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Alexandre Dumas
Louis XIII is tired of knowing less than Richelieu about his own house. He menaces Anne of Austria until she asks what crime she has committed beyond a letter to her brother. He answers with the request the cardinal told him to save: a ball at the Hôtel de Ville, and the diamond studs he gave her on her birthday. She goes pale and agrees. She asks the date. He will not name it. She asks if the cardinal told him to invite her with those stones. He leaves pleased and still does not know why she is afraid. Alone she kneels and says she is lost. Buckingham is in London. Madame de Chevreuse is at Tours. One of her women has betrayed her. Laporte cannot leave the Louvre.
Constance Bonacieux has been in a closet with the linen and has heard every word. She names the rosewood box and the duke, and says she will find a messenger. The queen writes two lines, seals them, and gives Constance a ring from her brother, the King of Spain, to raise money. The address is Buckingham in London. Constance hides the paper in her dress and goes home. She has not seen her husband since his release. She does not know Rochefort has already made him the cardinal's friend.
Bonacieux is putting a broken house in order. She asks him to leave at once for London with a paper he must not open, for perhaps a thousand pistoles. He will not work in the dark again. He boasts that Richelieu called him friend, and slaps a bag of silver from the cardinal and from Rochefort, the man who carried her off. He calls the queen a perfidious Spaniard and says what the cardinal does is well done.
She names him cowardly and infamous, then offers to restore her love if he goes. He refuses: he has seen the Bastille. She threatens a queen's arrest. He will appeal to his Eminence. She sees she has said too much and pulls back. He leaves, he says, to meet a friend. He means to tell Rochefort the queen wants a London messenger. Alone she hates him for the answer she gave the queen. A rap sounds on the ceiling. D'Artagnan asks her to open the little door on the alley so he can come down.
The person you named as safe may have taken the other side's money since you last saw them. Constance answers for her husband to the queen, then finds him slapping Rochefort's bag and calling Anne a perfidious Spaniard.
Before you stake a superior's secret on a spouse or colleague, ask what they have been paid to believe since you last sat with them.
D'Artagnan comes in by the alley door and tells her she has a bad sort of husband. He has overheard the whole quarrel, and the earlier talk with the cardinal's police. He offers himself as the man the queen needs for London, and says he is glad she is in trouble.
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is Loyalty When It Costs — Breakfast on a Bastion.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into Dumas's yard at Meung, the noon fight, the diamond road, the bastion breakfast, and the trial on the Lys.
Loyalty When It Costs
Louis menaces Anne of Austria until the diamond request lands. Constance carries messages between the Louvre and a rented room. Bonacieux has already been to the cardinal. The wife who runs the errand will pay in a pavilion and a convent. Loyalty is her labour.
Key Insight
The person who carries the letter often pays more than the person who wrote it. If your cause needs a go-between, budget their cost, not only your courage.
Chapter 17
It was the second time the cardinal had mentioned these diamond studs to the king. Louis XIII. was struck with this insistence, and began to fancy that this recommendation concealed some mystery. More than once the king had been humiliated by the cardinal, whose police, without having yet attained the perfection of the modern police, were excellent, being better informed than himself, even upon what was going on in his own household. He hoped, then, in a conversation with Anne of Austria, to obtain some information from that conversation, and afterward to come upon his Eminence with some secret which…
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On one page, copy Constance's promise to the queen (a husband who will carry a sealed letter without knowing it) and then list every fact this chapter gives about Bonacieux after his release: Rochefort's visits, the bag, the sentence about the Spanish heart, the plan to report the London ask. Mark the first fact that would have stopped you from answering for him.
When have you promised someone else's help and then found they had already taken a title, a payment, or a fear from the other side?
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Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
The Cassock He Asked For
Follow the Gascon who wants a cassock and is offered a commission.
The First Fight Was Not the One You Planned
Watch whom you stand beside when the first fight is not the one you planned.
A Trial Honour Will Not Name
Sit the trial on the Lys and ask what honour will not name.
Every Smile Hides a Warrant
Hear the court before you trust a smile or a warrant.
A Blank the Cardinal Already Signed
See what it costs to please a king and a cardinal at once.
Deep diving the literary elements.
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