The Three Musketeers. Александр Дюма

the wretch!” exclaimed the commissary.

      “What? of whom do you speak? It is not of my wife, I hope.”

      “On the contrary, it is of her. Your affairs are in a nice state.”

      “Do me the pleasure,” said the exasperated mercer, “to tell me, sir, how my affairs can be made worse by what my wife does whilst I am in prison?”

      “Because what she does is the consequence of an infernal plan arranged between you!”

      “I swear to you, Mr. Commissary, that you are in the most profound error; that I know nothing in the world of my wife’s actions; that I am completely ignorant of what she has done; and that, if she has committed follies, I renounce her, I give her the lie, and I curse her.”

      “And now,” said Athos, “if you have no further business with me, dismiss me. Your M. Bonancieux is very tiresome.”

      “Take the prisoners back to their dungeons,” said the commissary, pointing to Athos and Bonancieux, “and guard them more strictly than ever.”

      “Nevertheless,” said Athos, with his usual tranquillity, “your business is with M. d’Artagnan; I do not well see how I can supply his place!”

      “Do what I have ordered,” cried the commissary; “and the most solitary confinement—do you hear?”

      The two followed the guards, Athos shrugging his shoulders, and M. Bonancieux uttering lamentations which might have softened the heart of a tiger.

      They took the mercer into the same dungeon where he had passed the night, and left him there throughout the whole day. Hour after hour did poor Bonancieux weep like a very mercer; he was not at all a man of warlike soul, as he himself told us.

      About nine o’clock in the evening, just as he had made up his mind to go to bed, he heard steps in his corridor. These steps approached his dungeon, the door opened, and the guards appeared.

      “Follow me,” said a sergeant who commanded the guards.

      “Follow you!” cried Bonancieux, “follow you at this time of night! And where? my God!”

      “Where we have orders to conduct you.”

      “But that is no answer.”

      “It is, nevertheless, the only answer you will get.”

      “O Lord! O Lord!” muttered the poor mercer, “now I am lost!”

      He followed, mechanically, and without resistance.

      He went down the same corridor as before, crossed a first court, then a second floor; and then, at the entrance gate, he found a carriage surrounded by four horse guards. They made him enter this carriage; the sergeant placed himself at his side; the door was locked, and they both found themselves in a moving prison.

      The carriage proceeded slowly, like a funeral coach. Through the padlocked bars the prisoner could only see the horses and the pavement. But, like a true Parisian as he was, Bonancieux recognised each street by its corners, its lamps, and its signs. At the moment they reached St. Paul, where the criminals of the Bastile were executed, he nearly fainted, and crossed himself twice. He thought the carriage would have stopped there; but it went on, nevertheless. Farther on, he was seized with great fear: it was in skirting the cemetery of St. Jean, where the state criminals were buried. One thing alone encouraged him, which was, that before burying them, one generally cut off their heads; and his head was yet upon his shoulders. But when the carriage took the road to La Greve, and he perceived the painted roof of the Hotel de Ville, and saw that the carriage went under its colonnade, he thought it was all over with him, and wished to confess himself to the sergeant; and, on the refusal of the latter, uttered such piteous cries, that the sergeant declared that if he continued to deafen him so, he would put a gag on him. This threat reassured him a little: if they meant to execute him at the Greve, it was scarcely worth while to gag him, as they had nearly reached the place of execution. In fact, the carriage crossed this fatal place without stopping. There was only the Croix du Trahoir, then, to fear; and the carriage took the exact road to it.

      This time there was no further room for doubt. It was at the Croix du Trahoir that inferior criminals were executed. Bonancieux had flattered himself, by considering that he was worthy of St. Paul, or the place de Greve. It was at the Croix du Trahoir that his journey and his destiny would end. He could not yet see this unhappy cross, but he felt it, as it were, loom before him. When he was only about twenty paces from it, he heard a noise, and the carriage stopped. This was more than poor Bonancieux could bear: already crushed by the successive emotions he had experienced, he uttered a feeble cry, or rather groan, which might have been taken for the last sigh of a dying man, and fainted.

CHAPTER 14 The Man of Meung

      The mob that stopped the way was produced, not by the expectation of seeing a man hanged, but by the contemplation of man who was already hanging. After a moment’s hindrance, the carriage proceeded on its way, passed through the crowd, went along the Rue St. Honore, and turning at the Rue des Bons Enfants, stopped at a low doorway.

      When the door opened, two guards, assisted by the sergeant, received Bonancieux in their arms, and pushed him into a court; they then made him ascend a staircase, and placed him in an antechamber. All these operations were performed nearly mechanically, as far as he was concerned. He had walked as in a dream, he had seen things as through a mist; he had heard without understanding; and they might have executed him then without his making the slightest resistance, or uttering an appeal for mercy.

      He remained passive on the bench, with his back resting against the wall, and his arms hanging down, on the very spot where his guards had placed him.

      And yet, as, in looking around him, he saw nothing threatening, as no real danger was indicated, as the bench was comfortably stuffed, as the wall was covered with beautiful cordovan leather, and as long curtains of red damask, held by gilt brackets, hung before the windows, he became by degrees aware that his fears were exaggerated, and began to move his head from right to left, and vertically. At this motion, which no one opposed, he resumed a little courage, ventured to draw up one leg, and then the other; and, at last, supporting himself upon his hands, he raised himself on the bench, and found himself on his feet.

      At this moment an officer of pleasant appearance opened a door, exchanged a few words with some person in the next room, and then, turning towards the prisoner, said—

      “Is it you who are called Bonancieux?”

      “Yes, sir,” stammered the mercer, more dead than alive, “at your service.”

      “Enter!”

      The officer bade the mercer precede him; and the latter, obeying without reply, entered a room where he appeared to be expected.

      It was a large cabinet, the walls of which were furnished with offensive and defensive weapons—a close and suffocating room, in which there was already a fire, although it was scarcely yet the end of September. A square table, loaded with books and papers, and on which there was unrolled an immense plan of the town of Rochelle, occupied the middle of the apartment. In front of the chimney-piece there stood a man of middle height, with a proud and haughty air, piercing eyes, a large forehead, and an emaciated countenance, which was yet further elongated by an imperial, surmounted by a pair of moustaches.

      Although this man was scarcely thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, both imperial and moustaches were beginning to grow gray. His appearance, except that he wore no sword, was military; and his buff leather boots, which were yet slightly covered with dust, pointed out that he had been on horseback during the day.

      This individual was Armand-Jean Duplessis, Cardinal de Richelieu; not as he is represented—broken down like an old man, suffering like a martyr, his body shattered, his voice extinguished, buried in an enormous easy-chair, no longer living but by the power of his genius, and no longer supporting the struggle against