The Conspirators Part 76

Four years after this event, Buvat, reinstated in his place--and with his arrears paid--had the satisfaction of placing a pen in the hand of a fine boy of three years old--he was the son of Raoul and Bathilde.

The two first names which the child wrote were Albert du Rocher and Clarice Gray. The third was that of Philippe d'Orleans, regent of France.

POSTSCRIPTUM.

Perhaps some persons may have taken sufficient interest in those who have played a secondary part in our history to wish to know what became of them after the events which lost the conspiracy and saved the regent.

We will satisfy them in a few words.

The Duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Maine, whose plotting they wished to stop for the future, were arrested--the duke at Sceaux, and the d.u.c.h.ess in her house in the Rue Saint Honore. The duke was taken to the chateau of Doullens, and the d.u.c.h.ess to that of Dijon, and afterward to the citadel of Chalons. Both left at the end of a few months, disarming the regent, one by an absolute denial, the other by a complete avowal.

Richelieu was arrested, as Mademoiselle de Valois had warned him, the day after that on which he had procured Bathilde's interview with the regent; but his captivity was a new triumph for him. It was reported that the handsome prisoner had obtained permission to walk on the terrace of the Bastille. The Rue Saint Antoine was filled with most elegant carriages, and became, in twenty-four hours, the fashionable promenade. The regent--who declared that he had proofs of the treason of M. de Richelieu, sufficient to lose him four heads if he had them--would not, however, risk his popularity with the fair s.e.x by keeping him long in prison. Richelieu, again at liberty, after a captivity of three months, was more brilliant and more sought after than ever; but the closet had been walled up, and Mademoiselle de Valois became d.u.c.h.esse de Modena.

The Abbe Brigaud--arrested, as we have said, at Orleans--was kept for some time in the prison of that town, to the great despair of Madame Denis and her children; but, one fine morning, as they were sitting down to breakfast, the abbe entered, as calm as ever. They asked him a number of questions, but--with his habitual prudence--he referred them to his judicial declarations, saying that the affair had already given him so much trouble that they would greatly oblige him by never speaking of it any more. Now, as the Abbe Brigaud was quite an autocrat in Madame Denis's establishment, his desire was religiously respected, and from that day the affair was as completely forgotten in the Rue du Temps-Perdu as if it had never existed. Some days afterward Pompadour, Valef, Laval, and Malezieux went out of prison in their turn, and began again to pay their court to Madame de Maine, as if nothing had happened.

As to the Cardinal de Polignac, he was not even arrested; he was simply exiled to his Abbey d'Anchin.

These proofs of clemency appeared to Dubois so out of all reason that he came to the regent, intending to make a scene about it, but the regent only replied by repeating the burden of the song which Saint-Simon had made on him:

"For I am Philippe le Debonnaire, Philippe le Debonnaire."

This enraged Dubois so much that the regent, in order to pacify him, was obliged to transform him into his Eminence the Cardinal.

END OF "THE CONSPIRATORS."