At this the stranger, a tall young man with fair hair, pale complexion and nervous manner, though thin and intelligent-looking, despite the dark rim around his blue eyes and the expression of vulgar cynicism hovering on his lips – this stranger, we say, carefully inspected his pistols, slung his carbine on his shoulder, tried a long rapier a few times in its sheath and stared hard at the opposite bank, a wide meadow with a path cutting across it from the river’s edge, running in a straight line to the little town of Isson, where one could see the brown church steeple and the white smoke in the golden mists of evening.
Still on the far side, about an eighth of a league away on the right, stood the little fort of Vayres.
‘Well, then!’ the stranger, who was starting to grow impatient, said to his companions at the lookout. ‘Is he coming, can you see him at last, to the right or the left, behind us or in front?’
‘I think I can see a black group on the Isson road,’ one of the men said, ‘but I’m not sure yet, because the sun’s in my eyes. Hold on! Yes, yes, that’s right: one, two, three, four, five men, a trimmed hat and a blue cloak. It’s the messenger we’ve been waiting for, with an escort for greater security.’
‘He has every right,’ the stranger said phlegmatically. ‘Come and get my horse, Ferguzon.’
The man to whom this order had been addressed – in a voice that was part friendly and part commanding – hastened to obey and ran down the embankment. Meanwhile, the stranger dismounted and, as the other came up to him, threw the reins across his arm and prepared to get into the boat.
‘Listen, Cauvignac,’ said Ferguzon, putting a hand on his arm. ‘No rash valour now. If our man makes the slightest suspicious gesture, start by putting a bullet through his head. You see he’s bringing a whole troop with him, the sly dog.’
‘Yes, but they are fewer than we are. And, quite apart from our greater courage, we have the advantage of numbers, so there is nothing to fear. Ah! You can just see their heads.’
‘What about that!’ said Ferguzon. ‘What can they do? They won’t be able to find a boat. Well, I never! There is one, as if by magic.’
‘It belongs to my cousin, the ferryman of Isson,’ said the fisherman, who appeared to be very interested in the preparations, though terrified that a naval battle was about to take place between his boat and his cousin’s.
‘Good, the blue cloak is going aboard,’ said Ferguzon. ‘Alone, strictly as required by the treaty.’
‘We mustn’t keep them waiting,’ the stranger remarked, and, jumping into the boat himself, he signalled to the fisherman to take up his place.
‘Be careful, Roland,’ Ferguzon went on, repeating his appeal for caution. ‘The river is wide, so don’t get too close to the opposite bank and attract a burst of musket fire that we couldn’t return. As far as possible, keep on this side of the demarcation line.’
The man whom Ferguzon had just called ‘Roland’, and before that ‘Cauvignac’ – and who responded to both names, no doubt because one was his given name, and the other his family name or nom de guerre – nodded his head.
‘Don’t worry, I was just thinking about that. It’s all very well for those who have nothing to lose to take risks, but in this matter I have too much to win to risk idiotically losing it all. So if there is any rash move here, it will not be from me. Row on, Boatman.’
The fisherman untied his boat and stuck his long boat-hook into the grass. The boat began to move away from the bank just as the Isson ferryman’s rowing boat was leaving the opposite shore.
In the middle of the stream there was a little pier of three posts, with a white flag on top, serving to warn the long barges that sailed down the Dordogne that there was a dangerous outcrop of rocks at this point. When the water was low one could even see the tips of these rocks, black and smooth beneath the current; however, at this moment, the Dordogne was full and only the small flag and a slight boiling of the water revealed the presence of the reef.
The two boatmen no doubt realized that the parley could take place at this point, so they directed their skiffs towards it. The Isson ferryman was the first to reach the spot and, on his passenger’s orders, tied his boat to one of the rings on the pier.
At that moment, the fisherman, who had set off from the opposite bank, turned round to his traveller for instructions and was not a little surprised to see only a masked man, wrapped in a cloak, sharing the boat with him. This only increased the anxiety that he had felt from the start, and he was only able to manage a stammer as he requested his instructions from this odd personage.
