“I must. I’ve learned how, during my span on earth. And I, you too think far ahead.” Lacy’s words quickened. “I beg you, think. You’ll need a while to take this in, as well as to verify my story. I’m amazed how calmly you’ve heard me out. But—an immortal, in due course a gathering of immortals, at the service of the king—today’s king, and afterward .., his son, who should reign long and vigorously. Can you imagine what that will mean to his glory, and so to the glory ,. and power of France?”
“No, I cannot,” Richelieu snapped. “Nor can you. And I have likewise learned wariness.”
“But I tell you, Your Eminence, I can give you evidence—”
“Silence,” Richelieu commanded.
He rested left elbow on chair arm, chin on that fist, and I stared into space, as if beyond the walls, the province, the kingdom. His right hand gently stroked the kitten. It fell asleep, and he took his fingers away. The wind and the river rustled.
At last—the clock, on which Phaeton careered desperately in Apollo’s runaway sun chariot, had snipped off almost a quarter of an hour—he stirred and looked back at the other man. Lacy had gone Orientally impassive. Now his countenance came alive. The breath shivered in and out of him.
“I need not trouble myself with your tokens,” Richelieu said heavily. “I assume you are what you assert. It makes no difference.”
“I beg Your Eminence’s pardon?” Lacy whispered.
“Tell me,” Richelieu went on, and he came to sound nearly amiable, “do you, in the teeth of what you have seen and suffered, do you really believe we have won to a state of things that will endure?”
“N-no,” Lacy admitted. “No, I think instead everything is changing, everything, and this will go on and on, and nobody can guess what the end will be. But—because of it— we and the generations to come, our lives will be unlike any that ever were lived before. The old bets are off.” He paused. “I’ve grown weary of being homeless. You cannot dream of how weary. I’ll snatch at any chance of escape.”
Richelieu ignored the informal language. Perhaps he did not notice it. He nodded, and said as he might have crooned to one of his pets, “Poor soul. How brave you are, to have ventured this. Or else, as you say, how weary. But you have just your single life to lose. I have millions.”
Lacy’s head lifted stiffly. “My lord?”
“I am responsible for this realm,” Richelieu said. “The Holy Father is old and troubled and never had any gift of statecraft. Thus I am also responsible to a certain extent for the Catholic faith, which is to say Christendom. A good many people think I’ve given myself over to the Devil, and I confess to scorning most scruples. But in the end, I am responsible.
“You see this as an age of upheaval, but also of hope. You may be right, perhaps, but if so, you look on it with an immortal eye. I can only, I may only, see the upheaval. War devastating the German lands. The Empire—our enemy, yes, nevertheless the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne founded—bleeding to death. Protestant sect after sect springing up, each with its own doctrine, its own fanaticism. The English growing back to power, the Dutch growing newly to it, voracious and ruthless. Stirrings in Russia, India, China. God knows what in the Americas. Cannon and muskets bringing down the ancient strongholds, the ancient strengths—but what will replace them? To you, the discoveries of the natural philosophers, the books and pamphlets that pour from the printing presses, those are wonders that will bring a new era. I agree; but I, in my position, must ask myself what that era will be like. I must try to cope with it, keep it under control, knowing the entire while that I shall die unsuccessful and those who come after me will fail.”
His question lashed: “How then dare you suppose I would ever allow, yes, encourage and trumpet the knowledge that persons exist whom old age passes by? Should I— the doctor Descartes might say—throw yet another, wholly unknown and unmanageable factor into an equation already insoluble? ‘Unmanageable.’ Indeed that is the right word. The sole certainty I have is that this spark would ignite a thousand new religious lunacies and make peace in Europe impossible for another generation or worse.