains below are perishing from hunger and thirst in the midst of the desert, burnt up by the heat of the sun.”
The queen colored, for she now began to perceive the drift of her friend’s remark. “It was very wrong,” she said, “to have neglected you.”
“Oh! madame, I know the king has inherited the hatred his father bore me. The king would exile me if he knew I were in the Palais Royal.”
“I cannot say that the king is very well disposed towards you, duchesse,” replied the queen; “but I could—secretly, you know—”
The duchesse’s disdainful smile produced a feeling of uneasiness in the queen’s mind. “Duchesse,” she hastened to add, “you did perfectly right to come here, even were it only to give us the happiness of contradicting the report of your death.”
“Has it been rumored, then, that I was dead?”
“Everywhere.”
“And yet my children did not go into mourning.”
“Ah! you know, duchesse, the court is very frequently moving about from place to place; we see M. Albert de Luynes but seldom, and many things escape our minds in the midst of the preoccupations that constantly beset us.”
“Your majesty ought not to have believed the report of my death.”
“Why not? Alas! we are all mortal; and you may perceive how rapidly I, your younger sister, as we used
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