KING LOUIS XIV.
The king was seated in his cabinet, with his back turned toward the door
of entrance. In front of him was a mirror, in which, while turning over
his papers, he could see with a glance those who came in. He did not
take any notice of the entrance of D'Artagnan, but laid over his letters
and plans the large silk cloth which he made use of to conceal his
secrets from the importunate. D'Artagnan understood his play, and kept
in the background; so that, at the end of a minute, the king, who heard
nothing, and saw nothing but with the corner of his eye, was obliged to
cry, "Is not M. D'Artagnan there?"
"I am here, sire," replied the musketeer, advancing.
"Well, monsieur," said the king, fixing his clear eye upon D'Artagnan,
"what have you to say to me?"
"I, sire!" replied the latter, who watched the first blow of his
adversary to make a good retort; "I have nothing to say to your majesty,
unless it be that you have caused me to be arrested, and here I am."
The king was going to reply that he had not had D'Artagnan arrested, but
the sentence appeared too much like an excuse, and he was silent.
D'Artagnan likewise preserved an obstinate silence.
"Monsieur," at length resumed the king, "what did I charge you to go and
do at Belle-Isle? Tell me, if you please."
The king, while speaking these words, looked fixedly at his captain.
Here D'Artagnan was too fortunate; the king seemed to place the game in
his hands.
"I believe," replied he, "that your majesty does me the honor to ask
what I went to Belle-Isle to do?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Well! sire, I know nothing about it; it is not of me that question
should be asked, but of that infinite number of officers of all kinds to
whom have been given an infinite number of orders of all kinds, while to
me, head of the expedition, nothing precise was ordered."
The king was wounded; he showed it by his reply. "Monsieur," said he,
"orders have only been given to such as were judged faithful."
"And, therefore, I have been astonished, sire," retorted the musketeer,
"that a captain like myself, who rank with a maréchal of France, should
have found himself under the orders of five or six lieutenants or
majors, good to make spies of, possibly, but not at all fit to conduct
warlike expeditions. It was upon this subject I came to demand an
explanation of your majesty, when I found the door closed against me,
which, the last insult offered to a brave man, has led me to quit your
majesty's service."
"Monsieur," replied the king, "you still believe you are living in an
age when kings were, as you complain of having been, under the orders
and at the discretion of their inferiors. You appear too much to forget
that a king owes an account of his actions to none but God."
"I forget nothing at all, sire," said the musketeer, wounded by this
lesson. "Besides, I do not see in what an honest man, when he asks of
his king how he has ill served him, offends him."
"You have ill served me, monsieur, by taking part with my enemies
against me."
"Who are your enemies, sire?"
"The men I sent you to fight with."
"Two men the enemies of the whole of your majesty's army! That is
incredible."
"You have no power to judge of my will."
"But I have to judge of my own friendships, sire."
"He who serves his friends does not serve his master."
"I have so well understood that, sire, that I have respectfully offered
your majesty my resignation."
"And I have accepted it, monsieur," said the king. "Before being
separated from you I was willing to prove to you that I know how to keep
my word."
"Your majesty has kept more than your word, for your majesty has had me
arrested," said D'Artagnan, with his cold bantering air; "you did not
promise me that, sire."
The king would not condescend to perceive the pleasantry, and continued
seriously, "You see, monsieur," said he, "to what your disobedience has
forced me."
"My disobedience!" cried D'Artagnan, red with anger.
"That is the mildest name I can find," pursued the king. "My idea was to
take and punish rebels; was I bound to inquire whether these rebels were
your friends or not?"
"But I was," replied D'Artagnan. "It was a cruelty on your majesty's
part to send me to take my friends and lead them to your gibbets."
"It was a trial I had to make, monsieur, of pretended servants, who eat
my bread, and ought to defend my person. The trial has succeeded ill, M.
d'Artagnan."
"For one bad servant your majesty loses," said the musketeer, with
bitterness, "there are ten who have, on that same day, gone through
their ordeal. Listen to me, sire; I am not accustomed to that service.
Mine is a rebel sword when I am required to do ill. It was ill to send
me in pursuit of two men whose lives M. Fouquet, your majesty's
preserver, had implored you to save. Still further, these men were my
friends. They did not attack your majesty, they succumbed to a blind
anger. Besides, why were they not allowed to escape? What crime had they
committed? I admit that you may contest with me the right of judging of
their conduct. But why suspect me before the action? Why surround me
with spies? Why disgrace me before the army? Why me, in whom you have to
this time showed the most entire confidence--me who for thirty years
have been attached to your person, and have given you a thousand proofs
of devotedness--for it must be said, now that I am accused--why reduce
me to see three thousand of the king's soldiers march in battle against
two men?"
