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The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
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Twenty Years Later 13 at Prostate Health
smile.
"Now to the point. I want friends; I want faithful servants.
When I say I want, I mean the queen wants them. I do nothing
without her commands -- pray understand that; not like
Monsieur de Richelieu, who went on just as he pleased. So I
shall never be a great man, as he was, but to compensate for
that, I shall be a good man, Monsieur de Rochefort, and I
hope to prove it to you."
Rochefort knew well the tones of that soft voice, in which
sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of
young vipers.
"I am disposed to believe your eminence," he replied;
"though I have had but little evidence of that good-nature
of which your eminence speaks. Do not forget that I have
been five years in the Bastile and that no medium of viewing
things is so deceptive as the grating of a prison."
"Ah, Monsieur de Rochefort! have I not told you already that
I had nothing to do with that? The queen -- cannot you make
allowances for the pettishness of a queen and a princess?
But that has passed away as suddenly as it came, and is
forgotten."
"I can easily suppose, sir, that her majesty has forgotten
it amid the fetes and the courtiers of the Palais Royal, but
I who have passed those years in the Bastile ---- "
"Ah! mon Dieu! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort! do you
absolutely think that the Palais Royal is the abode of
gayety? No. We have had great annoyances there. As for me, I
play my game squarely, fairly, and above board, as I always
do. Let us come to some conclusion. Are you one of us,
Monsieur de Rochefort?"
"I am very desirous of being so, my lord, but I am totally
in the dark about everything. In the Bastile one talks
politics only with soldiers and jailers, and you have not an
idea, my lord, how little is known of what is going on by
people of that sort; I am of Monsieur de Bassompierres
party. Is he still one of the seventeen peers of France?"
"He is dead, sir; a great loss. His devotion to the queen
was boundless; men of loyalty are scarce."
"I think so, forsooth," said Rochefort, "and when you find
any of them, you march them off to the Bastile. However,
there are plenty in the world, but you dont look in the
right direction for them, my lord."
"Indeed! explain to me. Ah! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort,
how much you must have learned during your intimacy with the
late cardinal! Ah! he was a great man."
"Will your eminence be angry if I read you a lesson?"
"I! never! you know you may say anything to me. I try to be
beloved, not feared."
"Well, there is on the wall of my cell, scratched with a
nail, a proverb, which says, `Like master, like servant."
"Pray, what does that mean?"
"It means that Monsieur de Richelieu was able to find trusty
servants, dozens and dozens of them."
"He! the point aimed at by every poniard! Richelieu, who
passed his life in warding off blows which were forever
aimed at him!"
"But he did ward them off," said De Rochefort, "and the
reason was, that though he had bitter enemies he possessed
also true friends. I have known persons," he continued --
for he thought he might avail himself of the opportunity of
speaking of DArtagnan -- "who by their sagacity and address
have deceived the penetration of Cardinal Richelieu; who by
their valor have got the better of his guards and spies;
persons without money, without support, without credit, yet
who have preserved to the crowned head its crown and made
the cardinal crave pardon."
"But those men you speak of," said Mazarin, smiling inwardly
on seeing Rochefort approach the point to which he was
leading him, "those men were not devoted to the cardinal,
for they contended against him."
"No; in that case they would have met with more fitting
reward. They had the misfortune to be devoted to that very
queen for whom just now you were seeking servants."
"But how is it that you know so much of these matters?"
"I know them because the men of whom I speak were at that
time my enemies; because they fought against me; because I
did them all the harm I could and they returned it to the
best of their ability; because one of them, with whom I had
most to do, gave me a pretty sword-thrust, now about seven
years ago, the third that I
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