‘Tie up the boat at that piece of wood,’ said Cauvignac, pointing towards it. ‘As close as you can to the other gentleman’s boat.’
His hand pointed away from the post, towards the gentleman who had been brought there by the Isson ferryman.
The rower obeyed and the boats, brought side by side by the current, allowed the two plenipotentiaries to begin the following conference.
II
‘What! You are masked, Monsieur,’ the new arrival said with a mixture of surprise and scorn. He was a fat man of around fifty-five, with grimly staring eyes like those of a bird of prey. He had a grey moustache and small beard, and, though he was not himself masked, he had hidden as much as possible of his hair and face under a wide-brimmed hat, and his clothes and body behind a blue cloak with long folds.
Cauvignac, taking a closer look at the man who had just spoken to him, could not refrain from giving an involuntary start of surprise.
‘Well, Monsieur,’ said the other. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, I almost lost my balance. But I believe you did me the honour to address me. May I enquire what you said?’
‘I was asking why you are masked.’
‘It’s a frank question,’ the young man said. ‘And I shall reply with equal candour. I am masked to prevent you seeing my face.’
‘Do I know you then?’
‘I think not, but having seen me once you might recognize me later, and that, at least in my opinion, would be quite unnecessary.’
‘Well, I think you are at least as open as I am.’
‘Yes, when my candour cannot harm me.’
‘And does this candour go so far as to reveal the secrets of others?’
‘Why not, if the revelation can do me some good.’
‘It is a strange part that you are playing here.’
‘Heavens! One does what one can, Monsieur. I have been by turns lawyer, doctor, soldier and partisan. You can see that I am not short of a profession.’
‘And what are you now?’
‘I am your humble servant,’ the young man said, bowing with a pretence of respect.
‘Do you have the letter we mentioned?’
‘Do you have the letter of attestation3 requested?’
‘Here it is.’
‘Do you want us to exchange?’
‘One moment, Monsieur,’ said the stranger in the blue cloak. ‘Your conversation pleases me, and I am loath to deprive myself of the pleasure so soon.’
‘Why, Monsieur, it is entirely at your disposal, as I am myself,’ Cauvignac replied. ‘Let’s talk a while then, if it pleases you.’
‘Would you like me to come into your boat, or would you rather get into mine, so that we can keep our boatmen away from us in the one that is left free?’
‘No need, Monsieur. I suppose you speak some foreign language?’
‘I do speak Spanish.’
‘So do I. We’ll speak in Spanish then, if that language suits you.’
‘Perfectly!’ the other man said, from then on using the agreed language. ‘What made you reveal to the Duke d’Epernon the infidelity of the lady in question?’
‘I wanted to perform a service to the noble lord and gain his approval.’
‘Do you have any grudge against Mademoiselle de Lartigues?’
‘Me? Not at all. I must even confess that I owe her some favours and should be most displeased if any misfortune
were to befall her.’
‘So is your enemy Baron de Canolles?’
‘I have never met him and know him only by reputation, and, I must say, he has that of being a gallant knight and courageous gentleman.’
‘So you are not acting out of hatred for anyone?’
‘Pah! If I had a grudge against the Baron de Canolles, I should entreat him to blow out his brains or cut his throat with me, knowing that he is too gallant a fellow ever to refuse a duel.’
‘So I should trust what you have told me?’
‘I really think that is your best course.’
‘Very well, do you have the letter proving the infidelity of Mademoiselle de Lartigues?’
‘Here it is! With all due respect, this is the second time I have shown it to you.’
Without coming closer, the old nobleman cast a look full of sadness on the fine paper and the writing that could be seen through it. Slowly, the young man unfolded the letter.
‘I suppose you recognize the writing?’
‘I do.’
‘Then give me the letter of attestation, and you shall have the letter.’
‘In a moment. But might I ask you a question?’