"One would say you have forgotten what these men have done to me!" said
the king, in a hollow voice, "and that it was no merit of theirs, that I
was not lost."
"Sire, one would say that you forget I was there."
"Enough, M. d'Artagnan, enough of these dominating interests which arise
to keep the sun from my interests. I am founding a state in which there
shall be but one master, as I promised you formerly; the moment is come
for keeping my promise. You wish to be, according to your tastes or your
friendships, free to destroy my plans and save my enemies? I will thwart
you or will leave you--seek a more compliant master. I know full well
that another king would not conduct himself as I do, and would allow
himself to be dominated over by you, at the risk of sending you some day
to keep company with M. Fouquet and the others; but I have a good
memory, and for me, services are sacred titles to gratitude, to
impunity. You shall only have this lesson, Monsieur d'Artagnan, as the
punishment of your want of discipline, and I will not imitate my
predecessors in their anger, not having imitated them in their favor.
And, then, other reasons make me act mildly toward you; in the first
place, because you are a man of sense, a man of great sense, a man of
heart, and that you will be a good servant for him who shall have
mastered you; secondly, because you will cease to have any motives for
insubordination. Your friends are destroyed or ruined by me. These
supports upon which your capricious mind instinctively relied I have
made to disappear. At this moment, my soldiers have taken or killed the
rebels of Belle-Isle."
D'Artagnan became pale. "Taken or killed!" cried he. "Oh! sire, if you
thought what you tell me, if you were sure you were telling me the
truth, I should forget all that is just, all that is magnanimous in your
words, to call you a barbarous king, and an unnatural man. But I pardon
you these words," said he, smiling with pride; "I pardon them to a young
prince who does not know, who cannot comprehend, what such men as M.
d'Herblay, M. de Valon, and myself are. Taken or killed! Ah! ah! sire!
tell me, if the news is true, how much it has cost you, in men and
money. We will then reckon if the game has been worth the stakes."
As he spoke thus, the king went up to him in great anger, and said,
"Monsieur d'Artagnan, your replies are those of a rebel! Tell me, if you
please, who is king of France? Do you know any other?"
"Sire," replied the captain of the musketeers, coldly, "I very well
remember that one morning at Vaux you addressed that question to many
people who did not answer to it, while I, on my part, did answer to it.
If I recognized my king on that day, when the thing was not easy, I
think it would be useless to ask it of me now, when your majesty is
alone with me."
At these words Louis cast down his eyes. It appeared to him that the
shade of the unfortunate Philippe passed between D'Artagnan and himself,
to evoke the remembrance of that terrible adventure. Almost at the same
moment an officer entered and placed a dispatch in the hands of the
king, who, in his turn, changed color while reading it.
"Monsieur," said he, "what I learn here you would know later; it is
better I should tell you, and that you should learn it from the mouth of
your king. A battle has taken place at Belle-Isle."
"Oh! ah!" said D'Artagnan, with a calm air, though his heart beat enough
to break through his chest. "Well, sire?"
"Well, monsieur--and I have lost a hundred and ten men."
A beam of joy and pride shone in the eyes of D'Artagnan. "And the
rebels?" said he.
"The rebels have fled," said the king.
D'Artagnan could not restrain a cry of triumph. "Only," added the king,
"I have a fleet which closely blockades Belle-Isle, and I am certain no
bark can escape."
"So that," said the musketeer, brought back to his dismal ideas, "if
these two gentlemen are taken--"
"They will be hanged," said the king, quietly.
"And do they know it?" replied D'Artagnan, repressing his trembling.
"They know it, because you must have told them yourself; and all the
country knows it."
"Then, sire, they will never be taken alive, I will answer for that."
"Ah!" said the king, negligently, and taking up his letter again. "Very
well, they will be dead then, Monsieur d'Artagnan, and that will come to
the same thing, since I should only take them to have them hanged."
D'Artagnan wiped the sweat which flowed from his brow.
"I have told you," pursued Louis XIV., "that I would one day be an
affectionate, generous and constant master. You are now the only man of
former times worthy of my anger or my friendship. I will not be sparing
of either to you, according to your conduct. Could you serve a king,
Monsieur d'Artagnan, who should have a hundred kings his equals in the
kingdom? Could I, tell me, do, with such weakness, the great things I
meditate? Have you ever seen an artist effect solid works with a
rebellious instrument? Far from us, monsieur, those old leavens of
feudal abuses! The Fronde, which threatened to ruin the monarchy, has
emancipated it. I am master at home, Captain d'Artagnan, and I shall
have servants who, wanting, perhaps, your genius, will carry devotedness
and obedience up to heroism. Of what consequence, I ask you, of what
consequence is it that God has given no genius to arms and legs? It is
to the head he has given it, and the head, you know, all the rest obey.
