Essential Novelists - Alexandre Dumas. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.
and come to me first.”
“On the contrary, sire, set the example. You have committed the first wrong, since it was you who suspected the queen.”
“What! I make the first advances?” said the king. “Never!”
“Sire, I entreat you to do so.”
“Besides, in what manner can I make advances first?”
“By doing a thing which you know will be agreeable to her.”
“What is that?”
“Give a ball; you know how much the queen loves dancing. I will answer for it, her resentment will not hold out against such an attention.”
“Monsieur Cardinal, you know that I do not like worldly pleasures.”
“The queen will only be the more grateful to you, as she knows your antipathy for that amusement; besides, it will be an opportunity for her to wear those beautiful diamonds which you gave her recently on her birthday and with which she has since had no occasion to adorn herself.”
“We shall see, Monsieur Cardinal, we shall see,” said the king, who, in his joy at finding the queen guilty of a crime which he cared little about, and innocent of a fault of which he had great dread, was ready to make up all differences with her, “we shall see, but upon my honor, you are too indulgent toward her.”
“Sire,” said the cardinal, “leave severity to your ministers. Clemency is a royal virtue; employ it, and you will find that you derive advantage therein.”
Thereupon the cardinal, hearing the clock strike eleven, bowed low, asking permission of the king to retire, and supplicating him to come to a good understanding with the queen.
Anne of Austria, who, in consequence of the seizure of her letter, expected reproaches, was much astonished the next day to see the king make some attempts at reconciliation with her. Her first movement was repellent. Her womanly pride and her queenly dignity had both been so cruelly offended that she could not come round at the first advance; but, overpersuaded by the advice of her women, she at last had the appearance of beginning to forget. The king took advantage of this favorable moment to tell her that he had the intention of shortly giving a fete.
A fete was so rare a thing for poor Anne of Austria that at this announcement, as the cardinal had predicted, the last trace of her resentment disappeared, if not from her heart, at least from her countenance. She asked upon what day this fete would take place, but the king replied that he must consult the cardinal upon that head.
Indeed, every day the king asked the cardinal when this fete should take place; and every day the cardinal, under some pretext, deferred fixing it. Ten days passed away thus.
On the eighth day after the scene we have described, the cardinal received a letter with the London stamp which only contained these lines: “I have them; but I am unable to leave London for want of money. Send me five hundred pistoles, and four or five days after I have received them I shall be in Paris.”
On the same day the cardinal received this letter the king put his customary question to him.
Richelieu counted on his fingers, and said to himself, “She will arrive, she says, four or five days after having received the money. It will require four or five days for the transmission of the money, four or five days for her to return; that makes ten days. Now, allowing for contrary winds, accidents, and a woman’s weakness, there are twelve days.”
“Well, Monsieur Duke,” said the king, “have you made your calculations?”
“Yes, sire. Today is the twentieth of September. The aldermen of the city give a fete on the third of October. That will fall in wonderfully well; you will not appear to have gone out of your way to please the queen.”
Then the cardinal added, “A PROPOS, sire, do not forget to tell her Majesty the evening before the fete that you should like to see how her diamond studs become her.”
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IT WAS THE SECOND TIME the cardinal had mentioned these diamond studs to the king. Louis XIII was struck with this insistence, and began to fancy that this recommendation concealed some mystery.
More than once the king had been humiliated by the cardinal, whose police, without having yet attained the perfection of the modern police, were excellent, being better informed than himself, even upon what was going on in his own household. He hoped, then, in a conversation with Anne of Austria, to obtain some information from that conversation, and afterward to come upon his Eminence with some secret which the cardinal either knew or did not know, but which, in either case, would raise him infinitely in the eyes of his minister.
He went then to the queen, and according to custom accosted her with fresh menaces against those who surrounded her. Anne of Austria lowered her head, allowed the torrent to flow on without replying, hoping that it would cease of itself; but this was not what Louis XIII meant. Louis XIII wanted a discussion from which some light or other might break, convinced as he was that the cardinal had some afterthought and was preparing for him one of those terrible surprises which his Eminence was so skillful in getting up. He arrived at this end by his persistence in accusation.
“But,” cried Anne of Austria, tired of these vague attacks, “but, sire, you do not tell me all that you have in your heart. What have I done, then? Let me know what crime I have committed. It is impossible that your Majesty can make all this ado about a letter written to my brother.”
The king, attacked in a manner so direct, did not know what to answer; and he thought that this was the moment for expressing the desire which he was not going to have made until the evening before the fete.
“Madame,” said he, with dignity, “there will shortly be a ball at the Hotel de Ville. I wish, in order to honor our worthy aldermen, you should appear in ceremonial costume, and above all, ornamented with the diamond studs which I gave you on your birthday. That is my answer.”
The answer was terrible. Anne of Austria believed that Louis XIII knew all, and that the cardinal had persuaded him to employ this long dissimulation of seven or eight days, which, likewise, was characteristic. She became excessively pale, leaned her beautiful hand upon a CONSOLE, which hand appeared then like one of wax, and looking at the king with terror in her eyes, she was unable to reply by a single syllable.
“You hear, madame,” said the king, who enjoyed the embarrassment to its full extent, but without guessing the cause. “You hear, madame?”
“Yes, sire, I hear,” stammered the queen.
“You will appear at this ball?”
“Yes.”
“With those studs?”
“Yes.”
The queen’s paleness, if possible, increased; the king perceived it, and enjoyed it with that cold cruelty which was one of the worst sides of his character.
“Then that is agreed,” said the king, “and that is all I had to say to you.”
“But on what day will this ball take place?” asked Anne of Austria.
Louis XIII felt instinctively that he ought not to reply to this question, the queen having put it in an almost dying voice.
“Oh, very shortly, madame,” said he; “but I do not precisely recollect the date of the day. I will ask the cardinal.”
“It was the cardinal, then, who informed you of this fete?”
“Yes, madame,” replied the astonished king; “but