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.
