The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  “God forbid!” The Queen’s terror revealed her interest in Buckingham more clearly than words could do. “My Lord—”

  “Madame, I must tell you that for some time I have felt a strange presentiment …” he smiled, at once melancholy and charming, “Who shall say? I may die sooner than I imagine.…”

  “But, My Lord—”

  “I do not mention this, Madame, to frighten you. Forget what I said … it was ridiculous … I take no heed of such dreams … But your words and the hope you have suggested would prove to be a royal wage for even my life—”

  “I too feel strange portents; I too dream dreams; I too, queen though I be, saw a vision. It was you, My Lord, lying wounded on a couch, your blood flowing from your veins.”

  “In my left side … a knife wound.…”

  “Yes, My Lord, but who can have told you of it? It was but a dream which I confessed to God alone and in my prayers—”

  “I ask no more so but you tell me that you love me, Madame.”

  “I … I …?”

  “If you do not love me, then why does God send the same dreams to us? Could we feel the same presentiments in common if our existences were not one? You love me, Madam, and you will weep my death.”

  “Ah, God, be merciful to give me strength. I beg Your Grace to go. Whether I love you or not is another question, but I implore you, My Lord, to depart. I shall not make myself privy to perjury; take pity on me and go. If you were struck down here in France and I were held responsible for your death, I myself would die of grief. Pray go, Monsieur, by your love, pray leave me.”

  “How beautiful Your Majesty is in this supreme moment! How fervently your servant Buckingham worships you!”

  “Go, I beg you. You will come back later, as ambassador, as minister, surrounded by guards who will defend you and watch over you. Then at least I shall have no cause to fear for your days, then I shall delight in seeing you.”

  “Shall I believe this?”

  “You must, My Lord—”

  “Madame, let me beg as a token of your indulgence some object which comes from you … something to prove to me that I am not dreaming … something that you have worn on your person … something I may wear in turn … a ring, a necklace, a chain.…”

  “Will you leave if I give what you ask?”

  “Assuredly.”

  “At this very instant?”

  “Ay.”

  “You will quit France? You will return to England?”

  “I swear it.”

  “Wait then, wait, My Lord—”

  The Queen went back to her apartment, returning almost at once with a small rosewood coffer, the Royal and Imperial coat-of-arms stamped upon it in gold:

  “My Lord, here is a gift by which to remember me.”

  Buckingham took up the casket, fell to one knee …

  “You promised me to leave,” the Queen reminded him.

  “I shall be true to my word, Madame; your hand and I go.”

  Her eyes closed, the Queen offered him one hand, resting heavily with the other upon Dona Estefana, for she felt about to faint Passionately Buckingham pressed his lips to the Queen’s fingertips, then rose.

  “If I am still alive within six months,” he vowed, “I shall see Your Majesty again though I upset the universe to do so.” Then faithful to his promise, he stumbled from the room.

  Madame Bonacieux was awaiting him; with the same caution and the same luck they made their way successfully out of the Louvre.

  XIII

  OF MONSIEUR BONACIEUX

  By now the perspicacious reader will have perceived that the author seems to have paid but scant attention to one of his characters, despite the latter’s precarious plight. What of Monsieur Bonacieux, that worthy martyr to the political and amorous intrigues of an age when political and amorous intrigues went cheek by jowl?

  The officers who had arrested him led him straight to the Bastille … shuddering with fright, he was marched past a platoon of soldiers who were loading their muskets … then he was taken down a subterranean gallery where he met with the bawdiest insults and the harshest of physical treatment.… No one could have supposed him to be a gentleman; he was therefore handled as the veriest clodhopper.

