Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France
TextCHAPTER XIII
ST. MARTIN'S EVE
It was late evening on the last day but one of November, when I rode into Paris through the Orleans gate. The wind was in the northeast, and a great cloud of vapour hung in the eye of an angry sunset. The air seemed to be full of wood smoke, the kennels reeked, my gorge rose at the city's smell; and with all my heart I envied the man who had gone out of it by the same gate nearly two months before, with his face to the south, and the prospect of riding day after day across heath and moor and pasture. At least he had had some weeks of life before him, and freedom, and the open air, and hope and uncertainty, while I came back under doom; and in the pall of smoke that hung over the huddle of innumerable roofs, saw a gloomy shadowing of my own fate.
For make no mistake. A man in middle life does not strip himself of the worldly habit with which experience has clothed him, does not run counter to all the cynical saws and instances by which he has governed his course so long, without shiverings and doubts and horrible misgivings and struggles of heart. At least a dozen times between the Loire and Paris, I asked myself what honour was; and what good it would do me when I lay rotting and forgotten; if I was not a fool following a Jack-o'-lanthorn; and whether, of all the men in the world, the relentless man to whom I was returning, would not be the first to gibe at my folly.
However, shame kept me straight; shame and the memory of Mademoiselle's looks and words. I dared not be false to her again; I could not, after speaking so loftily, fall so low. And therefore-though not without many a secret struggle and quaking-I came, on this last evening but one of November, to the Orleans gate, and rode slowly and sadly through the streets by the Luxembourg, on my way to the Pont au Change.
The struggle had sapped my last strength, however; and with the first whiff of the gutters, the first rush of barefooted gamins under my horse's hoofs, the first babel of street cries, the first breath, in a word, of Paris, there came a new temptation-to go for one last night to Zaton's to see the tables again and the faces of surprise; to be, for an hour or two, the old Berault. That could be no breach of honour; for in any case I could not reach the Cardinal before tomorrow. And it could do no harm. It could make no change in anything. It would not have been a thing worth struggling about-only I had in my inmost heart suspicions that the stoutest resolutions might lose their force in that atmosphere; that even such a talisman as the memory of a woman's looks and words might lose its virtue there.
Still I think I should have succumbed in the end, if I had not received at the corner of the Luxembourg a shock which sobered me effectually. As I passed the gates, a coach followed by two outriders swept out of the palace courtyard; it was going at a great pace, and I reined my jaded horse on one side to give it room. As it whirled by me, one of the leather curtains flapped back, and I saw for a second, by the waning light, – the nearer wheels were no more than two feet from my boot, – a face inside.
A face, and no more, and that only for a second! But it froze me. It was Richelieu's, the Cardinal's; but not as I had been wont to see it, keen, cold, acute, with intellect and indomitable will in every feature. This face was distorted with rage and impatience; with the fever of haste and the fear of death. The eyes burned under the pale brow, the mustachios bristled, the teeth showed through the beard; I could fancy the man crying "Faster! Faster!" and gnawing his nails in the impatience of passion; and I shrank back as if I had been struck. The next moment the galloping outriders splashed me, the coach was a hundred paces ahead, and I was left chilled and wondering, foreseeing the worst, and no longer in any mood for the gaming-table.
Such a revelation of such a man was enough to appall me. Conscience cried out that he must have heard that Cocheforêt had escaped, and through me! But I dismissed the idea as soon as formed.
In the vast meshes of the Cardinal's schemes, Cocheforêt could be only a small fish; and to account for the face in the coach I needed a cataclysm, a catastrophe, a misfortune, as far above ordinary mishaps, as this man's intellect rose above the common run of minds.
It was almost dark when I crossed the bridges, and crept despondently to the Rue Savonnerie. After stabling my horse, I took my bag and holsters, and climbing the stairs to my old landlord's, – the place seemed to have grown strangely mean and small and ill-smelling in my absence, – I knocked at the door. It was opened by the little tailor himself, who threw up his arms at the sight of me. "By St. Genevieve!" he said. "If it is not M. de Berault!"
