With the exception of this voice, which might have been heard at the entrance of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, everything remained as calm in the carriage as in the prison. Ten minutes afterwards, M. de Baisemeaux appeared in his dressing-gown on the threshold of the door. “What is the matter now?” he asked, “and whom have you brought me there?”
The man with the lantern opened the carriage door, and said two or three words to the one who acted as driver, who immediately got down from his seat, took up a short musket which he kept under his feet, and placed its muzzle on the prisoner’s chest.
“And fire at once if he speaks!” added aloud the man who alighted from the carriage.
“Very good!” replied his companion, without any other remark.
With this recommendation, the person who had accompanied the King in the carriage ascended the flight of steps, at the top of which the governor was awaiting him. “Monsieur d’Herblay!” said the latter.
“Hush!” said Aramis. “Let us go into your room.”
“Good Heavens! what brings you here at this hour?”
“A mistake, my dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux,” Aramis replied quietly. “It appears that you were quite right the other day.”
“What about?” inquired the governor.
“About the order of release, my dear friend.”
“Tell me what you mean, monsieur—no, monseigneur,” said the governor, almost suffocated by surprise and terror.
“It is a very simple affair; you remember, dear M. de Baisemeaux, that an order of release was sent to you.”
“Yes, for Marchiali.”
“Very good! we both thought that it was for Marchiali.”
“Certainly; you will recollect, however, that I would not believe it, but that you compelled me.”
“Oh! Baisemeaux, my good fellow, what a word to make use of!—strongly recommended, that was all.”
“Strongly recommended, yes; strongly recommended to give him up to you: and that you carried him off with you in your carriage.”
“Well, my dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux, it was a mistake; it was discovered at the ministry, so that I now bring you an order from the King to set at liberty—Seldon, that poor Scotch fellow, you know.”
“Seldon! are you sure this time?”
“Well, read it yourself,” added Aramis, handing him the order.
“Why,” said Baisemeaux, “this order is the very same that has already passed through my hands.”
“Indeed!”
“It is the very one I assured you I saw the other evening. Parbleu! I recognise it by the blot of ink.”
“I do not know whether it is that or not; but all I know is that I bring it for you.”
“But, then, about the other?”
“What other?”
“Marchiali?”
“I have got him here with me.”
“But that is not enough for me. I require a new order to take him back again.”
“Don’t talk such nonsense, my dear Baisemeaux; you talk like a child! Where is the order you received respecting Marchiali?”
Baisemeaux ran to his iron chest and took it out. Aramis seized hold of it, coolly tore it in four pieces, held them to the lamp, and burnt them. “Good Heaven! what are you doing?” exclaimed Baisemeaux, in an extremity of terror.
“Look at your position a little quietly, my dear governor,” said Aramis, with his imperturbable self-possession, “and you will see how very simple the whole affair is. You no longer possess any order justifying Marchiali’s release.”
“I am a lost man!”
“Far from it, my good fellow, since I have brought Marchiali back to you, and it is just the same as if he had never left.”
“Ah!” said the governor, completely overcome by terror.
“Plain enough, you see; and you will go and shut him up immediately.”
“I should think so, indeed.”
“And you will hand over this Seldon to me, whose liberation is authorised by this order. Do you understand?”
“I—I—”
“You do understand, I see,” said Aramis. “Very good.”
Baisemeaux clasped his hands together. “But why, at all events, after having taken Marchiali away from me, do you bring him back again?” cried the unhappy governor, in a paroxysm of terror and completely dumbfounded.
“For a friend such as you are,” said Aramis,—“for so devoted a servant, I have no secrets;” and he put his mouth close to Baisemeaux’s ear, as he said in a low tone of voice, “you know the resemblance between that unfortunate fellow, and—”
“And the King?—yes!”
“Very good; the very first use that Marchiali made of his liberty was to persist—Can you guess what?”
“How is it likely I should guess?”
