Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/31

Rh he had never been known to lag behind, whatever wish the King expressed, the Marquis for once, instead of fulfilling the King's desire to be amused, remained stern and solemn, utterly absorbed in a fit of inexplicable gravity.

Some of those present, so remote was this gloom from Monsieur de Chauvelin's habitual bearing, thought the Marquis was but carrying on a jest, and that this gravity was the prelude to a wild burst of uproarious laughter. But the King this morning had no patience for waiting; so he began at once to rally the favourite on his melancholy.

"Why, what the deuce is wrong with you, Chauvelin?" asked the Monarch; "are you by way of continuing my last night's dream? Do you want to have yourself buried too, you of all people?"

"Oh! .... can your Majesty really have been dreaming such horrid things?" asked Richelieu.

"Yes, a nightmare, Duke. But egad! What I have to bear in my sleep, I should much prefer not to come across again when I am awake. Now, come, Chauvelin, what is wrong?"

But the Marquis only bowed by way of answer.

"Speak, man, speak, I order you to!" cried the King.

"Sire," answered the Marquis, "I have been reflecting."

"On what?" asked the astonished Monarch.

"On God! Sire"; is it not the beginning of wisdom?"

This preface, so cold and austere, made the poor King shudder. Bestowing a more attentive look on the Marquis, he discovered in his tired, age-worn features the probable reason for this unwonted melancholy.

"The beginning of wisdom?" he said.

"Well, well, I shall not be much surprised if this beginning has no sequel; it is too tiresome altogether. But you were not reflecting on God and nothing else. What else were you reflecting on?"

"On my wife and children, whom I have not seen for many a long day, Sire."

"True, true, Chauvelin, you are married and the father of a family; I had forgotten the fact; and you must have too, I should think, for during all the fifteen years we have enjoyed each other's society every day, this is the first time you have ever mentioned them to me. Well, well, if you are so enamoured of family life, bring them here; I will raise no objection, and your quarters in the Château are big enough, I should suppose."

"Sire," replied the Marquis, "Madame de Chauvelin lives in great retirement and in the strict exercise of her religion, and ..."

"And she would be shocked at our Versailles doings, eh I understand. 'Tis like my daughter Louise, whom I cannot get away from Saint-Denis. In that case I can see no way out of the difficulty, my dear Marquis.

"I crave the King's pardon; there is one."

"To wit?"

"My term of service is up to-night ; if the King would permit me to go to Grosbois to spend a few hours with my family."

"You are joking. Marquis. What, leave me?"

"I will come back. Sire; but I should not like to die without having made some testamentary arrangements."

"Die! devil take the man! what business has he to talk of dying? How old are you. Marquis?"

"Sire, I am ten years younger than your Majesty, though I look ten years older."

The King turned his back on the unfortunate wit, and addressing himself to the Due de Coigny, who was standing close to the Royal dais.

"Ah! there you are, Duke," he said; "you come at the very right moment; they were talking about you the other evening at supper. Is it true you have given hospitality, in my Castle of Choisy, to that poor fellow Gentil-Bernard,—a good deed, and a praiseworthy. Still, if all the Governors of my Castles did the same and sheltered poets run mad, there would be nothing left for me but to go and live at Bicetre. How is the poor wretch?"

"Still very bad, Sire."

"And how did this happen to him?"

"Why, because he lived a bit too merry a life in former days, and above all because he would play the young man quite recently."

"Ah yes! I understand. Of course, he is a very old man."

"I ask the King's pardon, but he is only a year older than your Majesty."

"Really and truly this is unbearable,"