The three musketeers
love for me is the concealed cause. This war may not only bring great
catastrophes upon England and France, but misfortune upon you, my Lord,
for which I should never console myself.
“Be careful of your life, which is menaced, and which will be dear
to me from the moment I am not obliged to see an enemy in you.
“Your affectionate
“ANNE”
Buckingham collected all his remaining strength to listen to the
reading of the letter; then, when it was ended, as if he had met with a
bitter disappointment, he asked, “Have you nothing else to say to me by
the living voice, Laporte?”
“The queen charged me to tell you to watch over yourself, for she had
advice that your assassination would be attempted.”
“And is that all—is that all?” replied Buckingham, impatiently.
“She likewise charged me to tell you that she still loved you.”
“Ah,” said Buckingham, “God be praised! My death, then, will not be to
her as the death of a stranger!”
Laporte burst into tears.
“Patrick,” said the duke, “bring me the casket in which the diamond
studs were kept.”
Patrick brought the object desired, which Laporte recognized as having
belonged to the queen.
“Now the scent bag of white satin, on which her cipher is embroidered
in pearls.”
Patrick again obeyed.
“Here, Laporte,” said Buckingham, “these are the only tokens I ever
received from her—this silver casket and these two letters. You will
restore them to her Majesty; and as a last memorial”—he looked round
for some valuable object—“you will add—”
He still sought; but his eyes, darkened by death, encountered only the
knife which had fallen from the hand of Felton, still smoking with the
blood spread over its blade.
“And you will add to them this knife,” said the duke, pressing the hand
of Laporte. He had just strength enough to place the scent bag at the
bottom of the silver casket, and to let the knife fall into it, making
a sign to Laporte that he was no longer able to speak; then, in a last
convulsion, which this time he had not the power to combat, he slipped
from the sofa to the floor.
Patrick uttered a loud cry.
Buckingham tried to smile a last time; but death checked his thought,
which remained engraved on his brow like a last kiss of love.
At this moment the duke’s surgeon arrived, quite terrified; he was
already on board the admiral’s ship, where they had been obliged to
seek him.
He approached the duke, took his hand, held it for an instant in his
own, and letting it fall, “All is useless,” said he, “he is dead.”
“Dead, dead!” cried Patrick.
At this cry all the crowd re-entered the apartment, and throughout the
palace and town there was nothing but consternation and tumult.
As soon as Lord de Winter saw Buckingham was dead, he ran to Felton,
whom the soldiers still guarded on the terrace of the palace.
“Wretch!” said he to the young man, who since the death of Buckingham
had regained that coolness and self-possession which never after
abandoned him, “wretch! what have you done?”
“I have avenged myself!” said he.
“Avenged yourself,” said the baron. “Rather say that you have served as
an instrument to that accursed woman; but I swear to you that this
crime shall be her last.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” replied Felton, quietly, “and I am
ignorant of whom you are speaking, my Lord. I killed the Duke of
Buckingham because he twice refused you yourself to appoint me captain;
I have punished him for his injustice, that is all.”
De Winter, stupefied, looked on while the soldiers bound Felton, and
could not tell what to think of such insensibility.
One thing alone, however, threw a shade over the pallid brow of Felton.
At every noise he heard, the simple Puritan fancied he recognized the
step and voice of Milady coming to throw herself into his arms, to
accuse herself, and die with him.
All at once he started. His eyes became fixed upon a point of the sea,
commanded by the terrace where he was. With the eagle glance of a
sailor he had recognized there, where another would have seen only a
gull hovering over the waves, the sail of a sloop which was directed
toward the coast of France.
He grew deadly pale, placed his hand upon his heart, which was
breaking, and at once perceived all the treachery.
“One last favor, my Lord!” said he to the baron.
“What?” asked his Lordship.
“What o’clock is it?”
The baron drew out his watch. “It wants ten minutes to nine,” said he.
Milady had hastened her departure by an hour and a half. As soon as she
heard the cannon which announced the fatal event, she had ordered the
anchor to be weighed. The vessel was making way under a blue sky, at
great distance from the coast.
“God has so willed it!” said he, with the resignation of a fanatic; but
without, however, being able to take his eyes from that ship, on board
of which he doubtless fancied he could distinguish the white outline of
her to whom he had sacrificed his life.
De Winter followed his look, observed his feelings, and guessed all.
“Be punished _alone_, for the first, miserable man!” said Lord de
Winter to Felton, who was being dragged away with his eyes turned
toward the sea; “but I swear to you by the memory of my brother whom I
have loved so much that your accomplice is not saved.”
Felton lowered his head without pronouncing a syllable.
As to Lord de Winter, he descended the stairs rapidly, and went
straight to the port.
Chapter LX.
IN FRANCE
The first fear of the King of England, Charles I., on learning of the
death of the duke, was that such terrible news might discourage the
Rochellais; he tried, says Richelieu in his _Memoirs_, to conceal it
from them as long as possible, closing all the ports of his kingdom,
and carefully keeping watch that no vessel should sail until the army
which Buckingham was getting together had gone, taking upon himself, in
default of Buckingham, to superintend the departure.
