Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Alexandre Dumas

  “D’Artagnan, beware of what you are doing! ”

  “For friendship’s sake, go!” and he pushed him gently towards the cabinet.

  “Well, I will go,” said Lyonne.

  D‘Artagnan waited, walking about the corridor in no enviable mood. Lyonne returned. “Well, what did the King say?” exclaimed d’Artagnan.

  “He simply answered, ‘That is well,’” replied Lyonne.

  “‘That is well!’” said the captain, with an explosion. “That is to say, that he accepts it? Good! Now, then, I am free! I am only a plain citizen, M. de Lyonne. I have the pleasure of bidding you good-bye! Farewell, castle, corridor, antechamber! a bourgeois, about to breathe at liberty, takes his farewell of you.”

  And without waiting longer, the captain sprang from the terrace down the staircase, where he had picked up the fragments of Gourville’s letter. Five minutes after, he was at the hostelry, where, according to the custom of all great officers who have lodgings at the castle, he had taken what was called his city-chamber. But when he arrived there, instead of throwing off his sword and cloak, he took his pistols, put his money into a large leather purse, sent for his horses from the castle stables, and gave orders for reaching Vannes during the night. Everything went according to his wishes. At eight o‘clock in the evening, he was putting his foot in the stirrup, when M. de Gesvres appeared at the head of twelve guards in front of the hostelry. D’Artagnan saw all from the corner of his eye; he could not fail seeing thirteen men and thirteen horses. But he feigned not to observe anything, and was about to put his horse in motion. Gesvres rode up to him, “Monsieur d’Artagnan,” said he, aloud.

  “Ah, Monsieur de Gesvres! good evening!”

  “One would say you were getting on horseback.”

  “More than that,—I am mounted, as you see.”

  “It is fortunate I have met with you.”

  “Were you looking for me, then?”

  “Mon dieu! Yes.”

  “On the part of the King, I will wager?”

  “Yes.”

  “As I, three days ago, went in search of M. Fouquet?”

  “Oh!”

  “Nonsense! It is of no use being delicate with me; that is all labour lost. Tell me at once you are come to arrest me.”

  “To arrest you,—good heavens! no.”

  “Why do you accost me with twelve horsemen at your heels, then?”

  “I am making my round.”

  “That isn’t bad! And so you pick me up in that round, eh?”

  “I don’t pick you up; I meet with you, and I beg you to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To the King.”

  “Good!” said d’Artagnan, with a bantering air; “the King has nothing to do at last!”

  “For Heaven’s sake, captain,” said M. de Gesvres, in a low voice to the musketeer, “do not compromise yourself! these men hear you.”

  D’Artagnan laughed aloud, and replied, “March! People who are arrested are placed between the six first guards and the six last.”

  “But as I do not arrest you,” said M. de Gesvres, “you will march behind, with me, if you please.”

  “Well,” said d’Artagnan, “that is very polite, Duc, and you are right in being so; for if ever I had had to make my rounds near your chambre-de-ville, I should have been courteous to you, I assure you, by the faith of a gentleman! Now, one favour more: what does the King want with me?”

  “Oh, the King is furious!”

  “Very well! the King, who has thought it worth while to be furious, may take the trouble of getting calm again; that is all. I shan’t die of that, I will swear.”

  “No, but—”

  “But—I shall be sent to keep company with poor M. Fouquet. Mordioux! That is a gallant man, a worthy man! We shall live very sociably together, I will be bound.”

  “Here we are at our place of destination,” said the Duc. “Captain, for Heaven’s sake be calm with the King!”

  “Ah, ah! you are playing the brave man with me, Duc!” said d’Artagnan, throwing one of his defiant glances over Gesvres. “I have been told that you are ambitious of uniting your guards with my musketeers. This strikes me as a capital opportunity.”

  “I will take devilish good care not to avail myself of it, captain. ”

  “And why not?”

  “Oh, for many reasons—in the first place, for this: If I were to succeed you in the musketeers, after having arrested you—”

  “Ah! then, you admit you have arrested me?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Say met me, then. So, you were saying, if you were to succeed me, after having arrested me?”

