Chapter 29

And he only spoke the truth, for the whole camp was in a turmoil. More than two thousand people had gazed, as at a play, at the lucky bit of braggadocio of the four friends,--braggadocio of which they were far from suspecting the real motive. The cry of "Long live the musketeers," resounded on all sides, and M. De Busigny was the first to hold out his hand to Athos and to declare that he had lost his wager. The dragoon and the Swiss had followed him, and all the others had followed the dragoon and the Swiss. There was nothing but congratulations, hand-shakings, embraces; and the tumult became so great that the Cardinal thought there must be a revolt, and sent La Houdinière, his captain of guards, to find out what was the matter.

"Well?" asked the Cardinal, as his messenger returned.

"Well, monseigneur," replied La Houdinière, "it is about three musketeers and a guardsman who made a bet with M. De Busigny to go and breakfast at the Bastion Saint-Gervais, and while breakfasting, held it for two hours against the enemy, and killed I don't know how many Rochellois."

"You asked the names of these gentlemen?"

"Yes, monseigneur."

"What are they?"

"Athos, Porthos, and Aramis."

"Always my three heroes," murmured the Cardinal. "And the guardsman?"

"M. D'Artagnan."

"Always my young rogue! I must gain over these men."

And the same evening, the Cardinal had a conversation with M. De Treville about the morning's exploit, with which the whole camp was still ringing. M. De Treville, who had heard it all at first hand, gave his Eminence all the details, not forgetting the episode of the napkin.

"Very good, M. De Treville," said the Cardinal; "but you must get me that napkin, and I will have three golden lilies embroidered on it, and give as a banner to your company."

"Monseigneur," replied M. De Treville, "that would be an injustice to the guards. M. D'Artagnan does not belong to me, but to M. Des Essarts."

"Then you must take him," said the Cardinal. "As these four brave soldiers love each other so much, they ought certainly to be in the same regiment."

That evening M. De Treville announced the good news to the three musketeers and to D'Artagnan, and invited them all to breakfast the following day.

D'Artagnan was nearly beside himself with joy. As we know, it had been the dream of his life to be a musketeer.

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK

From 'The Viscount of Bragelonne'

[Dumas adopts the theory that the Man in the Iron Mask was the suppressed twin brother of Louis XIV.]

"What is all this noise?" asked Philippe, turning towards the door of the concealed staircase. And as he spoke a voice was heard saying, "This way, this way. Still a few steps, sire."

"It is M. Fouquet's voice," said D'Artagnan, who was standing near the Queen Mother.

"Then M. D'Herblay will not be far off," added Philippe; but little did he expect to see the person who actually entered.

All eyes were riveted on the door, from which the voice of M. Fouquet proceeded; but it was not he who came through.

A cry of anguish rang through the room, breaking forth simultaneously from the King and the spectators, and surely never had been seen a stranger sight.

The shutters were half closed, and only a feeble light struggled through the velvet curtains, with their thick silk linings, and the eyes of the courtiers had to get accustomed to the darkness before they could distinguish between the surrounding objects. But once discerned, they stood out as clear as day.

So, looking up, they saw Louis XIV. in the doorway of the private stair, his face pale and his brows bent; and behind him stood Fouquet.

The Queen Mother, whose hand held that of Philippe, uttered a shriek at the sight, thinking that she beheld a ghost.

Monsieur staggered for a moment and turned away his head, looking from the King who was facing him to the King who was by his side.

Madame on the contrary stepped forward, thinking it must be her brother-in-law reflected in a mirror. And indeed, this seemed the only rational explanation of the double image.

Both young men, agitated and trembling, clenching their hands, darting flames of fury from their eyes, dumb, breathless, ready to spring at each other's throats, resembled each other so exactly in feature, figure, and even, by pure accident, in dress, that Anne of Austria herself stood confounded. For as yet the truth had not dawned on her. There are some torments that we all instinctively reject. It is easier far to accept the supernatural, the impossible.

