Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction; France -- History -- Louis XIII, 1610-1643 -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Swordsmen -- Fiction
“Without doubt. And you will tell him I will publish the report of
Bois-Robert and the Marquis de Beautru, upon the interview which the
duke had at the residence of Madame the Constable with the queen on the
evening Madame the Constable gave a masquerade. You will tell him, in
order that he may not doubt, that he came there in the costume of the
Great Mogul, which the Chevalier de Guise was to have worn, and that he
purchased this exchange for the sum of three thousand pistoles.”
“Well, monseigneur?”
“All the details of his coming into and going out of the palace—on the
night when he introduced himself in the character of an Italian fortune
teller—you will tell him, that he may not doubt the correctness of my
information; that he had under his cloak a large white robe dotted with
black tears, death’s heads, and crossbones—for in case of a surprise,
he was to pass for the phantom of the White Lady who, as all the world
knows, appears at the Louvre every time any great event is impending.”
“Is that all, monseigneur?”
“Tell him also that I am acquainted with all the details of the
adventure at Amiens; that I will have a little romance made of it,
wittily turned, with a plan of the garden and portraits of the
principal actors in that nocturnal romance.”
“I will tell him that.”
“Tell him further that I hold Montague in my power; that Montague is in
the Bastille; that no letters were found upon him, it is true, but that
torture may make him tell much of what he knows, and even what he does
not know.”
“Exactly.”
“Then add that his Grace has, in the precipitation with which he quit
the Isle of Ré, forgotten and left behind him in his lodging a certain
letter from Madame de Chevreuse which singularly compromises the queen,
inasmuch as it proves not only that her Majesty can love the enemies of
the king but that she can conspire with the enemies of France. You
recollect perfectly all I have told you, do you not?”
“Your Eminence will judge: the ball of Madame the Constable; the night
at the Louvre; the evening at Amiens; the arrest of Montague; the
letter of Madame de Chevreuse.”
“That’s it,” said the cardinal, “that’s it. You have an excellent
memory, Milady.”
“But,” resumed she to whom the cardinal addressed this flattering
compliment, “if, in spite of all these reasons, the duke does not give
way and continues to menace France?”
“The duke is in love to madness, or rather to folly,” replied
Richelieu, with great bitterness. “Like the ancient paladins, he has
only undertaken this war to obtain a look from his lady love. If he
becomes certain that this war will cost the honor, and perhaps the
liberty, of the lady of his thoughts, as he says, I will answer for it
he will look twice.”
“And yet,” said Milady, with a persistence that proved she wished to
see clearly to the end of the mission with which she was about to be
charged, “if he persists?”
“If he persists?” said the cardinal. “That is not probable.”
“It is possible,” said Milady.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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