As for Marion, after seeing the king make this curious exit, she ran to the window, drew aside the curtain, and saw him drive off in his carriage. Then, with that mischievous yet charming smile that belonged only to her, she said, “No doubt about it: I shall have to become a page.”
XLIV
How Étienne Latil and the Marquis
de Pisany, Each Making His First Outing,
Happened to Encounter Each Other
We have reported how the cardinal had retired to his country estate at Chaillot and left his house in the Place Royale—in effect, his ministry—to Louis XIII.
The rumor of his disgrace spread rapidly through Paris, and at a rendezvous between Madame de Fargis and Marillac the Minister of Justice at the Inn of the Painted Beard, she gave him the great news.
This great news quickly spread from the chamber where it was reported to the ear of Madame Soleil, and from her to Master Soleil. Together they carried it to Étienne Latil, who had just left his bed three days before and was walking around his room, leaning on his sword.
Master Soleil had offered to lend him his own cane, a handsome one with an agate set in the handle, like that of Mudarra the Bastard in Lope de Vega’s play. But Latil refused, deeming it unworthy for a man of the sword to rely on something other than his sword.
At the news of Richelieu’s disgrace he stopped short, leaned with both hands on the hilt of his sword and, looking keenly at Master Soleil, asked, “Is what you say the truth?”
“True as the Gospel.”
“And where did you get this news?”
“From a lady of the Court.”
Étienne Latil knew all too well that the house wherein he’d suffered the injury that had forced him to take up residence also played host to masked and incognito visitors from all walks of society. He took two or three thoughtful steps and then turned again to Master Soleil. “And now that he’s a minister no more, what do you think of the personal safety of Monsieur le Cardinal?”
Master Soleil grimaced and shook his head. “I think that if he hasn’t taken his guards with him, he’d better take to wearing that breastplate he wore over his robes at La Rochelle.”
“Do you think that’s the only risk he runs?” Latil asked.
“Well, there’s his food,” said Soleil. “I imagine his niece, Madame de Combalet, will take the precaution of finding a reliable taster for him.” Then he added, with that broad smile that often brightened his face, “Now, where do you suppose she might find someone like that?”
“He is found, Master Soleil,” Latil said. “Call me a sedan chair.”
“What, right now?” Master Soleil cried. “You’re not recovered! Are you really reckless enough to leave?”
“Yes, I am that reckless, my host. And since I admit I’m reckless, and that such recklessness may cost me my life, we should settle our little account so that, in the event of my death, you’ve lost nothing. Let’s see: three weeks of recuperation; nine pitchers of tea; two mugs of wine; and the devoted care of Madame Soleil, which is beyond price—does that come to more than twenty pistoles?”
“Monsieur Latil, please note that I ask no remuneration! The honor that it’s been to house you, to feed you . . .”
“Ha! Feed me! That was easy enough.”
“. . . And to care for you, is quite sufficient! But of course, if you really insist on giving me twenty pistoles to acknowledge your satisfaction . . .”
“You won’t refuse it?”
“God prevent me from insulting you so!”
“Then call me a chair while I count out your twenty pistoles.”
Master Soleil bowed and retired. Upon returning he went straight to the table upon which the twenty pistoles were lined up, counted them at a glance with that knack shared by innkeepers and tax collectors, and said, “Your chair is at hand, Monsieur.”
Latil sheathed his sword, gestured for Soleil to approach, and said, “Lend me your arm.”
“I’ll give you my arm to help you leave my house, my dear Monsieur Étienne, but it’s with great regret that I’ll see you go.”
“Soleil, mon ami,” said Latil, “I hate to see the slightest cloud cross your resplendent face, so I promise you that when I return to Paris I will stop here first—especially if you still have some of this lovely Coulange wine. I just made its acquaintance two days ago, and I regret not getting to know it more intimately.”
“I’ve laid in three hundred bottles, Monsieur Latil. I’ll save it for you.”
“At three bottles a day, that will last me three months. So I’ll stay with you for three months, Master Soleil, unless I run out of credit.”
