Before making this last promise, Canolles had asked permission to write four lines. The permission was granted, and he had the following letter taken to Nanon.
A prisoner, but free inside Bordeaux on my word of honour that I shall not communicate with anyone outside, I am writing these few words to you, dear Nanon, to assure you of my friendship, which my silence might otherwise make you doubt. I am relying on you to defend my honour to the king and queen.
Baron de Canolles
The influence of Madame de Cambes could be felt in the conditions of his capture, which, as one can see, were very mild.
It was five or six days before Canolles had done with all the meals and celebrations that were given for him by his friends. He was constantly to be seen with Ravailly, who walked around with his left arm linked in that of Canolles’s and his right arm in a sling. When the drum beat, and the people of Bordeaux left on some expedition or hurried to quell some riot or other, you were bound to see Canolles at the roadside, with Ravailly on his arm, or else alone, his hands clasped behind his back, looking on and smiling, curious and harmless.
In fact, since his arrival he had only rarely had a sight of Madame de Cambes and had barely spoken to her. It seemed to be enough for the viscountess that he was not beside Nanon, and she was happy, as she had said, to be keeping him close to her. So Canolles had written gently to complain, and she had had him invited to one or two houses in the town, with that protection, invisible to the eyes, but tangible to the heart, so to speak, of the woman who loves but does not want to reveal it.
There was more. Through Lenet, Canolles had received permission to pay court to Madame de Condé, and the handsome prisoner appeared there from time to time, buzzing and clucking around the princess’s women.
Moreover, there was no man who appeared less interested in political affairs than Canolles. Seeing Madame de Cambes, exchanging a few words with her, or, if he could not manage to speak to her, eliciting an affectionate gesture, pressing her hand as she climbed into her coach… and, Huguenot though he was, offering her some holy water in church – these were the great matters of the prisoner’s day.
At night, he thought about what had happened during the day.
However, after a while, this entertainment was not enough for him. And, since he understood the fine feelings of Madame de Cambes, who was more afraid for Canolles’s honour than for her own, he tried to expand the circle of his activities. First of all, he fought duels with an officer of the garrison and two townsmen, which did occupy him for a few hours. But since he disarmed one of his adversaries and wounded the other two, this amusement was soon denied him, as there were not enough people willing to provide it.
Then he had one or two pieces of good luck. This was not surprising: apart from the fact that Canolles, as we have said, was a very handsome youth, he had become an object of extreme interest since being taken prisoner. For three full days and the whole morning of the fourth, people had spoken about his captivity, which was almost as much time as had been devoted to that of the prince.
One day when Canolles was hoping to see Madame de Cambes in church – and when Madame de Cambes, perhaps for fear of meeting him, had not come – Canolles, stationed at his post beside the column, offered holy water to a charming lady, whom he had not previously met. This was not Canolles’s fault, but the viscountess’s: if she had come, he would not have thought of anyone but her, seen anyone but her, or offered holy water to anyone but her.
The same day, as Canolles was wondering who this charming brunette could be, he received an invitation to spend the evening with the advocate general Lavie, the same man who had tried to prevent the entrance of the princess into Bordeaux, and who, as a supporter of the royal authority, was detested almost as much as Monsieur d’Epernon. Canolles, who felt an increasing need to distract himself, gratefully welcomed the invitation and at six o’clock went to the house of the advocate general.
To our modern partygoers, this may seem to be an odd time of day, but there were two reasons why Canolles went to see the advocate general so early. The first was that, in those days, as lunch was taken at midday, evenings began much sooner; and the second was that as Canolles regularly returned to Château-Trompette at half past nine at the latest, if he wanted to do more than simply make an appearance, he had to be among the first to arrive.
As he entered the drawing room, Canolles gave a cry of joy: Madame Lavie was none other than the charming brunette to whom he had so gallantly offered holy water that very morning.
