Now, as to Bussy's great fight. He had gone to the house of Madame Diana de Monsereau. I am not au fait upon French social customs, but let us presume his being there was entirely proper, because that excellent lady was glad to see him. He was set upon by her husband, M. de Monsereau, with fifteen hired assassins. Outside, the Due D'Anjou and some others of assassins were in hiding to make sure that Monsereau killed Bussy, and that somebody killed Monsereau! There's a “situation” for you, double-edged treachery against—love and innocence, let us say. Bussy is in the house with Madame. His friend, St. Luc, is with him; also his lacquey and body-physician, the faithful Rely. Bang! the doors are broken in, and the assassins penetrate up the stairway. The brave Bussy confides Diana to St. Luc and Rely, and, hastily throwing up a barricade of tables and chairs near the door of the apartment, draws his sword. Then, ye friends of sudden death and valorous exercise, began a surfeit of joy. Monsereau and his assassins numbered sixteen. In less than three moderate paragraphs Bessy's sword, playing like avenging lightning, had struck fatality to seven. Even then, with every wrist going, he reflected, with sublime calculation: “I can kill five more, because I can fight with all my vigor ten minutes longer!” After that? Bessy could see no further—there spoke fate!—you feel he is to die. Once more the leaping steel point, the shrill death cry, the miraculous parry. The villain, Monsereau, draws his pistol. Bessy, who is fighting half a dozen swordsmen, can even see the cowardly purpose; he watches; he—dodges—the—bullets!—by watching the aim—
“Ye sons of France, behold the glory!”
He thrusts, parries and swings the sword as a falchion. Suddenly a pistol ball snaps the blade off six inches from the hilt. Bessy picks up the blade and in an instant splices—it—to—the—hilt—with—his—handkerchief! Oh, good sword of the good swordsman! it drinks the blood of three more before it—bends—and—loosens—under—the—strain! Bessy is shot in the thigh; Monsereau is upon him; the good Rely, lying almost lifeless from a bullet wound received at the outset, thrusts a rapier to Bessy's grasp with a last effort. Bessy springs upon Monsereau with the great bound of a panther and pins—the—son—of—a—gun—to—the—floor—with—the—rapier—and—watches—him—die!
You can feel faint for joy at that passage for a good dozen readings, if you are appreciative. Poor Bessy, faint from wounds and blood-letting, retreats valiantly to a closet window step by step and drops out, leaving Monsereau spitted, like a black spider, dead on the floor. Here hope and expectation are drawn out in your breast like chewing gum stretched to the last shred of tenuation. At this point I firmly believed that Bessy would escape. I feel sorry for the reader who does not. You just naturally argue that the faithful Rely will surely reach him and rub him with the balsam. That balsam of Dumas! The same that D'Artagnan's mother gave him when he rode away on the yellow horse, and which cured so many heroes hurt to the last gasp. That miraculous balsam, which would make doctors and surgeons sing small today if they had not suppressed it from the materia medica. May be they can silence their consciences by the reflection that they suppressed it to enhance the value and necessity of their own personal services. But let them look at the death rate and shudder. I had confidence in Rely and the balsam, but he could not get there in time. Then, it was forgone that Bessy must die. Like Mercutio, he was too brilliant to live. Depend upon it, these wizards of story tellers know when the knell of fate rings much sooner than we halting readers do.
Bessy drops from the closet window upon an iron fence that surrounded the park and was impaled upon the dreadful pickets! Even then for another moment you can cherish a hope that he may escape after all. Suspended there and growing weaker, he hears footsteps approaching. Is it a rescuing friend? He calls out—and a dagger stroke from the hand of D'Anjou, his Judas master, finds his heart. That's the way Bessy died. No man is proof against the dagger stroke of treachery. Bessy was powerful and the due jealous.
Diana has been carried off safely by the trustworthy St. Luc. She must have died of grief if she had not been kept alive to be the instrument of retributive justice. (In the sequel you will find that this Queen of Hearts descended upon the ignoble due at the proper time like a thousand of brick and took the last trick of justice.)
The extraordinary description of Bussy's fight is beyond everything. You gallop along as if in a whirlwind, and it is only in cooler moments that you discover he killed about twelve rascals with his own good arm. It seems impossible; the scientific, careful readers have been known to declare it impossible and sneer at it with laughter. I trust every novel reader respects scientific folks as he should; but science is not everything. Our scientific friends have contended that the whale did not engulf Jonah; that the sun did not pause over the vale of Askelon; that Baron Munchausen's horse did not hang to the steeple by his bridle; that the beanstalk could not have supported a stout lad like Jack; that General Monk was not sent to Holland in a cage; that Remus and Romulus had not a devoted lady wolf for a step-mother; in fact, that loads of things, of which the most undeniable proof exists in plain print all over the world, never were done or never happened. Bessy was killed, Rely was killed later, Diana died in performing her destiny, St. Luc was killed. Nobody left to make affidavits, except M. Dumas; in his lifetime nobody questioned it; he is now dead and unable to depose; whereupon the scientists sniff scornfully and deny. I hope I shall always continue to respect science in its true offices, but, brethren, are there not times when—science—makes—you—just—a—little—tired?
Heroes! D'Artagnan or Bessy? Choose, good friends, freely; as freely let me have my Bessy.