Man in the Iron Mask by Dumas, Alexandre part one

“M. Colbert.”

“Her name?”

“She did not mention it.”

“Her position in life?”

“She will answer that herself.”

“Her face?”

“She is masked.”

“Go, Molina; go and see!” cried the Queen.

“It is needless,” suddenly replied a voice, at once firm and gentle in its tone, which proceeded from the other side of the tapestry hangings,- a voice which startled the attendants and made the Queen tremble. At the same moment a woman, masked, appeared between the curtains, and before the Queen could speak, added, “I am connected with the order of the Beguines of Bruges, and do indeed bring with me the remedy which is certain to effect a cure of your Majesty’s complaint.”

No one uttered a sound, and the Beguine did not move a step.

“Speak!” said the Queen.

“I will when we are alone,” was the answer.

Anne of Austria looked at her attendants, who immediately withdrew. The Beguine thereupon advanced a few steps towards the Queen, and bowed reverently before her. The Queen gazed with increasing mistrust at this woman, who in her turn fixed a pair of brilliant eyes upon the Queen through openings in the mask.

“The Queen of France must indeed be very ill,” said Anne of Austria, “if it is known at the Beguinage of Bruges that she stands in need of being cured.”

“Your Majesty, thank God, is not ill beyond remedy.”

“But tell me, how do you happen to know that I am suffering?”

“Your Majesty has friends in Flanders.”

“And these friends have sent you?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Name them to me.”

“Impossible, Madame, since your Majesty’s memory has not been awakened by your heart.”

Anne of Austria looked up, endeavoring to discover through the concealment of the mask and through her mysterious language the name of this person who expressed herself with such familiarity and freedom; then suddenly, wearied by a curiosity at odds with her pride, she said, “You are ignorant, perhaps, that royal personages are never spoken to with the face masked.”

“Deign to excuse me, Madame,” replied the Beguine, humbly.

“I cannot excuse you; I will not forgive you if you do not throw your mask aside.”

“I have made a vow, Madame, to go to the help of those who are afflicted or suffering, without ever permitting them to behold my face. I might have been able to administer some relief to your body and to your mind; but since your Majesty forbids me, I will take my leave. Adieu, Madame, adieu!”

These words were uttered with a harmony of tone and respect of manner that destroyed the Queen’s anger and suspicion, but did not remove her feeling of curiosity. “You are right,” she said; “it ill becomes those who are suffering to reject the means of relief which Heaven sends them. Speak, then; and may you indeed be able, as you assert you are, to administer relief to my body. Alas! I think that God is about to make it suffer.”

“Let us first speak a little of the mind, if you please,” said the Beguine,- “of the mind, which I am sure must also suffer.”

“My mind?”

“There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers, Madame, leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient’s chest hears not, though he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; neither iron nor fire has ever destroyed or disarmed the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they grow in the heart until it breaks. Such, Madame, are these other cancers, fatal to queens: are you free from these evils?”

Anne slowly raised her arm, as dazzling in its perfect whiteness and as pure in its rounded outlines as it was in the time of her earlier days. “The evils to which you allude,” she said, “are the condition of the lives of the high in rank upon earth, to whom Heaven has imparted mind. When those evils become too heavy to be borne, the Lord lightens their burden by penitence and confession. Thus we lay down our burden, and the secrets which oppress us. But forget not that the same sovereign Lord apportions their trials to the strength of his creatures; and my strength is not inferior to my burden. For the secrets of others I have enough of the mercy of Heaven; for my own secrets not so much mercy as my confessor.”

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