The Red Sphinx

by Alexandre Dumas

  “These are the five hundred thousand francs you intend to pay to Monsieur d’Entragues for the possibility his daughter will love you.”

  “Ventre-saint-gris! I’d never imagined five hundred thousand francs took up so much room,” the king said. “See if you can arrange it for half this much, my good Sully.”

  Sully arranged the matter for three hundred thousand francs, and it goes without saying that Henri IV, ignoring the risks, had rewritten his promise of marriage. But as Sully had predicted, despite paying the price, Henriette d’Entragues didn’t deliver much in the way of love.

  Sully was hailed as the restorer of the state’s fortunes, and, unlike Monsieur de Sancy, he didn’t expend any of his own money in that restoration. We wouldn’t call him a thief or embezzler, rather a canny businessman, who never let an opportunity go missed. Henri was aware of this and often joked about it. In crossing the court of the Louvre one day, while saluting the king, who was watching from a balcony, Sully missed his footing and stumbled. “I’m not surprised to see you stumble,” called the king. “If my strongest Swiss Guard had as many drinks in his belly as you have payoffs in your pocket, he wouldn’t stumble: he’d fall flat on his face.”

  Despite being Superintendent of Finance, Sully was as stingy on his own behalf as he was on the state’s, and rather than buy a carriage, he always rode across Paris on horseback. And as he was a terrible rider, everyone laughed at him, even the children.

  But there had never been a Superintendent so tightfisted as he. An Italian, returning to the Arsenal for the fifth or sixth time to try to get the money that was owed him, saw three criminals being hanged at the Place de Grève and cried out, “Look at those lucky devils! At least they don’t have to deal with that scoundrel Sully.”

  However, Sully didn’t treat everyone the way he had the worthy Italian who’d envied the hanged men. A certain Pradel, who’d been head butler to the old Maréchal de Biron, kept trying to collect his back wages. Sully didn’t want to pay these back wages, and one day went so far as to have the man marched out of his chambers. As he was being escorted through Sully’s dining room, Pradel took a knife from the table setting and turned back toward Sully, who slammed the door on his aggrieved petitioner. Pradel went directly to an audience with the king, knife in hand, and told him the king was welcome to hang him, so long as he was first allowed to leave the knife in Sully’s belly.

  Sully paid him.

  The Duc de Sully was the first to plant the famous elms that line France’s highways, but he was so hated by some that they would chop them down, saying, “This for Rosny, may he be beheaded like Biron.”

  Speaking of Biron, Sully said in his memoirs that the marshal, with the twelve leading gallants of the Court, once undertook to put on a ballet they couldn’t afford to pay for. The king told them, “You can’t get anywhere without a Rosny at your side,” and funded the ballet himself.

  It may be hard to believe it of the man who historians have portrayed as such a grim and austere figure, but Sully loved to dance. Every night until the death of Henri IV—and after his death, even more so—a royal valet named Laroche would play the lute for Sully, performing all the latest dance tunes. From the first note, Sully was up on his feet, dancing alone, waving the extraordinary cap he usually wore in his office. He had as spectators only his two closest cronies, and though the party might have been more complete with a few women in attendance, the duke didn’t want to endanger his reputation—or so says Tallemant des Réaux, who is rather hard on Sully. We are entitled to be skeptical of this. The two spectators, who may or may not have contented themselves with merely watching, were his friends the Président de Chevry and the Seigneur de Chevigny.

  Since he was unwilling to dance with loose women, one assumes he could have asked the Duchesse de Sully, but he doesn’t seem to have been bothered by his lack of a female partner. When handing out his monthly paychecks, he used to say to his people, “Some for the market, some for your wife, and some for your lovers. Don’t mix them.”

  One day, tired of meeting people on the stairs who were on their way to see his wife rather than him, he asked to have a separate staircase built that led to the chambers of the duchess. When it was completed, he said, “Madame, I have had a staircase made expressly for you. Please have your callers use these stairs, because if I meet one of them on my own, I’ll hurl him down to the bottom.”