‘Go on,’ said the young man, calmly folding the letter and returning it to his pocket.
‘How did you obtain this missive?’
‘I am happy to tell you.’
‘Well…?’
‘You must surely know that the Duke d’Epernon’s4 somewhat spendthrift government caused him a great deal of trouble in Guyenne?’5
‘Yes, carry on.’
‘And you are not unaware that the horribly tight-fisted government of Monsieur de Mazarin brought him a lot of trouble in the capital?’6
‘What do Monsieur de Mazarin and Monsieur d’Epernon have to do with this?’
‘I’ll tell you. Out of these two opposite forms of government came a state of affairs that is very much like a general war in which everyone takes sides. At the moment, Monsieur de Mazarin is fighting for the queen, you are fighting for the king, the coadjutor7 is fighting for Monsieur de Beaufort,8 Monsieur de Beaufort is fighting for Madame de Montbazon, Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld is fighting for Madame de Longueville,9 the Duke d’Orléans10 is fighting for Mademoiselle Soyon, the Parliament11 is fighting for the people… and, finally, they have imprisoned Monsieur de Condé, who was fighting for France.12 Now, since I have little to gain by fighting for the queen, the king, the coadjutor, Monsieur de Beaufort, Madame de Montbazon, Madame de Longueville, Mademoiselle Soyon, for the people or for France, I had an idea, which was not to take any side but to follow whichever one attracted me at any given moment. So for me it is all a question of opportunity. What do you say of my idea?’
‘It’s ingenious.’
‘So I have mustered an army. You can see it assembled on the bank of the Dordogne.’
‘Good heavens! Five men!’
‘One more than you have yourself, so it would be most misplaced of you to despise them.’
‘And very ill-dressed,’ the old man went on. He was in a bad mood and so inclined to disparage.
‘It is true,’ the other man agreed, ‘that they are somewhat similar to the companions of Falstaff. Let that be: Falstaff is an English gentleman of my acquaintance. But this evening they will be freshly clothed, and if you should meet them tomorrow, you will see that they are in fact fine young lads.’
‘Let’s talk about you. I’m not bothered about your men.’
‘Very well, then. While I was fighting on my own behalf, we met the tax collector for the district who was going around from village to village, filling His Majesty’s purse. As long as he had a single tax left to collect, we escorted him loyally, and, I must tell you, as I watched his money bags getting fatter and fatter, I did have a yen to join the king’s side. But the devilish complexity of it all, a momentary annoyance with Monsieur de Mazarin and the complaints that we heard from all sides against the Duke d’Epernon, brought us back to our senses. We considered that there were good things, and many of them, to be said for the princes’ cause,13 and we embraced it eagerly. The tax collector ended his round in that little house that you see over there, standing on its own among the poplars and the sycamores.’
‘Nanon’s house,’ the nobleman said. ‘Yes, I can see it.’
‘We waited for him to come out, followed him as we had been doing for five days, crossed the Dordogne with him a little below Saint-Michel and when we were in the middle of the river, I informed him of our political conversion and asked him, as politely as I was able, to hand over the money he was carrying. Would you believe, Monsieur, that he refused? So my companions searched him, and since he was shouting in a way that might have roused the neighbourhood, my lieutenant, a lad of considerable resource – he is the one you can see over there, with the red cloak, holding my horse by the bridle – considered that the water, since it interrupts currents of air might, by the same token, interrupt sound waves. This is a principle of physics that I understood, being a doctor, and I applauded his deduction. So, after enunciating the proposition, he bent the recalcitrant tax collector’s head towards the river and held it a foot beneath the water, no more. And the tax collector did, indeed, cease to shout; or rather, one should perhaps say that we did not hear him shout. So we were able to take all the money he had, in the name of the princes, and the correspondence with which he had been entrusted. I gave the money to my soldiers, who as you most judiciously remarked are in need of new equipment, and I kept the papers, including this one. It appears that the brave tax collector was serving as go-between for Mademoiselle de Lartigues.’