That he should encounter such obstacles had never for one moment occurred to Louis. He imagined he had only to show himself, for the world to fall at his feet. The Sun-king could have no rival; and where his rays did not fall, there must be darkness--

As to Fouquet, who could describe his bewilderment at the sight of the living portrait of his master? Then he thought that Aramis was right, and that the new-comer was every whit as much a king as his double, and that after all, perhaps he had made a mistake when he had declined to share in the _coup d'état_ so cleverly plotted by the General of the Jesuits.

And then, it was equally the blood royal of Louis XIII. that Fouquet had determined to sacrifice to blood in all respects identical; a noble ambition, to one that was selfish. And it was the mere aspect of the pretender which showed him all these things.

D'Artagnan, leaning against the wall and facing Fouquet, was debating in his own mind the key to this wonderful riddle. He felt instinctively, though he could not have told why, that in the meeting of the two Louis XIV's lay the explanation of all that had seemed suspicious in the conduct of Aramis during the last few days.

Suddenly Louis XIV., by nature the most impatient of the two young men, and with the habit of command that was the result of training, strode across the room and flung open one of the shutters. The flood of light that streamed through the window caused Philippe involuntarily to recoil, and to step back into the shelter of an alcove.

The movement struck Louis, and turning to the Queen he said:

"Mother, do you not know your own son, although every one else has denied his King?"

Anne trembled at his voice and raised her arms to heaven, but could not utter a single word.

"Mother," retorted Philippe in his quietest tones, "do you not know your own son?"

And this time it was Louis who stepped back.

As for Anne, pierced to the heart with grief and remorse, she could bear it no longer. She staggered where she stood, and unaided by her attendants, who seemed turned into stone, she sank down on a sofa with a sigh.

This spectacle was too much for Louis. He rushed to D'Artagnan, whose brain was going round with bewilderment, and who clung to the door as his last hope.

"To me, musketeer! Look us both in the face, and see which is the paler, he or I."

The cry awoke D'Artagnan from his stupor, and struck the chord of obedience strong in the bosom of every soldier. He lifted his head, and striding straight up to Philippe laid his hand on his shoulder, saying quietly:--

"Monsieur, you are my prisoner."

Philippe remained absolutely still, as if nailed to the floor, his eyes fixed despairingly on the King who was his brother. His silence reproached him as no words could have done, with the bitterness of the past and the tortures of the future.

And the King understood, and his soul sank within him. His eyes fell, and drawing his brother and sister-in-law with him, he hastily quitted the room; forgetting in his agitation even his mother, lying motionless on the couch beside him, not three paces from the son whom for the second time she was allowing to be condemned to a death in life.

Philippe drew near to her, and said softly:--

"If you had not been my mother, madame, I must have cursed you for the misery you have caused me."

D'Artagnan overheard, and a shiver of pity passed through him. He bowed respectfully to the young prince, and said:--

"Forgive me, monseigneur; I am only a soldier, and my faith is due to him who has left us."

"Thank you, M. D'Artagnan. But what has become of M. D'Herblay?"

"M. D'Herblay is safe, monseigneur," answered a voice behind them; "and while I am alive and free, not a hair of his head shall be hurt."

"M. Fouquet!" said the prince, smiling sadly.

"Forgive me, monseigneur," cried Fouquet, falling on his knees; "but he who has left the room was my guest."

"Ah!" murmured Philippe to himself with a sigh, "you are loyal friends and true hearts. You make me regret the world I am leaving. M. D'Artagnan, I will follow you."

As he spoke, Colbert entered and handed to the captain of the musketeers an order from the King; then bowed, and went out.

D'Artagnan glanced at the paper, and in a sudden burst of wrath crumpled it in his hand.

"What is the matter?" asked the prince.

"Read it, monseigneur," answered the musketeer.

And Philippe read these words, written hastily by the King himself:--

"M. D'Artagnan will conduct the prisoner to the Îles Sainte-Marguerite. He will see that his face is covered with an iron mask, which must never be lifted on pain of death."

"It is just," said Philippe; "I am ready."

"Aramis was right," whispered Fouquet to D'Artagnan, "this is as good a king as the other."

