The Red Sphinx

by Alexandre Dumas

  But the king stopped them with a glance. “This isn’t finished,” he said. “There is a postscript.”

  Although Madame de Sévigné had not yet written her maxim that the most important part of a letter is always contained in the postscript, everyone froze at the phrase There is a postscript.

  The queen mother could not help saying, “I hope, my son, that if the cardinal goes back on his word, you will stick to your own.”

  “I have promised, Madame,” replied Louis XIII.

  “Then let us hear the postscript,” said Monsieur.

  The king read:

  “P.S.: Your Majesty will find enclosed a detailed list of the troops of the army, as well as their equipment. As for the funds, the remainder of the six million borrowed on my guarantee, 3,882,000 livres, can be found in a strongbox, the key of which my secretary will have the honor to deliver directly to Your Majesty.”

  “Almost four million!” exulted Queen Marie de Médicis, with an avarice she took no pains to conceal.

  The king stamped his foot, and there was silence.

  “As there may be those in the Louvre who fear there are state documents entrusted to me that may go astray, I give not only my office, but my entire house to Your Majesty. As everything I have comes from you, all that I have is yours. My servants will continue their efforts on your behalf, and their daily reports will be sent to you.

  “As of two o’clock on today’s date, Your Majesty may take full possession of my house.

  “I finish these lines as I finished those above, daring to name myself the most obedient, but also the most loyal, subject of Your Majesty.

  “Armand, Cardinal Richelieu”

  “Well,” said the king, with a dark look and a hoarse voice, “now you’re all happy, and each of you is ready to believe that you’re in charge.”

  Queen Marie, who considered herself the most important of the assembled royalty, was the first to reply. “You know better than anyone, Sire, that here you are the master, and I for one shall be the first to make an example of my obedience—but, upon the occasion of this historic retirement of Monsieur le Cardinal, allow me to give you some advice.”

  “And what is that, Madame?” asked the king. “Advice from you is always welcome.”

  “You should make haste to appoint a council who will manage the affairs of the realm in your absence.”

  “So now, when I march away to war with my brother, you no longer fear for my health and that of my realm, Madame, as when I planned to go with Monsieur le Cardinal?”

  “My son, when you resisted my pleas and those of the queen, your wife, you seemed so resolved to go that I haven’t dared to consider any alternative.”

  “And who, Madame, do you propose to include in this council?”

  “Well,” said the queen mother, “I certainly think Cardinal Bérulle can take the place of Monsieur de Richelieu.”

  “And who else?”

  “You already have Monsieur de La Vieuville for finance and Monsieur de Marillac as Keeper of the Seals. They can stay.”

  The king nodded. “And the war?” he asked.

  “For that you have Marshal Marillac, brother of the Keeper of the Seals. Such a council, consisting of dedicated men and chaired by you, my son, will provide for the safety of the state.”

  “Then for naval affairs,” said Monsieur, “since Monsieur le Cardinal will probably resign his admiralties along with his ministry, you have Messieurs de Lorient and du Ponent.”

  “You forget, Monsieur, that he bought one admiralty from Monsieur de Guise and the other from Monsieur de Montmorency, paying them a million each.”

  “Then pay him back,” said Monsieur.

  “With his own money?” asked the king, who had enough of a feeling of justice to regard such an act as shameful, though he knew Monsieur was perfectly capable of it.

  Monsieur felt the dig, and reared under the spur. “No, Sire,” he sniffed. “With Your Majesty’s permission, I will find the money for one, and I’m sure Monsieur de Condé will pay for the other. Unless the king would prefer that I purchased both. Brothers of the king are often great admirals of the realm.”

  “Very well,” said the king, “we’ll see.”

  “Only,” said Marie de Médicis, “I must point out, my son, that before turning over all this wealth left by Cardinal Richelieu to Monsieur de La Vieuville in his capacity as Superintendent of Finance, the king could, on his own authority, make such gifts of largesse as seemed appropriate—with no one the wiser.”