‘As you say,’ the old nobleman muttered. ‘Unless I am mistaken, he was one of Nanon’s slaves. And what became of the wretch?’
‘Believe me, we did well to give him a ducking, this wretch, as you call him! Had we not taken that precaution, he would have roused the whole county. Just imagine, when we did pull him out of the river, though he had been there no more than a bare quarter of an hour, he was dead of apoplexy.’
‘So you threw him back, I suppose?’
‘As you say.’
‘But if the messenger was drowned…?’
‘I didn’t say that he was drowned.’
‘Let’s not quibble about words. If the messenger is dead…’
‘Ah, now we’re talking. He’s quite dead.’
‘Then Monsieur de Canolles will not have received the message and will not come to the meeting.’
‘One moment! I am fighting the powers that be, not individuals. Monsieur de Canolles received a duplicate of the letter giving him the rendez-vous. However, considering that the original manuscript might have some value, I kept it.’
‘What will he think when he does not recognize the handwriting?’
‘That the person who is making the assignation used the help of a strange hand, for reasons of security.’
The stranger looked at Cauvignac with a certain admiration, inspired by the combination of so much impudence with such presence of mind. He was interested to see if there might not be a way of unsettling this bold gambler.
‘But what about the government? What about the investigation?’ he said. ‘Haven’t you thought of those?’
‘Investigation!’ the young man repeated, with a laugh. ‘Oh, yes. Monsieur d’Epernon has nothing better to do than an investigation. And didn’t I tell you that what I did was in order to obtain his favour? He would be very ungrateful if he did not accord it to me.’
‘So, in that case, I am not quite sure,’ the old nobleman remarked, ‘since on your own admission you have embraced the princes’ side, why you got the odd idea of wanting to be of service to Monsieur d’Epernon.’
‘Nothing could be simpler. Examining the papers taken from the tax collector convinced me of the king’s good intentions. His Majesty is entirely justified in my opinion, and the Duke d’Epernon is right a thousand times against his subjects. So this is the good cause, and I opted for i
t.’
‘Here is a bandit whom I shall have hanged should he ever fall into my hands!’ the old man muttered, tugging at the bristles on his moustache.
‘You were saying…?’ asked Cauvignac, blinking under his mask.
‘Nothing. Now, one more question: what will you do with the letter of attestation you have demanded?’
‘Devil take me if I know! I asked for a letter of attestation because it is the most convenient, most portable and most flexible thing. I shall probably keep it for some extreme emergency, though it is possible that I shall throw it away on the first whim that enters my head. I may present it to you myself before the end of the week, or it may only return to you in three or four months with a dozen endorsements, like a bill of exchange. In any case, don’t worry, I shall not misuse it to do anything that will make either of us blush. We are men of quality, after all.’
‘You are a man of quality?’
‘Yes, Monsieur, of the best.’
‘Then I’ll have him broken on the wheel,’14 the stranger muttered to himself. ‘That’s what his letter of attestation will bring him.’
‘Have you made up your mind to let me have the paper?’ Cauvignac asked.
‘I have no alternative,’ said the nobleman.
‘Let’s be quite clear: I’m not obliging you to anything. I’m offering an exchange. You keep your paper, I’ll keep mine.’
‘The letter?’
‘The letter of attestation?’ He held out the letter in one hand, while cocking a pistol in the other.
‘Put up your pistol,’ the stranger said, opening his coat. ‘I’ve got pistols of my own and ready cocked. Fair play on both sides. Here is your letter of attestation.’
The exchange of papers took place fairly and squarely, and each side examined the one that he had just been given closely, in silence and at leisure.
‘Now, Monsieur,’ said Cauvignac. ‘Which way are you going?’
‘I have to cross to the right bank of the river.’
‘And I to the left bank,’ Cauvignac replied.
‘What are we to do? My men are on the side where you are going, and yours on the side where I am going.’