Vingt ans après. English

by Alexandre Dumas

  17. Duc de Beaufort amused his Leisure Hours in the Donjon of Vincennes.

  The captive who was the source of so much alarm to the cardinal andwhose means of escape disturbed the repose of the whole court, waswholly unconscious of the terror he caused at the Palais Royal.

  He had found himself so strictly guarded that he soon perceived thefruitlessness of any attempt at escape. His vengeance, therefore,consisted in coining curses on the head of Mazarin; he even tried tomake some verses on him, but soon gave up the attempt, for Monsieur deBeaufort had not only not received from Heaven the gift of versifying,he had the greatest difficulty in expressing himself in prose.

  The duke was the grandson of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d'Estrees--asgood-natured, as brave, as proud, and above all, as Gascon as hisancestor, but less elaborately educated. After having been for some timeafter the death of Louis XIII. the favorite, the confidant, the firstman, in short, at the court, he had been obliged to yield his place toMazarin and so became the second in influence and favor; and eventually,as he was stupid enough to be vexed at this change of position, thequeen had had him arrested and sent to Vincennes in charge of Guitant,who made his appearance in these pages in the beginning of this historyand whom we shall see again. It is understood, of course, that when wesay "the queen," Mazarin is meant.

  During the five years of this seclusion, which would have improved andmatured the intellect of any other man, M. de Beaufort, had he notaffected to brave the cardinal, despise princes, and walk alone withoutadherents or disciples, would either have regained his liberty or madepartisans. But these considerations never occurred to the duke and everyday the cardinal received fresh accounts of him which were as unpleasantas possible to the minister.

  After having failed in poetry, Monsieur de Beaufort tried drawing. Hedrew portraits, with a piece of coal, of the cardinal; and as histalents did not enable him to produce a very good likeness, he wroteunder the picture that there might be little doubt regarding theoriginal: "Portrait of the Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin." Monsieur deChavigny, the governor of Vincennes, waited upon the duke to requestthat he would amuse himself in some other way, or that at all events, ifhe drew likenesses, he would not put mottoes underneath them. The nextday the prisoner's room was full of pictures and mottoes. Monsieur deBeaufort, in common with many other prisoners, was bent upon doingthings that were prohibited; and the only resource the governor had was,one day when the duke was playing at tennis, to efface all thesedrawings, consisting chiefly of profiles. M. de Beaufort did not ventureto draw the cardinal's fat face.

  The duke thanked Monsieur de Chavigny for having, as he said, cleanedhis drawing-paper for him; he then divided the walls of his room intocompartments and dedicated each of these compartments to some incidentin Mazarin's life. In one was depicted the "Illustrious Coxcomb"receiving a shower of blows from Cardinal Bentivoglio, whose servant hehad been; another, the "Illustrious Mazarin" acting the part of IgnatiusLoyola in a tragedy of that name; a third, the "Illustrious Mazarin"stealing the portfolio of prime minister from Monsieur de Chavigny, whohad expected to have it; a fourth, the "Illustrious Coxcomb Mazarin"refusing to give Laporte, the young king's valet, clean sheets, andsaving that "it was quite enough for the king of France to have cleansheets every three months."

  The governor, of course, thought proper to threaten his prisoner that ifhe did not give up drawing such pictures he should be obliged to deprivehim of all the means of amusing himself in that manner. To this Monsieurde Beaufort replied that since every opportunity of distinguishinghimself in arms was taken from him, he wished to make himself celebratedin the arts; since he could not be a Bayard, he would become a Raphaelor a Michael Angelo. Nevertheless, one day when Monsieur de Beaufort waswalking in the meadow his fire was put out, his charcoal all removed,taken away; and thus his means of drawing utterly destroyed.

  The poor duke swore, fell into a rage, yelled, and declared that theywished to starve him to death as they had starved the Marechal Ornanoand the Grand Prior of Vendome; but he refused to promise that he wouldnot make any more drawings and remained without any fire in the room allthe winter.

  His next act was to purchase a dog from one of his keepers. With thisanimal, which he called Pistache, he was often shut up for hours alone,superintending, as every one supposed, its education. At last, whenPistache was sufficiently well trained, Monsieur de Beaufort invited thegovernor and officers of Vincennes to attend a representation which hewas going to have in his apartment.

  The party assembled, the room was lighted with waxlights, and theprisoner, with a bit of plaster he had taken out of the wall of hisroom, had traced a long white line, representing a cord, on the floor.Pistache, on a signal from his master, placed himself on this line,raised himself on his hind paws, and holding in his front paws a wandwith which clothes used to be beaten, he began to dance upon the linewith as many contortions as a rope-dancer. Having been several times upand down it, he gave the wand back to his master and began withouthesitation to perform the same evolutions over again.