  “Not for my brother, in any case—he is wealthier than we are, it seems! He just claimed he had two million on hand to buy admiralties for du Ponent and de Lorient!”

  “I said I would find the money, Sire. If Monsieur de Richelieu was able to raise six million by pledging his word, I should certainly be able to raise two million by mortgaging my property.”

  “I, who have no property,” said Marie de Médicis, “have great need of one hundred thousand livres, but Monsieur le Cardinal said he could spare only fifty. From the additional fifty thousand I intend to pay a deposit to my portrait painter, Monsieur Rubens, who has received only ten thousand livres for the twenty-two paintings he executed for the gallery in my Luxembourg Palace. These paintings are dedicated to the memory and greater glory of the late king, your father.”

  “And in the memory of the late king, my father, you will pay for them, Madame,” Louis XIII said, in a tone that startled Marie de Médicis.

  Then, turning to Anne of Austria, “And you, Madame?” he asked. “Do you have any claims to make?”

  “You had allowed me, Sire,” said Anne of Austria, lowering her eyes, “to take the string of pearls you gave me to the jeweler Lopez to inquire about replacing the missing ones. But these pearls are so rare and beautiful, that to replace them would cost more than twenty thousand livres.”

  “So your concern today, Madame, is to pay a jeweler ten times what he deserves, whereas yesterday it was a sincere interest in my health, which you begged me not to expose to the Alpine snow by going on campaign with Monsieur le Cardinal. Is this the only request you have to make of me?”

  Anne was silent.

  “I’m sure the queen, my daughter,” said Marie de Médicis, speaking mostly to Anne of Austria, “would be delighted to reward the dedication of her maid of honor, Madame de Fargis, with a gift of ten thousand crowns, half of which she would send to her husband, our Ambassador to Madrid, who cannot worthily represent Your Majesty on his current low salary.”

  “Such a modest request,” said the king, “I could scarcely refuse.”

  “As for me,” said Monsieur, “given the high command Your Majesty awards me under his orders, I hope Your Majesty will be so generous as not to make me conduct the war at my own expense, and will help me commence the campaign with . . .” Monsieur hesitated to state a figure.

  “How much?” asked the king.

  “No more than one hundred fifty thousand livres.” The king didn’t grimace, so he added, “At a minimum!”

  “I understand that, after spending two million for the admiralties,” said the king with a touch of irony, “you might be a bit embarrassed for the price of the campaign—but I must observe that Monsieur le Cardinal, when he was my minister and had also spent two million to purchase these titles from Messieurs de Guise and de Montmorency, instead of asking for one hundred and fifty thousand livres to fund his campaign, instead lent six million to me and to France. But of course, he was not my brother and part of the family.”

  “But,” said Marie de Médicis, “where should money go, but to your family?”

  “Quite so, Madame,” said Louis XIII. “Our emblem is the pelican, who, if she lacks food for her children, feeds them her own blood. It’s true that she feeds it to her children, and I have no children of my own. But perhaps, if she had no children, she would feed her own blood to her family. Your son, Madame, will have the one hundred and fifty thousand livres to fund his campaign.” Louis XI
II emphasized the words your son, for everyone knew Gaston was Marie de Médicis’s favorite.

  “Anything else?” asked the king.

  “Yes,” said Marie. “I also have a faithful servant whom I would reward, though, dedicated as he is, he has always refused monetary rewards, despite his needs, which are dire. Today, Providence provides the money to meet these needs. . . .”

  “Take care, Madame,” said the king. “This money comes not from Providence, but from Monsieur le Cardinal. If you confuse one with the other, it would then be impious for us to reject the cardinal, for it would be rebelling against Providence.”

  “Nonetheless, my son, I must point out that in your distribution of largesse, Monsieur Vautier has received nothing.”

  “Then I award him the same amount I gave the queen’s friend, Madame de Fargis—but wait a moment, Providence gave us only 3,882,000 livres . . . no, my mistake, after subtracting two hundred and forty thousand crowns, there is still enough to reward a faithful servant of my own. I speak of my fool l’Angely, who never asks me for anything.”