"Better," replied D'Artagnan; "he only needed you and me."

A TRICK IS PLAYED ON HENRY III. BY AID OF CHICOT

From 'The Lady of Monsoreau'

The King and Chicot remained quiet and silent for the next ten minutes. Then suddenly the King sat up, and the noise he made roused Chicot, who was just dropping off to sleep.

The two looked at each other with sparkling eyes.

"What is it?" asked Chicot in a low voice.

"Do you hear that sighing sound?" replied the King in a lower voice still. "Listen!"

As he spoke, one of the wax candles in the hand of the golden satyr went out; then a second, then a third. After a moment, the fourth went out also.

"Oh, oh!" cried Chicot, "that is more than a sighing sound." But he had hardly uttered the last word when in its turn the lamp was extinguished, and the room was in darkness, save for the flickering glow of the dying embers.

"Look out!" exclaimed Chicot, jumping up.

"He is going to speak," said the King, shrinking back into his bed.

"Then listen and let us hear what he says," replied Chicot, and at the same instant a voice which sounded at once both piercing and hollow, proceeded from the space between the bed and the wall.

"Hardened sinner, are you there?"

"Yes, yes, Lord." gasped Henri with chattering teeth.

"Dear me!" remarked Chicot, "that is a very hoarse voice to have come from heaven! I feel dreadfully frightened; but never mind!"

"Do you hear me?" asked the voice.

"Yes, Lord," stammered Henri; "and I bow before your anger."

"Do you think you are carrying out my will by performing all the mummeries you have taken part in to-day, while your heart is full of the things of this world?"

"Well said!" cried Chicot; "you touched him there!"

The King's hands shook as he clasped them, and Chicot went up to him.

"Well," murmured Henri, "are you convinced now?"

"Wait a bit," answered Chicot.

"What do you want more?"

"Hush! listen to me. Creep softly out of bed, and let me take your place."

"Why?"

"Because then the anger of the Lord will fall first upon me."

"And do you think I shall escape?"

"We will try, anyway;" and with affectionate persistence he pushed the King out of bed, and took his place.

"Now, Henri," he said, "go and lie on my sofa, and leave all to me."

Henri obeyed; he began to understand Chicot's plan.

"You are silent," continued the voice, "which proves that your heart is hardened."

"Oh, pardon, pardon, Lord!" exclaimed Chicot, imitating the King's nasal twang. Then, stretching himself out of bed, he whispered to the King, "It is very odd, but the heavenly voice does not seem to know that it is Chicot who is speaking."

"Oh!" replied Henri, "what do you suppose is the meaning of that?"

"Don't be in a hurry; plenty of strange things will happen yet!"

"Miserable creature that you are!" went on the voice.

"Yes, Lord, yes!" answered Chicot. "I am a horrible sinner, hardened in crime."

"Then confess your sins, and repent."

"I acknowledge," said Chicot, "that I dealt wickedly by my cousin Condé, whose wife I betrayed; and I repent bitterly."

"What is that you are saying?" cried the King. "There is no good in mentioning that. It has all been forgotten long ago."

"Oh, has it?" replied Chicot; "then we will pass on to something else."

"Answer," said the voice.

"I acknowledge," said the false Henri, "that I behaved like a thief toward the Poles, who had elected me their king, in stealing away to France one fine night, carrying with me all the crown jewels; and I repent bitterly."

"Idiot!" exclaimed Henri, "what are you talking about now? Nobody remembers anything about that."

"Let me alone," answered Chicot, "I must go on pretending to be the King."

"Speak," said the voice.

"I acknowledge," continued Chicot, "that I snatched the throne from my brother D'Alençon, who was the rightful heir, since I had formally renounced my claims when I was elected King of Poland; I repent bitterly."

"Rascal!" cried the King.

"There is yet something more," said the voice.

"I acknowledge to have plotted with my excellent mother, Catherine de' Medicis, to hunt from France my brother-in-law the King of Navarre, after first destroying all his friends, and my sister Queen Marguerite, after first destroying all her lovers; and I repent bitterly."

"Scoundrel! Cease!" muttered the King, his teeth clenched in anger.