  After a half-hour or so, a clerk arrived to put an end to his tortures if not to his disquiet with orders to lead Monsieur Bonacieux to the Bureau of Investigation. Usually prisoners were questioned in their cells, but Monsieur Bonacieux’s presence in jail did not warrant such niceties. Two guards seized him, trundled him across a court, propelled him down a corridor flanked by sentinels, thrust open a door and pushed him into a small room to face a table, a chair and a Commissioner. The Commissioner was seated on the chair and busy writing at a table. The guards led the prisoner to the table, and at a wave of the Commissioner’s hand moved out of earshot. The Commissioner continued sedulously to examine the papers before him, then suddenly looked up, and Bonacieux glimpsed a surly mouth … a pointed nose … a pair of yellow protruding cheeks … a pair of tiny eyes, bright and piercing … a man half-ferret, half-fox … a head emerging atop an exaggerated neck much as a turtle’s head emerges from its shell.…

  The Commissioner asked Monsieur Bonacieux his family name, his Christian name, his age, his profession and his domicile, to which the accused replied:

  “Joseph-Michel Bonacieux; fifty years old; haberdasher (retired); residence, Number 11 Rue des Fossoyeurs.” This settled, there was no more questioning; instead, the Commissioner read a long lecture on the dangers an obscure bourgeois might incur by interfering with public affairs, topping this exordium with a lengthier exposition celebrating the deeds and power of His Eminence the Cardinal:

  “An incomparable minister, hum! The conqueror of previous ministries, hum! An exemplar of ministers to come, hum! A statesman whose acts no sane man, hum! would oppose.”

  Part Two of his speech done, Monsieur le Commissaire fixed his hawk eyes on poor Bonacieux, inviting him to ponder upon the extreme gravity of his plight. Our haberdasher needed no such invitation, his mind was already made up; he swiftly consigned Monsieur de La Porte to the Devil for marrying him off to Constance, especially since Constance was a servant in the Queen’s Household. At bottom Bonacieux’s character was a mixture of profound egoism and sordid avarice, flavored with a dash of extreme cowardice; any love he might bear his young wife was secondary to selfishness, greed and fear. Carefully he thought over what his questioner had said, then replied coolly:

  “Monsieur le Commissaire, I beg you to believe I yield to none in admiration for the personality and merit of His Incomparable Eminence whom we have the honor to serve.”

  “If that is so, why are you in the Bastille?”

  “Why am I here? How am I here? I simply cannot tell you, Monsieur, because I do not know myself. But certainly I never caused My Lord Cardinal the slightest displeasure—not consciously, at least!”

  “Why do you suppose you stand here accused of high treason?”

  “High treason! High treason! Why do you suppose a wretched haberdasher who loathes the Huguenots and abhors the Spaniards stands here accused of high treason? Come, Monsieur, think it over. How could I possibly be suspected of anything?”

  The Commissioner stared, cleared his throat, and:

  “You have a wife, Monsieur Bonacieux, have you not?”

  “Ay, Monsieur,” the haberdasher acknowledged. (Here’s where my troubles begin, he thought to himself.) “I mean I had a wife.”

  “You had a wife? What do you mean? Where is she?”

  “They took her away, Monsieur.”

  “So: ‘they took her away!’ Humph!” (To Bonacieux the ‘Humph’ complicated matters all the more.)

  “So they took her away. Who, Monsieur? Do you know who abducted her?”

  “I think so.”

  “Who?”

  “By your leave, Monsieur le Commissaire, I would not dare accuse anyone … I only have suspicions.…”

  “Who
m do you suspect? Come on, speak out, man!”

  This question put Monsieur Bonacieux in a very tight corner. Should he deny or should he confess? Denial would imply that he knew too much, confession that he was eager to co-operate; he therefore determined to tell everything. Eagerly he said:

  “I suspect a tall dark man … a distinguished-looking gentleman … a great lord, I dare say … if I am not in error, it seems to me that he followed us … my wife and me … several times … when I waited for her at the Louvre to take her home.…”

  At this point, Monsieur le Commissaire gave evidence of a certain anxiety:

  “His name?”

  “I wouldn’t know his name, Monsieur. But if ever I saw him, I could spot him out of a thousand.”

  “Out of a thousand, eh?” The Commissioner frowned. “Out of a thousand, you say?”

  Bonacieux, with a sense of past blunder and impending ruin, mumbled:

  “What I mean is … I mean, Monsieur.…”

  “You mean that you would recognize him out of a thousand. Very well, so much for today. Meanwhile, I shall report that you know who abducted your wife.”