“You will never run out of credit. A man who is friends with Monsieur de Moret, Monsieur de Montmorency, and Monsieur de Richelieu—a prince, a duke, and a cardinal . . .”
Latil shook his head. “An honest farmer might give you less honor, but he’d be a better risk, Master Soleil,” he declared, as he stepped into his sedan chair.
“Where should I tell the porters to take you, Monsieur?” asked the innkeeper.
“First to the Hotel de Montmorency, where I have a duty to perform, and then to Chaillot.”
“To the hotel of Monseigneur le Duc de Montmorency,” Soleil cried, “by way of the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux and Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie!”
The porters didn’t need to be told twice, and furthermore they adopted Master Soleil’s additional advice to go easy on their client, as he was recovering from a long and painful illness.
They stopped at Montmorency’s door. The Swiss doorman, in full regalia, baton in hand, stood on the threshold. Latil beckoned to him, and he approached. “My friend,” Latil said, “here’s half a pistole. Be so kind as to announce me.”
The Swiss doffed his hat, and asked whom he should announce.
“The wounded gentleman whom the Comte de Moret had the honor to visit during his illness, who promised to visit him as soon as he could stand. I am out today for the first time and, as promised, here I am. Please inquire if I may have the honor to be received by Monsieur le Comte.”
“Monsieur le Comte de Moret left the hotel five days ago,” said the Swiss, “and no one knows where he went.”
“Not even Monseigneur le Duc?”
“Monseigneur left the previous day for his governorship of Languedoc.”
“The dice are against me, but at least I’ve kept my promise to Monsieur le Comte. That’s all you can ask of a man of honor.”
“However,” said the Swiss, stepping away from the door, “before departing with the page Galaor, the Comte de Moret did have Galaor leave a message with all the doormen and guards, one that may concern Your Lordship.”
“What message is that?”
“He left orders that if a certain Étienne Latil presented himself at the hotel, he was to be offered room and board, and be treated as a man of confidence attached to the count’s personal house.”
Latil tipped his hat to the absent prince, and said, “Monsieur le Comte de Moret conducts himself like the worthy son of Henri IV he is. I am indeed that gentleman, and will have the honor, upon his return, to give him my thanks and enter his service. Here, mon ami, is another half a pistole for the pleasure of hearing that the Comte de Moret thinks kindly of me. Porters, on to Chaillot—to the estate of Monsieur le Cardinal!”
The porters picked up their poles and resumed their march, taking the Rue Simon-le-Franc, the Rue Maubué, and the Rue Troussevache so that, by the Rue de la Ferronnerie, they finally gained the Rue Saint-Honoré.
But as luck would have it, at the very moment that, at the doors of the Hotel de Montmorency, Latil cried, “On to Chaillot!”—as luck would have it, we say, the Marquis de Pisany, whom we temporarily lost sight of given the important events we had to relate, was just then rising for the first time since receiving his near-fatal sword thrust from Souscarrières. Resolving that his first action once back on his feet should be to apologize to the Comte de Moret, he summoned a cha
ir and, after cautioning the porters to tread easily as he was recovering from a wound, concluded by crying, “On to the Hotel de Montmorency!”
Leaving the Hotel de Rambouillet, the porters went down the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre to the Rue Saint-Honoré, then made their way toward the Rue de la Ferronnerie.
The result of these reciprocal maneuvers was that the two chairs met at the head of the Rue de l’Arbre-Sec. The Marquis de Pisany, preoccupied with how to approach the Comte de Moret, failed to recognize Étienne Latil—but Latil, whose mind was free of care, instantly recognized the Marquis de Pisany.
One can imagine the effect this apparition had upon the irascible swashbuckler. He uttered a cry that stopped his porters in their tracks and, thrusting his head out the window, shouted, “Hey! Monsieur Hunchback!”
It might have been wiser for the Marquis de Pisany to pretend the insult was addressed to someone else, but he was so sensitive about his hump that his first impulse was to stick his head out the door of his chair, in order to see who was addressing him by his deformity rather than his title.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” asked the marquis, as his porters settled to a stop.
