The Red Sphinx: A Sequel to the Three Musketeers

  “We fought from our sedan chairs, Monseigneur. It was most convenient, just the thing for wounded swordsmen.”

  “And you’re telling me this, after my edicts outlawing duels!” said the cardinal. “Though it is a fact that I’m no longer a minister, so it’s not my problem. In fact, given a year . . .” And the cardinal sighed, which proved he wasn’t so removed from worldly things as he wanted to believe.

  “But didn’t you say, dear Uncle, that Monsieur Latil—that is your name, is it not?—had come to offer his services?” asked Madame de Combalet. “What services does he offer?”

  Latil raised his sword. “Services both offensive and defensive,” he said. “Monsieur le Cardinal lacks both a Captain of the Guards, and guards for him to captain. I will take their place.”

  “A new Captain of the Guards?” said a feminine voice from behind Latil. “I don’t think so. Not so long as he still has his Cavois! . . . Who is, of course, also my Cavois.”

  “Ah!” said the cardinal. “There’s a voice I know. Come in, dear Madame Cavois, come in.”

  A lithe and pretty woman, though starting, in her thirties, to be more plump than lithe, slipped into the room, brushed past Latil, and presented herself to the cardinal and Madame de Combalet.

  “At last,” she said, rubbing her hands, “you’re free from that awful ministry and all the trouble it gave us!”

  “Gave us, you say?” said the cardinal. “So my ministry gave you troubles as well, dear Madame?”

  “I should say so! I couldn’t sleep day or night, I was so afraid some catastrophe would strike Your Eminence, and take my poor Cavois as well. All day I worried, and jumped at the slightest sound. All night I dreamed, and woke up with a start. You have no idea how bad a woman’s dreams can be when she sleeps alone.”

  “But what of Monsieur Cavois?” asked Madame de Combalet, laughing.

  “When he did sleep with me, you mean? Oh, Cavois! At least we never lost the will for it, thank God. Ten children in nine years, which shows we couldn’t get enough, but as time went on, I was more and more troubled. Then Monsieur le Cardinal took him to the Siege of La Rochelle, which lasted eight months! Fortunately I was already expecting when he left, so no time was lost. But this time, Madame, His Eminence was going to take him away to Italy. Can you believe it? And for God knows how long! But I prayed to God for a miracle, and thanks to my prayers Monsieur le Cardinal has lost his position.”

  “Why, thank you, Madame Cavois!” laughed the cardinal.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Madame de Combalet. “It was a big favor, indeed, that God has granted us. It gives you your husband and me my uncle.”

  “Fah!” said Madame Cavois. “A husband and an uncle are not the same thing at all.”

  “But, Madame,” said the cardinal, “unless Cavois goes with me into disgrace, he must follow the king.”

  “To where?” asked Madame Cavois.

  “To Italy!”

  “Him, go to Italy? Certainly not, Monseigneur. Him, leave me? Leave his little woman? Never!”

  “But didn’t he leave you to go on campaign with me?”

  “Oh, with you, yes. I think you bewitched him somehow. His wits aren’t that quick, poor man, and if he hadn’t had me to manage our home and raise our children, I don’t know what he would have done. But leave me to go with someone other than you? Never! He’s as likely to risk God’s wrath by sleeping with another woman.”

  “But what of his duties?”

  “What duties?”

  “If he’s no longer in my service, he must serve the king.”

  “If he’s no longer in your service, Monseigneur, he must serve me! I imagine that by this time he’s already presented his resignation to His Majesty.”

  “Did he tell you he was going to do that?” asked Madame de Combalet.

  “Does he need to tell me everything he’s going to do? Don’t I always know what he does before he does it? Isn’t he as transparent to me as crystal? When I tell you that by now he’s probably done it, then he has!”

  “But, my dear Madame Cavois,” said the cardinal, “as captain of my guards he earned six thousand livres per year. As a private citizen, I can’t pay a captain of the guards six thousand livres. That’s a lot to lose from your household budget. Think of your eight children!”

