"Alexandre Dumas. Twenty Years After." - читать интересную книгу автора

Twenty Years After
Alexandre Dumas


1
THE SHADE OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU.

In a splendid chamber of the Palais Royal, formerly styled the Palais
Cardinal, a man was sitting in deep reverie, his head supported on his
hands, leaning over a gilt and inlaid table which was covered with letters
and papers. Behind this figure glowed a vast fireplace alive with leaping
flames; great logs of oak blazed and crackled on the polished brass
andirons whose flicker shone upon the superb habiliments of the lonely
tenant of the room, which was illumined grandly by twin candelabra rich
with wax-lights.
Any one who happened at that moment to contemplate that red simar-the
gorgeous robe of office-and the rich lace, or who gazed on that pale brow,
bent in anxious meditation, might, in the solitude of that apartment,
combined with the silence of the ante-chambers and the measured paces of
the guards upon the landing-place, have fancied that the shade of Cardinal
Richelieu lingered still in his accustomed haunt.
It was, alas! the ghost of former greatness. France enfeebled, the
authority of her sovereign contemned, her nobles returning to their former
turbulence and insolence, her enemies within her frontiers-all proved the
great Richelieu no longer in existence.
In truth, that the red simar which occupied the wonted place was his
no longer, was still more strikingly obvious from the isolation which
seemed, as we have observed, more appropriate to a phantom than a living
creature-from the corridors deserted by courtiers, and courts crowded with
guards-from that spirit of bitter ridicule, which, arising from the streets
below, penetrated through the very casements of the room, which resounded
with the murmurs of a whole city leagued against the minister; as well as
from the distant and incessant sounds of guns firing-let off, happily,
without other end or aim, except to show to the guards, the Swiss troops
and the military who surrounded the Palais Royal, that the people were
possessed of arms.
The shade of Richelieu was Mazarin. Now Mazarin was alone and
defenceless, as he well knew.
"Foreigner!" he ejaculated, "Italian! that is their mean yet mighty
byword of reproach-the watchword with which they assassinated, hanged, and
made away with Concini; and if I gave them their way they would
assassinate, hang, and make away with me in the same manner, although they
have nothing to complain of except a tax or two now and then. Idiots!
ignorant of their real enemies, they do not perceive that it is not the
Italian who speaks French badly, but those who can say fine things to them
in the purest Parisian accent, who are their real foes.
"Yes, yes," Mazarin continued, whilst his wonted smile, full of
subtlety, lent a strange expression to his pale lips; "yes, these noises
prove to me, indeed, that the destiny of favorites is precarious; but ye
shall know I am no ordinary favorite. No! The Earl of Essex, 'tis true,