A moment later, one could hear the sounds of the assembled people to whom Ravailly had explained his mission, and who were shouting as loudly as they could: ‘Long live the princess! Long live the Duke d’Enghien!’
Exhausted by these daily demonstrations, which had more the character of orders than of ovations, the princess was momentarily tempted to refuse the people what they were asking, but as usually happens in such circumstances, they persisted, and the cries soon degenerated into shouts.
‘Come on,’ said the princess, taking her son by the hand. ‘Come on! Slaves that we are, let’s do as they wish.’
And, putting on a gracious smile, she appeared on her balcony and greeted her people – their sovereign and their slave.
XVI
At the moment when the princess and her son were appearing on the balcony amid the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd, they suddenly heard the sound of pipes and drums in the distance, together with a joyful hum.
At the same time, the noisy crowd that had gathered round the house of President de Lalasne to see Madame de Condé turned towards this new noise and, regardless of the rules of etiquette, began to move in its direction, while the noise got nearer and nearer. It was quite simple: they had already seen the princess a dozen times, a score of times, perhaps even a hundred times, while the noise promised something novel to them.
‘At least they are honest,’ said Lenet, smiling, where he stood behind the indignant princess. ‘But what are this music and these shouts? I must confess to Your Highness that I am almost as eager to find out as those discourteous people.’
‘Very well,’ said the princess. ‘You go too, and run about the streets with them.’
‘I should indeed, immediately,’ said Lenet, ‘if I were sure of bringing you good news.’
‘Huh! Good news!’ the princess replied, looking ironically towards the magnificent sky above her head. ‘I’m not expecting any of that. Our luck is not in.’
‘You know, Madame, that I am seldom mistaken,’ said Lenet. ‘But I shall be very much so if all this noise does not announce some fortunate event.’
Indeed, the sound was drawing nearer all the time, and a crowd appeared at the end of the street, its arms raised in the air and waving handkerchiefs in such a way that even the princess was convinced that the news was good. So she listened attentively and for a moment forgot the behaviour of her courtiers. This is what she heard: ‘Braune! The Governor of Braune! The governor is a prisoner!’
‘Ha!’ said Lenet. ‘The Governor of Braune prisoner! So it’s only half bad. There we have a hostage whom we can exchange for Richon.’
‘Don’t we already have the Governor of Saint-Georges?’ the princess retorted.
‘I am happy that the plan I suggested for taking Braune was so successful,’ said Madame de Tourville.
‘Let’s not congratulate ourselves yet on a complete victory, Madame,’ said Lenet. ‘Fate has a way of upsetting the plans of men and sometimes those of women too.’
‘And yet, Monsieur,’ snapped Madame de Tourville, drawing herself up with her usual petulance, ‘if the governor has been taken, the fort must too.’
‘The one is not a necessary deduction from the other; but, don’t worry, if we do owe you this double success, then I shall be the first to congratulate you.’
‘What I find astonishing in all this…’ said the princess, already looking for something in the happy event (which she had been expecting) that might offend her aristocratic pride, the essential component of her character, ‘… what I find astonishing is that I am not the first to learn what is happening. It is an unpardonable breach of etiquette, like everything that the Duke de La Rochefoucauld does.’
‘Why, Madame,’ said Lenet. ‘We are short of soldiers to fight, do you want us to take them away from their posts and make messengers of them? Alas, let’s not demand too much, and when we do get good news, accept it as God sends it to us, not asking by what means He does so.’
Meanwhile, the crowd was growing as each individual group came to join the main throng, like streams flowing into a river. In the midst of this main group, consisting of perhaps a thousand people, a little cluster of soldiers could be seen, around thirty men, and in the midst of them a prisoner whom the soldiers were apparently defending from the fury of the mob.
‘Death, death!’ they were shouting. ‘Death to the Governor of Braune!’
‘Ha!’ said the princess, with a triumphant smile. ‘It does indeed seem that we have a prisoner, and that this prisoner is the Governor of Braune.’