  The intelligent creature was received with loud applause.

  The first part of the entertainment being concluded Pistache was desiredto say what o'clock it was; he was shown Monsieur de Chavigny's watch;it was then half-past six; the dog raised and dropped his paw six times;the seventh he let it remain upraised. Nothing could be better done; asun-dial could not have shown the hour with greater precision.

  Then the question was put to him who was the best jailer in all theprisons in France.

  The dog performed three evolutions around the circle and laid himself,with the deepest respect, at the feet of Monsieur de Chavigny, who atfirst seemed inclined to like the joke and laughed long and loud, but afrown succeeded, and he bit his lips with vexation.

  Then the duke put to Pistache this difficult question, who was thegreatest thief in the world?

  Pistache went again around the circle, but stopped at no one, and atlast went to the door and began to scratch and bark.

  "See, gentlemen," said M. de Beaufort, "this wonderful animal, notfinding here what I ask for, seeks it out of doors; you shall, however,have his answer. Pistache, my friend, come here. Is not the greatestthief in the world, Monsieur (the king's secretary) Le Camus, who cameto Paris with twenty francs in his pocket and who now possesses tenmillions?"

  The dog shook his head.

  "Then is it not," resumed the duke, "the Superintendent Emery, who gavehis son, when he was married, three hundred thousand francs and a house,compared to which the Tuileries are a heap of ruins and the Louvre apaltry building?"

  The dog again shook his head as if to say "no."

  "Then," said the prisoner, "let's think who it can be. Can it be, can itpossibly be, the 'Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin de Piscina,' hey?"

  Pistache made violent signs that it was, by raising and lowering hishead eight or ten times successively.

  "Gentlemen, you see," said the duke to those present, who dared not evensmile, "that it is the 'Illustrious Coxcomb' who is the greatest thiefin the world; at least, according to Pistache."

  "Let us go on to another of his exercises."

  "Gentlemen!"--there was a profound silence in the room when the dukeagain addressed them--"do you not remember that the Duc de Guise taughtall the dogs in Paris to jump for Mademoiselle de Pons, whom he styled'the fairest of the fair?' Pistache is going to show you how superior heis to all other dogs. Monsieur de Chavigny, be so good as to lend meyour cane."

  Monsieur de Chavigny handed his cane to Monsieur de Beaufort. Monsieurde Beaufort placed it horizontally at the height of one foot.

  "Now, Pistache, my good dog, jump the height of this cane for Madame deMontbazon."

  "But," interposed Monsieur de Chavigny, "it seems to me that Pistache isonly doing what other dogs have done when they jumped for Mademoisellede Pons."

  "Stop," said the duke, "Pistache, jump for the queen." And he raised hiscane six inches higher.

  The dog sprang, and in spi
te of the height jumped lightly over it.

  "And now," said the duke, raising it still six inches higher, "jump forthe king."

  The dog obeyed and jumped quickly over the cane.

  "Now, then," said the duke, and as he spoke, lowered the cane almostlevel with the ground; "Pistache, my friend, jump for the 'IllustriousCoxcomb, Mazarin de Piscina.'"

  The dog turned his back to the cane.

  "What," asked the duke, "what do you mean?" and he gave him the caneagain, first making a semicircle from the head to the tail of Pistache."Jump then, Monsieur Pistache."

  But Pistache, as at first, turned round on his legs and stood with hisback to the cane.

  Monsieur de Beaufort made the experiment a third time, but by this timePistache's patience was exhausted; he threw himself furiously upon thecane, wrested it from the hands of the prince and broke it with histeeth.

  Monsieur de Beaufort took the pieces out of his mouth and presented themwith great formality to Monsieur de Chavigny, saying that for thatevening the entertainment was ended, but in three months it should berepeated, when Pistache would have learned a few new tricks.

  Three days afterward Pistache was found dead--poisoned.

  Then the duke said openly that his dog had been killed by a drug withwhich they meant to poison him; and one day after dinner he went to bed,calling out that he had pains in his stomach and that Mazarin hadpoisoned him.

  This fresh impertinence reached the ears of the cardinal and alarmed himgreatly. The donjon of Vincennes was considered very unhealthy andMadame de Rambouillet had said that the room in which the MarechalOrnano and the Grand Prior de Vendome had died was worth its weight inarsenic--a bon mot which had great success. So it was ordered theprisoner was henceforth to eat nothing that had not previously beentasted, and La Ramee was in consequence placed near him as taster.

