Twenty Years After | Page 3

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Twenty Years After
by 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,