On arriving at the door of the room where the queen was receiving he made a sign for them to wait and opening the door:
“Madame,” he said, “I hope Your Majesty will forgive me for disobeying your orders, when you learn that the gentlemen I have come to announce are the Comte de la Fère and the Chevalier d’Herblay.”
On hearing those two names the queen uttered a cry of joy, which the two gentlemen heard.
“Poor queen!” murmured Athos.
“Oh, let them come in! let them come in,” cried the young princess, bounding to the door.
The poor child was constant in her attendance on her mother and sought by her filial attentions to make her forget the absence of her two sons and her other daughter.
“Come in, gentlemen,” repeated the princess, opening the door herself.
The queen was seated on a fauteuil and before her were standing two or three gentlemen, and among them the Duc de Châtillon, the brother of the nobleman killed eight or nine years previously in a duel on account of Madame de Longueville, on the Place Royale. All these gentlemen had been noticed by Athos and Aramis in the guardhouse, and when the two friends were announced they started and exchanged some words in a low tone. “Well, sirs!” cried the queen, on perceiving the two friends, “you have come, faithful friends! But the royal couriers have been more expeditious than you, and here are Monsieur de Flamarens and Monsieur de Châtillon, who bring me from Her Majesty the Queen Anne of Austria, the very latest intelligence.”
Aramis and Athos were astounded by the calmness, even the gayety of the queen’s manner.
“Go on with your recital, sirs,” said the queen, turning to the Duc de Châtillon. “You said that His Majesty, King Charles, my august consort, had been condemned to death by a majority of his subjects!”
“Yes, Madame,” Châtillon stammered out.
Athos and Aramis were more and more astonished.
“And that being conducted to the scaffold,” resumed the queen—“oh, my lord! oh, my king!—and that being led to the scaffold he had been saved by an indignant people.”
“Just so Madame,” replied Châtillon, in so low a voice that though the two friends were listening eagerly they could hardly hear this affirmation.
The queen clasped her hands in enthusiastic gratitude, whilst her daughter threw her arms around her mother’s neck and kissed her—her own eyes streaming with tears.
“Now, Madame, nothing remains to me except to proffer my respectful homage,” said Châtillon, who felt confused and ashamed beneath the stern gaze of Athos.
“One moment, yes,” answered the queen. “One moment—I beg—for here are the Chevalier d’Herblay and the Comte de la Fère, just arrived from London, and they can give you, as eyewitnesses, such details as you can convey to the queen, my royal sister. Speak, gentlemen, speak—I am listening; conceal nothing, gloss over nothing. Since His Majesty still lives, since the honor of the throne is safe, everything else is a matter of indifference to me.”
Athos turned pale and laid his hand on his heart.
“Well!” exclaimed the queen, who remarked this movement and his paleness. “Speak, sir! I beg you to do so.”
“I beg you to excuse me, Madame; I wish to add nothing to the recital of these gentlemen until they perceive themselves that they have perhaps been mistaken.”
“Mistaken!” cried the queen, almost suffocated by emotion; “mistaken! what has happened, then?”
“Sir,” interposed Monsieur de Flamarens to Athos, “if we are mistaken the error has originated with the queen. I do not suppose you will have the presumption to set it to rights—that would be to accuse Her Majesty, Queen Anne, of falsehood.”
“With the queen, sir?” replied Athos, in his calm, vibrating voice.
“Yes,” murmured Flamarens, lowering his eyes.
Athos sighed deeply.
“Or rather, sir,” said Aramis, with his peculiar irritating politeness, “the error of the person who was with you when we met you in the guardroom; for if the Comte de la Fère and I are not mistaken, we saw you in the company of a third gentleman.”
Châtillon and Flamarens started.
“Explain yourself, count!” cried the queen, whose anxiety grew greater every moment. “On your brow I read despair—your lips falter ere you announce some terrible tidings—your hands tremble. Oh, my God! my God! what has happened?”
“Lord!” ejaculated the young princess, falling on her knees, “have mercy on us!”
“Sir,” said Châtillon, “if you bring bad tidings it will be cruel in you to announce them to the queen.”
Aramis went so close to Châtillon as almost to touch him.
“Sir,” said he, with compressed lips and flashing eyes, “you have not the presumption to instruct the Comte de la Fère and myself what we ought to say here?”
During this brief altercation Athos, with his hands on his heart, his head bent low, approached the queen and in a voice of deepest sorrow said:
“Madame, princes—who by nature are above other men—receive from Heaven courage to support greater misfortunes than those of lower rank, for their hearts are elevated as their fortunes. We ought not, therefore, I think, to act toward a queen so illustrious as Your Majesty as we should act toward a woman of our lowlier condition. Queen, destined as you are to endure every sorrow on this earth, hear the result of our unhappy mission.”
Athos, kneeling down before the queen, trembling and very cold, drew from his bosom, enclosed in the same case, the order set in diamonds which the queen had given to Lord de Winter and the wedding ring which Charles I before his death had placed in the hands of Aramis. Since the moment he had first received these two mementoes Athos had never parted with them.
He opened the case and offered them to the queen with deep and silent anguish.
The queen stretched out her hand, seized the ring, pressed it convulsively to her lips—and without being able to breathe a
