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I was removed from the Chatelet to the Bastile owing to an
order from your eminence.”
“You think you were.”
“I am certain of it.”
“Ah, stay! I fancy I remember it. Did you not once refuse to
undertake a journey to Brussels for the queen?”
“Ah! ah!” exclaimed Rochefort. “There is the true reason!
Idiot that I am, though I have been trying to find it out
for five years, I never found it out.”
“But I do not say it was the cause of your imprisonment. I
merely ask you, did you not refuse to go to Brussels for the
queen, whilst you had consented to go there to do some
service for the late cardinal?”
“That is the very reason I refused to go back to Brussels. I
was there at a fearful moment. I was sent there to intercept
a correspondence between Chalais and the archduke, and even
then, when I was discovered I was nearly torn to pieces. How
could I, then, return to Brussels? I should injure the queen
instead of serving her.”
“Well, since the best motives are liable to misconstruction,
the queen saw in your refusal nothing but a refusal — a
distinct refusal she had also much to complain of you during
the lifetime of the late cardinal; yes, her majesty the
queen —- ”
Rochefort smiled contemptuously.
“Since I was a faithful servant, my lord, to Cardinal
Richelieu during his life, it stands to reason that now,
after his death, I should serve you well, in defiance of the
whole world.”
“With regard to myself, Monsieur de Rochefort,” replied
Mazarin, “I am not, like Monsieur de Richelieu,
all-powerful. I am but a minister, who wants no servants,
being myself nothing but a servant of the queen’s. Now, the
queen is of a sensitive nature. Hearing of your refusal to
obey her she looked upon it as a declaration of war, and as
she considers you a man of superior talent, and consequently
dangerous, she desired me to make sure of you; that is the
reason of your being shut up in the Bastile. But your
release can be managed. You are one of those men who can
comprehend certain matters and having understood them, can
act with energy —- ”
“Such was Cardinal Richelieu’s opinion, my lord.”
“The cardinal,” interrupted Mazarin, “was a great politician
and therein shone his vast superiority over me. I am a
straightforward, simple man; that’s my great disadvantage. I
am of a frankness of character quite French.”
Rochefort bit his lips in order to prevent a smile.
“Now to the point. I want friends; I want faithful servants.
When I say I want, I mean the queen wants them. I do nothing
without her commands — pray understand that; not like
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Monsieur de Richelieu, who went on just as he pleased. So I
shall never be a great man, as he was, but to compensate for
that, I shall be a good man, Monsieur de Rochefort, and I
hope to prove it to you.”
Rochefort knew well the tones of that soft voice, in which
sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of
young vipers.
“I am disposed to believe your eminence,” he replied;
“though I have had but little evidence of that good-nature
of which your eminence speaks. Do not forget that I have
been five years in the Bastile and that no medium of viewing
things is so deceptive as the grating of a prison.”
“Ah, Monsieur de Rochefort! have I not told you already that
I had nothing to do with that? The queen — cannot you make
allowances for the pettishness of a queen and a princess?
But that has passed away as suddenly as it came, and is
forgotten.”
“I can easily suppose, sir, that her majesty has forgotten
it amid the fetes and the courtiers of the Palais Royal, but
I who have passed those years in the Bastile —- ”
“Ah! mon Dieu! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort! do you
absolutely think that the Palais Royal is the abode of