  The day he was appointed Grandmaster of the Artillery, he took as his seal an eagle holding a bolt of lightning, with the motto Quo Jussa Jovis—“I fly at Jupiter’s orders.”

  The seal of Cardinal Richelieu, whom we left ascending Sully’s staircase at half past five in the morning, was, we recall, an eagle in the clouds—Aquila in Nubibus.

  “Whom shall I announce?” a servant inquired of the morning visitor.

  “Announce?” he replied, smiling in advance at the effect the news would produce. “Announce Monsieur le Cardinal de Richelieu!”

  XXV

  The Two Eagles

  In truth, Sully had never heard an announcement quite so unexpected. When it struck his ear, he turned to see who had come to disturb the beginning of his day.

  He’d been occupied in writing those voluminous memoirs he left to us, but rose from his chair at the valet’s announcement.

  Sully was dressed in the fashion of 1610, eighteen or twenty years before, in black velvet with slashed breeches and a purple satin doublet below a starched neck ruff, short hair, and a long beard, curled up out of the way and held in place, in the manner of Coligny, with a long toothpick. On top he wore an old-fashioned house-robe, while around his neck hung the gold chains bearing the diamond-studded symbols of his orders and offices, as if he were about to attend the King’s Council of Henri IV. Dressed this way, except for the house-robe, he would often step out of his mansion (if the weather was good) at around one o’clock in the afternoon. Followed by his four Swiss Guards, he would walk from his hotel to the Place Royale, where he would march slowly around the square under the arcades. Everyone stopped to watch as he walked by, slow and grave, like a ghost of the previous century.

  The two ministers, who stood in each other’s presence for the first time, resembled the eagle each had taken as his symbol: Aquila in Nubibus, the eagle in the clouds, who ruled all he surveyed while hidden in the heights, was an apt representation of the minister who was all things to Louis XIII, his king; while on the other side, Quo Jussa Jovis, the eagle casting lightning at the behest of Henri IV, described Sully as that king’s strong but obedient right arm.

  (Readers who already know these historical facts may complain that these are unnecessary details that just get in the way of the picturesque and the novel. Such readers are welcome to pass over these details, but we include them for those unfamiliar with history or for those who, attracted by the ambitious title of this historical romance, hope to learn something from it.)

  Richelieu, who was relatively young compared to Sully—the cardinal was only forty-two, while Sully was sixty-eight—approached the old friend of Henri IV with the respect due to both age and reputation.

  Sully gestured toward a chair, and Richelieu sat in it. The proud old man, familiar with the etiquette of courts, appreciated this.

  “Monsieur le Duc,” said the cardinal, smiling, “does my visit surprise you?”

  “I admit,” Sully replied, with his typical bluntness, “that it is unexpected.”

  “But why, Monsieur le Duc? All ministers who work or have worked for the benefit of posterity—and we are among them—are dedicated to the happiness, glory, and greatness of the kingdom of France which they serve. Why shouldn’t I, who humbly serve the son, seek out the support, advice, and knowledge of one who so nobly served the father?”

  “Who remembers the services of one who is no longer able to serve?” Sully asked bitterly. “The old, dead tree is no good even for firewood, not worth the trouble to put it out of its misery.”

  “Ah, but wood in decay can sh
ine at night, Monsieur le Duc, when living wood is lost in darkness. But I accept the comparison, because you, thank God, are still an oak, and I hope the birds who sing in your branches are the birds of memory.”

  “Yes, they told me you wrote poetry, Monsieur le Cardinal,” Sully said disdainfully.

  “I do, Monsieur le Duc, in my spare time, but not for myself. I study poetry, not to be a poet, but so I can judge poems fairly and reward poets as they deserve.”

  “In my time,” said Sully, “gentlemen did not bother with such things.”

  “Your time, sir,” replied Richelieu, “was a glorious time, when they fought battles such as Coutras, Arques, Ivry, and Fontaine-Française. It was the time when the old policy of François I and Henri II, that is, opposition to the House of Austria, was taken up once more, a policy of which you were one of the leading supporters.”

