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Books
The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
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Twenty Years Later 18 at Prostate Health
which I do not
suffer affronts from your princes and your lordly servants,
all of them automata who do not perceive that I wind up the
spring that makes them move, nor do they see that beneath my
quiet demeanor lies the still scorn of an injured, irritated
man, who has sworn to himself to master them one of these
days. We have arrested Monsieur de Beaufort, but he is the
least dangerous among them. There is the Prince de Conde
---- "
"The hero of Rocroy. Do you think of him?"
"Yes, madame, often and often, but pazienza, as we say in
Italy; next, after Monsieur de Conde, comes the Duke of
Orleans."
"What are you saying? The first prince of the blood, the
kings uncle!"
"No! not the first prince of the blood, not the kings
uncle, but the base conspirator, the soul of every cabal,
who pretends to lead the brave people who are weak enough to
believe in the honor of a prince of the blood -- not the
prince nearest to the throne, not the kings uncle, I
repeat, but the murderer of Chalais, of Montmorency and of
Cinq-Mars, who is playing now the same game he played long
ago and who thinks that he will win the game because he has
a new adversary -- instead of a man who threatened, a man
who smiles. But he is mistaken; I shall not leave so near
the queen that source of discord with which the deceased
cardinal so often caused the anger of the king to rage above
the boiling point."
Anne blushed and buried her face in her hands.
"What am I to do?" she said, bowed down beneath the voice of
her tyrant.
"Endeavor to remember the names of those faithful servants
who crossed the Channel, in spite of Monsieur de Richelieu,
tracking the roads along which they passed by their blood,
to bring back to your majesty certain jewels given by you to
Buckingham."
Anne arose, full of majesty, and as if touched by a spring,
and looking at the cardinal with the haughty dignity which
in the days of her youth had made her so powerful: "You are
insulting me!" she said.
"I wish," continued Mazarin, finishing, as it were, the
speech this sudden movement of the queen had cut; "I wish,
in fact, that you should now do for your husband what you
formerly did for your lover."
"Again that accusation!" cried the queen. "I thought that
calumny was stifled or extinct; you have spared me till now,
but since you speak of it, once for all, I tell you ---- "
"Madame, I do not ask you to tell me," said Mazarin,
astounded by this returning courage.
"I will tell you all," replied Anne. "Listen: there were in
truth, at that epoch, four devoted hearts, four loyal
spirits, four faithful swords, who saved more than my life
-- my honor ---- "
"Ah! you confess it!" exclaimed Mazarin.
"Is it only the guilty whose honor is at the sport of
others, sir? and cannot women be dishonored by appearances?
Yes, appearances were against me and I was about to suffer
dishonor. However, I swear I was not guilty, I swear it by
---- "
The queen looked around her for some sacred object by which
she could swear, and taking out of a cupboard hidden in the
tapestry, a small coffer of rosewood set in silver, and
laying it on the altar:
"I swear," she said, "by these sacred relics that Buckingham
was not my lover."
"What relics are those by which you swear?" asked Mazarin,
smiling. "I am incredulous."
The queen untied from around her throat a small golden key
which hung there, and presented it to the cardinal.
"Open, sir," she said, "and look for yourself."
Mazarin opened the coffer; a knife, covered with rust, and
two letters, one of which was stained with blood, alone met
his gaze.
"What are these things?" he asked.
"What are these things?" replied Anne, with queen-like
dignity, extending toward the open coffer an arm, despite
the lapse of years, still beautiful. "These two letters are
the only ones I ever wrote to him. This knife is the knife
with which Felton stabbed him. Read the letters and see if I
have lied or spoken the truth."
But Mazarin, notwithstanding this permission, instead of
reading the letters, took the knife which the dying
Buckingham had snatched out of the wound and sent by Laporte
to the queen. The blade was red, for the blood had become
rust; after a momentary examination during which the queen
became as white as the cloth which covered the altar on
which
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