“It would be my pleasure if you’d stop a moment. I have a score to settle with you,” said Latil. Then, to his porters: “Quick! Set my chair down so my door is lined up with his.”
The porters picked up their poles and aligned Latil’s sedan chair with Pisany’s. “How’s this, Monsieur?” they asked.
“Perfect!” Latil said. “Ahh!”
This sigh came from his satisfaction at finally confronting his nemesis, whose name was yet unknown but whose rank had been revealed by the ring he’d been shown.
For his part, Pisany had finally recognized Latil. “Onward!” he shouted to his porters. “I want nothing to do with this man.”
“Perhaps, but unfortunately, this man has dealings with you, my darling. Don’t move, any of you!” he shouted to the porters of the other chair. “Don’t you dare budge, or ventre-saint-gris, as Henri IV used to say, I’ll cut off your ears!”
The porters, who’d been raising Pisany’s chair, set it back on the pavement. Meanwhile passersby, attracted by the fracas, began to gather around the two chairs.
“And I say,” Pisany cried, “that if you don’t carry me on, I’ll send my men to beat you!”
The marquis’s porters all shook their heads. “Better to be beaten,” one said, “than to lose our ears.”
“Send your men,” said another. “We have sticks of our own.”
“Bravo, my friends!” said Latil, who saw that luck was with him. “Here are four pistoles with which to drink my health! Now, I dare to give my name, which is Étienne Latil. Do you dare to give yours, Monsieur Hunchback?”
“You wretch!” cried Pisany. “Wasn’t being impaled on two swords enough for you?”
“It was not only enough,” replied Latil, “it was too much. But I’ll settle for impaling you just once.”
“Would you abuse a man who can’t even stand on his own two legs?”
“Is that the situation?” asked Latil. “In that case, the playing field is even. We shall fight while seated. En garde, Marquis . . . Oh, dear! Without your three accomplices, who will stab me from behind?” Latil drew his sword and hovered the tip beneath his opponent’s eye.
There was no way to decline. Witnesses surrounded the two chairs. Moreover, as we’ve said, the Marquis de Pisany was no coward. He drew his sword.
The fighters, whose only doors faced each other, were obscured to all other observers, who could only glimpse two blades flashing between the chairs. They passed, crossed, parried, feinted, thrust, and riposted, while cries of rage came first from one door, then from the other.
Finally, after a duel that lasted nearly five minutes, to the great entertainment of the audience, there was a cry—or rather, a blasphemy—from one of the two combatants. Latil had nailed his opponent’s arm to the frame of his chair.
“There!” said Étienne Latil. “Take that, my good Marquis—and remember that every time we meet, you’ll be served the same way.”
The common people love a winner, especially when he’s goodlooking or generous. Latil was reasonably handsome, and what’s more, he’d thrown the porters four pistoles.
The Marquis de Pisany, on the other hand, was ugly, defeated, and had kept his pistoles to himself. If he called upon the audience for aid and justice, he would certainly be mocked and denied. So he made up his mind: “To the Hotel de Rambouillet,” he said.
“To Chaillot!” said Étienne Latil.
XLV
The Cardinal at Chaillot
Arriving at Chaillot, the cardinal found himself in much the same situation as Atlas when, after bearing the weight of the world, he was able to place it for a few moments on the shoulders of his friend Hercules. He felt at last he could take a breath. “Ah,” he whispered, “I shall have the time to write poetry.”
Indeed, Chaillot was the retreat the cardinal had bought as an escape from politics, where he could write, if not true poetry, at least a little verse.
An office on the ground floor that opened onto a beautiful garden, with an avenue of lime trees dark and cool even in summer, was the sanctuary where he’d taken refuge one or two days a month.
Now he’d returned to that repose and renewal. For how long? He couldn’t tell.
His first idea, upon setting foot in this poetic oasis, was to call for his usual collaborators, those writers who, in his battles of the mind, were like the generals he sent to war in Spain and Italy. Against such as England’s Shakespeare, with Rotrou and Corneille he marshaled his French forces of letters.
