Twenty Years After, Alexandre Dumas [top 100 books to read TXT] 📗

“Oh,” cried the duchess, “I cannot make war alone, but I can avenge myself on that ungrateful queen and most ambitious favorite-on the honor of a duchess, I will avenge myself.”

“Madame,” replied Athos, “do not injure the Vicomte de Bragelonne--do not ruin his prospects. Alas! excuse my weakness! There are moments when a man grows young again in his children.”

The duchess smiled, half tenderly, half ironically.

“Count,” she said, “you are, I fear, gained over to the court. I suppose you have a blue ribbon in your pocket?”

“Yes, madame; I have that of the Garter, which King Charles I. gave me some days before he died.”

“Come, I am growing an old woman!” said the duchess, pensively.

Athos took her hand and kissed it. She sighed, as she looked at him.

“Count,” she said, “Bragelonne must be a charming place. You are a man of taste. You have water--woods--flowers there?”

She sighed again and leaned her charming head, gracefully reclined, on her hand, still beautiful in form and color.

“Madame!” exclaimed Athos, “what were you saying just now about growing old? Never have I seen you look so young, so beautiful!”

The duchess shook her head.

“Does Monsieur de Bragelonne remain in Paris?” she inquired.

“What think you of it?” inquired Athos.

“Leave him with me,” replied the duchess.

“No, madame; if you have forgotten the history of Oedipus, I, at least, remember it.”

“Really, sir, you are delightful, and I should like to spend a month at Bragelonne.”

“Are you not afraid of making people envious of me, duchess?” replied Athos.

“No, I shall go incognito, count, under the name of Marie Michon.”

“You are adorable, madame.”

“But do not keep Raoul with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is in love.”

“He! he is quite a child!”

“And ‘tis a child he loves.”

Athos became thoughtful.

“You are right, duchess. This singular passion for a child of seven may some day make him very unhappy. There is to be war in Flanders. He shall go thither.”

“And at his return you will send him to me. I will arm him against love.”

“Alas, madame!” exclaimed Athos, “to-day love is like war--the breastplate is becoming useless.”

Raoul entered at this moment; he came to announce that the solemn entrance of the king, queen, and her ministers was to take place on the ensuing day.

The next day, in fact, at daybreak, the court made preparations to quit Saint Germain.

Meanwhile, the queen every hour had been sending for D’Artagnan.

“I hear,” she said, “that Paris is not quiet. I am afraid for the king’s safety; place yourself close to the coach door on the right.”

“Reassure yourself, madame, I will answer for the king’s safety.”

As he left the queen’s presence Bernouin summoned him to the cardinal.

“Sir,” said Mazarin to him “an emeute is spoken of in Paris. I shall be on the king’s left and as I am the chief person threatened, remain at the coach door to the left.”

“Your eminence may be perfectly easy,” replied D’Artagnan; “they will not touch a hair of your head.”

“Deuce take it!” he thought to himself, “how can I take care of both? Ah! plague on’t, I will guard the king and Porthos shall guard the cardinal.”

This arrangement pleased every one. The queen had confidence in the courage of D’Artagnan, which she knew, and the cardinal in the strength of Porthos, which he had experienced.

The royal procession set out for Paris. Guitant and Comminges, at the head of the guards, marched first; then came the royal carriage, with D’Artagnan on one side, Porthos on the other; then the musketeers, for two and twenty years staunch friends of D’Artagnan. During twenty he had been lieutenant, their captain since the night before.

The cortege proceeded to Notre Dame, where a Te Deum was chanted. All Paris were in the streets. The Swiss were drawn up along the road, but as the road was long, they were placed at six or eight feet distant from each other and one deep only. This force was therefore wholly insufficient, and from time to time the line was broken through by the people and was formed again with difficulty. Whenever this occurred, although it proceeded only from goodwill and a desire to see the king and queen, Anne looked at D’Artagnan anxiously.

Mazarin, who had dispensed a thousand louis to make the people cry “Long live Mazarin,” and who had accordingly no confidence in acclamations bought at twenty pistoles each, kept one eye on Porthos; but that gigantic body-guard replied to the look with his great bass voice, “Be tranquil, my lord,” and Mazarin became more and more composed.

At the Palais Royal, the crowd, which had flowed in from the adjacent street was still greater; like an impetuous mob, a wave of human beings came to meet the carriage and rolled tumultuously into the Rue Saint Honore.

When the procession reached the palace, loud cries of “Long live their majesties!” resounded. Mazarin leaned out of the window. One or two shouts of “Long live the cardinal” saluted his shadow; but instantly hisses and yells stifled them remorselessly. Mazarin turned pale and shrank back in the coach.

“Low-born fellows!” ejaculated Porthos.

D’Artagnan said nothing, but twirled his mustache with a peculiar gesture which showed that his fine Gascon humor was awake.

Anne of Austria bent down and whispered in the young king’s ear:

“Say something gracious to Monsieur d’Artagnan, my son.”

The young king leaned toward the door.

“I have not said good-morning to you, Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he said; “nevertheless, I have remarked you. It was you who were behind my bed-curtains that night the Parisians wished to see me asleep.”