He was greeted in the home of the advocate general as a royalist who has proved his loyalty. Hardly had he been presented than he was overwhelmed with tributes that might have turned the head of one of the seven sages of Greece. His defence against the first attack was compared to that of Horatius Cocles, and his later defeat to the capture of Troy, brought down by the wiles of Ulysses.8
‘My dear Monsieur de Canolles,’ said the advocate general. ‘I know from a reliable source that you have been much spoken of at court and that your fine defence covered you in glory. The queen has sworn that she will exchange you for another prisoner as soon as she can and that on the day when you return to serve her it will be with the rank of colonel or brigadier. Now, do you wish to be exchanged?’
‘Why, Monsieur,’ Canolles replied, casting a lethal glance at Madame Lavie, ‘I promise you that my greatest desire is that the queen should not be in too much of a hurry: she would have to exchange me for money or for a good soldier. I would not like to occasion this expenditure, and I do not deserve such an honour. I shall wait until Her Majesty captures Bordeaux, where I am at present very content. Then she will have me for nothing.’
Madame Lavie gave Canolles a charming smile.
‘My goodness!’ said her husband. ‘You are lukewarm about your freedom, Baron.’
‘Why should I get heated about it? Do you think that it is much of a pleasure for me to return to active service and find myself liable at any moment to kill one of my friends?’
‘But what kind of life do you have here?’ asked the advocate general. ‘A life unworthy of a man of your calibre, kept aside from every discussion and every undertaking, forced to see others serving the cause to which they belong, while you have your arms folded. Useless, set aside – that’s what you are. You must find it hard.’
Canolles looked at Madame Lavie, who returned his look.
‘No,’ he said, ‘you are wrong. I’m not at all bored. You concern yourself with politics, which is very tedious, while I make love, which is very diverting. You are one of the queen’s servants, while the rest serve the princess… And I am not attached to any sovereign: I am the slave of all women.’
This retort was much appreciated, and the lady of the house gave another smile, showing what she thought of it.
Soon they split into groups for cards. Canolles began to play. Madame Lavie joined the game with him against her husband, who lost five hundred pistoles.
On the following day, the people, I don’t know why, decided to have a riot. A supporter of the princes who was more fanatical than the rest suggested that they go and throw stones through Madame Lavie’s windows. When the windowpanes had been broken, another suggested setting fire to the house. They were already running to get torches, when Canolles arrived with a detachment of the regiment of Navailles, carried Madame Lavie to safety and rescued her husband from the hands of a dozen enthusiasts, who, prevented from burning him, wanted to hang him at least.
‘Well, sir, you man of action!’ said Canolles to the advocate general, who was white with terror. ‘What do you think of my idleness now? Is it not better for me to do nothing?’
At that, he went back into Château-Trompette, as the curfew was just sounding. When he arrived, he found a letter on his table shaped in a way that made his heart beat faster and in a handwriting that made him tremble.
It was the handwriting of Madame de Cambes.
Canolles opened the letter and read: ‘Tomor
row, be alone at the Carmelite church at six in the evening and go to the first confessional on the left as you enter. You will find the door open.’
‘Why!’ Canolles thought. ‘That’s an original idea!’
There was a postscript. ‘Do not boast,’ it said, ‘of where you went yesterday and today. Bordeaux is not a royalist town: consider that and let the fate that the advocate general would have suffered without you give you pause for thought.’
‘Good!’ thought Canolles. ‘She is jealous. So I was right, whatever she says, to go to Monsieur Lavie’s yesterday and today.’
XI
Since arriving in Bordeaux, Canolles had gone through all the torments of unhappy love. He had seen the viscountess fussed over, the centre of attention and adulated, without being able to pay court to her himself, and his only consolation had been to catch the occasional glance that Claire managed to give him when the gossipmongers’ heads were turned. After the scene in the tunnel and the passionate words that he and the viscountess had exchanged at that supreme moment, this state of affairs no longer seemed to him lukewarm, but like ice. However, since Canolles felt behind all this coolness that he was truly and deeply loved, he had decided to be the most unfortunate of fortunate lovers. After all, it was easy to do. Because he had given his word not to have any contacts outside the city, he had relegated Nanon to that small corner of the conscience which is reserved for remorse in affairs of the heart. And, since he had no news of the young woman and consequently spared himself the worry that always comes from conflict – that is to say, the tangible memory of the woman to whom one is being unfaithful – his remorse was not excessively unbearable.
