Ten Years Later

“Ah! ah! he is here?” said D’Artagnan.

“He is on guard to-day, at the Louvre, with the company of the gentlemen of monsieur le prince.”

The king had scarcely ceased speaking, when Raoul presented himself, and, on seeing D’Artagnan, smiled on him with that charming smile which is only found upon the lips of youth.

“Come, come,” said D’Artagnan, familiarly, to Raoul, “the king will allow you to embrace me; only tell his majesty you thank him.”

Raoul bowed so gracefully, that Louis, to whom all superior qualities were pleasing when they did not overshadow his own, admired his beauty, strength, and modesty.

“Monsieur,” said the king, addressing Raoul, “I have asked monsieur le prince to be kind enough to give you up to me; I have received his reply, and you belong to me from this morning. Monsieur le prince was a good master, but I hope you will not lose by the exchange.”

“Yes, yes, Raoul, be satisfied; the king has some good in him,” said D’Artagnan, who had fathomed the character of Louis, and who played with his self-love, within certain limits; always observing, be it understood, the proprieties and flattering, even when he appeared to be bantering.

“Sire,” said Bragelonne, with voice soft and musical, and with the natural and easy elocution he inherited from his father; “Sire, it is not from to-day that I belong to your majesty.”

“Oh! no, I know,” said the king, “you mean your enterprise of the Greve. That day, you were truly mine, monsieur.”

“Sire, it is not of that day I would speak; it would not become me to refer to so paltry a service in the presence of such a man as M. d’Artagnan. I would speak of a circumstance which created an epoch in my life, and which consecrated me, from the age of sixteen, to the devoted service of your majesty.”

“Ah! ah!” said the king, “what was that circumstance? Tell me, monsieur.”

“This is it, sire. – When I was setting out on my first campaign, that is to say, to join the army of monsieur le prince, M. le Comte de la Fere came to conduct me as far as Saint-Denis, where the remains of King Louis XIII. wait, upon the lowest steps of the funeral basilique, a successor, whom God will not send him, I hope, for many years. Then he made me swear upon the ashes of our masters, to serve royalty, represented by you – incarnate in you, sire – to serve it in word, in thought, and in action. I swore, and God and the dead were witnesses to my oath. During ten years, sire, I have not so often as I desired had occasion to keep it. I am a soldier of your majesty, and nothing else; and, on calling me nearer to you, I do not change my master, I only change my garrison.”

Raoul was silent and bowed. Louis still listened after he had done speaking.

“Mordioux!” cried D’Artagnan, “that was well spoken! was it not, your majesty? A good race! a noble race!”

“Yes,” murmured the king, without, however daring to manifest his emotion, for it had no other cause than contact with a nature intrinsically noble. “Yes, monsieur, you say truly: – wherever you were, you were the king’s. But in changing your garrison, believe me you will find an advancement of which you are worthy.”

Raoul saw that this ended what the king had to say to him. And with the perfect tact which characterized his refined nature, he bowed and retired.

“Is there anything else, monsieur, of which you have to inform me?” said the king, when he found himself again alone with D’Artagnan.

“Yes, sire, and I kept that news for the last, for it is sad, and will clothe European royalty in mourning.”

“What do you tell me?”

“Sire, in passing through Blois, a word, a sad word, echoed from the palace, struck my ear.”

“In truth, you terrify me, M. d’Artagnan.”

“Sire, this word was pronounced to me by a piqueur, who wore crape on his arm.”

“My uncle, Gaston of Orleans, perhaps.”

“Sire, he has rendered his last sigh.”

“And I was not warned of it!” cried the king, whose royal susceptibility saw an insult in the absence of this intelligence.

“Oh! do not be angry, sire,” said D’Artagnan; “neither the couriers of Paris, nor the couriers of the whole world, can travel with your servant; the courier from Blois will not be here these two hours, and he rides well, I assure you, seeing that I only passed him on the thither side of Orleans.”

“My uncle Gaston,” murmured Louis, pressing his hand to his brow, and comprising in those three words all that his memory recalled of that symbol of opposing sentiments.

“Eh! yes, sire, it is thus,” said D’Artagnan, philosophically replying to the royal thought, “it is thus the past flies away.”

“That is true, monsieur, that is true; but there remains for us, thank God! the future; and we will try to make it not too dark.”

“I feel confidence in your majesty on that head,” said D’Artagnan, bowing, “and now – ”

“You are right, monsieur; I had forgotten the hundred leagues you have just ridden. Go, monsieur, take care of one of the best of soldiers, and when you have reposed a little, come and place yourself at my disposal.”

“Sire, absent or present, I am always yours.”

D’Artagnan bowed and retired. Then, as if he had only come from Fontainebleau, he quickly traversed the Louvre to rejoin Bragelonne.

Chapter II. A Lover and His Mistress

Whilst the wax-lights were burning in the castle of Blois, around the inanimate body of Gaston of Orleans, that last representative of the past; whilst the bourgeois of the city were thinking out his epitaph, which was far from being a panegyric; whilst madame the dowager, no longer remembering that in her young days she had loved that senseless corpse to such a degree as to fly the paternal palace for his sake, was making, within twenty paces of the funeral apartment, her little calculations of interest and her little sacrifices of pride; other interests and other prides were in agitation in all the parts of the castle into which a living soul could penetrate. Neither the lugubrious sounds of the bells, nor the voices of the chanters, nor the splendor of the wax-lights through the windows, nor the preparations for the funeral, had power to divert the attention of two persons, placed at a window of the interior court – a window that we are acquainted with, and which lighted a chamber forming part of what were called the little apartments. For the rest, a joyous beam of the sun, for the sun appeared to care little for the loss France had just suffered; a sunbeam, we say, descended upon them, drawing perfumes from the neighboring flowers, and animating the walls themselves. These two persons, so occupied, not by the death of the duke, but by the conversation which was the consequence of that death, were a young woman and a young man. The latter personage, a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, with a mien sometimes lively and sometimes dull, making good use of two large eyes, shaded with long eye-lashes, was short of stature and swart of skin; he smiled with an enormous, but well-furnished mouth, and his pointed chin, which appeared to enjoy a mobility nature does not ordinarily grant to that portion of the countenance, leant from time to time very lovingly towards his interlocutrix, who, we must say, did not always draw back so rapidly as strict propriety had a right to require. The young girl – we know her, for we have already seen her, at that very same window, by the light of that same sun – the young girl presented a singular mixture of shyness and reflection; she was charming when she laughed, beautiful when she became serious; but, let us hasten to say, she was more frequently charming than beautiful. These two appeared to have attained the culminating point of a discussion – half-bantering, half-serious.

“Now, Monsieur Malicorne,” said the young girl, “does it, at length, please you that we should talk reasonably?”

“You believe that that is very easy, Mademoiselle Aure,” replied the young man. “To do what we like, when we can only do what we are able – ”

“Good! there he is bewildered in his phrases.”

“Who, I?”

“Yes, you; quit that lawyer’s logic, my dear.”

“Another impossibility. Clerk I am, Mademoiselle de Montalais.”

“Demoiselle I am, Monsieur Malicorne.”

“Alas, I know it well, and you overwhelm me by your rank; so I will say no more to you.”

“Well, no, I don’t overwhelm you; say what you have to tell me – say it, I insist upon it.”

“Well, I obey you.”

“That is truly fortunate.”

“Monsieur is dead.”

“Ah, peste! that’s news! And where do you come from, to be able to tell us that?”

“I come from Orleans, mademoiselle.”

“And is that all the news you bring?”