“To persist in saying that he was the King of France; to dress himself up in clothes like those of the King; and then pretend to assume that he was the King himself.”
“Gracious Heavens!”
“That is the reason why I have brought him back again, my dear friend. He is mad, and lets every one see how mad he is.”
“What is to be done, then?”
“That is very simple; let no one hold any communication with him. You understand, that when his peculiar style of madness came to the King’s ears, the King, who had pitied his terrible affliction, and saw how his kindness of heart had been repaid by such black ingratitude, became perfectly furious; so that, now—and remember this very distinctly, dear Monsieur de Baisemeaux, for it concerns you most closely—so that there is now, I repeat, sentence of death pronounced against all those who may allow him to communicate with any one else but me, or the King himself. You understand, Baisemeaux, sentence of death!”
“You need not ask me whether I understand.”
“And now let us go down and conduct this poor devil back to his dungeon again, unless you prefer he should come up here.”
“What would be the good of that?”
“It would be better, perhaps, to enter his name in the prison-book at once.”
“Of course; certainly; not a doubt of it.”
“In that case have him up.”
Baisemeaux ordered the drums to be beaten, and the bells to be rung, as a warning to every one to retire, in order to avoid meeting a prisoner, about whom it was desired to observe a certain mystery. Then, when the passages were free, he went to take the prisoner from the carriage, at whose breast, Porthos, faithful to the directions which had been given him, still kept his musket levelled. “Ah! is that you, miserable wretch?” cried the governor, as soon as he perceived the King. “Very good, very good.” And immediately, making the King get out of the carriage, he led him, still accompanied by Porthos, who had not taken off his mask, and Aramis, who again resumed his, up the stairs, to the second Bertaudière, and opened the door of the room in which Philippe for six long years had bemoaned his existence. The King entered into the cell without pronouncing a single word; he was pale and haggard. Baisemeaux shut the door upon him, turned the key twice in the lock, and then returned to Aramis. “It is quite true,” he said in a low tone, “that he has a rather strong resemblance to the King; but still, less so than you said.”
“So that,” said Aramis, “you would not have been deceived by the substitution of the one for the other?”
“What a question!”
“You are a most valuable fellow, Baisemeaux,” said Aramis; “and now, set Seldon free.”
“Oh, yes. I was going to forget that. I will go and give orders at once.”
“Bah! to-morrow will be time enough.”
“‘To-morrow!’—oh, no. This very minute.”
“Well; go off to your own affairs, I shall go away to mine. But it is quite understood, is it not?”
“What is quite understood?”
“That no one is to enter the prisoner’s cell, except with an order from the King; an order which I will myself bring.”
“Quite so. Ad
ieu, monseigneur.”
Aramis turned to his companion. “Now, Porthos, my good fellow, back again to Vaux, and as fast as possible.”
“A man is light and easy enough, when he has faithfully served his King; and, in serving him, saved his country,” said Porthos. “The horses will be as light as if they had nothing at all behind them. So let us be off.” And the carriage, lightened of a prisoner, who might well be—as he in fact was—very heavy for Aramis, passed across the drawbridge of the Bastille, which was raised again immediately behind it.