"No other," I said. It touched me a little, after my lonely journey, to find him so glad to see me-though I had never done him a greater benefit than sometimes to unbend with him and borrow his money. "You look surprised, little man!" I continued, as he made way for me to enter. "I'll be sworn you have been pawning my goods and letting my room, you knave!"
"Never, your excellency!" he answered, beaming on me. "On the contrary, I have been expecting you."
"How?" I said. "To-day?"
"To-day or to-morrow," he answered, following me in and closing the door. "The first thing I said, when I heard the news this morning, was, Now we shall have M. de Berault back again. Your excellency will pardon the children," he continued, as I took the old seat on the three-legged stool before the hearth. "The night is cold, and there is no fire in your room."
While he ran to and fro with my cloak and bags, little Gil, to whom I had stood at St. Sulpice's-borrowing ten crowns the same day, I remember-came shyly to play with my sword-hilt "So you expected me back when you heard the news, Frison, did you?" I said, taking the lad on my knee.
"To be sure, your excellency," he answered, peeping into the black pot before he lifted it to the hook.
"Very good. Then, now, let us hear what the news was," I said drily.
"Of the Cardinal, M. de Berault."
"Ah? And what?"
He looked at me, holding the heavy pot suspended in his hands. "You have not heard?" he exclaimed, his jaw falling.
"Not a tittle. Tell it me, my good fellow."
"You have not heard that His Eminence is disgraced?"
I stared at him. "Not a word," I said.
He set down the pot. "Your excellency must have made a very long journey indeed, then," he said, with conviction. "For it has been in the air a week or more, and I thought it had brought you back. A week? A month, I dare say. They whisper that it is the old Queen's doing. At any rate, it is certain that they have cancelled his commissions and displaced his officers. There are rumours of immediate peace with Spain. His enemies are lifting up their heads, and I hear that he has relays of horses set all the way to the coast, that he may fly at any moment For what I know he may be gone already."
"But, man," I said-"the King! You forget the King. Let the Cardinal once pipe to him, and he will dance. And they will dance, too!" I added grimly.
"Yes," Frison answered eagerly. "True, your excellency, but the King will not see him. Three times to-day, as I am told, the Cardinal has driven to the Luxembourg, and stood like any common man in the ante-chamber, so that I hear it was pitiful to see him. But His Majesty would not admit him. And when he went away the last time, I am told that his face was like death! Well, he was a great man, and we may be worse ruled, M. de Berault, saving your presence. If the nobles did not like him, he was good to the traders, and the bourgeoisie, and equal to all."
"Silence, man! Silence, and let me think," I said, much excited. And while he bustled to and fro, getting my supper, and the firelight played about the snug, sorry little room, and the child toyed with his plaything, I fell to digesting this great news, and pondering how I stood now and what I ought to do. At first sight, I know, it seemed that I had nothing to do but sit still. In a few hours the man who held my bond would be powerless, and I should be free. In a few hours I might smile at him. To all appearance, the dice had fallen well for me. I had done a great thing, run a great risk, won a woman's love, and after all was not to pay the penalty!
But a word which fell from Frison as he fluttered round me, pouring out the broth, and cutting the bread, dropped into my mind and spoiled my satisfaction. "Yes, your excellency," he exclaimed, confirming something he had said before, and which I had missed, "and I am told that the last time he came into the gallery, there was not a man of all the scores who attended his levée last Monday would speak to him. They fell off like rats, – just like rats, – until he was left standing all alone. And I have seen him!" Frison lifted up his eyes and his hands and drew in his breath. "Ah, I have seen the King look shabby beside him! And his eye! I would not like to meet it now."
"Pish!" I growled. "Some one has fooled you. Men are wiser than that."
"So? Well, your excellency understands. But-there are no cats on a cold hearth."
