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The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
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The Three Musketeers 77 at Prostate Health
"there is your Jussac thrust paid for. There still
remains that of Bernajoux, but you must not be too confident."
As to the rest, M. de Treville had good reason to mistrust the
cardinal and to think that all was not over, for scarcely had the
captain of the Musketeers closed the door after him, than his
Eminence said to the king, "Now that we are at length by
ourselves, we will, if your Majesty pleases, converse seriously.
Sire, Buckingham has been in Paris five days, and only left this
morning."
16 IN WHICH M. SEGUIER, KEEPER OF THE SEALS, LOOKS MORE THAN
ONCE FOR THE BELL, IN ORDER TO RING IT, AS HE DID BEFORE
It is impossible to form an idea of the impression these few
words made upon Louis XIII. He grew pale and red alternately;
and the cardinal saw at once that he had recovered by a single
blow all the ground he had lost.
"Buckingham in Paris!" cried he, "and why does he come?"
"To conspire, no doubt, with your enemies, the Huguenots and the
Spaniards."
"No, PARDIEU, no! To conspire against my honor with Madame de
Chevreuse, Madame de Longueville, and the Condes."
"Oh, sire, what an idea! The queen is too virtuous; and besides,
loves your Majesty too well."
"Woman is weak, Monsieur Cardinal," said the king; "and as to
loving me much, I have my own opinion as to that love."
"I not the less maintain," said the cardinal, "that the Duke of
Buckingham came to Paris for a project wholly political."
"And I am sure that he came for quite another purpose, Monsieur
Cardinal; but if the queen be guilty, let her tremble!"
"Indeed," said the cardinal, "whatever repugnance I may have to
directing my mind to such a treason, your Majesty compels me to
think of it. Madame de Lannoy, whom, according to your Majestys
command, I have frequently interrogated, told me this morning
that the night before last her Majesty sat up very late, that
this morning she wept much, and that she was writing all day."
"Thats it!" cried the king; "to him, no doubt. Cardinal, I must
have the queens papers."
"But how to take them, sire? It seems to me that it is neither
your Majesty nor myself who can charge himself with such a
mission."
"How did they act with regard to the Marechale dAncre?" cried
the king, in the highest state of choler; "first her closets were
thoroughly searched, and then she herself."
"The Marechale dAncre was no more than the Marechale dAncre. A
Florentine adventurer, sire, and that was all; while the august
spouse of your Majesty is Anne of Austria, Queen of France--that
is to say, one of the greatest princesses in the world."
"She is not the less guilty, Monsieur Duke! The more she has
forgotten the high position in which she was placed, the more
degrading is her fall. Besides, I long ago determined to put an
end to all these petty intrigues of policy and love. She has
near her a certain Laporte."
"Who, I believe, is the mainspring of all this, I confess," said
the cardinal.
"You think then, as I do, that she deceives me?" said the king.
"I believe, and I repeat it to your Majesty, that the queen
conspires against the power of the king, but I have not said
against his honor."
"And I--I tell you against both. I tell you the queen does not
love me; I tell you she loves another; I tell you she loves that
infamous Buckingham! Why did you not have him arrested while in
Paris?"
"Arrest the Duke! Arrest the prime minister of King Charles I!
Think of it, sire! What a scandal! And if the suspicions of
your Majesty, which I still continue to doubt, should prove to
have any foundation, what a terrible disclosure, what a fearful
scandal!"
"But as he exposed himself like a vagabond or a thief, he should
have been--"
Louis XIII stopped, terrified at what he was about to say, while
Richelieu, stretching out his neck, waited uselessly for the word
which had died on the lips of the king.
"He should have been--?"
"Nothing," said the king, "nothing. But all the time he was in
Paris, you, of course, did not lose sight of him?"
"No, sire."
"Where did he lodge?"
"Rue de la Harpe. No. 75."
"Where is that?"
"By the side of the Luxembourg."
"And you are certain that the queen and he did not see each
other?"
"I believe the queen to
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