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

man; that's my great disadvantage. I am of a frankness of character quite
French."
Rochefort bit his lips in order to prevent a smile.
"Now to the point. I want friends; I want faithful servants. When I
say I want, I mean the queen wants them. I do nothing without her
commands-pray understand that; not like Monsieur de Richelieu, who went on
just as he pleased. So I shall never be a great man, as he was, but to
compensate for that, I shall be a good man, Monsieur de Rochefort, and I
hope to prove it to you."
Rochefort knew well the tones of that soft voice, in which sounded
sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of young vipers.
"I am disposed to believe your eminence," he replied; "though I have
had but little evidence of that good-nature of which your eminence speaks.
Do not forget that I have been five years in the Bastile and that no medium
of viewing things is so deceptive as the grating of a prison."
"Ah, Monsieur de Rochefort! have I not told you already that I had
nothing to do with that? The queen-cannot you make allowances for the
pettishness of a queen and a princess? But that has passed away as suddenly
as it came, and is forgotten."
"I can easily suppose, sir, that her majesty has forgotten it amid the
fetes and the courtiers of the Palais Royal, but I who have passed those
years in the Bastile-"
"Ah! mon Dieu! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort! do you absolutely think
that the Palais Royal is the abode of gayety? No. We have had great
annoyances there. As for me, I play my game squarely, fairly, and above
board, as I always do. Let us come to some conclusion. Are you one of us,
Monsieur de Rochefort?"
"I am very desirous of being so, my lord, but I am totally in the dark
about everything. In the Bastile one talks politics only with soldiers and
jailers, and you have not an idea, my lord, how little is known of what is
going on by people of that sort; I am of Monsieur de Bassompierre's party.
Is he still one of the seventeen peers of France."
"He is dead, sir; a great loss. His devotion to the queen was
boundless; men of loyalty are scarce."
"I think so, forsooth," said Rochefort, "and when you find any of
them, you march them off to the Bastile. However, there are plenty in the
world, but you don't look in the right direction for them, my lord."
"Indeed! explain to me. Ah! my dear Monsieur de Rochefort, how much
you must have learned during your intimacy with the late cardinal! Ah! he
was a great man."
"Will your eminence be angry if I read you a lesson?"
"I! never! you know you may say anything to me. I try to be beloved,
not feared."
"Well, there is on the wall of my cell, scratched with a nail, a
proverb, which says, `Like master, like servant.'"
"Pray, what does that mean?"
"It means that Monsieur de Richelieu was able to find trusty servants,
dozens and dozens of them."
"He! the point aimed at by every poniard! Richelieu, who passed his
life in warding off blows which were forever aimed at him!"