I told him again that he was a fool. But withal I felt uncomfortable. This was a great man if ever a great man lived, and they were all leaving him; and I-well, I had no cause to love him. But I had taken his money, I had accepted his commission, and I had betrayed him. Those three things being so, if he fell before I could-with the best will in the world-set myself right with him, so much the better for me. That was my gain, the fortune of war. But if I lay hid, and took time for my ally, and being here while he stood still, – though tottering, – waited until he fell, what of my honour then? What of the grand words I had said to Mademoiselle at Agen? I should be like the recreant in the old romance, who, lying in the ditch while the battle raged, came out afterwards and boasted of his courage. And yet the flesh was weak. A day, twenty-four hours, two days, might make the difference between life and death. At last I settled what I would do. At noon the next day, the time at which I should have presented myself, if I had not heard this news, at that time I would still present myself. Not earlier; I owed myself the chance. Not later; that was due to him.
Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace. But with the first light I was awake; and it was all I could do to keep myself quiet until I heard Frison stirring. I called to him then to know if there was any news, and lay waiting and listening while he went down to the street to learn. It seemed an endless time before he came back; an age, after he came back, before he spoke.
"Well, he has not set off?" I cried at last, unable to control my eagerness.
Of course he had not. At nine o'clock I sent Frison out again; and at ten, and at eleven-always with the same result. I was like a man waiting, and looking, and, above all, listening for a reprieve, and as sick as any craven. But when he came back at eleven, I gave up hope, and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I still had an odd look, however; for Frison stopped me at the door and asked me, with evident alarm, whither I was going.
I put the little man aside gently. "To the tables," I said. "To make a big throw, my friend."
It was a fine morning; sunny, keen, pleasant. Even the streets smelled fresh. But I scarcely noticed it. All my thoughts were where I was going. It seemed but a step from my threshold to the Hotel Richelieu. I was no sooner gone from the one than I found myself at the other. As on the memorable evening, when I had crossed the street in a drizzling rain, and looked that way with foreboding, there were two or three guards in the Cardinal's livery, loitering before the gates. But this was not all. Coming nearer, I found the opposite pavement under the Louvre thronged with people; not moving about their business, but standing all silent, all looking across furtively, all with the air of persons who wished to be thought passing by. Their silence and their keen looks had in some way an air of menace. Looking back after I had turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with their eyes.
Certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard, where some mornings when the court was in Paris I had seen a score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now emptiness and sunshine and stillness. The officer, who stood twisting his mustachios, on guard, looked at me in wonder as I passed. The lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned at my appearance. But that which happened when I had mounted the stairs, and come to the door of the ante-chamber, outdid all. The man on guard there would have opened the door; but when I went to take advantage of the offer, and enter, a major-domo, who was standing near, muttering with two or three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.
"Your business, Monsieur, if you please?" he said inquisitively. And I wondered why the others looked at me so strangely.
"I am M. de Berault," I answered sharply. "I have the entrée."
He bowed politely enough. "Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face," he said. "But pardon me. Have you business with His Eminence?"
"I have the common business," I answered bluntly, "by which many of us live, sirrah! – to wait on him."
"But-by appointment, Monsieur?" he persisted.
"No," I said, astonished. "It is the usual hour. For the matter of that, however, I have business with him."
The man looked at me for a moment, in apparent embarrassment. Then he stood reluctantly aside, and signed to the door-keeper to open the door. I passed in, uncovering, with an assured face, ready to meet all eyes. Then in a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained.
The room was empty.
CHAPTER XIV
ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER
Yes, at the great Cardinal's levée I was the only client. I stared round the room, a long narrow gallery, through which it was his custom to walk every morning, after receiving his more important visitors. I stared, I say, round this room, in a state of stupefaction. The seats against either wall were empty, the recesses of the windows empty too. The hat, sculptured and painted here and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms, looked down on a vacant floor. Only, on a little stool by the main door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men, blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.
At length, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought, – for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu's old hotel so crowded that he could not walk through it, – this man closed his book, rose, and came noiselessly towards me. "M. de Berault?" he said.
