The Red Sphinx

by Alexandre Dumas

  “The humble mount of Our Lord,” said the king.

  “But Monseigneur found that I did not travel fast enough.”

  “And so he gave you a carriage?”

  “At first, Sire, I refused the carriage out of humility, so he gave me a horse. Unfortunately, this horse was a mare, and one day my secretary, who was riding a stallion . . .”

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” said the king hastily. “And that’s when you accepted the carriage offered by the cardinal?”

  “Yes, Sire—I resigned myself to it. For I thought,” said the monk, “it would be pleasing to God to see the humble glorified.”

  “Despite the cardinal’s retirement, mon Père, I would like to keep you near me,” said the king. “Tell me what you require.”

  “Nothing, Sire. For the sake of my salvation, I may already have been too forward in the acceptance of honors.”

  “Have you no desires I can satisfy?”

  “Only to allow me to return to my monastery, which perhaps I never should have left.”

  “You are too useful in the affairs of state for me to allow that.”

  “I could see such things only through the eyes of His Eminence, Sire. With that illumination gone, I am blind.”

  “In every estate, mon Père, even the religious, it’s possible to see ambition awarded according to its merits. God has not given you your talent in order for it to be wasted. Monsieur le Cardinal is an example of the heights one might achieve.”

  “And from which, therefore, one can fall.”

  “But no matter how far you fall, if you fall wearing a cardinal’s red hat, the descent is bearable.”

  A flash of avarice glimmered beneath the Capuchin’s lowered lashes.

  This glimmer did not escape the king’s notice. “Have you ever thought about a high-ranking post in the Church?” he asked.

  “I might have had such thoughts, but only with Monsieur le Cardinal.”

  “Why only with Monsieur le Cardinal?”

  “Because it would have taken all his influence with Rome to achieve such a goal.”

  “And you think my influence doesn’t match his?”

  “Your Majesty proposed to give the Archbishop of Tours a cardinal’s hat, but he was an archbishop—not a poor Capuchin monk.”

  Louis XIII studied Father Joseph as closely as he could, but it was impossible to read anything in those downcast eyes or on those features of marble. Only the lips seemed alive.

  “Furthermore,” continued the monk, “there is the single grave fact that overshadows all others in accepting those tasks placed upon me by Monsieur le Cardinal and God; and that is the danger of committing sins that may jeopardize the salvation of one’s soul. But with Monsieur le Cardinal, who wields the power of Rome for both penitence and remission, I need have no fear, for if I sin by day, I confess by night. Monsieur le Cardinal absolves me, and I sleep in tranquility. However, if I serve a secular master, even a king, well . . . a king cannot absolve me. I cannot sin for the state and retain a clear conscience.”

  The king continued to study the monk as he spoke, and the more he said, the more a certain repugnance grew on the king’s face. “And when would you like to return to your monastery?” he asked, when Father Joseph had finished.

  “As soon as I have Your Majesty’s permission.”

  “You have it, mon Père,” the king snapped.

  “Your Majesty overwhelms me,” said the monk, crossing his hands on his breast and bowing to the ground. And, unlike how he’d entered, neither stiff nor humble, he strode out without even turning to say farewell from the doorway.

  “Ambitious hypocrite! You, at least, I won’t miss,” murmured Louis XIII.

  Then, after a moment surveying the shadows falling in the study, he said, “No matter. But one thing is certain: if I abdicated the throne tonight, as this morning the cardinal did this office, I wouldn’t be able to find four men to follow me into exile and disgrace. Not three, not two, maybe not even one.”

  Then he said, “Well, maybe one—there’s still my fool, l’Angely. Though of course, he’s a fool!”

  XLI

  The Ambassadors

  The next morning at ten o’clock, as he’d promised, the king was once again in the cardinal’s office.

  The lessons he was learning, while humiliating, were also fascinating.

  On his return to the Louvre the day before, he had received no one, closeting himself with his page Baradas, whom he’d sent three thousand pistoles via Charpentier as a reward for his help in bringing down the cardinal. He thought it best to delay paying the others, so he’d given Baradas his reward first.

