Page images
PDF
EPUB

in the shape of 400 double louis, just come from the Mint. There is a fine description of the interview at which d'Artagnan handed the gold to the avaricious Cardinal. Mazarin fingered and fondled the glittering pieces, then putting them in the bag, smelt at it, invited the guardsman to do the same, and asked him if it was not of exquisite fragrance.

The personal ambition of Mazarin grew in proportion to his illgotten fortunes: he cherished the idea of marrying one of his nieces to the King of France, and another to the King of England. But in 1654 it seemed very doubtful who was to wear the crown of England. Henrietta Maria had already offered the hand of her son, afterwards Charles II., but it was by no means clear that Richard Cromwell was not the real game to stalk. So the indispensable d'Artagnan was commissioned once more to proceed incognito to England, to find out the probable course of events. His adventures on this occasion in London were of an exceedingly piquant nature, but unluckily not of a sort that can be explained to the readers of 'Maga.' Enough to say that, disguised as a cook, he entered the service of a rich Englishman, and he does not scruple to describe how in that situation he became the successful rival of the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, in the favours of the Englishman's beautiful wife. De Bordeaux, from whom the Cardinal had carefully concealed d'Artagnan's presence in London, surprised the lovers and arrested d'Artagnan, who was sent as a prisoner to Paris and lodged in the Bastille. For five weeks he remained there, maddened with the intolerable horrors of solitary imprisonment to that degree that, had he pos

sessed the means, he would almost certainly have destroyed himself, "as did many wretches confined in this prison."

Meanwhile the Cardinal, in ignorance of the misadventure which had befallen his envoy, continued to address letters to him in London. It may be asked why d'Artagnan did not explain the real state of the case to the prison authorities, but that is to ignore the nature of the horrible system under which he had been arrested. M. de Bordeaux had simply intimated to the Cardinal as First Minister of the Crown that a certain prisoner, known to be dangerous, and suspected of being a spy of the Prince de Condé, had been consigned to the Bastille, and Mazarin's mind was far too full of lofty designs to trouble itself on such a small matter. The prisoner saw nobody but the turnkey, who was not likely to pay much attention to his complaints; until at last, having been brought before the lieutenant-criminel for interrogation, he revealed his real name, and sent word of the plight he was in to the Cardinal, who ordered him to be set at liberty and gave him 2000 crowns de gratification.

Brighter days were in store for our hero. The young king was beginning to assert himself, and becoming impatient of the perpetual dictation of his First Minister. Especially irritating were the continual injunctions on the part of Mazarin that Louis should

practise economy. No precaution in the view of the Cardinal was too minute to prevent unnecessary expense.

Thus when he took Louis to witness the siege of Montmédy, the soldiers were delighted with the indifference to cold and heat, foul weather or fair, displayed by their young monarch; but it was noticed also how, when

it began to rain, the Cardinal reminded him to take off his gloves and put them in his pocket.

But Louis soon shook himself free of these restrictions, being naturally of a turn for magnificence. The company of Mousquetaires was restored to its pristine splendour, the king himself being captain, the idle and dissolute Duc de Nevers, Mazarin's nephew, captain- lieutenant, and d'Artagnan, at length au comble de ses vœux, lieutenant of the corps-the Cardinal giving him two chargers of the proper colour out of his own stables. It was worth all the dangers and disappointments he had come through in his tortuous employment. De Nevers seldom came on parade, and troubled himself not at all about internal economy: d'Artagnan was practically second in command under the king, who made the regiment his favourite plaything, personally putting them through evolutions in the court of the Louvre, winter and summer, for three or four hours on end, to the intense ennui of his attendant courtiers.

