The Man of Meung — The Three Musketeers

The carriage that left Bonacieux fainting does not stop for a hanging. It threads the Rue St. Honoré, turns into the Rue des Bons Enfants, and drops him in a cushioned antechamber. When he can stand, an officer leads him into a close cabinet. A map of La Rochelle lies open on the table. The man by the chimney looks like a soldier still dusty from the road. He is Cardinal Richelieu, younger and harder than later portraits, and nothing in the room tells the mercer whose presence he has entered. Richelieu reads the Bastille papers, murmurs that this head has never conspired, and still charges Bonacieux with high treason beside his wife, Madame de Chevreuse, and the Duke of Buckingham.

Bonacieux, eager to please, repeats what his wife said: that Richelieu drew Buckingham to Paris to ruin the duke and the queen. The cardinal snaps at him to hold his tongue. Then he mines the useful facts. The mercer waited at doors while his wife visited two linen drapers, No. 25 in the Rue de Vaugirard and No. 75 in the Rue de la Harpe. Richelieu rings for Rochefort. Bonacieux cries that this is the man who stole his wife, then takes it back the moment he sees the cardinal's face. Alone with Rochefort, Richelieu learns the rest. A handkerchief from a laundress pulled the queen from her women. She left twice, once for a rosewood casket marked with her cipher. Madame de Lannoy is sure the diamond studs the king gave her went to Buckingham. The goldsmith never received a broken stud to mend.

Richelieu already guessed the two addresses and sends Rochefort to search them. He then calls Bonacieux back, names Chevreuse and Buckingham as the false drapers, and watches the mercer fall at his feet. A purse of a hundred pistoles and the word friend buy him. Rochefort returns too late: the woman left last night, the man this morning. The cardinal will keep the queen ignorant that he knows, send for the keeper of the seals, and dispatch Vitray to London with a sealed letter. Milady is to stand near Buckingham at the first ball and cut two of the twelve diamond studs from his doublet.