"Yes," I answered.
"His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me."
I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the Cardinal know that I was here? How could he have known when he gave the order? But I had short time to think of these things. We passed through two rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing; we stopped at a third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher knocked, opened, and with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain, and signed to me to enter. I did so, and found myself standing behind a screen.
"Is that M. de Berault?" asked a thin, high-pitched voice.
"Yes, Monseigneur," I answered, trembling.
"Then come, my friend, and talk to me."
I went round the screen; and I know not how it was, the watching crowd outside, the vacant antechamber in which I had stood, the stillness, – all seemed concentrated here, and gave to the man I saw before me, a dignity which he had never possessed for me when the world passed through his doors, and the proudest fawned on him for a smile. He sat in a great chair on the farther side of the hearth, a little red skull-cap on his head, his fine hands lying motionless in his lap. The collar of lawn which fell over his red cape was quite plain, but the skirts of his red robe were covered with rich lace, and the order of the Holy Ghost shone on his breast. Among the multitudinous papers on the great table near him I saw a sword and pistols lying; and some tapestry that covered a little table behind him failed to hide a pair of spurred riding-boots. But he-in spite of these signs of trouble-looked towards me as I advanced, with a face mild and almost benign; a face in which I strove in vain to find traces of last night's passion. So that it flashed across me that if this man really stood-and afterwards I knew he did-on the thin razor-edge between life and death, between the supreme of earthly power, lord of France, and arbiter of Europe, and the nothingness of the clod, he justified his fame. He gave weaker natures no room for triumph.
The thought was no sooner entertained than it was gone. "And so you are back at last, M. de Berault?" he said, gently. "I have been expecting to see you since nine this morning."
"Your Eminence knew then-" I muttered.
"That you returned to Paris by the Orleans gate last evening, alone?" He fitted together the ends of his fingers, and looked at me over them with inscrutable eyes. "Yes, I knew all that last night. And now of your mission? You have been faithful, and diligent, I am sure. Where is he?"
I stared at him, and was dumb. Somehow the strange things I had seen since I left my lodging, the surprises I had found awaiting me here, had driven my own fortunes, my own peril, out of my head, until this moment. Now, at his question, all returned with a rush. My heart heaved suddenly in my breast. I strove for a savour of the old hardihood; but for the moment I could not find a word.
"Well?" he said lightly, a faint smile lifting his mustache. "You do not speak. You left Auch with him on the twenty-fourth, M. de Berault. So much I know. And you reached Paris without him last night. He has not given you the slip?" with sudden animation.
"No, Monseigneur," I muttered.
"Ha! That is good," he answered, sinking back again in his chair. "For the moment-but I knew I could depend on you. And now where is he?" he continued. "What have you done with him? He knows much, and the sooner I know it, the better. Are your people bringing him, M. de Berault?"
"No, Monseigneur," I stammered, with dry lips. His very good humour, his benignity, appalled me. I knew how terrible would be the change, how fearful his rage, when I should tell him the truth. And yet that I, Gil de Berault, should tremble before any man! I spurred myself, as it were, to the task. "No, Your Eminence," I said, with the courage of despair. "I have not brought him, because I have set him free."
"Because you have-what?" he exclaimed. He leaned forward, his hands on the arm of his chair; and his glittering eyes, growing each instant smaller, seemed to read my soul.
"Because I have let him go," I repeated.
"And why?" he said, in a voice like the rasping of a file.
"Because I took him unfairly," I answered desperately. "Because, Monseigneur, I am a gentleman, and this task should have been given to one who was not. I took him, if you must know," I continued impatiently, – the fence once crossed, I was growing bolder, – "by dogging a woman's steps, and winning her confidence, and betraying it. And, whatever I have done ill in my life, – of which you were good enough to throw something in my teeth when I was last here, – I have never done that, and I will not!"
"And so you set him free?"
"Yes."