I am the head."
D'Artagnan started. Louis XIV. continued as if he had seen nothing,
although this emotion had not at all escaped him. "Now, let us conclude
between us two that bargain which I promised to make with you one day
when you found me very little at Blois. Do me justice, monsieur, when
you think that I do not make any one pay for the tears of shame I then
shed. Look around you; lofty heads have bowed; bow yours, or choose the
exile that will best suit you. Perhaps, when reflecting upon it, you
will find that this king is a generous heart, who reckons sufficiently
upon your loyalty to allow you to leave him dissatisfied, when you
possess a great state secret. You are a brave man; I knew you to be so.
Why have you judged me before term? Judge me from this day forward,
D'Artagnan, and be as severe as you please."
D'Artagnan remained bewildered, mute, undecided for the first time in
his life. He had just found an adversary worthy of him. This was no
longer trick, it was calculation; it was no longer violence, it was
strength; it was no longer passion, it was will; it was no longer
boasting, it was council. This young man who had brought down Fouquet,
and could do without D'Artagnan, deranged all the somewhat headstrong
calculations of the musketeer.
"Come, let us see what stops you?" said the king, kindly. "You have
given in your resignation; shall I refuse to accept it? I admit that it
may be hard for an old captain to recover his good humor."
"Oh!" replied D'Artagnan, in a melancholy tone, "that is not my most
serious care. I hesitate to take back my resignation because I am old in
comparison with you, and that I have habits difficult to abandon.
Henceforward, you must have courtiers who know how to amuse you--madmen
who will get themselves killed to carry out what you call your great
works. Great they will be, I feel--but, if by chance I should not think
them so? I have seen war, sire, I have seen peace; I have served
Richelieu and Mazarin; I have been scorched, with your father, at the
fire of Rochelle; riddled with thrusts like a sieve, having made a new
skin ten times, as serpents do. After affronts and injustices, I have a
command which was formerly something, because it gave the bearer the
right of speaking as he liked to his king. But your captain of the
musketeers will henceforward be an officer guarding the lower doors.
Truly, sire, if that is to be the employment from this time, seize the
opportunity of our being on good terms, to take it from me. Do not
imagine that I bear malice; no, you have tamed me, as you say; but it
must be confessed that in taming me you have lessened me; by bowing me
you have convicted me of weakness. If you knew how well it suits me to
carry my head high, and what a pitiful mien I shall have while
scenting the dust of your carpets! Oh! sire, I regret sincerely,
and you will regret as I do, those times when the king of France
saw in his vestibules all those insolent gentlemen, lean, always
swearing--cross-grained mastiffs, who could bite mortally in days of
battle. Those men were the best of courtiers for the hand which fed
them--they would lick it; but for the hand that struck them, oh! the
bite that followed! A little gold on the lace of their cloaks, a slender
stomach in their _hauts-de-chausses_, a little sprinkling of gray in
their dry hair, and you will behold the handsome dukes and peers, the
haughty _maréchaux_ of France. But why should I tell you all this? The
king is my master; he wills that I should make verses, he wills that I
should polish the mosaics of his antechambers with satin shoes.
Mordioux! that is difficult, but I have got over greater difficulties
than that. I will do it. Why should I do it? Because I love money?--I
have enough. Because I am ambitious?--my career is bounded. Because I
love the court? No. I will remain because I have been accustomed for
thirty years to go and take the orderly word of the king, and to have
said to me, 'Good-evening, D'Artagnan,' with a smile I did not beg for!
That smile I will beg for! Are you content, sire?" And D'Artagnan bowed
his silvered head, upon which the smiling king placed his white hand
with pride.
"Thanks, my old servant, my faithful friend," said he. "As, reckoning
from this day, I have no longer any enemies in France, it remains with
me to send you to a foreign field to gather your _maréchal's_ bâton.
Depend upon me for finding you an opportunity. In the meanwhile, eat of
my best bread and sleep tranquilly."
"That is all kind and well!" said D'Artagnan, much agitated. "But those
poor men at Belle-Isle? One of them, in particular--so good! so brave!
so true!"
"Do you ask their pardon of me?"
"Upon my knees, sire!"
"Well! then, go and take it to them, if it be still time. But do you
answer for them?"
"With my life, sire!"
"Go, then. To-morrow I set out for Paris. Return by that time, for I do
not wish you to leave me in future."
"Be assured of that, sire," said D'Artagnan, kissing the royal hand.
And, with a heart swelling with joy, he rushed out of the castle on his
way to Belle-Isle.