Mazarin had long been jealously aware that his own system of peculation was by no means his monopoly. M. de Fouquet, upon whom the constitution conferred, as Superintendent of Finance, practical irresponsibility, had enriched himself to a degree, and acquired an amount of power, hardly inferior to those attained by the First Minister himself. The story of his fall, trial, and condemnation is well known; so is that of the rise of M. de Colbert: they are told in these pages with vivid details of a personal kind. Mazarin did not live to witness the end, as he died in 1661; but with his last breath he denounced Fouquet to the king, and prayed that measures might be taken to

bring him to justice. Fouquet, foreseeing the influential position to which d'Artagnan was attaining, had made repeated overtures of friendship to him, and offered to finance his affairs-for which the still needy Musketeer could not fail to feel some gratitude, although Mazarin had strictly forbidden the soldier to hold any intercourse with the financier. It was, therefore, a peculiarly unpleasant duty which the king imposed on d'Artagnan when he ordered him to arrest Fouquet, and not only so, but to be responsible for his prisoner, first in the donjon of Angers, then in that of Vincennes, and, lastly, in the Bastille. He gives a mournful description of how severely the imprisonment told on the spirits of Fouquet, who, of all men, had been le plus vif et le plus remuant,

but, indeed, the routine of a French prison under the Grand Monarque was of a nature to crush the liveliest temperament. Fouquet himself sought relief in reading and writing; but his confidential clerk and his equerry, who also were placed in solitary confinement, had not the same resources. Of these, the first went raving mad, and the other-named Pelisson saved himself from a like fate by an ingenious device. He bought a thousand pins; every morning he scattered them broadcast in the room where he was confined, and spent the rest of the day in collecting them.

D'Artagnan soon became as enthusiastically proud of his new master as he had been ashamed of the old one. Of Louis he never speaks save with the deepest reverence, though he gives some amusing and scantly respectful particulars. He has some amusing passages about the Infanta Marie Thérèse, who, when she came to Paris for her betrothal with Louis,

etrayed too naïvely the frugal habits acquired in a Court which cultivated none of the prodigality of French society. The splendour of the repast prepared for her after the journey was such, the Princess supposed, as could only be appropriate for a special ceremonial occasion, and she greatly scandalised her maître d'hôtel, M. de Villacerf, by commanding him to reserve for the morrow the remains of a dish which particularly pleased her palate. Scarcely could she be persuaded to believe that what seemed to her a magnificent banquet was no more than an ordinary meal, such as would be served to her every day in her adopted country, and that the favourite dish could be repeated as often as she chose.

a

In truth, Louis XIV. was prince to inspire enthusiastic devotion. Handsome, generous, intellectual, an accomplished soldier, and devoted to the service of beauty, men could not but love and admire him as a man, and willingly supported him in his farreaching and impetuous schemes of reform. Reorganisation of finance, of the public service generally, and of the army in particular, were set on foot vigorously. The last-mentioned reform was essential to the young king's deliberate designs of foreign conquest, and it is interesting to note the reason for the change from personal to territorial titles of regiments. Hitherto it had been the custom to name regiments after their colonels, who were appointed to their commands as offices of profit, in token of the degree of favour each one had secured with the Cardinal, or, still more frequently, in consideration of the price each one was ready to pay for the post. There were only a very few famous old corps-such as the regiments of Picardy, of

Normandy, and of Champagne— which remained exceptions to the general rule. Now, however, when the king had determined that military capacity should be the sole qualification for the command of a regiment, the poorest officer had as good a chance of promotion as the greatest seigneur; and so it came to pass that a very needy but accomplished gentleman named Montpeyroux received command of a regiment: "Aussi puait-il comme un bouc, le plus souvent; mais à cela près, il était bon officier." Montpeyroux represented to the king that it would be absurd to name a battalion after such a ragged cavalier as himself, so it was called the regiment of Rouergue, and from that day territorial designations came into vogue.

It followed on this terrible system of appointment by merit that many of the old courtly families found themselves out in the cold. None of them suffered more severely in this respect than the house of Mazarin. The great Cardinal's nephew, the Duc de Nevers, was still nominal commander, under the king, of the Mousquetaires. He was deprived of his command, which Louis conferred on d'Artagnan-"sans que j'osasse la demander." Behold him then the stripling starved out of Béarn to seek his fortune in the great world - the gallant whose name had become a bogey to all self-respecting husbands the ruffler whose terrible sword had carved so many drinking-places for flies ("abreuvoirs à mouches," as he grimly calls them) on the persons of those who crossed him in love, at play, or in everyday intercourse, -behold him at the very pinnacle of a soldier of fortune's ambition. No-not quite the pinnacle: there was a loftier eminence to which, had his life been spared,

he assuredly would have attained. So keenly was Louis XIV. alive to the merit of this excellent soldier that, as may be gathered from many writers of the time, d'Artagnan was certain to have been raised to the dignity of a Maréchal of France had his varied and stormy life been spared a few years longer.

