Essential Novelists - Alexandre Dumas. Alexandre Dumas

monsieur, an investigation of my papers—mine! Truly, this is an indignity!”

      “Be kind enough to pardon me, madame; but in this circumstance I am but the instrument which the king employs. Has not his Majesty just left you, and has he not himself asked you to prepare for this visit?”

      “Search, then, monsieur! I am a criminal, as it appears. Estafania, give up the keys of my drawers and my desks.”

      For form’s sake the chancellor paid a visit to the pieces of furniture named; but he well knew that it was not in a piece of furniture that the queen would place the important letter she had written that day.

      When the chancellor had opened and shut twenty times the drawers of the secretaries, it became necessary, whatever hesitation he might experience—it became necessary, I say, to come to the conclusion of the affair; that is to say, to search the queen herself. The chancellor advanced, therefore, toward Anne of Austria, and said with a very perplexed and embarrassed air, “And now it remains for me to make the principal examination.”

      “What is that?” asked the queen, who did not understand, or rather was not willing to understand.

      “His majesty is certain that a letter has been written by you during the day; he knows that it has not yet been sent to its address. This letter is not in your table nor in your secretary; and yet this letter must be somewhere.”

      “Would you dare to lift your hand to your queen?” said Anne of Austria, drawing herself up to her full height, and fixing her eyes upon the chancellor with an expression almost threatening.

      “I am a faithful subject of the king, madame, and all that his Majesty commands I shall do.”

      “Well, it is true!” said Anne of Austria; “and the spies of the cardinal have served him faithfully. I have written a letter today; that letter is not yet gone. The letter is here.” And the queen laid her beautiful hand on her bosom.

      “Then give me that letter, madame,” said the chancellor.

      “I will give it to none but the king, monsieur,” said Anne.

      “If the king had desired that the letter should be given to him, madame, he would have demanded it of you himself. But I repeat to you, I am charged with reclaiming it; and if you do not give it up—”

      “Well?”

      “He has, then, charged me to take it from you.”

      “How! What do you say?”

      “That my orders go far, madame; and that I am authorized to seek for the suspected paper, even on the person of your Majesty.”

      “What horror!” cried the queen.

      “Be kind enough, then, madame, to act more compliantly.”

      “The conduct is infamously violent! Do you know that, monsieur?”

      “The king commands it, madame; excuse me.”

      “I will not suffer it! No, no, I would rather die!” cried the queen, in whom the imperious blood of Spain and Austria began to rise.

      The chancellor made a profound reverence. Then, with the intention quite patent of not drawing back a foot from the accomplishment of the commission with which he was charged, and as the attendant of an executioner might have done in the chamber of torture, he approached Anne of Austria, from whose eyes at the same instant sprang tears of rage.

      The queen was, as we have said, of great beauty. The commission might well be called delicate; and the king had reached, in his jealousy of Buckingham, the point of not being jealous of anyone else.

      Without doubt the chancellor Seguier looked about at that moment for the rope of the famous bell; but not finding it he summoned his resolution, and stretched forth his hands toward the place where the queen had acknowledged the paper was to be found.

      Anne of Austria took one step backward, became so pale that it might be said she was dying, and leaning with her left hand upon a table behind her to keep herself from falling, she with her right hand drew the paper from her bosom and held it out to the keeper of the seals.

      “There, monsieur, there is that letter!” cried the queen, with a broken and trembling voice; “take it, and deliver me from your odious presence.”

      The chancellor, who, on his part, trembled with an emotion easily to be conceived, took the letter, bowed to the ground, and retired. The door was scarcely closed upon him, when the queen sank, half fainting, into the arms of her women.

      The chancellor carried the letter to the king without having read a single word of it. The king took it with a trembling hand, looked for the address, which was wanting, became very pale, opened it slowly, then seeing by the first words that it was addressed to the King of Spain, he read it rapidly.

      It was nothing but a plan of attack against the cardinal. The queen pressed her brother and the Emperor of Austria to appear to be wounded, as they really were, by the policy of Richelieu—the eternal object of which was the abasement of the house of Austria—to declare war against France, and as a condition of peace, to insist upon the dismissal of the cardinal; but as to love, there was not a single word about it in all the letter.

      The king, quite delighted, inquired if the cardinal was still at the Louvre; he was told that his Eminence awaited the orders of his Majesty in the business cabinet.

      The king went straight to him.

      “There, Duke,” said he, “you were right and I was wrong. The whole intrigue is political, and there is not the least question of love in this letter; but, on the other hand, there is abundant question of you.”

      The cardinal took the letter, and read it with the greatest attention; then, when he had arrived at the end of it, he read it a second time. “Well, your Majesty,” said he, “you see how far my enemies go; they menace you with two wars if you do not dismiss me. In your place, in truth, sire, I should yield to such powerful instance; and on my part, it would be a real happiness to withdraw from public affairs.”

      “What say you, Duke?”

      “I say, sire, that my health is sinking under these excessive struggles and these never-ending labors. I say that according to all probability I shall not be able to undergo the fatigues of the siege of La Rochelle, and that it would be far better that you should appoint there either Monsieur de Conde, Monsieur de Bassopierre, or some valiant gentleman whose business is war, and not me, who am a churchman, and who am constantly turned aside for my real vocation to look after matters for which I have no aptitude. You would be the happier for it at home, sire, and I do not doubt you would be the greater for it abroad.”

      “Monsieur Duke,” said the king, “I understand you. Be satisfied, all who are named in that letter shall be punished as they deserve, even the queen herself.”

      “What do you say, sire? God forbid that the queen should suffer the least inconvenience or uneasiness on my account! She has always believed me, sire, to be her enemy; although your Majesty can bear witness that I have always taken her part warmly, even against you. Oh, if she betrayed your Majesty on the side of your honor, it would be quite another thing, and I should be the first to say, ‘No grace, sire—no grace for the guilty!’ Happily, there is nothing of the kind, and your Majesty has just acquired a new proof of it.”

      “That is true, Monsieur Cardinal,” said the king, “and you were right, as you always are; but the queen, not the less, deserves all my anger.”

      “It is you, sire, who have now incurred hers. And even if she were to be seriously offended, I could well understand it; your Majesty has treated her with a severity—”

      “It is thus I will always treat my enemies and yours, Duke, however high they may be placed, and whatever peril I may incur in acting severely toward them.”

      “The queen is my enemy, but is not yours, sire; on the contrary, she is a devoted,