"Sire, it is no use trying to hide what Providence knows as well as we do."

"There is a crime unconfessed that has nothing to do with politics," said the voice.

"Ah, now we are getting to it," observed Chicot dolefully; "it is about my conduct, I suppose?"

"It is," answered the voice.

"I cannot deny," continued Chicot, always speaking in the name of the King, "that I am very effeminate, very lazy; a hopeless trifler, an incorrigible hypocrite."

"It is true," said the voice.

"I have behaved ill to all women, to my own wife in particular; and such a good wife too."

"A man should love his wife as himself, and above all the world," cried the voice angrily.

"Oh dear!" wailed Chicot in despairing tones; "then I certainly have sinned terribly."

"And by your example you have caused others to sin."

"That is true, sadly true."

"You very nearly sent that poor Saint-Luc to perdition."

"Bah!" said Chicot, "are you sure I did not send him there quite?"

"No; but such a fate may befall both of you if you do not let him go back to his family at break of day."

"Dear me!" said Chicot to the King, "the voice seems to take a great interest in the house of Cossé."

"If you disobey me, you will suffer the same torments as Sardanapalus, Nabuchodnosor, and the Marshal De Retz."

Henry III. gave a loud groan; at this threat he became more frightened than ever.

"I am lost," he ejaculated wildly; "I am lost. That voice from on high will be my death-warrant."

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR

(1824-1895)

BY FRANCISQUE SARCEY

We shall not say much about the life of Alexandre Dumas the younger. The history of a great writer is the history of his works. He was born in Paris, on July 27th, 1824. His name on the register of births appears as "Alexandre, son of Marie Catherine Lebay, seamstress." He was not acknowledged by his father until he had reached his sixth year, March 7th, 1830. I emphasize this particular because it had great influence on the bent of his genius. During all his life Dumas was haunted by a desire of rehabilitating illegitimate children, of creating a reaction against their treatment by the Civil Code and the prejudice which makes of them something little better than outcasts in society.

"When seven years old," he himself says, "I entered as a boarder the school of Monsieur Vauthier, on Rue Montagne Saint-Geneviève. Thence I passed, about two years later, to the Saint-Victor School; the principal was Monsieur Goubaux, a friend of my father, with whom he collaborated under the _nom de plume_ of Dinaux. This school, which numbered two hundred and fifty boarding pupils, and with the rather strange habits which I tried to depict in 'The Clémenceau Case,' occupied all the ground covered to-day by the Casino de Paris and the 'Pôle-Nord' establishment. When about fifteen I left the Saint-Victor School for Monsieur Hénon's school, which was situated in the Rue de Courcelles and has now disappeared. It is in the Collêge Bourbon (now the Lycée Condorcet) that I received all my instruction, as the pupils of the two schools where I lived attended the college classes. I never belonged to any of the higher State schools,--I have not even the degree of bachelor."

At the end of his years of study he returned to his father. He did not stay there more than six months. The rather tumultuous life which he saw in the house disturbed his proud mind, already filled with serious yearnings.

"You have debts," his father said to him. "Do as I do: work, and you will pay them."

Such was indeed the young man's intention. His first work was a one-act play in verse, 'The Queen's Jewel,' which no one, assuredly, would mention to-day but for his signature. The date was 1845, and the author was then twenty-one. Other works by him were published at various times in the Journal des Demoiselles.

"I was," he has said, "the careless, lazy, and spoilt child of all my father's friends. I believed in the eternity of youth, of strength, of joy. I spent the whole day laughing, the whole night sleeping, unless I had some reason for writing verses."

About 1846 he set resolutely to work. He turned to novel-writing, which seemed to him to offer greater facilities for reaching the public and greater chances of immediate income than dramatic composition. Only two of his novels have survived: 'La Dame aux Camélias' ('Camille': 1848), because from this book came the immortal drama by the same title; and 'The Clémenceau Case,' because the author wrote it when he was in complete possession of his talent, and because moreover it is a first-rate work.

