“Suppose I refuse?”

“Then,” said D’Artagnan, “your eminence must expect the consequences of a refusal.”

“Would you dare to touch a cardinal?”

“You have dared, my lord, to imprison her majesty’s musketeers.”

“The queen will revenge me, gentlemen.”

“I do not think so, although inclination might lead her to do so, but we shall take your eminence to Paris, and the Parisians will defend us.”

“How uneasy they must be at this moment at Rueil and Saint Germain,” said Aramis.  “How they must be asking, `Where is the cardinal?’ `What has become of the minister?’ `Where has the favorite gone?’ How they must be looking for monseigneur in all corners!  What comments must be made; and if the Fronde knows that monseigneur has disappeared, how the Fronde must triumph!”

“It is frightful,” murmured Mazarin.

“Sign the treaty, then, monseigneur,” said Aramis.

“Suppose the queen should refuse to ratify it?”

“Ah! nonsense!” cried D’Artagnan, “I can manage so that her majesty will receive me well; I know an excellent method.”

“What?”

“I shall take her majesty the letter in which you tell her that the finances are exhausted.”

“And then?” asked Mazarin, turning pale.

“When I see her majesty embarrassed, I shall conduct her to Rueil, make her enter the orangery and show her a certain spring which turns a box.”

“Enough, sir,” muttered the cardinal, “you have said enough; where is the treaty?”

“Here it is,” replied Aramis.  “Sign, my lord,” and he gave him a pen.

Mazarin arose, walked some moments, thoughtful, but not dejected.

“And when I have signed,” he said, “what is to be my guarantee?”

“My word of honor, sir,” said Athos.

Mazarin started, turned toward the Comte de la Fere, and looking for an instant at that grand and honest countenance, took the pen.

“It is sufficient, count,” he said, and signed the treaty.

“And now, Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he said, “prepare to set off for Saint Germain and take a letter from me to the queen.”

88

Shows how with Threat and Pen more is effected than by the
Sword.

D’Artagnan knew his part well; he was aware that opportunity has a forelock only for him who will take it and he was not a man to let it go by him without seizing it.  He soon arranged a prompt and certain manner of traveling, by sending relays of horses to Chantilly, so that he might be in Paris in five or six hours.  But before setting out he reflected that for a lad of intelligence and experience he was in a singular predicament, since he was proceeding toward uncertainty and leaving certainty behind him.

“In fact,” he said, as he was about to mount and start on his dangerous mission, “Athos, for generosity, is a hero of romance; Porthos has an excellent disposition, but is easily influenced; Aramis has a hieroglyphic countenance, always illegible.  What will come out of those three elements when I am no longer present to combine them?  The deliverance of the cardinal, perhaps.  Now, the deliverance of the cardinal would be the ruin of our hopes; and our hopes are thus far the only recompense we have for labors in comparison with which those of Hercules were pygmean.”