  Before giving the queen her thirty thousand, the queen mother her sixty thousand, and Monsieur his one hundred fifty thousand livres, he wanted to read Monsieur’s response to the Duc de Lorraine, which Rossignol had promised him by ten o’clock the next morning.

  Thus, as we’ve said, at ten o’clock the king was once more in the cardinal’s office, and even before he threw his cape over a chair and put his hat on the table, he knocked three times on the panel.

  Rossignol appeared with his usual punctuality.

  “Well?” the king asked eagerly.

  “Well, Sire,” Rossignol said, blinking behind his glasses, “we have cracked the code.”

  “Quick,” said the king, “let’s see it. The key first.”

  “Here it is, Sire.” And he presented the key.

  The king read:

  Je— The King

  Astre se— The Queen

  Be— The Queen Mother

  L’amb—Monsieur

  L.M.—The Cardinal

  T.— Death

  Pif-paf— The War

  Zane— Duc de Lorraine

  Gier— Duchesse de Chevreuse

  Oel— Madame de Fargis

  O— Pregnant

  “And now?” said the king.

  “Apply the key, Sire.”

  “No,” the king said, “you do it, you’re used to it. My head would break at such a task.”

  Rossignol took the paper and read, “The queen, the queen mother, and the Duc d’Orléans are in bliss. The cardinal is dead. The king wants to be king: he’s decided on war against the Prince of Marmots, but with the Duc d’Orléans in charge. The Duc d’Orléans is in love with the Duc de Lorraine’s daughter, but he’d rather marry the queen, even if she is seven years older than him. His only fear is that, following the advice of Madame de Fargis or the Duchesse de Chevreuse, she may be pregnant when the king dies. Signed, Gaston d’Orléans.”

  The king had listened without interrupting, though he had wiped his forehead several times and scored the floorboards with the wheel of his spur. “Pregnant,” he murmured, “pregnant. If she becomes pregnant, it certainly won’t be by me.”

  Then, turning to Rossignol: “Is this the first letter of this sort that you’ve decoded?”

  “Oh, no, Sire! I’ve deciphered ten or twelve like this.”

  “What! And Monsieur le Cardinal never showed them to me?”

  “Why torment Your Majesty with a misfortune that might never occur?”

  “But when he was accused and harried by these people, why didn’t he use these weapons against them?”

  “He was afraid that would also make them enemies to the king.”

  The king took a few steps back and forth, from one end of the study to the other, his head low and his hat over his eyes.

  Then, returning to Rossignol, he said, “Make me a copy of each letter, with its decoded version, and the key on top.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Do you think there will be others like this?”

  “Most certainly, Sire.”

  “Who are the people I’m to receive today?”

  “That’s not my concern, Sire. Ciphers are my only business. You should see Monsieur Charpentier.”

  Even before Rossignol was out the door, the king, with a feverish and trembling hand, struck two blows on the panel.
These rapid, violent blows indicated his state of mind.

  Charpentier appeared instantly, but stopped on the threshold.

  The king’s eyes were fixed on the floor, fist clenched on the cardinal’s desk, while he muttered, “Pregnant . . . the queen pregnant . . . a foreign queen on the throne of France. By an Englishman, maybe!”

  Then, in a lower voice, as if he was afraid himself to hear what he said: “Nothing is impossible. Not in this family, based on what has gone before.”

  Absorbed in his thoughts, the king hadn’t noticed Charpentier. Thinking the secretary hadn’t responded to his summons, he looked up impatiently and was about to knock a second time when, seeing the gesture and guessing the intention, Charpentier stepped forward and said, “Here I am, Sire.”

  “Good, good,” the king said, trying to regain his composure. “What do we have before us today?”

  “Sire, the Comte de Bautru has arrived from Spain, and the Comte de La Saludie from Venice.”

  “What were they doing in those places?”

  “I don’t know, Sire. Yesterday I had the honor to tell you that Monsieur le Cardinal had sent for them, as well as for Monsieur de Charnassé, who will be arriving from Sweden by tomorrow at the latest.”