The autobiography closes on 1st May 1673, the day on which d'Artagnan at the head of his well-tried Mousquetaires escorted Louis XIV. from Paris on his way to take part in the siege of Maestricht, which had begun on 27th March. On Saturday, 24th June, a general assault took place, the general of the day being the gallant son of Charles II. and Lucy Walters our English Duke of Monmouth. It was sustained till Sunday morning, when the besieged managed to spring a couple of mines under the lines of the French, and the garrison under M. de Fariaux made a fierce sortie against their assailants, who had

been thrown into confusion by the explosion. The brunt fell on the Mousquetaires, of whom ninetyfive fell around their beloved captain. D'Artagnan perished on the field, "de quoy," says the 'Gazette de France,' "Sa Majesté témoigna être sensiblement touchée, pour sa valeur et la confiance qu'elle avait en lui."

To this fitting close was brought a soldier's life. I have done no more than mention a few of the more salient points in a story of unusual interest, but in truth there is hardly a dull passage in these thousand and odd pages. It is not a book to edify young persons withal there is a great deal in it that is exceedingly reprehensible; but to those of us who have bidden "bonjour lunettes! adieu fillettes!" it presents a singularly vivid picture of a stirring epoch, and reveals the secret springs which moved some of the most leading characters on the European stage.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

DARIEL: A ROMANCE OF SURREY.1

CHAPTER XXXV.-A RACE OF PLATERS.

Of the 26,250 days which (after due allowance made for the little jangles of the sun and moon) are the up-cast of our living-time according to the wise man, that sage complains that no one produces anything exactly like the produce of its brother one day old. If it were so in the almanac of Solon, what can be expected now, when every day is supposed to achieve a long stride in advance of all previous ages, clapping their laurels on its own pert head? So have I seen a pretty little dear, with her hair upon her shoulders, dash out in front of the village mile-race, at half a skip from the winning-post, and scream out, "I have won it.' Το me, in my quiet slow-go pace, it would have been more than enough, if the morrow had been content with its yesterday, and backed it up in a friendly style. But instead of that, it only cared to indorse the safe corollary-"All in all, a human creature is nothing more than accident." Accident to wit, just out of luck, according to the word there used, which bears no merry meaning. Perhaps this on the whole was my disgrace; for a friend's good luck should be one's own.

[ocr errors]

But could I put Tom Erricker in the most romantic scale of friendship (such as the Romans cultivated) against the heavenly Dariel? Those Tusculans knew not such love as ours; because they had no such girls to love. However, let Tom have his say.

"BELOVED GEORGE,-You are my best friend. The only one that

1

understands me, in this smiling vale of tears. You may not have heard from me for some months, because I have had the finest shooting I have ever yet been blest with. It makes one despise all the partridges and pheasants, tame fowl of a lower order. Grouse, my dear boy, and blackcocks too, and we heard of capercailzie! Tell old Stocks-andstones, who was so stingy about his rabbits, that I blow my nail at him, as the poet says. But that is not half of it. The grub-the grubGeorge, you never came across the like. I am seven pounds heavier than when I came down, in spite of walking off two pounds per diem. The wind seems to blow it back into you. And you make it up at dinner-time; and then you have cigars, such as you never put between your teeth; and then half-a-dozen lovely girls, all ready to scratch one another's faces, to draw you for their pal at billiards. And did not I show them a dodge or two?

"But that reminds me that I had my choice; and I chose like the man who put the broom across the walk. I might have had beauty; I might have had fashion; I might have had wit, though I hate it in a girl, because they soon give you the worst of it. And I might have had noble birth; but that would never do, because she might be nasty about the forks and spoons, at the height of the most festive enterprise. She was very sweet upon me for as much as three days; and my aunt, who has £80,000 to leave, was wild to have a Lady Frances Erricker. But my Lady Fanny

Copyright, 1897, by Dodd, Mead & Co. in the United States of America.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »