“Well,” continued the regent, “I knew very well that he would attempt to regain Paris, for I suspected to-night’s rendezvous, monsieur, as I suspect a great many other things,” and he glanced at me in a way which made me wonder if the Cellamare conspiracy was really such a profound secret as the conspirators believed. “Consequently I gave orders to his guards not to press him too closely should he attempt to escape, and I prepared a trap for him here. He was followed from the moment he entered Paris until he disappeared through M. de Mazarin’s private entrance below there. You do not seem to recognize the fact that I have a well-organized police department, monsieur, the best that the world has ever seen. I had resolved this: If Richelieu could escape from this trap and set out for Bayonne as I expected, I should make no great resistance. If he could not escape, he should die.”
The last words were uttered in a voice that chilled me.
“As you may guess,” continued the regent, “I was not sorry when he carried out his plan of escape, for I believe that now he will really go to Bayonne, and he cannot return from there in time to interfere with me. He is a popular and powerful man, and while I should not have hesitated in sending him to the block, it would have made me new enemies, whom I could ill afford just at this time. Have you ever known what it is, M. de Brancas,” he asked, suddenly, “to be hooted and stoned through the streets?”
“No, monsieur,” I answered, surprised at the turn the conversation had taken and at the gloomy cloud which had descended upon the regent’s face.
“I have known what it is!” he exclaimed. “I, regent of France,—king in everything but name. I have been abominated, hissed, spat upon. Even now I am suspected, and Villeroi, the king’s governor, surrounds him with ridiculous precautions to keep me away from him. I am trying to turn the tide the other way; I am trying to make friends, hence I am lenient with you and with Richelieu. I do not know why I am telling you this,” he added in another tone, “only I admire brave men, whether they are with me or against me. That is all; forget this conversation and keep Richelieu from vexing me too far. You may go.”
I bowed and left the room with a dazed consciousness that I had seen a side of the man which the world knew little of, and as I threaded my way through the corridors and down the great staircase to the street I pondered upon it wonderingly. When I heard, afterwards, as I often did, of the excesses of the little suppers which he gave nearly every night in his apartment, I did not find it in my heart to blame him.
The increasing cold and the lateness of the hour had driven the people from the streets, and even the Rue St. Honoré was almost deserted as I emerged from the Palais Royal. I returned as I had come, casting a glance at the gloomy river as I crossed it, and was soon at the Hotel de Richelieu. Jacques admitted me, and told me that his master had secured a horse from the stables more than an hour before and was now well on the road to Bayonne.
I was glad to learn that Richelieu had indeed left Paris, for I had little hope that the regent would permit reasons of state to interfere with his personal inclinations should the duke provoke him further. Nor, indeed, had I much hope that Richelieu would remain at Bayonne, despite his knowledge of the regent’s purpose. Philip of Orleans was still in my mind as I went to bed, and as I dropped asleep I was compelled to admit that he was a greater man than I had thought.
CHAPTER XI
THE HOUSE IN THE RUE VILLEDOT
Paris, with its ever-changing crowds, its narrow, clamorous streets, its towering, tottering, dingy buildings, its contrasts of wealth and poverty, light and shade, had not yet ceased to astonish me. It was a wonderful place,—wonderful, at least, to me, who had known only Poitiers,—and I, who had sat in the chimney corner at home with mouth agape listening to the tales my grandfather—God rest his soul—was wont to tell of it, had during the first few days hastened from place to place,—from Notre Dame to the Place de Greve, from the Porte St. Denis to the Great Chatelet,—constructing anew the scenes which had made them all so famous, and delighted to find that they had remained unchanged with the changing years. For half a century the city had stood stagnant, the king choosing to lavish his money on his wars or his pleasures rather than in beautifying his capital, or sinking into his grave, his coffers empty, his subjects estranged, under the severe dominion of Madame de Maintenon. But I found it beautiful, and in the romance with which I clothed it forgot the uneven streets, the stenches of the ill-kept gutters, the danger from the tottering walls. It was to me a dream city, and, as in dreams, I used only one faculty in regarding it,—the imagination.