Under the Red Robe Part 31

And as solemnly as we had come we marched back through the first and second and third doors until we stood again in the silence of the Cardinal's chamber--he and I and the velvet-footed man in black. For a while Richelieu seemed to forget me. He stood brooding on the hearth, his eyes on a small fire, which burned there though the weather was warm. Once I heard him laugh, and twice he uttered in a tone of bitter mockery the words,--

'Fools! Fools! Fools!'

At last he looked up, saw me, and started.

'Ah!' he said, 'I had forgotten you. Well, you are fortunate, M. de Berault. Yesterday I had a hundred clients; to-day I have only one, and I cannot afford to hang him. But for your liberty that is another matter.'

I would have said something, pleaded something; but he turned abruptly to the table, and sitting down wrote a few lines on a piece of paper.

Then he rang his bell, while I stood waiting and confounded.

The man in black came from behind the screen.

'Take this letter and that gentleman to the upper guard-room,' the Cardinal said sharply. 'I can hear no more,' he continued, frowning and raising his hand to forbid interruption. 'The matter is ended, M. de Berault. Be thankful.'

In a moment I was outside the door, my head in a whirl, my heart divided between grat.i.tude and resentment. I would fain have stood to consider my position; but I had no time. Obeying a gesture, I followed my guide along several pa.s.sages, and everywhere found the same silence, the same monastic stillness. At length, while I was dolefully considering whether the Bastille or the Chatelet would be my fate, he stopped at a door, thrust the letter into my hands, and lifting the latch, signed to me to enter.

I went in in amazement, and stopped in confusion. Before me, alone, just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale, the next crimson with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforet. I cried out her name.

'M. de Berault,' she said, trembling. 'You did not expect to see me?'

'I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle,' I answered, striving to recover my composure.

'Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert you,' she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my heart. 'We should have been base indeed, if we had not made some attempt to save you.

I thank Heaven, M. de Berault, that it has so far succeeded that that strange man has promised me your life. You have seen him?' she continued eagerly and in another tone, while her eyes grew on a sudden large with fear.

'Yes, Mademoiselle,' I said. 'I have seen him, and it is true, He has given me my life.'

'And--?'

'And sent me into imprisonment.'

'For how long?' she whispered.

'I do not know,' I answered. 'I fear during the King's pleasure.'

She shuddered.

'I may have done more harm than good,' she murmured, looking at me piteously. 'But I did it for the best. I told him all, and perhaps I did harm.'

But to hear her accuse herself thus, when she had made this long and lonely journey to save me, when she had forced herself into her enemy's presence, and had, as I was sure she had, abased herself for me, was more than I could bear.

'Hush, Mademoiselle, hush!' I said, almost roughly. 'You hurt me. You have made me happy; and yet I wish that you were not here, where, I fear, you have few friends, but back at Cocheforet. You have done more for me than I expected, and a hundred times more than I deserved. But it must end here. I was a ruined man before this happened, before I ever saw you. I am no worse now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name pinned to mine on Paris lips. Therefore, good-bye. G.o.d forbid I should say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would soon malign you.'

She looked at me in a kind of wonder; then, with a growing smile,--

'It is too late,' she said gently.

'Too late?' I exclaimed. 'How, Mademoiselle?'

'Because--do you remember, M. de Berault, what you told me of your love-story under the guide-post by Agen? That it could have no happy ending? For the same reason I was not ashamed to tell mine to the Cardinal. By this time it is common property.'

I looked at her as she stood facing me. Her eyes shone under the lashes that almost hid them. Her figure drooped, and yet a smile trembled on her lips.

'What did you tell him, Mademoiselle?' I whispered, my breath coming quickly.

'That I loved,' she answered boldly, raising her clear eyes to mine.

'And therefore that I was not ashamed to beg--even on my knees.'

I fell on mine, and caught her hand before the last word pa.s.sed her lips. For the moment I forgot King and Cardinal, prison and the future, all; all except that this woman, so pure and so beautiful, so far above me in all things, loved me. For the moment, I say. Then I remembered myself. I stood up, and stood back from her in a sudden revulsion of feeling.

'You do not know me!' I cried, 'You do not know what I have done!'

'That is what I do know,' she answered, looking at me with a wondrous smile.

'Ah! but you do not!' I cried. 'And besides, there is this--this between us.' And I picked up the Cardinal's letter. It had fallen on the floor.

She turned a shade paler. Then she cried quickly,--

'Open it! open it! It is not sealed nor closed.'

I obeyed mechanically, dreading with a horrible dread what I might see.

Even when I had it open I looked at the finely scrawled characters with eyes askance. But at last I made it out. And it ran thus:--

'THE KING'S PLEASURE IS THAT M. GIL DE BERAULT, HAVING MIXED HIMSELF UP IN AFFAIRS OF STATE, RETIRE FORTHWITH TO THE DEMESNE OF COCHEFORET, AND CONFINE HIMSELF WITHIN ITS LIMITS UNTIL THE KING'S PLEASURE BE FURTHER KNOWN.

'THE CARDINAL DE RICHELIEU.'

We were married next day, and a fortnight later were at Cocheforet, in the brown woods under the southern mountains; while the great Cardinal, once more triumphant over his enemies, saw with cold, smiling eyes the world pa.s.s through his chamber. The flood tide of his prosperity lasted thirteen years from that time, and ceased only with his death. For the world had learned its lesson; to this hour they call that day, which saw me stand alone for all his friends, 'The Day of Dupes.'