  “Over which I quarreled with the queen mother.”

  “That policy established French influence in Italy,” the cardinal continued without seeming to notice the interruption, though he took careful note of it. “It brought us Savoy, Bresse, Bugey, and Valromey. It supported the Dutch revolt against Spain and encouraged the Lutherans in Germany against the Catholics. You were the instigator of the latter effort, which aimed to create a sort of Christian Republic in which all disputes would be resolved in a congress, a body where all sects would meet on an equal footing, and the estates confiscated by Emperor Mathias might be restored to their rightful heirs.”

  “Yes, and it was amid these glorious efforts that the assassin struck down the king.”

  Richelieu noted this second interruption as he had the first, intending to return to both matters, but for now he continued: “In such glorious days one has little time for literature, for it wasn’t under Caesar that Horace and Virgil were born, or rather it wasn’t Julius who was their Caesar, but Augustus. I admire your generals and your ministers, Monsieur de Sully, but do not disdain my poets. The generals and ministers make empires great, but it’s the poets who kindle a civilization’s lights. The future and the past are both dark as night, and only the poets brighten them. Ask now who were Augustus’s generals and ministers, and the only one anyone can name is Agrippa. Ask who were the protégés of Augustus’s friend Maecenas, and we remember Virgil, Horace, Varius, Tibullus . . . even those exiled by Augustus included the immortal Ovid. I can’t be an Agrippa, or even a Sully, so let me be Maecenas.”

  Sully looked with astonishment at this man who had twenty times the authority Sully had known, but had come to remind him of his days of power and glory while sitting at the feet of their former master. He drew his toothpick from his beard and slid it between his teeth, which were as sound as those of a much younger man, and said, “Very well, you may have your poets, though I’m not sure their works are quite the marvels you say.”

  “Monsieur de Sully,” said Richelieu, “when was it you planted the elms that today shade our roads?”

  “Monsieur le Cardinal,” said Sully, “that would have been from 1598 through 1604, so twenty-four years ago.”

  “Are they as beautiful and strong today as the day you planted them?”

  “They were well planted and well grown, my elms.”

  “I know there were people who mistook your intentions and chopped some down, blind to the provident hand of the great man who was sowing shade for the aid of weary travelers. But the ones that survived, they’ve grown tall, spread their branches, flourished their leaves?”

  “In fact, they have,” Sully said proudly; “and when I see them so strong, so healthy, so green, I’m almost consoled for the ones that were struck down.”

  “That’s how it is, Monsieur de Sully, with me and my poets. The critics may tear one down but they exalt another, and those who remain grow ever stronger and more fruitful. Today I planted an elm named Rotrou; tomorrow I will likely plant an oak called Corneille. I water them and wait. I can’t say which ones would have flourished under your reign: Desmarets, Bois-Robert, Mairet, Voiture, Chapelain, Gombauld, Baro, Raissiguier, La Morelle, Grandchamp—I couldn’t say. It’s not my fault if some grow into briars rather than a forest.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Sully. “The greatest laborers—and they say you do know how to work, Monsieur le Cardinal—need such distractions in their spare time. It’s no worse, I suppose, than gardening.”

  “May God bless my garden, Monsieur de Sully, and make it one for the ages.”

  “But I don’t imagine,” said Sully, “that you got up at five in the morning to come pay me compliments and tell me all about your poets.”

  “First of all, I didn’t get up at five in the morning,” said the cardinal, smiling, “as I haven’t yet been to bed. Perhaps in your time you got to sleep late, Monsieur de Sully, although you did work late. In my time, we don’t sleep at all. No, I didn’t come to pay you compliments and tell you about my poets. But the opportunity arose, and I was careful not to let it escape. In fact, Monsieur, I came to speak with you about two things you first brought up yourself.”

  “I brought up two things myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I haven’t said anything!”

  “Begging your pardon, but when I mentioned your efforts against Austria and Spain, you said, ‘Over which I quarreled with the queen mother.’”

  “That’s true. For isn’t she Austrian by her mother Jeanne, and Spanish by her uncle Charles V?”