  “Your musketeers, at the first exercise with ball cartridges, would all fire towards me, by mistake.”

  “Ah! as to that I won’t say; for the fellows do love me a little.”

  Gesvres made d‘Artagnan pass in first, and took him straight to the cabinet where the King was waiting for his captain of the musketeers, and placed himself behind his colleague in the antechamber. The King could be heard distinctly, speaking aloud to Colbert, in the same cabinet where Colbert might have heard, a few days before, the King speaking aloud with M. d’Artagnan. The guards remained as a mounted piquet before the principal gate; and the report was quickly spread through the city, that the captain of the musketeers had just been arrested by order of the King. Then these men were seen to be in motion, as in the good old times of Louis XIII and M. de Tréville; groups were formed, the staircases were filled; vague murmurs, issuing from the courts below, came rolling up to the upper storeys, like the hoarse moanings of the tide-waves. M. de Gesvres became very uneasy. He looked at his guards, who, after being interrogated by the musketeers who had just got among the ranks, began to shun them with a manifestation of uneasiness. D’Artagnan was certainly less disturbed than M. de Gesvres, the captain of the guards, was. As soon as he entered, he had seated himself on the ledge of a window, whence, with his eagle glance, he saw all that was going on, without the least emotion. None of the progress of the fermentation which had manifested itself at the report of his arrest had escaped him. He foresaw the moment when the explosion would take place; and we know that his previsions were pretty correct.

  “It would be very whimsical,” thought he, “if, this evening, my prætorians should make me King of France. How I should laugh! ”

  But, at the height, all was stopped. Guards, musketeers, officers, soldiers, murmurs and uneasinesses, all dispersed, vanished, died away; no more tempest, no more menace, no more sedition. One word had calmed all the waves. The King had desired Brienne to say, “Hush, messieurs! you disturb the King.”

  D’Artagnan sighed. “All is over!” said he; “the musketeers of the present day are not those of His Majesty Louis XIII. All is over.

  “Monsieur d’Artagnan to the King’s apartment,” cried an usher.

  81

  King Louis XIV

  THE KING WAS SEATED in his cabinet, with his back turned towards the door of entrance. In front of him was a mirror, in which, while turning over his papers, he could see with a glance those who came in. He did not take any notice of the entrance of d‘Artagnan, but laid over his letters and plans the large silk cloth which he made use of to conceal his secrets from the importunate. D’Artagnan understood his play, and kept in the background; so that, at the end of a minute, the King, who heard nothing and saw nothing but with the corner of his eye, was obliged to cry, “Is not M. d’Artagnan there?”

  “I am here, sire,” replied the musketeer, advancing.

  “Well, monsieur,” said the King, fixing his clear eye upon d’Artagnan, “what have you to say to me?”

  “I, sire!” replied the latter, who watched the first blow of his adversary to make a good retort; “I have nothing to say to your Majesty, unless it be that you have caused me to be arrested, and here I am.”

  The King was going to reply that he had not had d‘Artagnan arrested, but the sentence appeared
too much like an excuse, and he was silent. D’Artagnan likewise preserved an obstinate silence.

  “Monsieur,” at length resumed the King, “what did I charge you to go and do at Belle-Isle? Tell me, if you please.”

  The King while speaking these words looked fixedly at his captain. Here d’Artagnan was too fortunate; the King seemed to place the game in his hands.

  “I believe,” replied he, “that your Majesty does me the honour to ask what I went to Belle-Isle to do?”

  “Yes, monsieur.”

  “Well! sire, I know nothing about it; it is not of me that question should be asked, but of that infinite number of officers of all kinds, to whom have been given an infinite number of orders of all kinds, whilst to me, head of the expedition, nothing precise was ordered.”

  The King was wounded; he showed it by his reply. “Monsieur,” said he, “orders have only been given to such as were judged faithful.”

  “And, therefore, I have been astonished, sire,” retorted the musketeer, “that a captain like myself, who ranks with a marshal of France, should have found himself under the orders of five or six lieutenants or majors, good to make spies of possibly, but not at all fit to conduct warlike expeditions. It was upon this subject I came to demand an explanation of your Majesty, when I found the door closed against me, which, the last insult offered to a brave man, has led me to quit your Majesty’s service.”

