The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas [read out loud books .TXT] 📗

nothing, and saw nothing save from the corner of his eye, was obliged to cry, “Is not M. d’Artagnan there?”

“I am here, sire,” replied the musketeer, advancing.

“Well, monsieur,” said the king, fixing his pellucid eyes on D’Artagnan, “what have you to say to me?”

“I, sire!” replied the latter, who watched the first blow of his adversary to make a good retort; “I have nothing to say to your majesty, unless it be that you have caused me to be arrested, and here I am.”

The king was going to reply that he had not had D’Artagnan arrested, but any such sentence appeared too much like an excuse, and he was silent. D’Artagnan likewise preserved an obstinate silence.

“Monsieur,” at length resumed the king, “what did I charge you to go and do at Belle-Isle? Tell me, if you please.”

The king while uttering these words looked intently at his captain. Here D’Artagnan was fortunate; the king seemed to place the game in his hands.

“I believe,” replied he, “that your majesty does me the honor to ask what I went to Belle-Isle to accomplish?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Well! sire, I know nothing about it; it is not of me that question should be asked, but of that infinite number of officers of all kinds, to whom have been given innumerable orders of all kinds, whilst to me, head of the expedition, nothing precise was said or stated in any form whatever.”

The king was hurt: he showed it by his reply. “Monsieur,” said he, “orders have only been given to such as were judged faithful.”

“And, therefore, I have been astonished, sire,” retorted the musketeer, “that a captain like myself, who ranks with a marechal of France, should have found himself under the orders of five or six lieutenants or majors, good to make spies of, possibly, but not at all fit to conduct a warlike expedition. It was upon this subject I came to demand an explanation of your majesty, when I found the door closed against me, which, the final insult offered to a brave man, has led me to quit your majesty’s service.”

“Monsieur,” replied the king, “you still believe that you are living in an age when kings were, as you complain of having been, under the orders and at the discretion of their inferiors. You seem to forget that a king owes an account of his actions to none but God.”

“I forget nothing, sire,” said the musketeer, wounded by this lesson. “Besides, I do not see in what an honest man, when he asks of his king how he has ill-served him, offends him.”

“You have ill-served me, monsieur, by siding with my enemies against me.”

“Who are your enemies, sire?”

“The men I sent you to fight.”

“Two men the enemies of the whole of your majesty’s army! That is incredible.”

“You have no power to judge of my will.”

“But I have to judge of my own friendships, sire.”

“He who serves his friends does not serve his master.”

“I so well understand this, sire, that I have respectfully offered your majesty my resignation.”

“And I have accepted it, monsieur,” said the king. “Before being separated from you I was willing to prove to you that I know how to keep my word.”

“Your majesty has kept more than your word, for your majesty has had me arrested,” said D’Artagnan, with his cold, bantering air; “you did not promise me that, sire.”

The king would not condescend to perceive the pleasantry, and continued, seriously, “You see, monsieur, to what grave steps your disobedience forces me.”

“My disobedience!” cried D’Artagnan, red with anger.

“It is the mildest term that I can find,” pursued the king. “My idea was to take and punish rebels; was I bound to inquire whether these rebels were your friends or not?”

“But I was,” replied D’Artagnan. “It was a cruelty on your majesty’s part to send me to capture my friends and lead them to your gibbets.”

“It was a trial I had to make, monsieur, of pretended servants, who eat my bread and should defend my person. The trial has succeeded ill, Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

“For one bad servant your majesty loses,” said the musketeer, with bitterness, “there are ten who, on that same day, go through a like ordeal. Listen to me, sire; I am not accustomed to that service. Mine is a rebel sword when I am required to do ill. It was ill to send me in pursuit of two men whose lives M. Fouquet, your majesty’s preserver, implored you to save. Still further, these men were my friends. They did not attack your majesty, they succumbed to your blind anger. Besides, why were they not allowed to escape? What crime had they committed? I admit you may contest with me the right of judging their conduct. But why suspect me before the action? Why surround me with spies? Why disgrace me before the army? Why me, in whom till now you showed the most entire confidence—who for thirty years have been attached to your person, and have given you a thousand proofs of my devotion—for it must be said, now that I am accused—why reduce me to see three thousand of the king’s soldiers march in battle against two men?”

“One would say you have forgotten what these men have done to me!” said the king, in a hollow voice, “and that it was no merit of theirs I was not lost.”

“Sire, one would imagine you forget that I was there.”

“Enough, Monsieur d’Artagnan, enough of these dominating interests which arise to keep the sun itself from my interests. I am founding a state in which there shall be but one master, as I promised you; the moment is at hand for me to keep my promise. You wish to be, according to your tastes or private friendships, free to destroy my plans and save my enemies? I will thwart you or will drop you—seek a more compliant master. I know full well that another king would not conduct himself as I do, and would allow himself to be dominated by you, at the risk of sending you some day to keep company with M. Fouquet and the rest; but I have an excellent memory, and for me, services are sacred titles to gratitude, to impunity. You shall only have this lesson, Monsieur d’Artagnan, as the punishment of your want of discipline, and I will not imitate my predecessors in anger, not having imitated them in favor. And, then, other reasons make me act mildly towards you; in the first place, because you are a man of sense, a man of excellent sense, a man of heart, and that you will be a capital servant to him who shall have mastered you; secondly, because you will cease to have any motives for insubordination. Your friends are now destroyed or ruined by me. These supports on which your capricious mind instinctively relied I have caused to disappear. At this moment, my soldiers have taken or killed the rebels of Belle-Isle.”