No one knows whether it was the devil who let go or the monks who gave up, but, in less than three months, the penitent reappeared in the world outside, with the reputation of having had the most terrible demonic possession ever recorded.
After leaving the monastery, Séguier became a magistrate. He stepped into the presiding judgeship formerly held by his uncle and embraced the party of the cardinal, which proved he didn’t lack brains. Appointed Keeper of the Seals, he served His Eminence with zeal in his campaign against the queen mother and his vengeance on Anne of Austria. He oversaw the judges in the Chalais affair, and encouraged the efforts of Monsieur de Laffemas,61 Grand Executioner of France. Finally, having completely earned the confidence of the cardinal, he was given the singular mission for which he had presented himself in the chambers of the queen.
The queen was still standing when he entered, but as soon as she noticed him she reseated herself on her armchair, and made a sign to her women to resume their cushions and stools. Then, in a tone of supreme hauteur, Anne of Austria said, “What do you desire, Monsieur? Why are you here?”
“To make, Madame, in the name of the king, and with all due respect to Your Majesty, a thorough investigation of your papers.”
“What, Monsieur! An investigation of my papers? Such a thing would be a gross indignity.”
“I beg your pardon, Madame, but under the circumstances, you can see that I’m merely the king’s instrument. Wasn’t His Majesty just here, and didn’t he warn you to prepare for this visit?”
“Search, then, Monsieur! It seems I am a criminal. Estefania, give him the keys of my desks and secretaries.”
Monsieur Séguier for form’s sake searched all the furniture, though he knew quite well that he wouldn’t find the queen’s letter in a desk. When the bureaucrat had opened and closed the desk drawers twenty times, he had no choice but to overcome his hesitation and proceed to the affair’s inevitable conclusion: in other words, to search the queen herself. With an air of embarrassment, the Keeper of the Seals advanced toward Anne of Austria and said in an unnatural voice, “And now it’s time for me to make the principal investigation.”
“Which is?” demanded the queen, who didn’t understand, or rather was unwilling to understand.
“His Majesty is certain that you wrote a letter today, and he knows it hasn’t yet been sent. This letter isn’t in your desk, or your secretary, but nonetheless, it is somewhere.”
“Would you dare to lay a hand on your queen?” said Anne of Austria, drawing up to her full height and glaring at the bureaucrat with an expression almost menacing.
“I am a loyal subject of the king, Madame, and all that His Majesty orders, I will do.”
“There’s no doubt of that,” said Anne of Austria, “and the spies of Monsieur le Cardinal have served him well. I have written a letter today, and that letter has not yet been sent. The letter . . . is here.” And the queen pressed her beautiful hand to her bosom.
“Then give me that letter, Madame,” said Monsieur Séguier.
“I will give it to no one but the king, Monsieur,” said Anne.
“If the king had wanted that letter given up to him, Madame, he’d have demanded it of you himself. I must repeat, I’m the one who’s been charged with recovering it from you, and if you won’t give it up . . .”
“Well?”
“His Majesty has charged me to take it from you.”
“How! What’s that you say?”
“That my orders go far, Madame. I’m authorized to search for the suspected letter even on the person of Your Majesty.”
“What horror!” cried the queen.
“Be kind enough, Madame, to comply with my mission.”
“To lay hands on me would be an act of infamous violence! Do you know that, Monsieur?”
“The king commands, Madame; please excuse me.”
In the queen ran the hot imperial blood of Spain and Austria. “I will not tolerate it!” she cried. “No, no—I would rather die!”
Séguier made a deep and reverential bow, then, clearly intending to fully execute his commission, he approached Anne of Austria like the torturer’s assistant in a chamber of inquisition. The queen’s eyes gushed tears of rage.
The queen was, as has been noted, a great beauty. Some might consider Séguier’s mission rather indelicate, but the king was so jealous of Buckingham he was no longer jealous of other men.
No doubt Monsieur Séguier’s hands clutched at that moment for the famous bell-rope, but not finding it, he reached instead for where the queen had said he could find the letter.
Anne of Austria took a step backward, so pale she looked like death. Then, leaning with her left hand on a table behind her to keep from falling, with her right she drew the paper from between her breasts and handed it to Keeper of the Seals.
“You see, Monsieur, here is the letter. Take it!” the queen cried, in a broken, trembling voice. “Take it, and take your odious presence away from me.”
Monsieur Séguier, trembling as well for reasons it’s easy to guess, took the letter, bowed to the ground, and retired.
The door was scarcely closed on him when the queen fell, half-fainting, into the arms of her women.
The Keeper of the Seals carried the letter to the king without reading a single word of it. The king took it with shaking hands, looked for an address, and finding none, became very pale. He opened it slowly, and then, seeing from the first words that it was addressed to the King of Spain, he read it rapidly.
The whole thing was a plan of attack on the cardinal. The queen urged her brother and the Emperor of Austria to seem injured, as in fact they were, by the policies of Richelieu, whose eternal preoccupation was the defeat of the Hapsburgs. She urged them to declare war on France and demand the dismissal of the cardinal as a condition of the peace. But of love, the letter contained not a single word.