  “Yes, but haven’t you already covered that? Half the sedan-chair monopoly is worth at least twelve thousand livres a year—and isn’t that preferable to depending on a position with the king, from which he might be dismissed at the slightest whim? Our children, thanks be to God, are plump and stout, and you shall see they lack nothing. If you have healthy children, you have everything!”

  “What, are your children here?”

  “All but the one who was born during the Siege of La Rochelle, who is only five months old and still with the wet nurse. But he’s as healthy as the rest.”

  “With a wet nurse? Then, are you expecting again, Madame Cavois?”

  “By the grace of God! After all, my husband’s been back for nearly a month. Come in! Come in, everyone! By the cardinal’s permission!”

  “Yes, I will permit it—but at the same time I must permit, or rather command, Latil to take a seat. Take a chair and sit down, Latil.”

  Latil didn’t speak, but he quickly obeyed. Another minute on his feet and he would have fainted.

  Meanwhile, all the Cavois children trooped into the room in order of age, the eldest first, a sweet boy of the age of nine, then a girl, then another boy, then another girl, all the way down to an infant of two years.

  Arrayed in front of the cardinal, from tallest to shortest, they looked like a set of pan-pipes.

  “Now, then,” said Madame de Cavois, “here is the man to whom we owe everything—you, me, and Papa. Kneel before him and offer him your thanks.”

  “Madame Cavois! We do not kneel save before the Lord.”

  “And before those who represent him. Kneel, you puppies.”

  The children obeyed.

  “Now, Armand,” said Madame de Cavois to the eldest boy, “repeat to Monsieur le Cardinal the prayer I taught you to say every morning and night.”

  “Lord God,” said the child, “grant health to my father, my mother, my brothers, and my sisters, and see to it that His Eminence the Cardinal, to whom we owe everything, shall lose his ministry so that Papa can spend his nights at home.”

  “Amen!” the children replied in unison.

  “Well,” said the cardinal, laughing, “it’s no surprise to me that such a prayer, offered so earnestly by so many voices, was granted.”

  “Là!” said Madame Cavois. “And now that we’ve said everything to Monseigneur that we had to say, get up and go on out.” The children rose and left the room in the same order they’d come in. “Good!” said Madame Cavois. “Very obedient.”

  “Madame Cavois,” said the cardinal, “If I’m ever restored to my ministry, I shall appoint you as drill instructor to the King’s Infantry.”

  “God forbid, Monseigneur!”

  Madame de Combalet kissed the children and their mother, who loaded them into three waiting sedan chairs, before entering a fourth herself with the two-year-old. The cardinal watched them go with some emotion.

  “Monseigneur,” said Latil, straightening himself on his chair, “you won’t need me as a man of the sword, since Monsieur Cavois also follows you in your fall from grace, but it’s not really steel that you have to fear. For your true enemy goes by the name of Médicis.”

  “I am entirely of the same mind,” said Madame de Combalet, coming back into the room. “And I fear the same thing: poison.”

  “You need someone devoted to you, Your Eminence, who will taste everything you drink and everything you eat before you do. I offer myself for this role.”

  “I’m so sorry, my dear Monsieur Latil,” smiled Madame de Combalet, “but you’re too late. Someone else has already offered to do that.”

  “And has been accepted?”


  “I sincerely hope so,” Madame said, gazing tenderly at her uncle.

  “And who is that?” asked Latil.

  “Me,” said Madame de Combalet.

  “In that case,” said Latil, “there’s no need for me here. Adieu, Monseigneur.”

  “What are you doing?” the cardinal said.

  “I’m leaving. You have a guard captain, and you have a devoted taster, so in what way could I serve Your Eminence?”

  “As a friend. Étienne Latil, a heart like yours is hard to find, and having found it, I intend to keep it.” Then, turning to Madame de Combalet, he said, “My dear Marie, I entrust to you, body and soul, my friend Latil here. Though right now I can’t find a position equal to his merits, the opportunity may yet present itself.

  “Now, let’s see if my literary friends are as loyal to me as my guard captain and my lieutenant. I need to know how tomorrow will be spent.”

  “Monsieur Jean Rotrou,” announced the voice of Guillemot.

  “There, you see?” the cardinal said to Latil and Madame de Combalet. “One arrives already, and not one I expected.”