However, occasionally, even at a moment when the happiest smile spread across the young man’s face, and when his voice was exulting in witty and joyful remarks, a cloud would suddenly pass across his brow, and a sigh escape, if not from his heart, at least from his lips. The sigh was for Nanon; the cloud was the memory of past times throwing its shadow over the present.
Madame de Cambes had noticed these instants of sadness. Her eyes had penetrated to the depths of Canolles’s heart, and it occurred to her that she could not afford to leave Canolles abandoned to his own devices in this way. Between an old love which was not quite extinct, and a new passion that might flare up, this excess of amorous vigour which had previously been used up in military affairs and the prospect of high office might become a threat to that pure love that she sought to inspire in him. In any case, she was only trying to gain time until the memory of all these romantic adventures might be more or less obliterated, after having aroused the curiosity of everyone in the princess’s court. It could be that Madame de Cambes was wrong, and that, if she had declared her love openly, people would have been less preoccupied with it, or else for a shorter time.
The person, however, who was most attentively and most successfully following the progress of this mysterious affair was Lenet. His observant eye had for some time recognized the existence of the viscountess’s passion without knowing its object. He had not, it is true, guessed the precise status of this feeling and did not know whether it was requited or not; simply that Madame de Cambes, who was sometimes trembling and uncertain, sometimes strong and determined, and almost always indifferent to the pleasures that were being enjoyed around her, seemed to him to have been truly enraptured. Suddenly the passionate interest that she had taken in the war had faded, and she was no longer anxious or strong, wavering or decisive: she was pensive, smiling without evident cause, weeping without evident cause, as if her lips and her eyes were responding to the movements of her thoughts and the contrary impulses of her mind. This change had happened over the previous six or seven days, and it was six or seven days since Canolles had been captured. There was no longer any doubt that Canolles was the object of her love.
Moreover, Lenet was quite ready to give his support to a feeling that might one day provide such a brave defender for the princess.
Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld was perhaps still further advanced than Lenet in his exploration of Madame de Cambes’s heart, but his gestures, his eyes and his mouth said so exactly what he allowed them to say, and no more, that no one could have told whether he felt love or hatred for Madame de Cambes. As for Canolles, he did not speak of him, look at him or take any more account of him than if he had not existed, while acting the warrior more than ever and posing as a hero – a pretension in which he was aided by unfailing courage and genuine military skills – to give daily more importance to his own position as the general’s second-in-command. Monsieur de Bouillon, on the contrary, was cold, mysterious and scheming, as well as being admirably served in his schemes by attacks of gout that sometimes arrived so conveniently that one was inclined to doubt their reality; he continued to negotiate and to keep out of sight as much as possible, unable to get used to the immense change from Richelieu to Mazarin and constantly fearing for his head, which he almost lost on the same scaffold as Cinq-Mars, and which he was able to save only by handing over Sedan, his home town, and renouncing his status as a sovereign prince, in fact at least, if not in law.9
As for the town itself, it was carried away by the tide of courtly manners that swept over it on all sides. Caught between two fires, between two deaths and between two ruins, the people of Bordeaux were so unsure of the morrow that they had to do something to make this precarious existence more agreeable, as they could only count on the future second by second.
They recalled La Rochelle, which had previously been laid waste by Louis XIII, and they recalled Anne of Austria’s great admiration for this feat of arms… Why might Bordeaux not offer this princess a second La Rochelle for her hatred and her ambition?