46
A Night at the Bastille
PAIN, ANGUISH, AND SUFFERING in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man’s capability of endurance the anguish with which he af flicts him; such, indeed, would not be exact, since Heaven permits the existence of death, which is, sometimes, the only refuge open to those who are too closely pressed—too bitterly afflicted, as far as the body is concerned. Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded to a person; in other words, the weak suffer more, where the trial is the same, than the strong. And, what are the elementary principles, we may ask, which compose human strength? Is it not—more than anything else—exercise, habit, experience? We shall not even take the trouble to demonstrate that, for it is an axiom in morals, as in physics. When the young King, stupefied and crushed in every sense and feeling, found himself led to a cell in the Bastille, he fancied that death itself is but a sleep; that it, too, has its dreams as well; that the bed had broken through the flooring of his room at Vaux; that death had resulted from the occurrence; and that, still carrying out his dream, as the King, Louis XIV, now no longer living, was dreaming one of those horrors, impossible to realise in life, which is termed dethronement, imprisonment, and insult towards a sovereign, who formerly wielded unlimited power. To be present at—an actual witness, too—of this bitterness of death; to float indecisively, in an incomprehensible mystery, between resemblance and reality; to hear everything, to see everything, without interfering with a single detail of agonising suffering, was—so the King thought within himself—a torture far more terrible, since it might last for ever. “Is this what is termed eternity—hell?” he murmured, at the moment the door closed upon him, which Baisemeaux had himself shut. He did not even look round him; and in the room, leaning with his back against the wall, he allowed himself to be carried away by the terrible supposition that he was already dead, as he closed his eyes in order to avoid looking upon something even worse still. “How can I have died?” he said to himself, sick with terror. “The bed might have been let down by some artificial means? But no! I do not remember to have received any contusion, nor any shock either. Would they not rather have poisoned me at one of my meals, or with the fumes of wax, as they did my ancestress, Jeanne d‘Albret?”18 Suddenly, the chill of the dungeon seemed to fall like a cloak upon Louis’s shoulders. “I have seen,” he said, “my father lying dead upon his funeral couch, in his regal robes. That pale face, so calm and worn, those hands, once so skilful, lying nerveless by his side; those limbs stiffened by the icy grasp of death; nothing there betokened a sleep peopled with dreams. And yet, how numerous were the dreams which Heaven might have sent that royal corpse—him, whom so many others had preceded, hurried away by him into eternal death! No, that King was still the King; he was enthroned still upon that funeral couch, as upon a velvet arm-chair; he had not abdicated aught of his majesty. God, who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing.” A strange sound attracted the young man’s attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing, all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant of the cell. The King could not resist a sudden impulse of fear and disgust; he moved back towards the door uttering a loud cry; and, as if he had but needed this cry, which escaped from his breast almost unconsciously, to recognise himself, Louis knew that he was alive and in full possession of his natural senses. “A prisoner!” he cried. “I—I, a prisoner!” He looked round him for a bell to summon some one to him. “There are no bells at the Bastille,” he said, “and it is in the Bastille I am imprisoned. In what way can I have been made a prisoner? It must have been owing to a conspiracy of M. Fouquet. I have been drawn to Vaux, as into a snare. M. Fouquet cannot be acting alone in this affair. His agent——. That voice I but just now heard was M. d’Herblay’s; I recognised it. Colbert was right, then. But what is Fouquet’s object? To reign in my place and stead?—Impossible, Yet, who knows!” thought the King, relapsing into gloom again. “Perhaps my brother, the Duc d’Orleans, is doing that which my uncle wished to do during the whole of his life against my father. But the Queen?—My mother, too? And La Vallière? Oh! La Vallière, she will have been abandoned to Madame. Dear, dear girl! Yes, it is—it must be so. They must have shut her up, as they have me. We are separated for ever!” And at this idea of separation, the poor lover burst into a flood of tears, and sobs, and groans.
“There is a governor in this place,” the King continued, in a fury of passion; “I will speak to him, I will summon him to me.”
He called, but no voice replied to his. He seized hold of his chair, and hurled it against the massive oaken door. The wood resounded against the door, and awakened many a mournful echo in the profound depths of the staircase: but from a human creature, not one.