  “You informed them that the cardinal was no longer a minister and that I would receive them in his place?”

  “I sent them His Eminence’s orders, which were to report on their missions to His Majesty as they would have done to himself.”

  “Who is coming first?”

  “Monsieur de Bautru.”

  “As soon as he arrives, bring him in.”

  “He is here, Sire.”

  “Let him come, then.”

  Charpentier turned, spoke a few words in a low voice, and then stepped aside to let Bautru enter.

  The ambassador was still in his traveling clothes, and apologized to appear so before the king, but it was thus that he had always met Cardinal Richelieu. Once he’d arrived in the antechamber, he hadn’t wanted to keep His Majesty waiting.

  “Monsieur de Bautru,” the king said to him, “the cardinal spoke well of you, saying you were a trustworthy man, and that the honest opinion of a Bautru was worth two of Cardinal Bérulle’s.”

  “Sire, I endeavored to be worthy of the confidence the cardinal placed in me.”

  “And you will prove worthy of mine as well, won’t you, Monsieur, telling me everything you would have told him?”

  “Everything, Sire?” Bautru asked, staring at the king.

  “Everything. I’m looking for the truth and I want all of it.”

  “Well, Sire, you should start by recalling your Ambassador de Fargis who, instead of following the instructions of the cardinal, to the benefit of Your Majesty’s honor and glory, follows those of the queen mother, to the detriment of France.”

  “Others have already advised me of this. I will think about it. You’ve spoken with Count-Duke Olivares?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “What were your orders regarding him?”

  “To negotiate, if possible, a peaceful settlement on Mantua.”

  “And?”

  “When I tried to talk business with him, he led me into the henhouse of His Majesty King Philip IV, which contains the most curious species in the world, and offered to give me samples to send to Your Majesty.”

  “So he was mocking you, then?”

  “Both me, Sire, and he whom I represented.”

  “Monsieur!”

  “You asked me for the truth, Sire. That’s what I give you. Shall I lie? If the truth is unpleasant, I certainly have wit enough to replace it with pleasant lies.”

  “No, give me the truth, whatever it may be. What do people think of our planned Italian campaign?”

  “People laugh, Sire.”

  “People laugh? Don’t they know what we plan to do?”

  “They do, Sire—but they say the queens will make you change your mind, and that Monsieur, placed in command, will obey the queens rather than you, so the expedition is bound to end up failing to support the Duc de Nevers.”

  “Ah! So they think in Madrid?”

  “Yes, Sire, they think it and write it—as I know, since I suborned one of the Count-Duke’s secretaries. Olivares wrote to Don Gonzalès de Cordova, ‘If the king gives Monsieur control of the army, have no fear: that army will never cross the Pass of Susa. On the other hand, if the cardinal is in charge of the conduct of the war, with or without the king, the Duke of Savoy will need all the support you can send him.’”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Quite sure, Sire.”

  The king resumed pacing back and forth, head down, hat pulled over his eyes, as was his habit when worried. Suddenly he stopped and, fixing Bautru with a penetrating look, asked, “And the queen—have you heard anything about her?”

  “Only what’s said at Court.”

  “And what do they say at Court?”

  “Nothing I can repeat to Your Majesty.”

  “Never mind that. I want to know.”

  “Slander and calumny, Sire. Don’t disturb yourself with such filth.”

  “I tell you, Monsieur,” said Louis XIII, impatiently stamping his foot, “that slander or truth, I want to hear what is said of the queen!”

  Bautru bowed. “Your Majesty orders, and a loyal subject must obey.”

  “Obey, then.”

  “It is said that Your Majesty’s health is failing. . . .”

  “My health is failing! So everyone seems to hope. It seems my death is their salvation. Go on.”

  “Since your health is failing, the queen will take steps to make sure . . .” Bautru hesitated.

  “Make sure of what?” demanded the king. “Speak! Tell me!”

  “To ensure the regency.”

  “But there’s only a regency when there’s an heir to the throne!”