  “The devil!” Latil said to himself. “Thank God my father never taught me to appreciate poetry.”

  XLVI

  Mirame

  Rotrou did not arrive alone. The cardinal gazed curiously at the unknown companion who followed him, hat in hand, his half-bow indicating admiration rather than servility.

  “So it’s you, Rotrou,” said the cardinal, taking his hand. “I won’t hide from you that I rely on the loyalty of my fellow poets above that of all others. I’m pleased to see that you’re the most faithful of my followers.”

  “If I could have predicted that this would happen to you, Monseigneur, I’d have been here even sooner! What I can predict is that if your fall from power closes some doors, it will open others. Now,” Rotrou said, rubbing his hands together, “let’s write some poetry!”

  “And is this young man of the same opinion?” Richelieu asked, looking at Rotrou’s companion.

  “So much so, Monseigneur, that when he came running to tell me the news he’d heard at Madame de Rambouillet’s, that Your Eminence was no longer a minister, he begged me to introduce him to you immediately. He hopes that, now that affairs of state no longer occupy your time, you’ll be able to go see his comedy when it plays at the Hotel de Bourgogne.”

  This proposal to a Prince of the Church, which might appear improper today, seemed not at all strange or scandalous to Richelieu. “And what is this piece you’ve presented to the comedians at the Bourgogne?” asked the cardinal.

  The young man dressed in black shyly replied, “It’s called Melite, Monseigneur.”

  “Ah!” Richelieu said. “Then you must be that Monsieur Corneille whom your friend Rotrou says will shortly surpass us all, himself included.”

  “Friends can exaggerate, Monseigneur—and Rotrou is even more than a friend to me: he’s a brother.”

  “The ancients tell us of such friendships between warriors, but never between poets,” Richelieu said to them, then turned to Corneille. “Are you ambitious, young man?”

  “I am, Monseigneur. And I have one ambition above all that, if realized, will fill me with joy.”

  “And that is?”

  “Ask my friend Rotrou.”

  “So! Ambitious yet shy,” said the cardinal.

  “Better than shy, Monseigneur,” said Rotrou. “Modest!”

  “And this ambition of yours,” asked the cardinal, “is it something that I can grant you?”

  “In a word, Monseigneur—yes,” said Corneille.

  “Then speak of it. I’ve never been more willing to realize the ambitions of others than since my own have been thwarted.”

  Rotrou said, “Monseigneur, my friend Corneille longs for the honor of being one of your collaborators. If Your Eminence had continued as a minister, he’d hoped that the success of his comedy would enable him to be presented to you. However, now that you are merely a man of greatness, with time for great works ahead of you, he said to me, ‘Jean, mon ami, now the cardinal will turn to his real work. Introduce me to him while there is still a place by his side.’”

  “There is still a place, Monsieur Corneille,” said the cardinal, “and you shall have it. Dine with me, Messieurs, and if our other companions happen to join us, I’ll share with all of you my new drama, of which I’ve already outlined a few scenes.”

  The cardinal was not disappointed in his hopes, for by supper-time he’d gathered around his table his five collaborators: that is, Bois-Robert, Colletet, L’Estoile, Rotrou, and Corneille. Richelieu received them with as much honor as if he was dining with his peers. After dinner, he led them into his study, where Richelieu, burning with impatience to share his new project with his colleagues, drew forth a folio upon which was written, in large letters:

  MIRAME

  “Messieurs,” said the cardinal, “everything we have done so far is just the prologue to this work. The name ‘Mirame’ means nothing to you, of course, as the name, like the play, is a work of pure invention. But it is not given to man to create, only to replicate creation, to the degree that the poet has talent and imagination. So you will probably recognize the real people and places represented by the fictitious names herein. I hope that will inform your comments, which are entirely welcome.”

  His listeners bowed. Corneille glanced at Rotrou, as if to say, “I have no idea what this means, but I trust you’ll explain it later.” Rotrou reassured him with a gesture.

