Twenty years after
some interest in the handsome young man before her, “what is his name?”
“The Comte de la Fère, madame,” replied the young man, bowing.
De Winter made a gesture of surprise and the queen turned to him with a
start of joy.
“The Comte de la Fère!” she cried. “Have you not mentioned that name to
me?”
As for De Winter he could scarcely believe that he had heard aright.
“The Comte de la Fère!” he cried in his turn. “Oh, sir, reply, I
entreat you—is not the Comte de la Fère a noble whom I remember,
handsome and brave, a musketeer under Louis XIII., who must be now
about forty-seven or forty-eight years of age?”
“Yes, sir, you are right in every particular!”
“And who served under an assumed name?”
“Under the name of Athos. Latterly I heard his friend, Monsieur
d’Artagnan, give him that name.”
“That is it, madame, that is the same. God be praised! And he is in
Paris?” continued he, addressing Raoul; then turning to the queen: “We
may still hope. Providence has declared for us, since I have found this
brave man again in so miraculous a manner. And, sir, where does he
reside, pray?”
“The Comte de la Fère lodges in the Rue Guénégaud, Hotel du Grand Roi
Charlemagne.”
“Thanks, sir. Inform this dear friend that he may remain within, that I
shall go and see him immediately.”
“Sir, I obey with pleasure, if her majesty will permit me to depart.”
“Go, Monsieur de Bragelonne,” said the queen, “and rest assured of our
affection.”
Raoul bent respectfully before the two princesses, and bowing to De
Winter, departed.
The queen and De Winter continued to converse for some time in low
voices, in order that the young princess should not overhear them; but
the precaution was needless: she was in deep converse with her own
thoughts.
Then, when De Winter rose to take leave:
“Listen, my lord,” said the queen; “I have preserved this diamond cross
which came from my mother, and this order of St. Michael which came
from my husband. They are worth about fifty thousand pounds. I had
sworn to die of hunger rather than part with these precious pledges;
but now that this ornament may be useful to him or his defenders,
everything must be sacrificed. Take them, and if you need money for
your expedition, sell them fearlessly, my lord. But should you find the
means of retaining them, remember, my lord, that I shall esteem you as
having rendered the greatest service that a gentleman can render to a
queen; and in the day of my prosperity he who brings me this order and
this cross shall be blessed by me and my children.”
“Madame,” replied De Winter, “your majesty will be served by a man
devoted to you. I hasten to deposit these two objects in a safe place,
nor should I accept them if the resources of our ancient fortune were
left to us, but our estates are confiscated, our ready money is
exhausted, and we are reduced to turn to service everything we possess.
In an hour hence I shall be with the Comte de la Fère, and to-morrow
your majesty shall have a definite reply.”
The queen tendered her hand to Lord de Winter, who, kissing it
respectfully, went out and traversed alone and unconducted those large,
dark and deserted apartments, brushing away tears which, blasé as he
was by fifty years spent as a courtier, he could not withhold at the
spectacle of royal distress so dignified, yet so intense.
Chapter XL.
Uncle and Nephew.
The horse and servant belonging to De Winter were waiting for him at
the door; he proceeded toward his abode very thoughtfully, looking
behind him from time to him to contemplate the dark and silent frontage
of the Louvre. It was then that he saw a horseman, as it were, detach
himself from the wall and follow him at a little distance. In leaving
the Palais Royal he remembered to have observed a similar shadow.
“Tony,” he said, motioning to his groom to approach.
“Here I am, my lord.”
“Did you remark that man who is following us?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Who is he?”
“I do not know, only he has followed your grace from the Palais Royal,
stopped at the Louvre to wait for you, and now leaves the Louvre with
you.”
“Some spy of the cardinal,” said De Winter to him, aside. “Let us
pretend not to notice that he is watching us.”
And spurring on he plunged into the labyrinth of streets which led to
his hotel, situated near the Marais, for having for so long a time
lived near the Place Royale, Lord de Winter naturally returned to lodge
near his ancient dwelling.
The unknown spurred his horse to a gallop.
De Winter dismounted at his hotel and went up into his apartment,
intending to watch the spy; but as he was about to place his gloves and
hat on a table, he saw reflected in a glass opposite to him a figure
which stood on the threshold of the room. He turned around and Mordaunt
stood before him.
There was a moment of frozen silence between these two.
“Sir,” said De Winter, “I thought I had already made you aware that I
am weary of this persecution; withdraw, then, or I shall call and have
you turned out as you were in London. I am not your uncle, I know you
not.”
“My uncle,” replied Mordaunt, with his harsh and bantering tone, “you
are mistaken; you will not have me turned out this time as you did in
London—you dare not. As for denying that I am your nephew, you will
think twice about it, now that I have learned some things of which I
was ignorant a year ago.”
“And how does it concern me what you have learned?” said De Winter.
“Oh, it concerns you very closely, my uncle, I am sure, and you will
soon be of my opinion,” added he, with a smile which sent a shudder
through the veins of him he thus addressed. “When I presented myself
before you for the first time in London, it was to ask you what had
become of my fortune; the second time it was to demand who had sullied
my name; and this time I come before you to ask a question far more
terrible than any other, to say to you as God said to the first
murderer: ‘Cain, what hast thou done to thy brother Abel?’ My lord,
what have you done with your sister—your sister, who was my mother?”