"After you had brought him to Auch?"
"Yes."
"And in point of fact saved him from falling into the hands of the commandant at Auch?"
"Yes," I answered desperately.
"Then what of the trust I placed in you, sirrah?" he rejoined, in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward, he probed me with his eyes. "You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion this month past, answer me that! What of the trust I placed in you?"
"The answer is simple," I said, shrugging my shoulders with a touch of my old self. "I am here to pay the penalty."
"And do you think that I do not know why?" he retorted, striking his one hand on the arm of the chair with a force which startled me. "Because you have heard, Sir, that my power is gone! That I, who was yesterday the King's right hand, am to-day dried up, withered, and paralyzed! Because-but have a care! Have a care!" he continued not loudly, but in a voice like a dog's snarl. "You, and those others! Have a care I say, or you may find yourselves mistaken yet!"
"As Heaven shall judge me," I answered solemnly, "that is not true. Until I reached Paris last night I knew nothing of this report. I came here with a single mind, to redeem my honour by placing again in Your Eminence's hands that which you gave me on trust."
For a moment he remained in the same attitude, staring at me fixedly. Then his face somewhat relaxed. "Be good enough to ring that bell," he said.
It stood on a table near me. I rang it, and a velvet-footed man in black came in, and gliding up to the Cardinal placed a paper in his hand. The Cardinal looked at it while the man stood with his head obsequiously bent; my heart beat furiously. "Very good," the Cardinal said, after a pause, which seemed to me to be endless. "Let the doors be thrown open."
The man bowed low, and retired behind the screen. I heard a little bell ring, somewhere in the silence, and in a moment the Cardinal stood up. "Follow me!" he said, with a strange flash of his keen eyes.
Astonished, I stood aside while he passed to the screen; then I followed him. Outside the first door, which stood open, we found eight or nine persons, – pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several guards waiting like mutes. These signed to me to precede them, and fell in behind us, and in that order we passed through the first room and the second, where the clerks stood with bent heads to receive us. The last door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew open as we approached; a score of voices cried, "Place! Place for His Eminence!" We passed without pause through two lines of bowing lackeys, and entered-an empty room!
The ushers did not know how to look at one another. The lackeys trembled in their shoes. But the Cardinal walked on, apparently unmoved, until he had passed slowly half the length of the chamber. Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side; and then to another, with a low laugh of derision. "Father," he said, in his thin voice, "what does the psalmist say? 'I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, and like an owl that is in the desert!'"
The monk mumbled assent.
"And later, in the same psalm is it not written, 'They shall perish, but thou shalt endure!'"
"It is so," the father answered. "Amen."
"Doubtless that refers to another life," the Cardinal continued, with his slow, wintry smile. "In the meantime we will go back to our book? and our prayers, and serve God and the King in small things, if not in great. Come, father, this is no longer a place for us. Vanitas vanitatum; omnia vanitas! We will retire."
So, as solemnly as we had come, we marched back through the first and second and third doors, until we stood again in the silence of the Cardinal's chamber; he and I and the velvet-footed man in black. For a while Richelieu seemed to forget me. He stood brooding on the hearth, with his eye's on the embers. Once I heard him laugh; and twice he uttered in a tone of bitter mockery, the words, "Fools! Fools! Fools!"
At last he looked up, saw me, and started. "Ah!" he said. "I had forgotten you. Well, you are fortunate, M. de Berault. Yesterday I had a hundred clients. To-day I have only one, and I cannot afford to hang him. But for your liberty-that is another matter."
I would have said something, but he turned abruptly to the table, and sitting down wrote a few lines on a piece of paper. Then he rang his bell, while I stood waiting and confounded.
The man in black came from behind the screen. "Take that letter and this gentleman to the upper guard-room," His Eminence said sharply. "I can hear no more," he continued wearily, raising his hand to forbid interruption. "The matter is ended, M. de Berault. Be thankful."