He carried the strictness of this order so far as to detain in England
the ambassadors of Denmark, who had taken their leave, and the regular
ambassador of Holland, who was to take back to the port of Flushing the
Indian merchantmen of which Charles I. had made restitution to the
United Provinces.
But as he did not think of giving this order till five hours after the
event—that is to say, till two o’clock in the afternoon—two vessels had
already left the port, the one bearing, as we know, Milady, who,
already anticipating the event, was further confirmed in that belief by
seeing the black flag flying at the masthead of the admiral’s ship.
As to the second vessel, we will tell hereafter whom it carried, and
how it set sail.
During this time nothing new occurred in the camp at La Rochelle; only
the king, who was bored, as always, but perhaps a little more so in
camp than elsewhere, resolved to go incognito and spend the festival of
St. Louis at St. Germain, and asked the cardinal to order him an escort
of only twenty Musketeers. The cardinal, who sometimes became weary of
the king, granted this leave of absence with great pleasure to his
royal lieutenant, who promised to return about the fifteenth of
September.
M. de Tréville, being informed of this by his Eminence, packed his
portmanteau; and as without knowing the cause he knew the great desire
and even imperative need which his friends had of returning to Paris,
it goes without saying that he fixed upon them to form part of the
escort.
The four young men heard the news a quarter of an hour after M. de
Tréville, for they were the first to whom he communicated it. It was
then that D’Artagnan appreciated the favor the cardinal had conferred
upon him in making him at last enter the Musketeers—for without that
circumstance he would have been forced to remain in the camp while his
companions left it.
It goes without saying that this impatience to return toward Paris had
for a cause the danger which Mme. Bonacieux would run of meeting at the
convent of Béthune with Milady, her mortal enemy. Aramis therefore had
written immediately to Marie Michon, the seamstress at Tours who had
such fine acquaintances, to obtain from the queen authority for Mme.
Bonacieux to leave the convent, and to retire either into Lorraine or
Belgium. They had not long to wait for an answer. Eight or ten days
afterward Aramis received the following letter:
“MY DEAR COUSIN, Here is the authorization from my sister to withdraw
our little servant from the convent of Béthune, the air of which you
think is bad for her. My sister sends you this authorization with great
pleasure, for she is very partial to the little girl, to whom she
intends to be more serviceable hereafter.
“I salute you,
“MARIE MICHON”
To this letter was added an order, conceived in these terms:
“At the Louvre, August 10, 1628
“The superior of the convent of Béthune will place in the hands of the
person who shall present this note to her the novice who entered the
convent upon my recommendation and under my patronage.
“ANNE”
It may be easily imagined how the relationship between Aramis and a
seamstress who called the queen her sister amused the young men; but
Aramis, after having blushed two or three times up to the whites of his
eyes at the gross pleasantry of Porthos, begged his friends not to
revert to the subject again, declaring that if a single word more was
said to him about it, he would never again implore his cousins to
interfere in such affairs.
There was no further question, therefore, about Marie Michon among the
four Musketeers, who besides had what they wanted: that was, the order
to withdraw Mme. Bonacieux from the convent of the Carmelites of
Béthune. It was true that this order would not be of great use to them
while they were in camp at La Rochelle; that is to say, at the other
end of France. Therefore D’Artagnan was going to ask leave of absence
of M. de Tréville, confiding to him candidly the importance of his
departure, when the news was transmitted to him as well as to his three
friends that the king was about to set out for Paris with an escort of
twenty Musketeers, and that they formed part of the escort.
Their joy was great. The lackeys were sent on before with the baggage,
and they set out on the morning of the sixteenth.
The cardinal accompanied his Majesty from Surgères to Mauzes; and there
the king and his minister took leave of each other with great
demonstrations of friendship.
The king, however, who sought distraction, while traveling as fast as
possible—for he was anxious to be in Paris by the twenty-third—stopped
from time to time to fly the magpie, a pastime for which the taste had
been formerly inspired in him by de Luynes, and for which he had always
preserved a great predilection. Out of the twenty Musketeers sixteen,
when this took place, rejoiced greatly at this relaxation; but the
other four cursed it heartily. D’Artagnan, in particular, had a
perpetual buzzing in his ears, which Porthos explained thus: “A very
great lady has told me that this means that somebody is talking of you
somewhere.”
At length the escort passed through Paris on the twenty-third, in the
night. The king thanked M. de Tréville, and permitted him to distribute
furloughs for four days, on condition that the favored parties should
not appear in any public place, under penalty of the Bastille.
The first four furloughs granted, as may be imagined, were to our four
friends. Still further, Athos obtained of M. de Tréville six days
instead of four, and introduced into these six days two more nights—for
they set out on the twenty-fourth at five o’clock in the evening, and
as a further kindness M. de Tréville post-dated the leave to the
morning of the twenty-fifth.
“Good Lord!” said D’Artagnan, who, as we have often said, never