“I can quite believe that,” returned the musketeer; “for when you have once done such an act as that, you will never be able to look me in the face again.”
The King dashed down his pen violently. “Leave the room, Monsieur!” he said.
“Oh, not so, Sire, if it please your Majesty!”
“How, not so?”
“Sire, I came to speak temperately to your Majesty. Your Majesty got into a passion with me: that is a misfortune; but I shall not the less on that account say what I had to say to you.”
“Your resignation, Monsieur,- your resignation!” cried the King.
“Sire, you know whether I care about my resignation or not, since at Blois, on the day when you refused King Charles the million which my friend the Comte de la Fere gave him, I tendered my resignation to your Majesty.”
“Very well, then, do it at once!”
“No, Sire; for there is no question of my resignation at the present moment. Your Majesty took up your pen just now to send me to the Bastille,- why should you change your intention?”
“D’Artagnan! Gascon that you are! who is the King, allow me to ask,- you or myself?”
“You, Sire, unfortunately.”
“What do you mean by ‘unfortunately’?”
“Yes, Sire; for if it were I-”
“If it were you, you would approve of M. d’Artagnan’s rebellious conduct, I suppose?”
“Certainly.”
“Really?” said the King, shrugging his shoulders.
“And I should tell my captain of the Musketeers,” continued d’Artagnan,- “I should tell him, looking at him all the while with human eyes and not with eyes like coals of fire, ‘M. d’Artagnan, I have forgotten that I am King; I have descended from my throne to insult a gentleman.'”
“Monsieur!” cried the King, “do you think you can excuse your friend by exceeding him in insolence?”
“Oh, Sire! I shall go much further than he did,” said d’Artagnan; “and it will be your own fault. I shall tell you what he, a man full of delicacy, did not tell you; I shall say: ‘Sire, you sacrificed his son, and he defended his son; you sacrificed him; he addressed you in the name of honor, of religion, of virtue,- you repulsed, pursued, imprisoned him.’ I shall be harder than he was, for I shall say to you: ‘Sire, choose! Do you wish to have friends or lackeys, soldiers or slaves, great men or puppets? Do you wish men to serve you or to crouch before you? Do you wish men to love you or to fear you? If you prefer baseness, intrigue, cowardice,- oh! say it, Sire! We will leave you,- we who are the only surviving illustrations, nay, I will say more, the only models of the valor of former times; we who have done our duty, and have exceeded, perhaps, in courage and in merit the men already great for posterity. Choose, Sire, and without delay! Whatever remains to you of the grand nobility, guard it with a jealous eye; of courtiers you will always have enough. Delay not- and send me to the Bastille with my friend; for if you have not known how to listen to the Comte de la Fere, that is to say, to the most sweet and noble voice of honor; if you do not know how to listen to d’Artagnan, that is to say, to the most candid and rough voice of sincerity,- you are a bad king, and to-morrow will be a poor king. Now, bad kings are hated; poor kings are driven away.’ That is what I had to say to you, Sire; you are wrong to have driven me to it.”
The King threw himself back in his chair, cold and livid. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet, he could not have been more astonished; he appeared as if his respiration had ceased, and as if he were at the point of death. That rough voice of sincerity, as d’Artagnan had called it, had pierced through his heart like a sword-blade.
D’Artagnan had said all that he had to say. Comprehending the King’s anger, he drew his sword, and approaching Louis XIV respectfully, placed it on the table. But the King, with a furious gesture, thrust aside the sword, which fell on the ground and rolled to d’Artagnan’s feet. Notwithstanding his mastery over himself, d’Artagnan too, in his turn, became pale and trembled with indignation. “A king,” he said, “may disgrace a soldier,- he may exile him, and may even condemn him to death; but were he a hundred times a king, he has no right to insult him by casting dishonor on his sword! Sire, a king of France has never repulsed with contempt the sword of a man such as I am! Stained with disgrace as this sword now is, it has henceforth no other sheath than either your heart or my own. I choose my own, Sire; give thanks for it to God, and my patience.” Then snatching up his sword, he cried, “My blood be upon your head!” and with a rapid gesture he placed the hilt upon the floor and directed the point of the blade towards his breast. The King, however, with a movement still more rapid than that of d’Artagnan, threw his right arm round the musketeer’s neck, and with his left hand seized hold of the blade by the middle, and returned it silently to the scabbard. D’Artagnan, upright, pale, and still trembling, suffered the King to do all, without aiding him, to the very end. Then Louis, overcome, returned to the table, took a pen, wrote a few lines, signed them, and offered the paper to d’Artagnan.