Suddenly, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought--for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu"s old hotel so crowded that he could not walk through it--this man closed his book, rose and came noiselessly towards me.
"M. de Berault?" he said.
"Yes," I answered.
"His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me."
I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the Cardinal know that I was here? How could he have known when he gave the order?
But I had short time to think of these things, or others. We pa.s.sed through two rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing, we stopped at a third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt.
The usher knocked, opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain and signed to me to enter. I did so and found myself behind a screen.
"Is that M. de Berault?" asked a thin, high-pitched voice.
"Yes, Monseigneur," I answered trembling.
"Then come, my friend, and talk to me."
I went round the screen, and I know not how it was, the watching crowd outside, the vacant ante-chamber in which I had stood, the stillness and silence all seemed to be concentrated here, and to give to the man I saw before me a dignity which he had never possessed for me when the world pa.s.sed through his doors, and the proudest fawned on him for a smile.
He sat in a great chair on the farther side of the hearth, a little red skull-cap on his head, his fine hands lying still in his lap. The collar of lawn which fell over his cape was quite plain, but the skirts of his red robe were covered with rich lace, and the order of the Holy Ghost, a white dove on a gold cross, shone on his breast. Among the mult.i.tudinous papers on the great table near him I saw a sword and pistols; and some tapestry that covered a little table behind him failed to hide a pair of spurred riding-boots. But as I advanced he looked towards me with the utmost composure; with a face mild and almost benign, in which I strove in vain to read the traces of last night"s pa.s.sion. So that it flashed across me that if this man really stood (and afterwards I knew that he did) on the thin razor-edge between life and death, between the supreme of earthly power, lord of France and arbiter of Europe, and the nothingness of the clod, he justified his fame. He gave weaker natures no room for triumph.
The thought was no sooner entertained than it was gone.
"And so you are back at last, M. de Berault," he said gently. "I have been expecting to see you since nine this morning."
"Your Eminence knew, then--" I muttered.
"That you returned to Paris by the Orleans gate last evening alone?" he answered, fitting together the ends of his fingers, and looking at me over them with inscrutable eyes. "Yes, I knew all that last night. And now, of your business. You have been faithful and diligent, I am sure.
Where is he?"
I stared at him and was dumb. In some way the strange things I had seen since I had left my lodgings, the surprises I had found awaiting me here, had driven my own fortunes, my own peril, out of my head--until this moment. Now, at this question, all returned with a rush, and I remembered where I stood. My heart heaved suddenly in my breast. I strove for a savour of the old hardihood, but for the moment I could not find a word.
"Well," he said lightly, a faint smile lifting his moustache. "You do not speak. You left Auch with him on the twenty-fourth, M. de Berault.
So much I know. And you reached Paris without him last night. He has not given you the slip?"
"No, Monseigneur," I muttered.
"Ha! that is good," he answered, sinking back again in his chair. "For the moment--but I knew that I could depend on you. And now where is he?
What have you done with him? He knows much, and the sooner I know it the better. Are your people bringing him, M. de Berault?"
"No, Monseigneur," I stammered, with dry lips. His very good-humour, his benignity, appalled me. I knew how terrible would be the change, how fearful his rage, when I should tell him the truth. And yet that I, Gil de Berault, should tremble before any man! With that thought I spurred myself, as it were, to the task. "No, your Eminence," I said, with the energy of despair. "I have not brought him, because I have set him free."
"Because you have--WHAT?" he exclaimed. He leaned forward as he spoke, his hands on the arm of the chair; and his eyes growing each instant smaller, seemed to read my soul.
"Because I have let him go," I repeated.
"And why?" he said, in a voice like the rasping of a file.
"Because I took him unfairly," I answered.
"Because, Monseigneur, I am a gentleman, and this task should have been given to one who was not. I took him, if you must know," I continued impatiently--the fence once crossed I was growing bolder--"by d.o.g.g.i.ng a woman"s steps and winning her confidence and betraying it. And whatever I have done ill in my life--of which you were good enough to throw something in my teeth when I was last here--I have never done that, and I will not!"
"And so you set him free?"
"Yes."
"After you had brought him to Auch?"
"Yes."
"And, in point of fact, saved him from falling into the hands of the Commandant at Auch?"
"Yes," I answered desperately to all.
"Then, what of the trust I placed in you, sirrah?" he rejoined, in a terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward he probed me with his eyes. "You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion this month past, answer me that? What of the trust I placed in you?"
"The answer is simple," I said, shrugging my shoulders with a touch of my old self. "I am here to pay the penalty."
"And do you think that I do not know why?" he retorted, striking one hand on the arm of his chair with a force that startled me. "Because you have heard, sir, that my power is gone! Because you have heard that I, who was yesterday the King"s right hand, am to-day dried up, withered and paralysed! Because you have heard--but have a care! have a care!"
he continued with extraordinary vehemence, and in a voice like a dog"s snarl. "You and those others! Have a care, I say, or you may find yourselves mistaken yet."
"As Heaven shall judge me," I answered solemnly, "that is not true.
Until I reached Paris last night I knew nothing of this report. I came here with a single mind, to redeem my honour by placing again in your Eminence"s hands that which you gave me on trust, and here I do place it."
For a moment he remained in the same att.i.tude, staring at me fixedly.
Then his face relaxed somewhat.
"Be good enough to ring that bell," he said.
It stood on a table near me. I rang it, and a velvet-footed man in black came in, and gliding up to the Cardinal, placed a paper in his hand. The Cardinal looked at it; while the man stood with his head obsequiously bent, and my heart beat furiously.
"Very good," his Eminence said, after a pause which seemed to me to be endless, "Let the doors be thrown open."
The man bowed low, and retired behind the screen. I heard a little bell ring somewhere in the silence, and in a moment the Cardinal stood up.
"Follow me!" he said, with a strange flash of his keen eyes.
Astonished, I stood aside while he pa.s.sed to the screen; then I followed him. Outside the first door, which stood open, we found eight or nine persons--pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several guards waiting like mutes. These signed to me to precede them and fell in behind us, and in that order we pa.s.sed through the first room and the second, where the clerks stood with bent heads to receive us. The last door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew open as we approached, voices cried, "Room! Room for his Eminence!" we pa.s.sed through two lines of bowing lackeys, and entered--an empty chamber.
The ushers did not know how to look at one another; the lackeys trembled in their shoes. But the Cardinal walked on, apparently unmoved, until he had pa.s.sed slowly half the length of the chamber. Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side and then to the other, with a low laugh of derision.
"Father," he said in his thin voice, "what does the Psalmist say? "I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that is in the desert!""
The monk mumbled a.s.sent.
"And later in the same psalm, is it not written, "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure?""
"It is so," the father answered. "Amen."
"Doubtless though, that refers to another life," the Cardinal said, with his slow wintry smile. "In the meantime we will go back to our books, and serve G.o.d and the King in small things if not in great. Come, father, this is no longer a place for us. VANITAS VANITATUM OMNIA VANITAS! We will retire."