  “Exactly—but it was because of you, Monsieur de Sully, that she became Queen of France.”

  “And I was wrong to advise that course to my august master, King Henri IV. Since then, many times, I have repented it.”

  “Well, today I fight the same struggle you faced twenty years ago, one to which you succumbed. And I may yet succumb in my turn, for I have two queens opposing me, the young and the old.”

  “Fortunately,” Sully said, grinning and chewing his toothpick, “this time it’s not the younger who has the more influence. King Henri IV loved too well, but his son doesn’t love much at all.” “Have you ever thought, Monsieur le Duc, about this difference between the father and the son?”

  Sully looked quizzically at Richelieu, as if to say “Are you serious?” Then he said, with a strange accent, “The difference between father and son? Yes, I have thought about it, and often.”

  “You recall the father: all activity, riding twenty miles on horseback by day and then playing tennis in the evening, consulting with ministers and receiving ambassadors as he walked, busy from morning till night, playing to win, cheating when he lost without the slightest remorse, then generously returning his ill-gotten gains. Hurt by slights but reacting with a smile, though his smile was never far from tears. Never doing anything with half a heart, even if his whims led him to mad caprices. Deceiving women, but honoring them. He was born with the heaven-sent gift of loving, that same gift that made Saint Thèrése weep for Satan, who could only hate.”

  “Did you know King Henri IV?” Sully asked in surprise.

  “I saw him once or twice in my youth,” Richelieu said, “that’s all. But I have made him my special study. In contrast to him, behold his son: slow as an old man, dour as the dying, standing rather than walking, gazing out a window, looking without seeing. He moves like an automaton, games without caring if he wins, though hating to lose. Sleeping long, crying little, loving nothing and, worst of all, no one.”

  “I understand,” said Sully. “Over a man like that, you can have little influence.”

  “If I do, it’s because, despite all this, he has two virtues: pride in the monarchy and a jealous sensitivity to the honor of France. These are the two spurs with which I drive him. And they would be enough if it were not for his mother, always defending Spain and promoting Austria, though I, pursuing the policy of the great King Henri and his minister Sully, want only to oppose these two eternal enemies of France. So I come to you, my master, whom I study and admire, especially in financial matters, to ask for your aid against that ev
il genius who was your enemy then and is mine today.”

  “And how can I help you,” Sully asked, “you, who are more powerful than the king?”

  “You said it was amid your glorious campaign that the assassin struck down the king.”

  “Did I say assassin or assassins?”

  “You said assassin.”

  Sully paused.

  “So,” Richelieu continued, drawing his chair closer to Sully’s, “recall if you can all your memories of that fateful May 14, and tell me what warnings you had in advance.”

  “We had many warnings, but unfortunately we paid little attention to them. When men trust in Providence, they let their wits sleep. However, as I see it King Henri committed two key indiscretions.”

  “What were those?”

  “He promised Pope Paul V he would restore the Jesuits to favor, but when the Pope pressed him to comply, he refused, saying, ‘If I had two lives, I would gladly give one to satisfy Your Holiness, but as I have only one, I must preserve it for your service and for the sake of my subjects.’ The second mistake was to insult Concino Concini, the queen’s favorite, in open Parliament. When her gallant cavalier, a man who set fashions, won tournaments, and eclipsed even the princes, was insulted before mere men of the robe, she took it as a personal affront and vowed revenge—an Italian vendetta, no less. After that, she closed her heart to the king.”

  “The warnings that were ignored,” Richelieu asked: “were any of them delivered by a woman named the Dame de Coëtman?”

  Sully started. “Yes, in fact,” he said. “But they weren’t the only ones. There was a man named Lagarde in the Hébert household in Naples who warned the king that d’Épernon plotted to assassinate him. There was a certain Labrosse, whom we never found, who warned Monsieur de Vendôme on that May morning that a transition from 13 to 14 would be fatal to the king. I don’t know if you’ve considered the influence of the number 14 on the birth, life, and death of King Henri IV.”

  “No,” replied Richelieu, loosing the reins to let Sully run to his goal.