  “Monsieur,” replied the King, “you still believe you are living in an age when Kings were, as you complain of having been, under the orders and at the discretion of their inferiors. You appear too much to forget that a king owes an account of his actions to none but God.”

  “I forget nothing at all, sire,” said the musketeer, wounded by this lesson. “Besides, I do not see in what an honest man, when he asks of his King how he has ill served him, offends him.”

  “You have ill-served me, monsieur, by taking part with my enemies against me.”

  “Who are your enemies, sire?”

  “The men I sent you to fight with.”

  “Two men the enemies of the whole of your Majesty’s army! That is incredible!”

  “You have no power to judge of my will.”

  “But I have to judge of my own friendships, sire.”

  “He who serves his friends, does not serve his master.”

  “I have so well understood that, sire, that I have respectfully offered your Majesty my resignation.”

  “And I have accepted it, monsieur,” said the King. “Before being separated from you, I was willing to prove to you that I know how to keep my word.”

  “Your Majesty has kept more than your word, for your Majesty has had me arrested,” said d’Artagnan, with his cold bantering air; “you did not promise me that, sire.”

  The King would not condescend to perceive the pleasantry, and continued seriously, “You see, monsieur,” said he, “to what your disobedience has forced me.”

  “My disobedience!” cried d’Artagnan, red with anger.

  “That is the mildest name I can find,” pursued the King. “My idea was to take and punish rebels; was I bound to enquire whether these rebels were your friends or not?”

  “But I was,” replied d’Artagnan. “It was a cruelty on your Majesty’s part to send me to take my friends and lead them to your gibbets.”

  “It was a trial I had to make, monsieur, of pretended servants, who eat my bread and ought to defend my person. The trial has succeeded ill, Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

  “For one bad servant your Majesty loses,” said the musketeer, with bitterness, “there are ten who have, on that same day, gone through their ordeal. Listen to me, sire; I am not accustomed to that service. Mine is a rebel sword when I am required to do ill. It was ill to send me in pursuit of two men whose lives M. Fouquet, your Majesty’s preserver, had implored you to save. Still further, these men were my friends. They did not attack your Majesty, they succumbed to a blind anger. Besides, why were they not allowed to escape? What crime had they committed? I admit that you may contest with me the right of judging of their conduct. But why suspect me before the action? Why surround me with spies? Why disgrace me before the army? Why me, in whom you have to this time showed the most entire confidence—me, who for thirty years have been attached to your person, and have given you a thousand proofs of devotedness—for it must be said, now that I am accused—why reduce me to see three thousand of the King’s soldiers march in battle against two men?”

  “One would say you have forgotten what these men have done to me!” said the King, in a hollow voice, “and that it was no merit of theirs that I was not lost.”

  “Sire, one would say that you forget I was there.”

  “Enough, Monsieur d‘Artagnan, enough of these dominating interests which arise to keep the sun from my interests. I am founding a state in which there shall be but one master, as I promised you formerly; the moment is come for keeping my promise. You wish to be, according to your tastes or your friendships, free to destroy my plans, and save my enemies? I will thwart you or will leave you—seek a more compliant master. I know full well that another king would not conduct himself as I do, and would allow himself to be dominated over by you, at the risk of sending you some day to keep company with M. Fouquet and the others; but I have a good memory, and for me, services are sacred titles to gratitude, to impunity. You shall only have this lesson, Monsieur d’Artagnan, as the punishment of your want of discipline, and I will not imitate my predecessors in their anger, not having imitated them in their favour. And, then, other reasons make me act mildly towards you; in the first place because you are a man of sense, a man of great sense, a man of heart, and that you will be a good servant for him who shall have mastered you; secondly, because you will cease to have any motives for insubordination. Your friends are destroyed or ruined by me. These supports upon which your capricious mind instinctively relied I have made to disappear. At this moment, my soldiers have taken or killed the rebels of Belle-Isle.”