  “. . . To ensure the regency,” Bautru repeated.

  The king stamped his foot. “So, the same rumor in Spain as in Lorraine—in Lorraine it’s a fear, but in Spain, a hope. Indeed, if the queen becomes queen regent, then Paris will be Spanish. So that’s what they’re saying, Bautru?”

  Bautru bowed to the king. “You ordered me to speak, Sire. I obeyed.”

  “You’ve done well. I told you I was looking for the truth, and you’ve put me on the trail—and now, thank God, I’m hunter enough to follow it to the end.”

  “Any further orders, Your Majesty?”

  “Go and rest, Monsieur. You must be exhausted.”

  “Your Majesty hasn’t told me whether I’ve had the good fortune to please him, or the misfortune to dissatisfy him.”

  “I can’t say I enjoyed hearing what you had to tell me, Monsieur Bautru. But you’ve done your duty, which is better. The next time there is a vacancy among the Councilors of State, I think I may reward you with it.” And Louis XIII, removing his glove, presented his hand for the Ambassador Extraordinaire to Philip IV to kiss.

  Bautru, as etiquette required, backed out of the room so as not to turn his back on the king.

  Left alone, the king murmured, “So—my death is others’ hope; my honor is a joke; and the succession to the throne is a lottery. If my brother assumes the throne, he’ll betray France and auction it to the highest bidder. And my mother, the widow of Henri IV, that great king who was killed because he planned to make France greater still—my mother will help him. Fortunately . . .” and the king gave a shrill laugh, “. . . when I die, the queen may be pregnant, which will upend everything. Oh, how happy I am in my marriage!”

  Then his expression darkened even more, and his voice lowered. “Not so astonishing, then, that they all wanted me to get rid of the cardinal!”

  He thought he heard a small sound from the door, and turned. The door opened. “Does Your Majesty wish to receive Monsieur de La Saludie?” Charpentier asked.

  “I believe so,” said the king. “Everything these gentlemen have to tell me is so very interesting.” Th
en, with another shrill laugh: “They do say that a king never knows what’s happening in his own castle! But though he may be the last to know, he can find out if he wants to.” Then, as Monsieur de La Saludie appeared at the door, he said, “Come, come, Monsieur de La Saludie, I’ve been expecting you. You’ve been told, haven’t you, to report to me in place of the cardinal? Speak, and keep no secrets from me that you would share with him.”

  “But, Sire,” said La Saludie, “in the situation in which I find myself, I’m not sure if I should repeat . . .”

  “Repeat what?”

  “Words of praise from Italy for a man of whom it seems you had complaints.”

  “Ah! Do they praise the cardinal in Italy? And what do they say of the cardinal on the far side of the mountains?”

  “Sire, they are unaware that the cardinal is no longer your minister, and they congratulate Your Majesty on being served by the leading political and military genius of our century. I was instructed by the cardinal to announce the fall of La Rochelle to the Duke of Mantua, to the Senate of Venice, and to His Holiness Urban VIII. The news was received with joy in Mantua, enthusiasm in Venice, and satisfaction in Rome. Your Majesty’s planned expedition into Italy has terrified Charles-Emmanuel of Savoy, but reassured all the other princes. Here are letters from the Duke of Mantua, from the Venetian Senate, and from His Holiness, Sire, all of which express the utmost confidence in the plans of the cardinal. And each of these three powers, who wish to support this effort as much as they can, has instructed me to place drafts with their bankers for funds totaling one and a half million crowns.”

  “And these drafts are in whose name?”

  “In the name of Monsieur le Cardinal, Sire. They are payable on demand—he has only to endorse them to collect the money.”

  The king took the drafts and turned away. “A million and a half,” he said, “along with the six million he borrowed—it’s with this that we’re marching to war. And all the money raised by one man, as if that man was himself the grandeur and glory of France.”

  Then, at a sudden thought, Louis XIII stepped to the panel and knocked twice. Charpentier appeared. “Do you know,” asked the king, “from whom the cardinal borrowed the six million with which he planned to finance the war?”