‘Yes,’ said Lenet. ‘But, look, Madame. It appears that the prisoner is in mortal danger. Can you hear the threats? Can you see those angry gestures? They are going to break through the cordon of soldiers and tear him limb from limb. Oh, the tigers! They can scent flesh and want to drink blood.’
‘Let them!’ said the princess, with that ferocity peculiar to women when their worst passions are aroused. ‘Let them drink his blood: it is the blood of an enemy.’
‘But, Madame,’ said Lenet, ‘that enemy is safeguarded by the honour of the house of Condé, think of that. And, in any case, how do you know that at this moment Richon, our brave Richon, is not running the same risk as that poor wretch? Oh, no! They’re breaking through the cordon. If they touch him, he is lost. Twenty men!’ Lenet shouted, turning round. ‘Twenty men of goodwill to help to drive that mob back. If a hair of that prisoner’s falls from his head, you will answer with your own! Go…’
Twenty musketeers from the city guard, taken from the best families in the town, plunged like a torrent down the stairs, drove their way through the crowd with the butts of their muskets and joined the escort. It was none too soon: some claws, longer and sharper than the rest, had already torn shreds of material from the prisoner’s blue coat.
‘In faith, I thank you, gentlemen,’ said the prisoner. ‘You’ve just saved me from being devoured by those cannibals. I’m most obliged to you. My word! If they eat men like that, when the royal army attacks your town, they’ll have it for dinner!’
At this he started to laugh, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Ah! He’s a fine fellow!’ the crowd yelled, when it saw the prisoner’s (somewhat affected) calm, and they repeated this joke, which flattered their self-esteem. ‘He’s a real fine fellow! He’s not afraid. Long live the Governor of Braune!’
‘Indeed so!’ cried the prisoner. ‘Long live the Governor of Braune! I’d be quite pleased myself if he lived.’
From then on, the people’s anger changed to admiration, and that admiration was immediately expressed in forceful terms. A warm ovation succeeded the imminent martyrdom of the Governor of Braune – that is, of our friend, Cauvignac. Because, as our readers have already guessed, it was Cauvignac who, under the pompous title of Governor of Braune, found himself making such a sad entrance into the capital of Guyenne.
However, protected by his guards and subsequently by his own presence of mind, the prisoner of war was brought into the house of President de Lalasne, and, while half his escort kept guard at the door, the other half led him to see the princess.
Cauvignac marched into the apartments of Madame de Condé calmly and with his head high, but it must be said that under this heroic exterior, his heart was beating fast. He was recognized instantly, despite the state in which the mob’s enthusiasm had left his fine blue coat, his gold braid and the feather in his cap.
‘Monsieur Cauvignac!’ Lenet exclaimed.
‘Monsieur Cauvignac, Governor of Braune!’ the princess added. ‘Ah, Monsieur, this has a scent of treason about it!’
‘What did Your Highness say?’ Cauvignac replied, realizing that now was the time, if ever, to call on all his self-control and, even more, his wits. ‘I believe that Your Majesty mentioned the word “treason”.’
‘Yes, Monsieur: treason. In what capacity do you appear before me?’
‘In the capacity of Governor of Braune, Madame.’
‘Exactly: treas
on. Who signed the order appointing you?’
‘Monsieur de Mazarin.’
‘Treason, double treason, as I said! You are Governor of Braune, and it was your company that betrayed Vayres: the appointment was your reward.’
On hearing these words, an expression of the most profound astonishment appeared on Cauvignac’s face. He looked round as if searching for the person to whom this peculiar remark might have been addressed; then, convinced by his investigation that the object of the princess’s accusation could be none other than himself, he let his hands fall beside him in a gesture full of discouragement.
‘My company betrayed Vayres!’ he said. ‘Is it Your Highness that reproaches me with such a thing?’
‘Yes, Monsieur, I do. Pretend that you do not know it, feign astonishment… yes, you are a fine actor, it appears. But I shall not be fooled by your play-acting or your words, however well they are suited to one another.’