  Richelieu waited for the young men to complete their pantomime, then continued: “Imagine a King of Bithynia—or wherever—who is rival to the King of Colchis. The King of Bithynia has a daughter named Mirame, who has a confidante named Almire and a servant named Alcine. For his part, the King of Colchis, who is at war with Bithynia, has a sly, seductive, and elegant favorite named Arimant. You might find someone like him in a country neighboring our own France.”

  “The Duke of Buckingham,” said Bois-Robert.

  “Quite so,” said Richelieu.

  Rotrou bumped his knee against that of Corneille, who was still struggling to follow, though the name of Buckingham clarified things a bit.

  “Now Azamor, the King of Phrygia, and ally to the King of Bithynia, is not only in love with Mirame, he is her fiancé.”

  “But she, of course, is in love with Arimant,” said Bois-Robert.

  “You’ve got it, Le Bois,” said Richelieu, laughing. “You see the situation, don’t you, Messieurs?”

  “It’s simple,” said Colletet. “Mirame loves her father’s enemy, and so betrays her father to her lover.”

  Rotrou again knocked his knee against Corneille’s, but Corneille was all at sea.

  “That goes too far, Colletet,” said the cardinal. “A wife may betray her husband, but for a daughter to betray her father, that goes too far. No, in the second act, she merely receives her lover in the palace gardens.”

  “As a certain Queen of France,” said L’Estoile, “received Milord Buckingham . . .”

  “Hush, Monsieur de L’Estoile! One would think such a rumor was historical fact. Anyway, at last the two sides come to blows. Arimant wins the first victory, but then, in one of those reverses so common in the annals of war, he’s defeated by Azamor. Mirame learns that her lover’s victory has turned to defeat, and is overcome with sorrow. Arimant cannot face his defeat, throws himself on his sword, and is believed dead. Mirame wants to follow him in death, and turns to her confidante, Madame de Chevreuse . . . no, my mistake! ‘Madame de Chevreuse,’ what was I thinking? Mirame speaks to her confidante, Almire, and asks her to take poison with her, an herb she brought from Colchis. They consume the poison and fall into a swoon.

  “Meanwhile, Arimant has recovered from his wounds, which weren’t fatal. But he is stricken with despair upon learning of the death of Mirame. Everyone is in anguish until Almire reveals that she gave the princess a sleeping draught rather than poison, much like that which Medea
gave the serpent that guarded the Golden Fleece. So Mirame isn’t dead after all, the King of Colchis makes peace with Azamor, and Mirame is united with Arimant.”

  “Bravo!” Colletet, L’Estoile, and Bois-Robert cried as one.

  “It’s sublime!” added Bois-Robert, hoping to take the lead.

  “Indeed, it’s not bad at all,” said Rotrou. “What do you think, Corneille?”

  Corneille nodded tentatively.

  “You don’t exactly seem thrilled, Monsieur Corneille,” said Richelieu, a little piqued by the lack of enthusiasm on the part of his youngest listener.

  “Not at all, Monseigneur,” said Corneille. “I was just thinking about the play’s structure.”

  “It’s perfect,” said Richelieu. “The first act ends with the scene between Almire and Mirame where Mirame agrees to receive Arimant in the palace gardens. The second ends when, having received him, she recoils from his impudence and cries, ‘What have I done? I’m no better than a criminal!’ Her infidelity is exposed to all!”

  “Bravo!” applauded Le Bois. “Thesis and antithesis! It’s classical!”

  “The third act,” the cardinal continued, “ends in despair, as Azamor realizes that, despite his victory, Mirame prefers Arimant. The fourth act ends with the ‘death’ of Mirame, and the fifth, the King of Bithynia’s consent to his daughter’s marriage with Arimant.”

  “Exactly!” said L’Estoile. “The drama is complete, and couldn’t be more perfect, Monseigneur!”

  “Quite so,” said Richelieu. “And I’ve already written a number of verses, which I’m quite fond of, that will put the story across.”

  “Will you share these verses with us, Monseigneur?” said Bois-Robert.

  “Very well. Here’s the first scene between the king and his confidant, Acaste, in which the king complains of his daughter’s love for his enemy:”

  THE KING: Arimant’s plans will come to naught,

  His army’s a figment that’s never fought,

  Yet I fear no matter what I do,

  My daughter’s love will blind her view.