and it is unquestionably better that I should deliver myself up as a prisoner with M. Athos, who is already arrested, and with M. d’Artagnan, who will doubtless before long be so too.”
“Gascon head! will you have done?” said the king.
“Sire,” said Treville, without in the least lowering his voice, “give me up my musketeer, or let him be tried!”
“He shall be tried,” said the king.
“Well, so much the better: for then I shall demand your majesty’s permission to plead his cause.”
The king dreaded an outbreak.
“If his eminence,” said he, “had not any personal motives—.”
The cardinal saw which way the king was tending, and anticipated him.
“Pardon me,” said he, “but the moment that the king sees in me a prejudiced judge, I retire.”
“Come,” said the king to M. de Treville, “do you swear to me by my father, that M. Athos was at your house during this event, and that he had nothing to do with it?”
“By your glorious father, and by yourself, whom I love and venerate most in the world, I swear it!”
“You must reflect, sire,” said the cardinal, “that if we thus release this prisoner, the truth cannot be discovered.”
“M. Athos shall always be forthcoming,” said Treville, “when it may please the lawyers to interrogate him. He will not run away. I stand surety for him.”
“In reality he will not desert,” said the king; “he can always be found, as Treville says. Besides,” added he, lowering his voice, and regarding the cardinal with a supplicating air, “put them in security: it is politic.”
This policy of Louis XIII. made Richelieu smile.
“Give your order, sire,” said he, “for you have the privilege of pardon.”
“The privilege of pardon applies only to the guilty,” said Treville, who wished to have the last word, “and my musketeer is innocent. It is not a pardon, therefore, that your majesty is going to grant, but justice.”
“Is he at Fort l’Eveque?” asked the king.
“Yes, sire, and in a solitary dungeon, like the worst of criminals.”
“’Od’s blood!” said the king, “what is to be done?”
“Sign the order for his release,” said the cardinal, “and all will be ended. I believe, like your majesty, that M. de Treville’s security is more than sufficient.”
Treville bowed respectfully, with a joy not unmingled with fear. He would have preferred an obstinate resistance on the part of the cardinal, to this sudden concession.
The king signed the order of release, and Treville carried it away immediately.
At the moment he was going out, the cardinal gave him a friendly smile, and said to the king—
“Great harmony exists between the officers and the soldiers of your musketeers, sire; it must be very beneficial to the service, and reflects honour on them all.”
“He will play me some scurvy trick presently,” thought Treville; “one never has the last word with such a man. But let me hasten, for the king may change his mind soon; and, after all, it is more difficult to put a man back into the Bastile, or Fort l’Eveque, once he has got out of it, than to keep him prisoner there when they have already caught him.”
M. de Treville entered Fort l’Eveque triumphantly, and set at liberty his musketeer, who had not lost his calm indifference.
And the first time that he saw d’Artagnan, he said to him, “You have escaped well: your sword-thrust to Jussac is now paid for; that to Bernajoux still remains; but you must not be too confident.”
M. de Treville had reason to distrust the cardinal, and to think that all was not ended; for scarcely had the captain of musketeers closed the door behind him before his eminence said to the king—
“Now that we are alone together, we must have some serious conversation, if it please your majesty. Sire, the Duke of Buckingham has been in Paris for five days, and left it only this morning.”
It is impossible to form an idea of the impression which these few words produced on the king. He grew red and pale by turns, and the cardinal saw immediately that he had regained, by a single stroke, all the ground that he had previously lost.
“The Duke of Buckingham at Paris!” said the king; “and what has he been doing there?”
“No doubt plotting with your enemies, the Huguenots and the Spaniards.”
“No, by God, no! Plotting, rather against my honour, with Madame de Chevreuse, Madame de Longueville, and the Conde.”
“Oh! sire, what an idea! The queen is too good, and, above all, loves your majesty too well.”
“Woman is feeble,” said the king: “and as for her loving me too well, I have my own opinion about that!”
“Nevertheless, I maintain that the Duke of Buckingham came to Paris for an entirely political object.”
“And I am just as sure that he came for other purposes; but, if the queen is guilty, let her tremble!”
“After all,” said the cardinal, “however unwilling I am to dwell upon a treason of this kind, your majesty, by your words, reminds me that Madame de Lannoy, whom, by your majesty’s order, I have several times questioned, told me this morning that, the night before last, the queen was up very late, that this morning she was weeping very much, and that she had been writing throughout the whole day.”
“That confirms it!” said the king: “writing to him, no doubt. Cardinal, I must have the queen’s papers!”
“But how are we to get them, sire? It appears to me that neither I nor your majesty ought to undertake such an office.”
“How did they proceed towards the Marechale d’Ancre,” said the king, in the most violent rage; “they first ransacked her chests, and at last searched her person.”
“The Marechale d’Ancre was only the Marechale d’Ancre, a Florentine adventuress: but the august spouse of your majesty is Anne of Austria, Queen of France; that is, one of the greatest princesses in the world.”
“That only makes her the more criminal! The more she has forgotten the high position in which she is placed, the lower she has fallen. For a long time, now, I have been determined to put an end to all these petty intrigues of politics and love. There is, also, one La Porte in her service.”
“Whom I believe to be the master-spirit in all this.”