‘I am not pretending anything, Madame,’ Cauvignac replied. ‘How can Your Highness expect me to know what happened in Vayres, when I have never been there?’
‘Subterfuge, Monsieur, subterfuge!’
‘I have no answer to such words, Madame, except to say that Your Highness seems discontented with me. May Your Highness forgive my forthright character and the liberty I take in defending myself, if I say that I considered that, on the contrary, I was the one who had cause to complain of her.’
‘To complain of me? You, Monsieur!’ the princess exclaimed, amazed by such impudence.
‘Indeed, Madame,’ Cauvignac replied calmly. ‘On your word and that of Monsieur Lenet here present, I recruited a company of men and contracted undertakings towards them, which were still more sacred, since they were almost all verbal undertakings. And then, when I asked Your Highness for the promised money… a trifling sum… a mere thirty or forty thousand livres, not intended for my own use, note, but for the new defenders that I had recruited for the princes, Your Highness refused me! Yes, refused me! Monsieur Lenet is my witness.’
‘That’s true,’ said Lenet. ‘When Monsieur appeared, we had no money.’
‘Could you not have waited a few days, Monsieur? Was your loyalty and that of your men counted by the hour?’
‘I waited the amount of time that Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld himself asked me, that is to say, a week. After that week, I appeared again, and this time there was a plain refusal. Once more, Monsieur Lenet will witness to it.’
The princess turned towards her counsellor. Her lips were clenched and her eyes flashing under her frowning eyebrows.
‘Unfortunately,’ Lenet said, ‘I have to admit that what this gentleman says is the precise truth.’
Cauvignac drew himself up triumphantly.
‘Very well, Madame,’ he said. ‘In such circumstances, what would an intriguer have done? An intriguer would have gone to the queen to sell himself and his men to her. But I, as someone who has a horror of intrigue, I dismissed my company, releasing each man from his word, and then, alone, isolated – isolated in absolute neutrality, I did what wisdom requires that we should when in doubt, that is to say, I did nothing.’
‘But what about your soldiers, Monsieur, your soldiers!’ the princess yelled furiously.
‘Madame,’ said Cauvignac, ‘since I am neither king nor prince, but merely a captain, and since I have neither subjects nor vassals, I only call them my soldiers when I am paying them, and since, as Monsieur Lenet says, they were not paid at all, they were free. That is when they turned against their new leader. What can be done about it? I admit that I have no idea.’
‘But you, Monsieur, who also took the king’s side, what have you to say for yourself? You were finding your neutrality hard to bear?’
‘No, Madame, but my neutrality, innocent as it was, had become suspect to His Majesty’s supporters. One fine morning, I was arrested at the inn of the Golden Calf on the Libourne road and brought before the queen.’
‘And you made a pact with her?’
‘A man of feeling, Madame,’ Cauvignac replied, ‘has certain tender spots on which a subtle ruler can attack him. My soul was wounded. I had been dismissed from a party into which I had flung myself blindly with all the enthusiasm and good faith of youth. I appeared before the queen with a soldier who was ready to kill me on either side of me. I was expecting recriminations, insults, death. After all, at least in intention, I had been serving the cause of the princes. But, quite the opposite to what I expected, instead of punishing me by depriving me of my freedom and sending me to prison, or making me mount the scaffold, this great monarch said to me: “Brave, misguided man, I might with a word make your head fall. But as you see, they were ungrateful to you there, but here we shall be grateful. In the name of my patron, Saint Anne, from now on you shall be one of us. Gentlemen,” she went on, addressing my guards, “respect this officer, because I have appreciated his merits, and I make him your leader. And you,” she continued, turning to me, “I shall make you Governor of Braune. This is how a queen of France is avenged.’
‘What could I reply?’ Cauvignac asked, resuming his normal voice and manner, after imitating those of Anne of Austria in a way that was half comical and half touching. ‘Nothing. I had been stricken in my dearest hopes, I had been wounded in the entirely gratuitous loyalty that I placed at Your Highness’s feet, having, as I recall with joy, been able to do you some small service in Chantilly. I acted as Coriolanus did and went into the tents of the Volsci.’12
This speech, delivered in a dramatic voice and with sweeping gestures, had a great effect on those who heard it. Cauvignac was aware of his triumph when he saw the princess go pale with fury.
