Twenty Years After

“But you, Guitant, are not a courtier. You are a brave soldier, one of the few remaining veterans of the days of Henry IV. Alas! how few to-day exist!”

“Plague on’t, my lord, have you brought me here to get my horoscope out of me?”

“No; I only brought you here to ask you,” returned Mazarin, smiling, “if you have taken any particular notice of our lieutenant of musketeers?”

“Monsieur d’Artagnan? I have had no occasion to notice him particularly; he’s an old acquaintance. He’s a Gascon. De Treville knows him and esteems him very highly, and De Treville, as you know, is one of the queen’s greatest friends. As a soldier the man ranks well; he did his whole duty and even more, at the siege of Rochelle-as at Suze and Perpignan.”

“But you know, Guitant, we poor ministers often want men with other qualities besides courage; we want men of talent. Pray, was not Monsieur d’Artagnan, in the time of the cardinal, mixed up in some intrigue from which he came out, according to report, quite cleverly?”

“My lord, as to the report you allude to”-Guitant perceived that the cardinal wished to make him speak out-“I know nothing but what the public knows. I never meddle in intrigues, and if I occasionally become a confidant of the intrigues of others I am sure your eminence will approve of my keeping them secret.”

Mazarin shook his head.

“Ah!” he said; “some ministers are fortunate and find out all that they wish to know.”

“My lord,” replied Guitant, “such ministers do not weigh men in the same balance; they get their information on war from warriors; on intrigues, from intriguers. Consult some politician of the period of which you speak, and if you pay well for it you will certainly get to know all you want.”

“Eh, pardieu!” said Mazarin, with a grimace which he always made when spoken to about money. “They will be paid, if there is no way of getting out of it.”

“Does my lord seriously wish me to name any one who was mixed up in the cabals of that day?”

“By Bacchus!” rejoined Mazarin, impatiently, “it’s about an hour since I asked you for that very thing, wooden-head that you are.”

“There is one man for whom I can answer, if he will speak out.”

“That’s my concern; I will make him speak.”

“Ah, my lord, ‘tis not easy to make people say what they don’t wish to let out.”

“Pooh! with patience one must succeed. Well, this man. Who is he?”

“The Comte de Rochefort.”

“The Comte de Rochefort!”

“Unfortunately he has disappeared these four or five years and I don’t know where he is.”

“I know, Guitant,” said Mazarin.

“Well, then, how is it that your eminence complained just now of want of information?”

“You think,” resumed Mazarin, “that Rochefort-”

“He was Cardinal Richelieu’s creature, my lord. I warn you, however, his services will cost you something. The cardinal was lavish to his underlings.”

“Yes, yes, Guitant,” said Mazarin; “Richelieu was a great man, a very great man, but he had that defect. Thanks, Guitant; I shall benefit by your advice this very evening.”

Here they separated and bidding adieu to Guitant in the court of the Palais Royal, Mazarin approached an officer who was walking up and down within that inclosure.

It was D’Artagnan, who was waiting for him.

“Come hither,” said Mazarin in his softest voice; “I have an order to give you.”

D’Artagnan bent low and following the cardinal up the secret staircase, soon found himself in the study whence they had first set out.

The cardinal seated himself before his bureau and taking a sheet of paper wrote some lines upon it, whilst D’Artagnan stood imperturbable, without showing either impatience or curiosity. He was like a soldierly automaton, or rather, like a magnificent marionette.

The cardinal folded and sealed his letter.

“Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he said, “you are to take this dispatch to the Bastile and bring back here the person it concerns. You must take a carriage and an escort, and guard the prisoner with the greatest care.”

D’Artagnan took the letter, touched his hat with his hand, turned round upon his heel like a drill-sergeant, and a moment afterward was heard, in his dry and monotonous tone, commanding “Four men and an escort, a carriage and a horse.” Five minutes afterward the wheels of the carriage and the horses’ shoes were heard resounding on the pavement of the courtyard.

3. Dead Animosities

D’Artagnan arrived at the Bastile just as it was striking half-past eight. His visit was announced to the governor, who, on hearing that he came from the cardinal, went to meet him and received him at the top of the great flight of steps outside the door. The governor of the Bastile was Monsieur du Tremblay, the brother of the famous Capuchin, Joseph, that fearful favorite of Richelieu’s, who went by the name of the Gray Cardinal.

During the period that the Duc de Bassompierre passed in the Bastile-where he remained for twelve long years-when his companions, in their dreams of liberty, said to each other: “As for me, I shall go out of the prison at such a time,” and another, at such and such a time, the duke used to answer, “As for me, gentlemen, I shall leave only when Monsieur du Tremblay leaves;” meaning that at the death of the cardinal Du Tremblay would certainly lose his place at the Bastile and De Bassompierre regain his at court.

His prediction was nearly fulfilled, but in a very different way from that which De Bassompierre supposed; for after the death of Richelieu everything went on, contrary to expectation, in the same way as before; and Bassompierre had little chance of leaving his prison.

Monsieur du Tremblay received D’Artagnan with extreme politeness and invited him to sit down with him to supper, of which he was himself about to partake.

“I should be delighted to do so,” was the reply; “but if I am not mistaken, the words ‘In haste,’ are written on the envelope of the letter which I brought.”

“You are right,” said Du Tremblay. “Halloo, major! tell them to order Number 25 to come downstairs.”

The unhappy wretch who entered the Bastile ceased, as he crossed the threshold, to be a man-he became a number.

D’Artagnan shuddered at the noise of the keys; he remained on horseback, feeling no inclination to dismount, and sat looking at the bars, at the buttressed windows and the immense walls he had hitherto only seen from the other side of the moat, but by which he had for twenty years been awe-struck.

A bell resounded.

“I must leave you,” said Du Tremblay; “I am sent for to sign the release of a prisoner. I shall be happy to meet you again, sir.”

“May the devil annihilate me if I return thy wish!” murmured D’Artagnan, smiling as he pronounced the imprecation; “I declare I feel quite ill after only being five minutes in the courtyard. Go to! go to! I would rather die on straw than hoard up a thousand a year by being governor of the Bastile.”

He had scarcely finished this soliloquy before the prisoner arrived. On seeing him D’Artagnan could hardly suppress an exclamation of surprise. The prisoner got into the carriage without seeming to recognize the musketeer.

“Gentlemen,” thus D’Artagnan addressed the four musketeers, “I am ordered to exercise the greatest possible care in guarding the prisoner, and since there are no locks to the carriage, I shall sit beside him. Monsieur de Lillebonne, lead my horse by the bridle, if you please.” As he spoke he dismounted, gave the bridle of his horse to the musketeer and placing himself by the side of the prisoner said, in a voice perfectly composed, “To the Palais Royal, at full trot.”

The carriage drove on and D’Artagnan, availing himself of the darkness in the archway under which they were passing, threw himself into the arms of the prisoner.

“Rochefort!” he exclaimed; “you! is it you, indeed? I am not mistaken?”

“D’Artagnan!” cried Rochefort.

“Ah! my poor friend!” resumed D’Artagnan, “not having seen you for four or five years I concluded you were dead.”