The king, overjoyed, inquired if the cardinal was still in the Louvre. On being told that His Eminence awaited the orders of His Majesty in the study, the king went straight to him.
“There, Cardinal,” he said, “you were right, and I was wrong. The whole intrigue is political, and there’s not the slightest question of love in this letter. On the other hand, there is a great deal about you.”
The cardinal took the letter and read it with the greatest attention: once, and then a second time.
“Well, Your Majesty,” he said, “you see how far my enemies will go. They menace you with two wars unless you dismiss me. In truth, if I were in your position, Sire, I would yield to such powerful arguments. Personally, it would be a relief for me to retire from public affairs.”
“What are you saying, Cardinal?”
“I’m saying, Sire, that these struggles, these never-ending labors are destroying my health. In all probability I won’t have the stamina for a siege of La Rochelle, and Your Majesty is better off appointing either Condé or Bassompierre for it, a valiant man who is in the right condition to lead a war, rather than me. I’m a man of the Church, though I’ve been diverted from my vocation and have had to apply myself to things for which I have no aptitude. Release me, Sire: you would be much happier in your domestic affairs, and you’d be applauded for it abroad.”
“Monsieur le Cardinal,” said the king, “I understand. Rest easy: all those who are named in that letter will be punished as they deserve, even the queen herself.”
“What are you saying, Sire? God forbid the queen should suffer the least inconvenience on my account! She has always believed I’m her enemy, Sire, though Your Majesty can bear witness that I always take her side, even against you. Of course, if she betrayed Your Majesty’s honor, that would be another thing. In that case I’d be the first to say, ‘No mercy, Sire—no mercy for the guilty!’ But fortunately there’s no question of that, and in this letter Your Majesty has a new proof of it.”
“That’s true, Monsieur le Cardinal,” said the king, “and you were right, as always. But the queen nonetheless des
erves my anger.”
“I beg your pardon, but it’s you, Sire, who have earned her anger. In truth, if she were to hold this against Your Majesty, I could understand it. Your Majesty has treated her with such severity . . . !”
“That’s how I will always treat my enemies, and yours, Cardinal, no matter how high their place, and how dangerous it may be to treat them severely.”
“The queen may be my enemy, Sire, but she’s not yours. On the contrary, she’s a devoted wife, submissive and irreproachable. Please allow me to intercede for her with Your Majesty.”
“She should humble herself and reconcile with me first!”
“On the contrary, Sire, set the example! You were first to be in the wrong, since it was you who suspected the queen.”
“What, me—reconcile with her first?” said the king. “Never!”
“Sire, I implore you to do so.”
“Besides, how could I reconcile with her?”
“By doing something you know she would like.”
“Such as?”
“Give a ball. You know how much the queen loves to dance. I will answer for it, she can’t hold onto her resentment if you offer her a fête.”
“Monsieur le Cardinal, you know I don’t enjoy such worldly pleasures.”
“The queen will be all the more grateful to you since she knows you dislike such frivolous amusements. Besides, it would be an opportunity for her to show off those beautiful diamond studs you gave her for her birthday, and which she’s not yet had a chance to display.”
“We shall see, Monsieur le Cardinal, we shall see,” said the king. In his delight at finding the queen guilty of a crime he didn’t care about, and innocent of the offense he so dreaded, the king was entirely ready for a rapprochement. “We shall see, but, upon my honor, you are too indulgent toward her.”
“Sire,” said the cardinal, “leave severity to your ministers. Clemency is a royal virtue; rely on clemency, and you’ll be pleased with the results.”
Upon which the cardinal, hearing the clock strike eleven, bowed deeply and asked permission of the king to retire.
Anne of Austria, after the seizure of her letter, expected some reproach, and was astonished when the next day the king made overtures of reconciliation. Her first reaction was to reject him; her womanly pride and queenly dignity had both been so cruelly outraged that she simply couldn’t make up with him at the first advance. However, on the advice of her women, she finally began at least to pretend to forget. The king took advantage of this favorable moment to immediately tell her that he was considering giving a ball.
A ball was such a rare thing for poor Anne of Austria that at this announcement, just as the cardinal had predicted, the last trace of her resentment disappeared—if not from her heart, at least from her face. She asked when this ball would take place, but the king replied that he must discuss this point with the cardinal.
Thereafter, the king asked the cardinal every day when this ball should occur, and every day the cardinal put off settling it on one pretext or another. A week passed away thus.
The eighth day after the king proposed the fête to the queen, the cardinal received a letter, postmarked in London, consisting of nothing more than the following lines:
I have them, but cannot leave London for lack of money. Send me five hundred pistoles, and four or five days after I have received them, I shall be in Paris.
The same day that the cardinal received this letter, the king asked his usual question. Richelieu counted on his fingers, and said to himself, “She’ll arrive four or five days after receiving the money. Figure on four or five days to get the money to her, and four or five days for her to return, which makes ten days. Allowing for contrary winds, bad luck, and a woman’s weakness, we’ll make it twelve days.”
“Well, Monsieur le Cardinal,” said the king, “have you completed your calculations?”
