The Forty-Five Guardsmen. Dumas Alexandre
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would vanish.
"Well, I had a little affair to settle with M. de Mayenne, you remember?"
"Perfectly."
"I settled it; I beat this valiant captain without mercy. He sought for me to hang me; and you, whom I thought would protect me, abandoned me, and made peace with him. Then I declared myself dead and buried by the aid of my friend Gorenflot, so that M. de Mayenne has ceased to search for me."
"What a frightful courage you had, Chicot; did you not know the grief your death would cause me?"
"I have never lived so tranquilly as since the world thought me dead."
"Chicot, my head turns; you frighten me – I know not what to think."
"Well! settle something."
"I think that you are dead and – "
"Then I lie; you are polite."
"You commence by concealing some things from me; but presently, like the orators of antiquity, you will tell me terrible truths."
"Oh! as to that, I do not say no. Prepare, poor king!"
"If you are not a shade, how could you come unnoticed into my room, through the guarded corridors?" And Henri, abandoning himself to new terrors, threw himself down in the bed and covered up his head.
"Come, come," cried Chicot; "you have only to touch me to be convinced."
"But how did you come?"
"Why, I have still the key that you gave me, and which I hung round my neck to enrage your gentlemen, and with this I entered."
"By the secret door, then?"
"Certainly."
"And why to-day more than yesterday?"
"Ah! that you shall hear."
Henri, sitting up again, said like a child, "Do not tell me anything disagreeable, Chicot; I am so glad to see you again."
"I will tell the truth; so much the worse if it be disagreeable."
"But your fear of Mayenne is not serious?"
"Very serious, on the contrary. You understand that M. de Mayenne gave me fifty blows with a stirrup leather, in return for which I gave him one hundred with the sheath of my sword. No doubt he thinks, therefore, that he still owes me fifty, so that I should not have come to you now, however great your need, had I not known him to be at Soissons."
"Well, Chicot, I take you now under my protection, and I wish that you should be resuscitated and appear openly."
"What folly!"
"I will protect you, on my royal word."
"Bah! I have better than that."
"What?"
"My hole, where I remain."
"I forbid it," cried the king, jumping out of bed.
"Henri, you will catch cold; go back to bed, I pray."
"You are right, but you exasperated me. How, when I have enough guards, Swiss, Scotch, and French, for my own defense, should I not have enough for yours?"
"Let us see: you have the Swiss – "
"Yes, commanded by Tocquenot."
"Good! then you have the Scotch – "
"Commanded by Larchant."
"Very well! and you have the French guards – "
"Commanded by Crillon. And then – but I do not know if I ought to tell you – "
"I did not ask you."
"A novelty, Chicot!"
"A novelty?"
"Yes; imagine forty-five brave gentlemen."
"Forty-five? What do you mean?"
"Forty-five gentlemen."
"Where did you find them? Not in Paris, I suppose?"
"No, but they arrived here yesterday."
"Oh!" cried Chicot, with a sudden illumination, "I know these gentlemen."
"Really!"
"Forty-five beggars, who only want the wallet; figures to make one die with laughter."
"Chicot, there are splendid men among them."
"Gascons, like your colonel-general of infantry."
"And like you, Chicot. However, I have forty-five formidable swords at command."
"Commanded by the 46th, whom they call D'Epernon."
"Not exactly."
"By whom, then?"
"De Loignac."
"And it is with them you think to defend yourself?"
"Yes, mordieu! yes."
"Well, I have more troops than you."
"You have troops?"
"Why not?"
"What are they?"
"You shall hear. First, all the army that MM. de Guise are raising in Lorraine."
"Are you mad?"
"No; a real army – at least six thousand men."
"But how can you, who fear M. de Mayenne so much, be defended by the soldiers of M. de Guise?"
"Because I am dead."
"Again this joke!"
"No; I have changed my name and position."
"What are you, then?"
"I am Robert Briquet, merchant and leaguer."
"You a leaguer?"
"A devoted one, so that I keep away from M. de Mayenne. I have, then, for me, first, the army of Lorraine – six thousand men; remember that number."
"I listen."
"Then, at least one hundred thousand Parisians."
"Famous soldiers!"
"Sufficiently so to annoy you much: 6,000 and 100,000 are 106,000; then there is the pope, the Spaniards, M. de Bourbon, the Flemings, Henry of Navarre, the Duc d'Anjou – "
"Have you done?" interrupted Henri, impatiently.
"There still remain three classes of people."
"What are they?"
"First the Catholics, who hate you because you only three parts exterminated the Huguenots: then the Huguenots, who hate you because you have three parts exterminated them; and the third party is that which desires neither you, nor your brother, nor M. de Guise, but your brother-in-law, Henri of Navarre."
"Provided that he abjure. But these people of whom you speak are all France."
"Just so. These are my troops as a leaguer; now add, and compare."
"You are joking, are you not, Chicot?"
"Is it a time to joke, when you are alone, against all the world?"
Henri assumed an air of royal dignity. "Alone I am," said he, "but at the same time I alone command. You show me an army, but where is the chief? You will say, M. de Guise; but do I not keep him at Nancy? M. de Mayenne, you say yourself, is at Soissons, the Duc d'Anjou is at Brussels, and the king of Navarre at Pau; so that if I am alone, I am free. I am like a hunter in the midst of a plain, waiting to see his prey come within his reach."
"On the contrary; you are the game whom the hunters track to his lair."
"Chicot!"
"Well! let me hear whom you have seen come."
"No one."
"Yet some one has come."
"Of those whom I named?"
"Not exactly, but nearly."
"Who?"
"A woman."
"My sister Margot?"
"No;