It was in 1852 that the Vaudeville Theatre gave the first performance of 'Camille,' the fortune of which was to be so extraordinary. For two or three years the play had been tossed from theatre to theatre. Nobody wanted it. To the ideas of the time it seemed simply shocking, and the play was still forbidden in London after its performances in France were numbered by the hundreds.

There is this special trait in 'Camille'--it was a work all instinct with the spirit of youth. Dumas twenty years later sadly said: "I might perhaps make another 'Demi-Monde'; I could not make another 'Camille.'" There existed, indeed, other works which have all the fire and charm of the twentieth year. 'Polyeucte' is Corneille's masterpiece; his 'Cid' breathes the spirit of youth: Corneille at forty could not have written the 'Cid.' Racine's first play is 'Andromaque': Beaumarchais's is the 'Barber of Seville'; Rossini, when young, enlivened it with his light and sparkling airs. Fifteen years later he himself wrote his 'William Tell,' a higher work, but a work which was not young.

If the theatrical managers had recoiled from 'Camille' in spite of the great names that recommended it, it is because it was cut after a pattern to which neither they nor the public were accustomed; it is because it contained the germ of a whole dramatic revolution. Now, the author was not a theatrical revolutionist. He had not said to himself, "I am going to throw down the old fabric of the drama, and erect a new one on its ruins." To tell the truth, he had no idea of what he was doing. He had witnessed a love drama. He had thrown it still throbbing upon the stage, without any regard for the dramatic conventions which were then imposed upon playwrights, and which were almost accepted as laws. He had simply depicted what he had seen. All the managers, attached as they were to the old customs, and respectful of the traditions, had trembled with horror when they saw moving around Camille the ignoble Prudence, the idiotic Due de Varville, the silly Saint-Gaudens. But the public--though the fact was suspected neither by them nor by the public itself--yearned for more truth upon the boards. When 'Camille' was presented to them, the play-goers uttered a cry of astonishment and joy: that was the thing! that was just what they wanted! From that day, which will remain as a date in the history of the French stage, the part of Camille has been performed by all the celebrated actresses. The part has two sides: one may see in it a degraded woman who has fallen profoundly in love, rather late in life; one may also see in it a woman, already poetical in her own nature, suddenly carried away by a great passion into the sacred regions of the Ideal.

Almost any young man in Dumas's place would have lost his head after so astounding a success, and might not have resisted the temptation of at once working out the vein. For on coming out of the theatre after the first performance, the author had all the managers at his feet, and the smallest trifle was sure to be accepted if it only had his signature. But he had learned, by the side of "a prodigal father," the art of husbanding his talent. He declined to front the footlights again, save with a work upon which he had been able to bestow all the care and labor it deserved: he waited a year before he gave, at the Gymnase theatre, 'Diane de Lys.'

'Diane de Lys' undoubtedly pleased the public, but its success was not exactly brilliant. It is full of great qualities, it is strongly conceived, constructed with rare power and logic, but it added nothing to his reputation. The play as a whole seemed long and melancholy. It is a curious subject for critical study, as one of the stages in which the genius of the author stopped awhile, on its way to higher works. It will leave no great trace in his career.

Two years later he gave at the Gymnase theatre--I do not dare to say his masterpiece, but certainly the best constructed and most enjoyable play he ever wrote, 'Le Demi-Monde' (The Other Half-World). In this play he discovered and defined the very peculiar world of those women who live on the margin of regular "society," and try to preserve its tone and demeanor. What scientific and strong construction are here! What an admirable disposition of the scenes, both flexible and logical! And through the action, which moves on with wonderful straightforwardness and breadth, how many portraits, drawn with a steady hand, each one bearing such distinctive features that you would know them if you met them on the street! Olivier de Jalin, the refined Parisian, the dialectician of the play, who is no other than Dumas himself; Raymond de Nanjac, handsome and honest, but not keen or Parisian; and that giddy Valentine de Sanctis, whose head turns with the wind, whose tongue cannot rest one moment; and especially Suzanne d'Ange, so witty, so complex, so devious in her motions, so _roublarde_, as a Parisian of to-day would say.