This was a fresh proof for the King of the slight regard in which he was held at the Bastille. Therefore, when his first fit of anger had passed away, having remarked a barred window, through which there passed a stream of light, lozenge-shaped, which must be, he knew, the bright orb of approaching day, Louis began to call out, at first gently enough, then louder and louder still; but no one replied to him. Twenty other attempts which he made, one after another, obtained no other or better success. His blood began to boil within him, and mount to his head. His nature was such, that, accustomed to command, he trembled at the idea of disobedience. By degrees, his anger increased more and more. The prisoner broke the chair, which was too heavy for him to lift, and made use of it as a battering ram to strike against the door. He struck so loudly, and so repeatedly, that the perspiration soon began to pour down his face. The sound became tremendous and continuous; some stifled, smothered cries replied in different directions. This sound produced a strange effect upon the King. He paused to listen to it; it was the voice of the prisoners, formerly his victims, now his companions. The voices ascended like vapours through the thick ceilings and the massive walls, and rose in accusation against the author of this noise, as doubtless their sighs and tears accused, in whispered tones, the author of their captivity. After having deprived so many people of their liberty, the King came among them to rob them of their rest. This idea almost drove him mad; it redoubled his strength, or rather his will, bent upon obtaining some information, or a conclusion to the affair. With a portion of the broken chair he recommenced the noise. At the end of an hour, Louis heard something in the corridor, behind the door of his cell, and a violent blow, which was returned upon the door itself, made him cease his own.
“Are you mad?” said a rude brutal voice. “What is the matter with you this morning?”
“This morning!” thought the King; but he said aloud, politely, “Monsieur, are you the governor of the Bastille?”
“My good fellow, your head is out of sorts,” replied the voice; “but that is no reason why you should make such a terrible disturbance. Be quiet; mordieu!”
“Are you the governor?” the King inquired again.
He heard a door on the corridor close; the jailer had just left, not even condescending to reply a single word. When the King had assured himself of this departure, his fury knew no longer any bounds. As agile as a tiger, he leaped from the table to the window, and struck the iron bars with all his might. He
broke a pane of glass, the pieces of which fell clanking into the courtyard below. He shouted with increasing hoarseness, “The governor, the governor!” This excess lasted fully an hour, during which time he was in a burning fever. With his hair in disorder and matted on his forehead, his dress torn and whitened, his linen in shreds, the King never rested until his strength was utterly exhausted, and it was not until then that he clearly understood the pitiless thickness of the walls, the impenetrable nature of the cement, invincible to all other influence but that of time, and possessed of no other weapon but despair. He leaned his forehead against the door, and let the feverish throbbings of his heart calm by degrees; it seemed as if one single additional pulsation would have made it burst.
“A moment will come when the food which is given to the prisoners will be brought to me. I shall then see some one, I shall speak to him, and get an answer.”
And the King tried to remember at what hour the first repast of the prisoners was served at the Bastille; he was ignorant even of this detail. The feeling of remorse at this remembrance smote him like the keen thrust of a dagger, that he should have lived for five-and-twenty years a King, and in the enjoyment of every happiness, without having bestowed a moment’s thought on the misery of those who had been unjustly deprived of their liberty. The King blushed from very shame. He felt that Heaven, in permitting this fearful humiliation, did no more than render to the man the same torture as was inflicted by that man upon so many others. Nothing could be more efficacious for reawakening his mind to religious influences than the prostration of his heart, and mind, and soul beneath the feelings of such acute wretchedness. But Louis dared not even kneel in prayer to God to entreat Him to terminate his bitter trial.
“Heaven is right,” he said; “Heaven acts wisely, it would be cowardly to pray to Heaven for that which I have so often refused to my own fellow creatures.”
He had reached this stage of his reflections, that is, of his agony of mind, when a similar noise was again heard behind his door, followed this time by the sound of the key in the lock, and of the bolts being withdrawn from their pins. The King bounded forward to be nearer to the person who was about to enter, but suddenly reflecting that it was a movement unworthy of a sovereign, he paused, assumed a noble and calm expression, which for him was easy enough, and waited with his back turned towards the window, in order, to some extent, to conceal his agitation from the eyes of the person who was about entering. It was only a jailer with a basket of provisions. The King looked at the man with restless anxiety, and waited until he spoke.
Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 42
