out.”
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Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
“That’s my concern; I will make him speak.”
“Ah, my lord, ’tis not easy to make people say what they
don’t wish to let out.”
“Pooh! with patience one must succeed. Well, this man. Who
is he?”
“The Comte de Rochefort.”
“The Comte de Rochefort!”
“Unfortunately he has disappeared these four or five years
and I don’t know where he is.”
“I know, Guitant,” said Mazarin.
“Well, then, how is it that your eminence complained just
now of want of information?”
“You think,” resumed Mazarin, “that Rochefort —- ”
“He was Cardinal Richelieu’s creature, my lord. I warn you,
however, his services will cost you something. The cardinal
was lavish to his underlings.”
“Yes, yes, Guitant,” said Mazarin; “Richelieu was a great
man, a very great man, but he had that defect. Thanks,
Guitant; I shall benefit by your advice this very evening.”
Here they separated and bidding adieu to Guitant in the
court of the Palais Royal, Mazarin approached an officer who
was walking up and down within that inclosure.
It was D’Artagnan, who was waiting for him.
“Come hither,” said Mazarin in his softest voice; “I have an
order to give you.”
D’Artagnan bent low and following the cardinal up the secret
staircase, soon found himself in the study whence they had
first set out.
The cardinal seated himself before his bureau and taking a
sheet of paper wrote some lines upon it, whilst D’Artagnan
stood imperturbable, without showing either impatience or
curiosity. He was like a soldierly automaton, or rather,
like a magnificent marionette.
The cardinal folded and sealed his letter.
“Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he said, “you are to take this
dispatch to the Bastile and bring back here the person it
concerns. You must take a carriage and an escort, and guard
the prisoner with the greatest care.”
D’Artagnan took the letter, touched his hat with his hand,
turned round upon his heel like a drill-sergeant, and a
moment afterward was heard, in his dry and monotonous tone,
commanding “Four men and an escort, a carriage and a horse.”
Five minutes afterward the wheels of the carriage and the
horses’ shoes were heard resounding on the pavement of the
courtyard.
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Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
3
Dead Animosities.
D’Artagnan arrived at the Bastile just as it was striking
half-past eight. His visit was announced to the governor,
who, on hearing that he came from the cardinal, went to meet
him and received him at the top of the great flight of steps
outside the door. The governor of the Bastile was Monsieur
du Tremblay, the brother of the famous Capuchin, Joseph,
that fearful favorite of Richelieu’s, who went by the name
of the Gray Cardinal.
During the period that the Duc de Bassompierre passed in the
Bastile — where he remained for twelve long years — when
his companions, in their dreams of liberty, said to each
other: “As for me, I shall go out of the prison at such a
time,” and another, at such and such a time, the duke used
to answer, “As for me, gentlemen, I shall leave only when
Monsieur du Tremblay leaves;” meaning that at the death of
the cardinal Du Tremblay would certainly lose his place at
the Bastile and De Bassompierre regain his at court.
His prediction was nearly fulfilled, but in a very different
way from that which De Bassompierre supposed; for after the
death of Richelieu everything went on, contrary to
expectation, in the same way as before; and Bassompierre had
little chance of leaving his prison.
Monsieur du Tremblay received D’Artagnan with extreme
politeness and invited him to sit down with him to supper,
of which he was himself about to partake.
“I should be delighted to do so,” was the reply; “but if I
am not mistaken, the words `In haste,’ are written on the
envelope of the letter which I brought.”
“You are right,” said Du Tremblay. “Halloo, major! tell them
to order Number 25 to come downstairs.”
The unhappy wretch who entered the Bastile ceased, as he
crossed the threshold, to be a man — he became a number.
D’Artagnan shuddered at the noise of the keys; he remained
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