‘But, in that case, Monsieur,’ she asked, ‘to whom are you loyal?’
‘To those who appreciate the delicacy of my conduct,’ he replied.
‘Very well, then. You are my prisoner.’
‘I have that honour, Madame. But I hope you will treat me as a gentleman. It is true that I am your prisoner, but without having fought against Your Highness. I was making my way to my governorship with my luggage when I fell upon a party of your soldiers, who arrested me. Not for a single moment did I attempt to conceal my rank or my opinions. So, I repeat, I demand to be treated not only as a gentleman, but as a superior officer.’
‘You shall be, Monsieur,’ the princess replied. ‘You shall have the whole town as your prison, but you must swear on your honour not to attempt to leave it.’
‘I shall swear on whatever Your Highness wishes.’
‘Very well. Lenet, read the form of words to this gentleman and we will hear his oath.’
Lenet dictated the words of the oath which Cauvignac had to swear. Cauvignac raised his hand and solemnly swore not to leave the town until the princess had released him from the oath.
‘Now go,’ said the princess. ‘We are relying on your loyalty as a gentleman and your honour as a soldier.’
Cauvignac did not wait to be told twice: he bowed and left, but as he was leaving, he had time to notice a gesture by the counsellor that meant: ‘Madame, he is right and we are wrong: that’s what happens when you skimp on the money.’
The fact is that Lenet, who appreciated all sorts of qualities, recognized the subtlety of Cauvignac’s character, and, precisely because he had not been fooled in the slightest by the specious arguments that Cauvignac had offered, he was able to admire how the prisoner had worked his way out of one of the most compromising situations in which he could have found himself.
As for Cauvignac, he went down the staircase deep in thought, holding his chin in his hand and saying to himself: ‘Well, then, what we must do now is to sell them for another hundred thousand livres, my hundred and fifty men, which is quite possible, since the intelligent and honest Ferguzon has obtained complete freedom for himself and for his own men… I’ll manage it, one day or another. Well I never,’ Cauvignac went on, quite consoled, ‘I see that by letting myself be captured I didn’t get such a bad deal after all.�
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XVII
Now let us take a step back and draw our readers’ attention to the events that took place at Vayres, events of which they are so far only imperfectly informed.
After several assaults, which were all the more frightful since the general of the royal troops was sacrificing more men in order to take less time, the retrenchments were captured. But the brave defenders of these forward positions, after defending every inch of the territory and leaving the battlefield littered with dead, had retreated down the covered road and taken up their positions inside Vayres. And Monsieur de La Meilleraie had no illusions about the fact that, having lost five or six hundred men to capture a paltry rampart of earth with a palisade on top of it, he would lose six times as many in taking a fort that was surrounded by solid walls and defended by a man, who, as he had already had the opportunity to learn at his own expense, was a master of military strategy and a model of courage.
Consequently, they had decided to open a trench and make this a formal siege, when they saw the advance guard of the Duke d’Epernon’s army, which had just met up with the army of Monsieur de La Meilleraie, so doubling the king’s forces. With twenty-four thousand men one can undertake what one might shrink from doing with twelve thousand; so the assault was fixed for the following day.
When work on the trench was interrupted, a new formation was taken up, and, above all, at the sight of the arriving reinforcements, Richon realized that the besiegers were intending to attack without delay. Guessing that there would be an attack on the following morning, he called his men together to sound out their feelings – though, given the way in which they had helped him in the defence of the first retrenchments, he had no reason to doubt what these were. So he was extremely surprised when he saw the garrison’s new attitude. His men were casting dark and anxious looks on the royal army, and a sullen murmuring arose from their ranks.
Richon did not allow levity from soldiers under arms, and especially not of that kind.
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