De Winter shrank back from the fire of those scorching eyes.
“Your mother?” he said.
“Yes, my lord, my mother,” replied the young man, advancing into the
room until he was face to face with Lord de Winter, and crossing his
arms. “I have asked the headsman of Bethune,” he said, his voice hoarse
and his face livid with passion and grief. “And the headsman of Bethune
gave me a reply.”
De Winter fell back in a chair as though struck by a thunderbolt and in
vain attempted a reply.
“Yes,” continued the young man; “all is now explained; with this key I
open the abyss. My mother inherited an estate from her husband, you
have assassinated her; my name would have secured me the paternal
estate, you have deprived me of it; you have despoiled me of my
fortune. I am no longer astonished that you knew me not. I am not
surprised that you refused to recognize me. When a man is a robber it
is hard to call him nephew whom he has impoverished; when one is a
murderer, to recognize the man whom one has made an orphan.”
These words produced a contrary effect to that which Mordaunt had
anticipated. De Winter remembered the monster that Milady had been; he
rose, dignified and calm, restraining by the severity of his look the
wild glance of the young man.
“You desire to fathom this horrible secret?” said De Winter; “well,
then, so be it. Know, then, what manner of woman it was for whom to-day
you call me to account. That woman had, in all probability, poisoned my
brother, and in order to inherit from me she was about to assassinate
me in my turn. I have proof of it. What say you to that?”
“I say that she was my mother.”
“She caused the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham to be stabbed by a man
who was, ere that, honest, good and pure. What say you to that crime,
of which I have the proof?”
“She was my mother.”
“On our return to France she had a young woman who was attached to one
of her opponents poisoned in the convent of the Augustines at Bethune.
Will this crime persuade you of the justice of her punishment—for of
all this I have the proofs?”
“She was my mother!” cried the young man, who uttered these three
successive exclamations with constantly increasing force.
“At last, charged with murders, with debauchery, hated by every one and
yet threatening still, like a panther thirsting for blood, she fell
under the blows of men whom she had rendered desperate, though they had
never done her the least injury; she met with judges whom her hideous
crimes had evoked; and that executioner you saw—that executioner who
you say told you everything—that executioner, if he told you
everything, told you that he leaped with joy in avenging on her his
brother’s shame and suicide. Depraved as a girl, adulterous as a wife,
an unnatural sister, homicide, poisoner, execrated by all who knew her,
by every nation that had been visited by her, she died accursed by
Heaven and earth.”
A sob which Mordaunt could not repress burst from his throat and his
livid face became suffused with blood; he clenched his fists, sweat
covered his face, his hair, like Hamlet’s, stood on end, and racked
with fury he cried out:
“Silence, sir! she was my mother! Her crimes, I know them not; her
disorders, I know them not; her vices, I know them not. But this I
know, that I had a mother, that five men leagued against one woman,
murdered her clandestinely by night—silently—like cowards. I know that
you were one of them, my uncle, and that you cried louder than the
others: ‘She must die.’ Therefore I warn you, and listen well to my
words, that they may be engraved upon your memory, never to be
forgotten: this murder, which has robbed me of everything—this murder,
which has deprived me of my name—this murder, which has impoverished
me—this murder, which has made me corrupt, wicked, implacable—I shall
summon you to account for it first and then those who were your
accomplices, when I discover them!”
With hatred in his eyes, foaming at his mouth, and his fist extended,
Mordaunt had advanced one more step, a threatening, terrible step,
toward De Winter. The latter put his hand to his sword, and said, with
the smile of a man who for thirty years has jested with death:
“Would you assassinate me, sir? _Then_ I shall recognize you as my
nephew, for you would be a worthy son of such a mother.”
“No,” replied Mordaunt, forcing his features and the muscles of his
body to resume their usual places and be calm; “no, I shall not kill
you; at least not at this moment, for without you I could not discover
the others. But when I have found them, then tremble, sir. I stabbed to
the heart the headsman of Bethune, without mercy or pity, and he was
the least guilty of you all.”
With these words the young man went out and descended the stairs with
sufficient calmness to pass unobserved; then upon the lowest landing
place he passed Tony, leaning over the balustrade, waiting only for a
call from his master to mount to his room.
But De Winter did not call; crushed, enfeebled, he remained standing
and with listening ear; then only when he had heard the step of the
horse going away he fell back on a chair, saying:
“My God, I thank Thee that he knows me only.”
Chapter XLI.
Paternal Affection.
Whilst this terrible scene was passing at Lord de Winter’s, Athos,
seated near his window, his elbow on the table and his head supported
on his hand, was listening intently to Raoul’s account of the
adventures he met with on his journey and the details of the battle.
Listening to the relation of those emotions so fresh and pure, the
fine, noble face of Athos betrayed indescribable pleasure; he inhaled
the tones of that young voice, as harmonious music. He forgot all that