“But then,” I began, and stopped. I had no wish to seem too curious.
“But then,” said Richelieu, pausing in his walk up and down the room. “Go on, de Brancas. What would you say?”
“Then he does not know?” I asked. “You have met with obstacles?”
“Obstacles!” and Richelieu smiled at me with triumphant face. “Yes,—such as most men would falter at. Imagine wooing a woman with whom you can never speak,—who is kept from you as from the plague! Ah, there was a problem, and one of the sort I love to solve. Why, de Brancas, if her father suspected that I had in my pocket a note from his daughter, he would have me back in a trice in my old cell at the Bastille.”
He paused a moment and touched the note with trembling fingers.
“No, I could never exchange a word with her,” he went on, at last, “but I made progress, nevertheless. Gold will work many miracles. Every morning she found a note in a bouquet of flowers,—on her writing-desk, on her dressing-table, on her embroidery-frame. Ah, how I cudgelled my poor brain in writing those notes, pleading, passionate, despairing by turns! At every ball, every concert, every fête where she was like to be, there was I, and if I could not use my lips, at least I could use my eyes. She looked at me first indifferently, then curiously, then shyly,—and last night at the Opéra she blushed when her eyes met mine, and I knew the battle won. To-morrow night I can speak to her. Ah, how I shall make her love me!”
Well, he was worth loving. My eyes blur with tears even yet as I see him again standing there, so glad, so straight, so gallant, and think of what came after. If I were a woman, I know I should have loved him heart and soul. Even as a man, ’tis little less than that.
“In affairs of the heart, as in affairs of state, my sword is at the service of M. le Duc,” I said, no little moved, and again we struck hands upon our compact, in which, I could not but think, it was I who must reap the most advantage. For of what service could the sword of an unknown youth of twenty be to Richelieu? And yet, as I was soon to learn, even a humble sword when backed by a loyal heart may be of service to the greatest.
Jacques was called and told to show me my apartment. What a contrast it was to that den under the gutters in the Rue Bailleul! Richelieu declared he would not part with me, and with some reluctance I gave Jacques the address of my former lodging, that he might bring away my wardrobe. That done, I was soon abed, turned to the wall, and slept a sleep infinitely sweetened by this sudden change in my circumstances.