  Every kind of revenge was practiced upon the duke by the governor inreturn for the insults of the innocent Pistache. De Chavigny, who,according to report, was a son of Richelieu's, and had been a creatureof the late cardinal's, understood tyranny. He took from the duke allthe steel knives and silver forks and replaced them with silver knivesand wooden forks, pretending that as he had been informed that the dukewas to pass all his life at Vincennes, he was afraid of his prisonerattempting suicide. A fortnight afterward the duke, going to the tenniscourt, found two rows of trees about the size of his little fingerplanted by the roadside; he asked what they were for and was told thatthey were to shade him from the sun on some future day. One morning thegardener went to him and told him, as if to please him, that he wasgoing to plant a bed of asparagus for his especial use. Now, since, asevery one knows, asparagus takes four years in coming to perfection,this civility infuriated Monsieur de Beaufort.

  At last his patience was exhausted. He assembled his keepers, andnotwithstanding his well-known difficulty of utterance, addressed themas follows:

  "Gentlemen! will you permit a grandson of Henry IV. to be overwhelmedwith insults and ignominy?

  "Odds fish! as my grandfather used to say, I once reigned in Paris! doyou know that? I had the king and Monsieur the whole of one day in mycare. The queen at that time liked me and called me the most honest manin the kingdom. Gentlemen and citizens, set me free; I shall go to theLouvre and strangle Mazarin. You shall be my body-guard. I will make youall captains, with good pensions! Odds fish! On! march forward!"

  But eloquent as he might be, the eloquence of the grandson of Henry IV.did not touch those hearts of stone; not one man stirred, so Monsieur deBeaufort was obliged to be satisfied with calling them all kinds ofrascals underneath the sun.

  Sometimes, when Monsieur de Chavigny paid him a visit, the duke used toask him what he should think if he saw an army of Parisians, all fullyarmed, appear at Vincennes to deliver him from prison.

  "My lord," answered De Chavigny, with a low bow, "I have on the rampartstwenty pieces of artillery and in my casemates thirty thousand guns. Ishould bombard the troops till not one grain of gunpowder wasunexploded."

  "Yes, but after you had fired off your thirty thousand guns they wouldtake the donjon; the donjon being taken, I should be obliged to let themhang you--at which I should be most unhappy, certainly."

  And in his turn the duke bowed low to Monsieur de Chavigny.

  "For myself, on the other hand, my lord," returned the governor, "whenthe first rebel should pass the threshold of my postern doors I shouldbe obliged to kill you with my own hand, since you were confidedpeculiarly to my care and as I am obliged to give you up, dead oralive."

  And once more he bowed low before his highness.

  These bitter-sweet pleasantries lasted ten minutes, sometimes longer,but always finished thus:

  Monsieur de Chavigny, turning toward the door, used to call out:"Halloo! La Ramee!"

  La Ramee came into the room.

  "La Ramee, I recommend Monsieur le Duc to you, particularly; treat himas a man of his rank and family ought to be treated; that is, neverleave him alone an instant."

  La Ramee became, therefore, the duke's dinner guest by compulsion--aneternal keeper, the shadow of his person; but La Ramee--gay, frank,convivial, fond of play, a great hand at tennis, had one defect in theduke's eyes--his incorruptibility.

  Now, although La Ramee appreciated, as of a certain value, the honor ofbeing shut up with a prisoner of so great importance, still the pleasureof living in intimacy with the grandson of Henry IV. hardly compensatedfor the loss of that which he had experienced in going from time to timeto visit his family.

  One may be a jailer or a keeper and at the same time a good father andhusband. La Ramee adored his wife and children, whom now he could onlycatch a glimpse of from the top of the wall, when in order to please himthey used to walk on the opposite side of the moat. 'Twas too brief anenjoyment, and La Ramee felt that the gayety of heart he had regarded asthe cause of health (of which it was perhaps rather the result) wouldnot long survive such a mode of life.

  He accepted, therefore, with delight, an offer made to him by his friendthe steward of the Duc de Grammont, to give him a substitute; he alsospoke of it to Monsieur de Chavigny, who promised that he would notoppose it in any way--that is, if he approved of the person proposed.

  We consider it useless to draw a physical or moral portrait of Grimaud;if, as we hope, our readers have not wholly forgotten the first part ofthis work, they must have preserved a clear idea of that estimableindividual, who is wholly unchanged, except that he is twenty yearsolder, an advance in life that has made him only more silent; although,since the change that had been working in himself, Athos had givenGrimaud permission to speak.

  But Grimaud had for twelve or fifteen years preserved habitual silence,and a habit of fifteen or twenty years' duration becomes second nature.