  “I didn’t say I knew him. On the contrary.…”

  “Prisoner dismissed! Take him away.”

  “Where, Monsieur le Commissaire?”

  “Clap him into a cell!”

  “What sort of cell?”

  “Clap him into the handiest cell you find so but it be secure!”

  The Commissioner’s indifference filled Bonacieux with horror:

  “Alas, alas,” he mused, “misfortune has fallen upon my gray hairs. Undoubtedly my wife committed some horrible crime … I am suspected of being her accomplice … I shall pay for it, all on her account … she has probably confessed I know what all this is about … I shall suffer because woman is a weak vessel … the Commissioner said ‘the handiest cell you can find’… I know: one night, twelve short hours, and then the wheel, the gallows … Ah God, have mercy on my soul!…”

  The guards, hardened by use to the lamentations of prisoners, whisked Monsieur Bonacieux off while the Commissioner wrote a summary report of the proceedings.

  Though his cell was not too disagreeable, Bonacieux could not sleep a wink. All night long he sat rooted to his stool, trembling at the slightest rumor; and, when the first rays of daylight crept into his cell, the dawn seemed to him dismal and funereal. Suddenly the bolts of his door shot back and he gave a terrible start. Yes, now surely they had come to take him to the scaffold. When, to his surprise, he saw no executioner but instead the Commissioner and the clerk of yesterday’s interview, he was ready to embrace them both.

  “This trouble you are in has become ever so much more complicated overnight,” the Commissioner informed Bonacieux. “I advise you to tell the whole truth. Only full repentance will appease the Cardinal’s anger.”

  “But I am ready to say everything, at least everything that I know. Won’t you please question me, Monsieur?”

  “Well, in the first place: where is your wife?”

  “She was abducted.”

  “But at five-thirty yesterday afternoon, thanks to your efforts, she escaped.”

  “My wife? Escaped? Poor, poor woman! If she escaped, I swear it is no fault of mine!”

  “You visited your neighbor Monsieur d’Artagnan yesterday. You had a long conversation with him. What was your business?”

  “Yes, yes, Monsieur le Commissaire, yes, it is true, I confess I acted foolishly in visiting Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

  “The purpose of your visit?”

  “I called to beg him to help me find my wife again. I thought I was right in looking for her. But apparently I was wrong and I beg your pardon most humbly.”

  “How did Monsieur d’Artagnan react to your proposal?”

  “Monsieur d’Artagnan promised to help me. Alas, I soon realized that he was betraying me.”

  “You are attempting to obstruct justice, my good man. Do you deny that Monsieur d’Artagnan agreed to drive away the police officers? Do you deny that he kept your wife in hiding?”

  “Monsieur d’Artagnan abducted my wife! Monsieur le Commissaire, what on earth do you mean?”

  “Fortunately Monsieur d’Artagnan is in our hands. We shall at once confront you with him.”

  “By my faith, I ask for nothing better,” cried Bonacieux. “I shall not be sorry to see the face of somebody I know.”

  “Show Monsieur d’Artagnan in,” the Commissioner ordered. The guards admitted Athos.

  “Monsieur d’Artagnan,” said the Commissioner, “will you please state what happened between you and Monsieur here?”

  “But Monsieur,” Bonacieux objected, “this is not Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

  “What? This is not Monsieur d’Artagnan?”

  “No, not by any manner of means.”

  “Then what is Monsieur’s name?”

  “I cannot tell you, Monsieur le Commissaire. I do not know this gentleman.”

  “You do not know him?”

  “No, Monsieur.”

  “You have never seen him?”

  “Yes, I have seen him, but I do not know his name.”

  “Your name, Monsieur,” snapped the Commissioner. “Athos,” the musketeer replied.

  “That is not a man’s name,” the wretched interrogator protested, losing his head. “Athos is the name of a mountain.”

  “Athos is nevertheless my name.”

  “But you said your name was D’Artagnan?”

  “I said that?”

  “Certainly you did.”

  “No, Monsieur le Commissaire. Somebody asked me was I Monsieur d’Artagnan; I said: ‘Do you really think so.’ The guards declared they were positive I was D’Artagnan. Who was I to contradict them? After all, I might have been wrong about my own identity.”