Then it occurred to him that, though master of his house at Chaillot, he was no longer the powerful minister distributing largesse. Here he was only a private citizen with whom, suddenly, it was dangerous to associate. He therefore resolved to wait and see which old friends would come to him without being summoned.
So he drew forth the outline of his new tragedy, Mirame, which was nothing less than a retaliation in words against the reigning queen, and reviewed the scenes he’d already begun.
Cardinal Richelieu, poor Catholic though he was, was even worse when it came to the Christian virtue of forgiving one’s enemies. He’d been devastated by the pernicious plot that had toppled him from power, and blamed Queen Anne as one of its prime movers. So he consoled himself with the idea of taking what revenge he could.
We are sorry to have to reveal this petty weakness in such a great minister, but we are his historian, not his apologist.
The first show of sympathy for his plight came from an unexpected quarter. Guillemot, his valet, announced that a sedan chair had arrived bearing a man who seemed to be recovering from serious illness or injury. He had gotten as far as a bench in the entry hall where he had sunk down in exhaustion, saying “My place is here.” The porters, paid off, trotted away as quickly as they’d come. This man, who wore a somewhat battered felt hat and a cloak the color of Spanish tobacco, was dressed in a manner more military than civilian, and bore a rapier like those we see in the sketches of Callot, in the style that was just beginning to become fashionable.
When asked what name should be announced to the cardinal, “I am nobody,” he replied, “so announce no one.”
Asked why he had come, he said simply, “His Eminence is short of guards. I’ll help ensure his safety.”
This seemed strange enough to Guillemot that he thought he’d better inform Madame de Combalet and Monsieur le Cardinal. The cardinal ordered this mysterious guardian brought before him.
Five minutes later, the door opened and Étienne Latil appeared in the doorway, pale and leaning on the jamb, his hat in his right hand, the left on the pommel of his sword.
With his knack for remembering faces, Richelieu recognized him at a glance. “Ah!” he said. “Is that you, my dear Latil?”
“In person, Your Eminence.”
“Are you doing better?�
��
“Yes, Monseigneur, so since I’m recovered I’ve come to offer my services to Your Eminence.”
“My thanks, Monsieur,” the cardinal laughed, “but there’s no one I need you to rid me of.”
“That may be,” said Latil, “but aren’t there those who’d like to be rid of you?”
“Now that you mention it,” said the cardinal, “that seems quite likely.”
Just then Madame de Combalet entered through a side door, her worried gaze darting quickly from her uncle to the unknown adventurer.
“Come, Marie,” said the cardinal, “and help me welcome this brave lad, the first who’s come to help me in my day of adversity.”
“Oh, I won’t be the last,” said Latil, “but I’m not sorry to be counted as the first.”
“Uncle,” said Madame de Combalet, after regarding Latil with the sympathetic eye of a woman, “monsieur is pale and stricken with weakness.”
“Which speaks all the better for him. I know from my doctor, who’s been looking in on him, that he only got up for the first time three days ago. This visit, so early, is entirely to his credit.”
“Oh,” said Madame de Combalet, “so this is the gentleman who was wounded in the brawl at the Inn of the Painted Beard?”
“You’re right, fair lady, and my hat’s off to you,” said Latil. “They got me in an ambush, but I finally caught up with that cursed hunchback, and sent him home just now with a sword thrust through the arm.”
“The Marquis de Pisany?” said Madame de Combalet. “That poor wretch has no luck. He’d just spent over a week recovering from a wound he’d received the same night you were nearly murdered.”
“The Marquis de Pisany, eh?” Latil said. “It’s good to finally know his name. That explains why, when I told my porters ‘To Chaillot,’ he said to his ‘To the Hotel de Rambouillet’—an address I took care to remember.”
“If you were both recovering from wounds, how did you manage to have a duel?” asked the cardinal.
“We fought from our sedan chairs, Monseigneur. It was most convenient, just the thing for wounded swordsmen.”
The Red Sphinx Page 43