  D‘Artagnan became pale. “Taken or killed!” cried he. “Oh! sire, if you thought what you tell me, if you were sure you were telling me the truth, I should forget all that is just, all that is magnanimous in your words, to call you a barbarous king, and an unnatural man. But I pardon you these words,” said he, smiling with pride; “I pardon them to a young prince who does not know, who cannot comprehend what such names as M. d’Herblay, M. du Vallon, and myself are. Taken or killed! Ah! ah! sire! tell me, if the news is true, how much it has cost you in men and money. We will then reckon if the game has been worth the stakes.”

  As he spoke thus, the King went up to him in great anger, and said, “Monsieur d’Artagnan, your replies are those of a rebel! Tell me! if you please, who is King of France? Do you know any other?”

  “Sire,” replied the captain of the musketeers coldly, “I very well remember that one morning at Vaux, you addressed that question to many people who did not answer to it, whilst I, on my part, did answer to it. If I recognised my King on that day, when the thing was not easy, I think it would be useless to ask it of me now, when your Majesty is alone with me.”

  At these words Louis cast down his eyes. It appeared to him that the shade of the unfortunate Philippe passed between d’Artagnan and himself, to evoke the remembrance of that terrible adventure. Almost at the same moment an officer entered and placed a despatch in the hands of the King, who, in his turn, changed colour while reading it.

  “Monsieur,” said he, “what I learn here you would know later; it is better I should tell you, and that you should learn it from the mouth of your King. A battle has taken place at Belle-Isle.”

  “Oh! ah!” said d’Artagnan, with a calm air, though his heart beat enough to break through his chest. “Well, sire!”

  “Well, monsieur—and I have lost a hundred and ten men.”

  A beam of joy and pride shone in the eyes of d’Artagnan. “And the rebels?” said he.

  “The rebels have fled,” said the King.
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  D’Artagnan could not restrain a cry of triumph. “Only,” added the King, “I have a fleet which closely blockades Belle-Isle, and I am certain no barque can escape.”

  “So that,” said the musketeer, brought back to his dismal ideas, “if these two gentlemen are taken—”

  “They will be hanged,” said the King quietly.

  “And do they know it?” replied d’Artagnan, repressing his trembling.

  “They know it, because you must have told them yourself; and all the country knows it.”

  “Then, sire, they will never be taken alive, I will answer for that.”

  “Ah!” said the King negligently, and taking up his letter again. “Very well, they will be had dead then, Monsieur d’Artagnan, and that will come to the same thing, since I should only take them to have them hanged.”

  D’Artagnan wiped the sweat which flowed from his brow.

  “I have told you,” pursued Louis XIV, “that I would one day be an affectionate, generous, and constant master. You are now the only man of former times worthy of my anger or my friendship. I will not be sparing of either to you, according to your conduct. Could you serve a king, Monsieur d‘Artagnan, who should have a hundred kings his equals in the kingdom? Could I, tell me, do with such weakness, the great things I meditate? Have you ever seen an artist effect solid works with a rebellious instrument? Far from us, monsieur, these old leavens of feudal abuses! The Fronde which threatened to ruin the monarchy, has emancipated it. I am master at home, Captain d’Artagnan, and I shall have servants who, wanting, perhaps, your genius, will carry devotedness and obedience up to heroism. Of what consequence, I ask you, of what consequence is it that God has given no genius to arms and legs? It is to the head he has given it, and the head, you know, all the rest obey. I am the head.”

  D‘Artagnan started. Louis XIV continued as if he had seen nothing, although this emotion had not at all escaped him. “Now let us conclude between us two that bargain which I promised to make with you one day when you found me very little at Blois. Do me justice, monsieur, when you think that I do not make any one pay for the tears of shame I then shed. Look around you; lofty heads have bowed. Bow yours, or choose the exile that will best suit you. Perhaps, when reflecting upon it, you will find that this king is a generous heart, who reckons sufficiently upon your loyalty to allow you to leave him dissatisfied, when you possess a great state secret. You are a brave man; I know you to be so. Why have you judged me prematurely? Judge me from this day forward, d’Artagnan, and be as severe as you please.”