And in a moment I was outside the door, my head in a whirl, my heart divided between gratitude and resentment. Along several passages I followed my guide; everywhere finding the same silence, the same monastic stillness. At length, when I had begun to consider whether the Bastile or the Châtelet would be my fate, he stopped at a door, gave me the letter, and, lifting the latch, signed to me to enter.
I went in in amazement, and stopped in confusion. Before me, alone, just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale, the next red with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt. I cried out her name.
"M. de Berault!" she said, visibly trembling. "You did not expect to see me?"
"I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle," I answered, striving to recover my composure.
"Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert you," she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my heart. "We should have been base indeed, if we had not made some attempt to save you. I thank Heaven that it has so far succeeded that that strange man has promised me your life. You have seen him?" she continued eagerly, and in another tone, while her eyes grew suddenly large with fear.
"Yes, Mademoiselle, I have seen him," I said. "And he has given me my life."
"And?"
"And sent me to imprisonment."
"For how long?" she whispered.
"I do not know," I answered. "I expect, during the King's pleasure."
She shuddered. "I may have done more harm than good," she murmured, looking at me piteously. "But I did it for the best. I told him all, and-yes, perhaps I did harm."
But to hear her accuse herself thus, when she had made this long and lonely journey to save me; when she had forced herself into her enemy's presence, and had, as I was sure she had, abased herself for me, was more than I could bear. "Hush, Mademoiselle, hush!" I said, almost roughly. "You hurt me. You have made me happy: and yet I wish that you were not here, where I fear you have few friends, but back at Cocheforêt. You have done more than I expected, and a hundred times more than I deserved. But I was a ruined man before this happened. I am no more now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name pinned to mine on Paris lips. Therefore, good-bye. God forbid I should say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would soon malign you."
She looked at me in a kind of wonder; then with a growing smile, "It is too late," she said gently.
"Too late?" I exclaimed. "How, Mademoiselle?"
"Because-do you remember, M. de Berault, what you told me of your love story, by Agen? That it could have no happy ending? For the same reason I was not ashamed to tell mine to the Cardinal. By this time it is common property."
I looked at her as she stood facing me. Her eyes shone, but they were downcast. Her figure drooped, and yet a smile trembled on her lips. "What did you tell him, Mademoiselle?" I whispered, my breath coming quickly.
"That I loved," she answered boldly, raising her clear eyes to mine. "And therefore that I was not ashamed to beg, even on my knees. Nor ashamed to be with my lover, even in prison."
I fell on my knees, and caught her hand before the last word passed her lips. For the moment I forgot King and Cardinal, prison and the future, all-all except that this woman, so pure and so beautiful, so far above me in all things, loved me. For the moment, I say. Then I remembered myself. I stood up and thrust her from me, in a sudden revulsion of feeling. "You do not know me," I said. "You do not know me. You do not know what I have done."
"That is what I do know," she answered, looking at me with a wondrous smile.
"Ah, but you do not," I cried. "And besides, there is this-this between us." And I picked up the Cardinal's letter. It had fallen on the floor.
She turned a shade paler. Then she said, "Open it! Open it! It is not sealed, nor closed."
I obeyed mechanically, dreading what I might see. Even when I had it open I looked at the finely scrawled characters with eyes askance. But at last I made it out. It ran thus: -
"The King's pleasure is, that M. de Berault, having mixed himself up with affairs of state, retire forthwith to the manor of Cocheforêt, and confine himself within its limits, until the King's pleasure be further known.
"Richelieu."
On the next day we were married. The same evening we left Paris, and I retraced, in her company, the road which I had twice traversed alone and in heaviness.
A fortnight later we were at Cocheforêt, in the brown woods under the southern mountains; and the great Cardinal, once more triumphant over his enemies, saw, with cold, smiling eyes, the world pass through his chamber. The flood-tide, which then set in, lasted thirteen years; in brief, until his death. For the world had learned its lesson, and was not to be deceived a second time. To this hour they call that day, which saw me stand for all his friends, "The day of Dupes."