  “But, my son,” said the queen mother, “he has the favor of your attention, which is worth much.”

  “A favor which no one else vies for, mother mine. But it is noon,” said the king, drawing his watch from his pocket. “At two o’clock I must take possession of the cardinal’s house and office. And here is Monsieur le Premier scratching at the door to tell me my dinner is served.”

  “Bon appétit, brother!” said Monsieur, who, seeing that he had acquired two admiralties, the office of Lieutenant General of the King’s Armies, and one hundred and fifty thousand livres, was overjoyed.

  “No need of that wish, Monsieur,” said the king, “because in that respect, I’m sure to be gratified.” And the king went out, surprised to find that his personal involvement in affairs of state had delayed his regular lunch service by ten minutes, from 12:00 to 12:10.

  If the worthy Doctor Héroard had not died six months earlier, we would, no doubt, know to every spoonful of soup what His Majesty Louis XIII ate and drank at this meal which inaugurated the era of his true monarchy. But all that has come down to us is that he dined tête-à-tête with his favorite Baradas, and, after an hour and a half, got into his carriage and told his driver, “Place Royale, the house of Monsieur le Cardinal.” At two o’clock, led by the secretary Charpentier, he entered the office of his disgraced minister and sat in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. He then said, smiling and without understanding all it meant, “At last! Now I shall reign.”

  XL

  The King Reigns

  After the spending spree of the Regency, when all the funds of France were spent on fairs and festivals in honor of that handsome cavalier who’d gathered all power as queen’s favorite; when France, impoverished by the pillaging of the treasury of Henri IV, which Sully had so painstakingly amassed, and then had to watch as the realm’s gold passed into the hands of d’Épernon, of de Guise, de Condé, and the other great nobles; when whatever was necessary was spent to stave off the hatred of a populace that suspected the queen of murdering her king—after all that, Louis XIII had known nothing but poverty, until he appointed Richelieu as his minister. It was due to the cardinal’s wise administration, learned from Monsieur de Sully but pursued with even greater integrity, that order had returned to the king’s finances and he became familiar with a metal he’d previously believed belonged only to Spain: gold.

  But what a price this iron minister exacted to reach that point! Nobility and clergy were exempt from taxes until 1795, after the general employee tax of 1789 had failed to stave off state bankruptcy. If the cardinal had proposed taxing the exempt classes, it would have been rejected out of hand. Driven by implacable necessity, he therefore turned to the very body of France: her people, the peasants and the poor.

  The French people were surrounded by enemies—to the west, the English; to the north and east, the Austrians; to the south, the Spanish—and in order to save the people, the cardinal plundered them. In four years, he’d increased tax revenues by nineteen million, necessary to support the army and create a navy. He’d had to close his eyes to the people’s misery, close his ears to the cries of the poor, ignoring their wretched figures and sullen gaze. He had to obtain the king’s attention and favor; but without a magic potion or enchanted ring, he had to resort to money, so money Richelieu found—and Louis XIII, who’d never had any cash, suddenly found it in his hands.

  This was the source of King Louis’s admiration for his minister—and of his jealousy.

  Who could fail to admire a man who could raise six million livres on his word alone, when the king, by word and even by signature, couldn’t raise fifty thousand?

  But the king had never quite been able to believe in the promised 3,882,000 livres—so the first thing he demanded from Charpentier was the key to this famous treasure.

  Charpentier, without comment, begged the king to get up, and then pushed the desk aside. He lifted the carpet upon which yesterday the cardinal, and today the king, had rested his feet, revealing a trap door. He unlocked it with a key and pulled the door open, revealing a large iron chest.

  This chest unlocked with a combination, which Charpentier shared with the king. It opened with the same ease as the door, and to the dazzled eyes of Louis XIII was revealed the sum he was so eager to see.

  Then, presumably in response to orders he’d received, Charpentier bowed to the king, gave him the key, and withdrew, leaving the two majesties, monarchy and money, alone with each other.