They forgot that the one who stood too high above the rest or whose head appeared above the parapet was dead and that Cardinal Mazarin was hardly a shadow of Cardinal Richelieu.
So everyone let himself go, and Canolles was carried away by this fever like the rest. It is true that sometimes he would doubt everything, and in such fits of scepticism he would even doubt Madame de Cambes’s love, with the rest of the things of this world. In such moments, Nanon would grow larger and more tender in his heart, and more devoted, by her very absence. In such moments, had Nanon appeared before him, inconstant fellow that he was, he would have fallen at her feet.
It was amid all these confusions of ideas (of a kind that only a heart can understand that has found itself torn between two loves), that Canolles received the viscountess’s letter. Of course, every other thought vanished at that moment. After reading it, he could not understand that he could ever have loved anyone but Madame de Cambes, and after rereading it, he believed that he never had loved anyone but her.
Canolles spent one of those feverish nights that both excite and relax, happiness providing a counterweight to insomnia. Although he had hardly closed his eyes throughout the night, he was up as soon as day broke.
We know how lovers spend the hours before a meeting: looking at their watches, running backwards and forwards and ignoring their dearest friends because they no longer recognize them. Canolles did all the foolish things demanded by his state.
On the dot (he was coming into the church for the twentieth time), he went to the confessional, which was open. The rays of the setting sun were shining through the dark windows, and the whole of the sacred building was lit with that mysterious light which is so pleasant to those who pray and those who love. Canolles would have given a year of his life not to lose hope at that moment.
He looked around to make sure that the church was empty, peering into each chapel, and then, when he was convinced that no one could see him, went into the confessional and closed the door behind him.
XII
A moment later, Claire herself, wrapped in a thick mantle, appeared at the door, leaving Pompée outside as sentry, then, after making sure in her turn that she ran no risk of being seen, went and knelt on one of the stools in the confessional.
‘At last! It’s you!’
said Canolles. ‘Finally, you have taken pity on me.’
‘I had to, since you were destroying yourself,’ Claire replied, quite disturbed at speaking a lie in this court of truth – a very innocent lie, but one nonetheless.
‘So if you are good enough to come here, I have to thank a simple feeling of commiseration,’ said Canolles. ‘Why, surely you must admit that I am entitled to expect better than that from you!’
‘Let us speak seriously,’ said Claire, trying in vain to control the trembling in her voice. ‘And in a manner fitting to this holy place. I repeat, you will be lost if you visit Monsieur Lavie, who is the sworn enemy of the princess. Yesterday, Madame de Condé learned of it from Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, who knows everything, and spoke these words that struck fear into me: “If we also have to fear plotting by our prisoners, we shall have to apply severity, where previously we showed indulgence. In dangerous situations, firm decisions are needed: not only are we ready to make them, but also determined to carry them out.” ’
The viscountess said these words in a firmer voice: she felt that in view of the reason, God would excuse the action, and this was a sort of salve to her conscience.
‘I am not a knight of Her Highness’s, Madame,’ Canolles replied. ‘I am your knight and none other. I delivered myself to you and to you alone: you know the circumstances and the conditions.’
‘I had not thought that there were any conditions made,’ said Claire.
‘Not in so many words, perhaps, but in the heart. Oh, Madame! After what you said to me, after the happiness that you allowed me to glimpse and after the hope that you gave me! Oh, admit honestly that you have been most unkind!’
‘My friend,’ Claire replied. ‘Can you reproach me for taking as much care of your honour as of my own? Do you not realize – I have to admit this to you, since you would certainly guess it – do you not realize that I have suffered as much as you, perhaps more so, since I have not had the strength to bear this suffering? Listen to me, and let my words, which come from the bottom of my heart, go to the depths of yours. I told you, my friend, that I have suffered more than you, being obsessed with a fear that you cannot experience, since you know that I love no one but you. In staying here, do you have any yearning for the person who is no longer here, and, in your dreams of the future, do you have any wishes that are not connected with me?’
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