  “Monsieur, you are insulting the majesty of the law.”

  “In no wise, Monsieur.”

  “You are Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

  “There, you see, once again I hear I am Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

  “Monsieur le Commissaire,” Bonacieux interrupted, “I can tell you there is not the least doubt about the matter. Monsieur d’Artagnan is my lodger and, though he does not pay his rent, or rather because he does not pay his rent, I most certainly know him. Monsieur d’Artagnan is a youth barely nineteen or twenty years old; this gentleman here must be at least thirty. Monsieur d’Artagnan serves in the Guards under Monsieur des Essarts; this gentleman belongs to Monsieur de Tréville’s Musketeers. Just look at his uniform, Monsieur le Commissaire, look at his uniform.”

  “By God, that’s true!” the Commissioner gasped. But before he could take action, the door swung open and one of the gatekeepers of the Bastille introduced a messenger who handed the Commissioner a letter.

  “Oh, poor woman, poor woman!” sighed the Commissioner, as he finished reading the message.

  “What’s that? What did you say? Whom are you talking about? Not my wife, I hope.”

  “Precisely: your wife. You’re in plenty of trouble now, believe me!”

  “But look here, Monsieur le Commissaire,” cried the haberdasher, overcome, “will you be good enough to tell me how I can get into worse trouble because of what my wife may be doing while I languish in prison?”

  “It is quite simple. Your wife is carrying out the diabolical plans which the pair of you previously agreed upon.”

  “I swear to you, Monsieur le Commissaire, that you are making a most tragic mistake. I know nothing about what my wife was supposed to be doing, I am completely foreign to what she may have done, and if she has made a fool of herself, I renounce her, I abjure her, I curse her.”

  “Come, Monsieur le Commissaire,” said Athos disdainfully, “if I am no longer needed here, pray send me somewhere else. I find your Monsieur Bonacieux a very tiresome person.”

  “Take the prisoners back to their cells.” The Commissioner included Athos and Bonacieux in the same gesture of dismissal. �
�See that they are guarded more closely than ever.”

  “I must observe,” Athos declared with his usual phlegm, “that you are interested in Monsieur d’Artagnan, I scarcely see how I can replace him.”

  “Do as I said,” the Commissioner told his guards. “Watch these men carefully!”

  Athos shrugged his shoulders and followed the guards silently, but Monsieur Bonacieux set up howls of lamentation. Led back to the same cell he had occupied the night before, he sat there all day, weeping like a real haberdasher. As he himself had said, he was no soldier. In the evening, at about nine, just as he was preparing to retire, he heard steps echoing ever louder and closer in the corridor. The door of his cell was flung open and the guards appeared. Then an officer, close behind the guards, commanded:

  “Follow me!”

  “Follow you?” cried Bonacieux. “Follow you at this hour? Where to? O Lord, where to?”

  “Where we are commanded to lead you.”

  “But that is no answer, Monsieur.”

  “It is the only answer we can give you.”

  “O God, O God,” cried the wretched haberdasher, “now indeed I am lost.”

  Moving like an automaton, he followed the familiar corridor, crossed a courtyard, then another large building in front of which stood a carriage, flanked by four guards on horseback.

  “Get in,” said the officer, hoisting him on the seat and settling himself on Bonacieux’s right. A guard locked the door, and the rolling prison moved off, slow as a hearse. Through the padlocked windows, the prisoner could see a house here, a pavement there, but, a true Parisian, he recognized each street by its stones, signboards and lamp-posts. As the carriage approached Saint-Paul, where prisoners from the Bastille were usually executed, he all but fainted. Twice he made the sign of the Cross, then realized he was spared. The carriage rolled on.

  Further on, a new wave of terror swept over him as the carriage passed by the Cimetière Saint-Jean, the burial place of State criminals. But he found consolation in recalling that their heads were usually severed from their bodies before interment, whereas his head was still on his shoulders.

  Next the carriage moved towards the Place de Grève; he identified their itinerary by the pointed roofwork of the Hôtel de Ville. Suddenly the carriage whisked under an arcade and Bonacieux knew all was over.