  In that era, when banking was in its infancy, before paper money backed by shareholders was widespread, cash money was rare in France. The cardinal’s 3,882,000 livres was therefore in the form of about one million crowns bearing the images of Charles IX, Henri III, and Henri IV, plus almost a million Spanish doubloons and seven or eight hundred thousand reales in Mexican gold. The balance was contained in a small bag of diamonds, each twisted like a candy in a paper wrapper, wearing its value on a label.

  Louis XIII, instead of feeling that joy which the sight of gold was supposed to evoke, was instead overcome with sadness; after seeing this wealth of coinage, recognizing the kings stamped upon their faces, plunging his hand into the coffer’s depths to feel the weight of the bullion, and holding up the diamonds to view their clarity, he straightened and, standing, gazed down at those millions that had been garnered through such pain to the donors, and delivered by such devotion from their gatherer.

  He thought how easily, from this sum, he had already promised nearly three hundred thousand crowns to reward the devotion of his enemies, who hated the man who’d raised those funds. He wondered, in spite of himself, if, in his hands, that money would be spent in a manner as beneficial to France as if he’d left it in the hands of his minister.

  Then, without withdrawing a single coin, he knocked twice on the panel to summon Charpentier. He ordered the secretary to lock the chest and close the trap door, and then gave him the key. “You will disburse nothing from this chest,” he said, “except on my written order.”

  Charpentier bowed.

  “With whom will I work?” asked the king.

  “Monseigneur the cardinal,” replied the secretary, “always worked alone.”

  “Alone? And what was he working on, all alone?”

  “All the affairs of the State, Sire.”

  “But no one could handle all the affairs of the State by himself!”

  “He had agents who reported to him.”

  “Who were his chief agents?”

  “Father Joseph, Lopez the Spaniard, Monsieur de Souscarrières, and others I shall have the honor of naming to Your Majesty as matters arise or they come to present their reports. All have been informed that they will now be dealing with Your Majesty.”

  “Very well.”

  “In addition, Sire,” Charpentier continued, “there are the agents dispatched by the cardinal to the various powers of Europe: Monsieur de Bautru to Spain, Monsieur d
e La Saludie to Italy, and Monsieur de Charnassé to Germany. Letters have arrived announcing their return today, or tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Upon their return, after having given them the instructions from Monsieur le Cardinal, you will introduce them to me. Is there anyone currently waiting to report?”

  “Monsieur Cavois, the Captain of the Cardinal’s Guard, who wishes the honor of being received by Your Majesty.”

  “I have heard that Monsieur Cavois is an honest man and a courageous soldier. I shall be glad to receive him.”

  Charpentier stepped to the outer door. “Monsieur Cavois,” he said. Cavois appeared.

  “Come in, Monsieur Cavois, come in,” said the king. “You wished to speak with me?”

  “Yes, Sire. I have a favor to ask of Your Majesty.”

  “Say on. If it will help us to keep a good servant, we’ll grant it with pleasure.”

  “Sire, I wish Your Majesty to accept my resignation.”

  “Your resignation! But why, Monsieur Cavois?”

  “I belonged to Monsieur le Cardinal while he was a minister; but if he is no longer a minister, I belong to no one.”

  “I beg your pardon, Monsieur, but you belong to me.”

  “I know that if Your Majesty insists, I shall be forced to remain in his service, but I must warn him that I’ll be a poor servant.”

  “And why would you be a poor servant in my service if you were not for Monsieur le Cardinal?”

  “Because my heart was in my service to him, Sire.”

  “And it would not be with me?”

  “For Your Majesty, Sire, I must confess I feel only duty.”

  “And how did you become so tied to Monsieur le Cardinal?” “Well, it was because of his deeds.”

  “And what if I want to do good deeds, even more so than him?”

  Cavois shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same?” repeated the king.

  “I owe everything I have to Monsieur le Cardinal. He brought me into his household, provided for my children, and most recently endowed me, or rather my wife, with a privilege that will bring in twelve to fifteen thousand a year.”