“Yes, Sire. Today is September twentieth. The City Aldermen are giving a fête on October third. That would suit your purposes perfectly, as you won’t seem to be going too far in reconciling with the queen.”
Then the cardinal added, “By the way, Sire, don’t forget to tell Her Majesty, the night before the ball, that you want to see how she’ll look wearing those diamond studs.”
XVII
In the Bonacieux Household
This was the second time the cardinal had made a point of mentioning the diamond studs to the king. Louis XIII was struck by this, and thought there must be something important behind the cardinal’s suggestion.
More than once the king had been humiliated by the superior knowledge of the cardinal. His Eminence’s police were excellent, and he was often better informed than Louis himself about what was happening in his own household. The king hoped a conversation with the queen might shed some new light on her activities, so he could return afterward to His Eminence knowing some secret that, whether the cardinal knew it already or not, would elevate him in the eyes of his minister.
So he went to the queen and, following his usual practice, bullied her by making threats against the people of her household. Anne of Austria lowered her head and let the torrent flow by without reply, hoping it would run out once the king was satisfied. However, that wasn’t what Louis XIII had in mind. The king wanted to provoke a response that would cast some light on events, convinced as he was that the cardinal was up to something and was preparing some terrible surprise in the way that only His Eminence knew how. Through persistent accusations, he eventually got what he wanted.
“Please, Sire,” Anne cried, fed up with his vague attacks, “tell me what you really want. What have I actually done? What crimes have I committed? Your Majesty can’t possibly be this upset because of one letter written to my brother.”
The king, confronted directly like this, was unsure of what to say. He decided it was a good time to make the suggestion he was supposed to hold until the night before the ball.
“Madame,” he said majestically, “there will soon be a ball at the Hôtel de Ville. To honor our worthy aldermen, I wish you to appear in full ceremonial attire, and I particularly want you to wear the diamond studs I gave you for your birthday. There: that is my response.”
This response was terrible. Anne of Austria thought it meant that Louis knew everything, and that the cardinal had persuaded him to pretend otherwise for the last week, a deceit that was quite in character for him. She blanched, and groped for the support of a bureau with one of her beautiful hands, which suddenly resembled a hand of wax. She looked at the king with terror in her eyes, and was unable to utter a single word.
“You hear, Madame?” said the king, who was enjoying her embarrassment to its fullest, without comprehending its cause. “You hear?”
“Yes, Sire. I hear,” stammered the queen.
“You will appear at this ball?”
“Yes.”
“With those studs?”
“Yes!” The queen’s pallor increased still more, till she was white as the lace of her collar. The king saw this and reveled in it, with that cold cruelty that was one of the worst sides of his character.
“Then it’s agreed,” said the king, “and that’s all I have to say to you.”
“But when is this ball to take place?” asked Anne of Austria, barely able to speak.
Louis XIII felt instinctively that he should evade this question. “Very soon, Madame,” he said, “but I can’t precisely recall the date. I will ask the cardinal.”
“It was the cardinal, then, who proposed this fête to you?” cried the queen.
“Yes, Madame,” replied the king, astonished. “But what of that?”
“He’s the one who told you to require me to appear with the studs?”
“That is to say, Madame . . .”
“It was he, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”
“Yes, yes! What of it? What does it matter whether it was he, or I? Is there some crime in this request?”
“No, Sire.”
�
�Then, you’ll be there?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Fine,” said the king, retiring. “That’s fine. I count upon it.”
The queen curtsied, less from etiquette than because her knees were failing her. The king departed, delighted with his interview.
“I’m lost!” murmured the queen. “Lost! The cardinal knows everything! He’s the one who’s been urging on the king, who knows nothing yet, but will soon know it all. I’m lost! My God! My God! My God!”
She knelt on a cushion and prayed, her head enfolded in her trembling arms.
In truth, her position was dire. Buckingham had returned to London, Madame de Chevreuse was at Tours. More closely watched than ever, the queen felt sure that one of her women was betraying her, but didn’t know how to tell which. La Porte didn’t dare leave the Louvre. She hadn’t a soul in the world in whom she could confide.
Overcome by her troubles, threatened, menaced and feeling completely abandoned, she broke down and sobbed.
“Is there anything I can do to help Your Majesty?” said a voice, full of sweetness and pity.
The queen turned eagerly, for there was no mistaking the tone of that voice. This was the voice of a friend.
There, at one of the doors that gave onto the queen’s apartments, was the pretty Madame Bonacieux. She had been busy arranging dresses and linen in a closet when the king had entered. She’d been unable to leave and had heard everything.
The queen, surprised and confused, gave a little shriek, for at first she didn’t recognize the young woman who’d been brought into her household by La Porte.
“Oh! Don’t be afraid, Madame,” said the young woman. Seeing the queen’s anguish brought tears to her own eyes, and joining her hands, she pleaded, “Listen, Your Majesty! I’m yours, body and soul, and no matter how far below you I may be, no matter how different our rank, I think I may be able to find a way to help Your Majesty out of this dilemma.”
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - [Full Version] - (ANNOTATED) Page 20