“And if the king permits me,” returned the Gascon, “I shall be near him always when there is danger to be encountered.”

“Sir,” said Mazarin to Porthos, “what would you do if the crowd fell upon us?”

“Kill as many as I could, my lord.”

“Hem! brave as you are and strong as you are, you could not kill them all.”

“‘Tis true,” answered Porthos, rising on his saddle, in order that he might appraise the immense crowd, “there are a lot of them.”

“I think I should like the other fellow better than this one,” said Mazarin to himself, and he threw himself back in his carriage.

The queen and her minister, more especially the latter, had reason to feel anxious. The crowd, whilst preserving an appearance of respect and even of affection for the king and queen regent, began to be tumultuous. Reports were whispered about, like certain sounds which announce, as they whistle from wave to wave, the coming storm--and when they pass athwart a multitude, presage an emeute.

D’Artagnan turned toward the musketeers and made a sign imperceptible to the crowd, but very easily understood by that chosen regiment, the flower of the army.

The ranks closed firmly in and a kind of majestic tremor ran from man to man.

At the Barriere des Sergents the procession was obliged to stop. Comminges left the head of the escort and went to the queen’s carriage. Anne questioned D’Artagnan by a look. He answered in the same language.

“Proceed,” she said.

Comminges returned to his post. An effort was made and the living barrier was violently broken through.

Some complaints arose from the crowd and were addressed this time to the king as well as the minister.

“Onward!” cried D’Artagnan, in a loud voice.

“Onward!” cried Porthos.

But as if the multitude had waited only for this demonstration to burst out, all the sentiments of hostility that possessed it exploded simultaneously. Cries of “Down with Mazarin!” “Death to the cardinal!” resounded on all sides.

At the same time through the streets of Grenelle, Saint Honore, and Du Coq, a double stream of people broke the feeble hedge of Swiss guards and came like a whirlwind even to the very legs of Porthos’s horse and that of D’Artagnan.

This new eruption was more dangerous than the others, being composed of armed men. It was plain that it was not the chance combination of those who had collected a number of the malcontents at the same spot, but a concerted organized attack.

Each of these mobs was led by a chief, one of whom appeared to belong, not to the people, but to the honorable corporation of mendicants, and the other, notwithstanding his affected imitation of the people, might easily be discerned to be a gentleman. Both were evidently stimulated by the same impulse.

There was a shock which was perceived even in the royal carriage. Myriads of hoarse cries, forming one vast uproar, were heard, mingled with guns firing.

“Ho! Musketeers!” cried D’Artagnan.

The escort divided into two files. One of them passed around to the right of the carriage, the other to the left. One went to support D’Artagnan, the other Porthos. Then came a skirmish, the more terrible because it had no definite object; the more melancholy, because those engaged in it knew not for whom they were fighting. Like all popular movements, the shock given by the rush of this mob was formidable. The musketeers, few in number, not being able, in the midst of this crowd, to make their horses wheel around, began to give way. D’Artagnan offered to lower the blinds of the royal carriage, but the young king stretched out his arm, saying:

“No, sir! I wish to see everything.”

“If your majesty wishes to look out--well, then, look!” replied D’Artagnan. And turning with that fury which made him so formidable, he rushed toward the chief of the insurgents, a man who, with a huge sword in his hand, was trying to hew a passage to the coach door through the musketeers.

“Make room!” cried D’Artagnan. “Zounds! give way!”

At these words the man with a pistol and sword raised his head, but it was too late. The blow was sped by D’Artagnan; the rapier had pierced his bosom.

“Ah! confound it!” cried the Gascon, trying in vain, too late, to retract the thrust. “What the devil are you doing here, count?”

“Accomplishing my destiny,” replied Rochefort, falling on one knee. “I have already got up again after three stabs from you, I shall never rise after this fourth.”

“Count!” said D’Artagnan, with some degree of emotion, “I struck without knowing that it was you. I am sorry, if you die, that you should die with sentiments of hatred toward me.”

Rochefort extended his hand to D’Artagnan, who took it. The count wished to speak, but a gush of blood stifled him. He stiffened in the last convulsions of death and expired.

“Back, people!” cried D’Artagnan, “your leader is dead; you have no longer any business here.”

Indeed, as if De Rochefort had been the very soul of the attack, the crowd who had followed and obeyed him took to flight on seeing him fall. D’Artagnan charged, with a party of musketeers, up the Rue du Coq, and the portion of the mob he assailed disappeared like smoke, dispersing near the Place Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois and taking the direction of the quays.

D’Artagnan returned to help Porthos, if Porthos needed help; but Porthos, for his part, had done his work as conscientiously as D’Artagnan. The left of the carriage was as well cleared as the right, and they drew up the blind of the window which Mazarin, less heroic than the king, had taken the precaution to lower.

Porthos looked very melancholy.

“What a devil of a face you have, Porthos! and what a strange air for a victor!”

“But you,” answered Porthos, “seem to me agitated.”

“There’s a reason! Zounds! I have just killed an old friend.”

“Indeed!” replied Porthos, “who?”

“That poor Count de Rochefort.”

“Well! exactly like me! I have just killed a man whose face is