“I do,” answered the youth, slightly reddening.
“Well, he was a prince full of noble ideas and great projects, always, alas! deferred by the troubles of the times and the struggle that his minister Richelieu had to maintain against the great nobles of France. The King himself was of a feeble character, and died young and unhappy.”
“I know it.”
“He had been long anxious about having an heir,- a care which weighs heavily on princes, who desire to leave behind them more than one pledge that they will be remembered and their work will be continued.”
“Did King Louis XIII die without children?” asked the prisoner, smiling.
“No; but he was long without one, and for a long while thought he should be the last of his race. This idea had reduced him to the depths of despair, when suddenly his wife, Anne of Austria-”
The prisoner trembled.
“Did you know,” said Aramis, “that Louis XIII’s wife was called Anne of Austria?”
“Continue!” said the young man, without replying to the question.
“When suddenly,” resumed Aramis, “the Queen announced an interesting event. There was great joy at the intelligence, and all prayed for her happy delivery. On the 5th of September, 1638, she gave birth to a son.” Here Aramis looked at his companion, and thought he observed him turning pale. “You are about to hear,” said Aramis, “an account which few could now give; for it refers to a secret which is thought to be buried with the dead or entombed in the abyss of the confessional.”
“And you will tell me this secret?” broke in the youth.
“Oh!” said Aramis, with unmistakable emphasis, “I do not know that I ought to risk this secret by intrusting it to one who has no desire to quit the Bastille.”
“I listen, Monsieur.”
“The Queen, then, gave birth to a son. But while the court was rejoicing over the event, when the King had shown the new-born child to the nobility and people, and was sitting gayly down to table to celebrate the event, the Queen, who was alone in her room, was again taken ill, and gave birth to a second son.”
“Oh!” said the prisoner, betraying a better acquaintance with affairs than he had admitted, “I thought that Monsieur was only born in-”
Aramis raised his finger. “Let me continue,” he said.
The prisoner sighed impatiently, and paused.
“Yes,” said Aramis, “the Queen had a second son, whom Dame Perronnette, the midwife, received in her arms.”
“Dame Perronnette!” murmured the young man.
“They ran at once to the banqueting-room, and whispered to the King what had happened; he rose and quitted the table. But this time it was no longer happiness that his face expressed, but something akin to terror. The birth of twins changed into bitterness the joy to which that of an only son had given rise, seeing that in France (a fact of which you are assuredly ignorant) it is the oldest of the king’s sons who succeeds his father-”
“I know it.”
“And that the doctors and jurists assert that there is ground for doubting whether he who first makes his appearance is the elder by the law of Heaven and of Nature.”
The prisoner uttered a smothered cry, and became whiter than the coverlet under which he hid himself.
“Now you understand,” pursued Aramis, “that the King, who with so much pleasure saw himself repeated in one, was in despair about two; fearing that the second might dispute the claim of the first to seniority, which had been recognized only two hours before, and so this second son, relying on party interests and caprices, might one day sow discord and engender civil war in the kingdom,- by these means destroying the very dynasty he should have strengthened.”
“Oh, I understand, I understand!” murmured the young man.
“Well,” continued Aramis, “this is what is related; this is why one of the Queen’s two sons, shamefully parted from his brother, shamefully sequestered, is buried in the profoundest obscurity; this is why that second son has disappeared, and so completely that not a soul in France, save his mother, is aware of his existence.”
“Yes; his mother, who has cast him off!” cried the prisoner, in a tone of despair.