“Oh, sire!” said the officer, “your majesty has ill understood me; I no longer claim anything now.”
“Excess of delicacy, monsieur; but I will keep my eye upon your affairs, and later——”
“Oh, sire! what a word!—later! Thirty years have I lived upon that promising word, which has been pronounced by so many great personages, and which your mouth has, in its turn, just pronounced. Later—that is how I have received a score of wounds, and how I have reached fifty-four years of age without ever having had a louis in my purse, and without ever having met with a protector on my way,—I who have protected so many people! So I change my formula, sire; and when any one says to me ‘Later,’ I reply ‘Now.’ It is rest that I solicit, sire. That may be easily granted me. That will cost nobody anything.”
“I did not look for this language, monsieur, particularly from a man who has always lived among the great. You forget you are speaking to the king, to a gentleman who is, I suppose, of as good a house as yourself; and when I say later, I mean a certainty.”
“I do not at all doubt it, sire, but this is the end of the terrible truth I had to tell you. If I were to see upon that table a marshal’s stick, the sword of constable, the crown of Poland, instead of later, I swear to you, sire, that I should still say Now! Oh, excuse me, sire! I am from the country of your grandfather, Henry IV. I do not speak often; but when I do speak, I speak all.”
“The future of my reign has little temptation for you, monsieur, it appears,” said Louis, haughtily.
“Forgetfulness, forgetfulness everywhere!” cried the officer, with a noble air; “the master has forgotten the servant, so that the servant is reduced to forget his master. I live in unfortunate times, sire. I see youth full of discouragement and fear, I see it timid and despoiled, when it ought to be rich and powerful. I yesterday evening, for example, open the door to a king of England, whose father, humble as I am, I was near saving, if God had not been against me—God, who inspired His elect, Cromwell! I open, I said, the door, that is to say, the palace of one brother to another brother, and I see—stop, sire, that is a load on my heart!—I see the minister of that king drive away the proscribed prince, and humiliate his master by condemning to want another king, his equal. Then I see my prince, who is young, handsome, and brave, who has courage in his heart, and lightning in his eye,—I see him tremble before a priest, who laughs at him behind the curtain of his alcove, where he digests all the gold of France, which he afterwards stuffs into secret coffers. Yes—I understand your looks, sire. I am bold to madness; but what is to be said? I am an old man, and I tell you here, sire, to you, my king, things which I would cram down the throat of any one who should dare to pronounce them before me. You have commanded me to pour out the bottom of my heart before you, sire, and I cast at the feet of your majesty the pent-up indignation of thirty years, as I would pour out all my blood, if your majesty commanded me to do so.”
The king, without speaking a word, wiped the drops of cold and abundant perspiration which trickled from his temples. The moment of silence which followed this vehement outbreak represented for him who had spoken, and for him who had listened, ages of suffering.
“Monsieur,” said the king at length, “you spoke the word forgetfulness. I have heard nothing but that word; I will reply, then, to it alone. Others have perhaps been able to forget, but I have not, and the proof is, that I remember that one day of riot, that one day when the furious people, raging and roaring as the sea, invaded the royal palace; that one day when I feigned sleep in my bed, one man alone, naked sword in hand, concealed behind my curtain, watched over my life, ready to risk his own for me, as he had before risked it twenty times for the lives of my family. Was not the gentleman, whose name I then demanded, called M. d’Artagnan? say, monsieur.”
“Your majesty has a good memory,” replied the officer, coldly.