The State Secret.
A few moments after the doctor's departure, the confessor arrived. He had hardly crossed the threshold of the door when the Franciscan fixed a penetrating look upon him, and, shaking his head, murmured - "A weak mind, I see; may Heaven forgive me if I die without the help of this living piece of human infirmity." The confessor, on his side, regarded the dying man with astonishment, almost with terror. He had never beheld eyes so burningly bright at the very moment they were about to close, nor looks so terrible at the moment they were about to be quenched in death. The Franciscan made a rapid and imperious movement of his hand. "Sit down, there, my father," he said, "and listen to me." The Jesuit confessor, a good priest, a recently initiated member of the order, who had merely seen the beginning of its mysteries, yielded to the superiority assumed by the penitent.
"There are several persons staying in this hotel," continued the Franciscan.
"But," inquired the Jesuit, "I thought I had been summoned to listen to a confession. Is your remark, then, a confession?"
"Why do you ask?"
"In order to know whether I am to keep your words secret."
"My remarks are part of my confession; I confide them to you in your character of a confessor."
"Very well," said the priest, seating himself on the chair which the Franciscan had, with great difficulty, just left, to lie down on the bed.
The Franciscan continued, - "I repeat, there are several persons staying in this inn."
"So I have heard."
"They ought to be eight in number."
The Jesuit made a sign that he understood him. "The first to whom I wish to speak," said the dying man, "is a German from Vienna, whose name is Baron de Wostpur. Be kind enough to go to him, and tell him the person he expected has arrived." The confessor, astounded, looked at his penitent; the confession seemed a singular one.
"Obey," said the Franciscan, in a tone of command impossible to resist. The good
Jesuit, completely subdued, rose and left the room. As soon as he had gone, the Franciscan again took up the papers which a crisis of the fever had already, once before, obliged him to put aside.
"The Baron de Wostpur? Good!" he said; "ambitious, a fool, and straitened in means."
He folded up the papers, which he thrust under his pillow. Rapid footsteps were heard at the end of the corridor. The confessor returned, followed by the Baron de Wostpur, who walked along with his head raised, as if he were discussing with himself the possibility of touching the ceiling with the feather in his hat. Therefore, at the appearance of the Franciscan, at his melancholy look, and seeing the plainness of the room, he stopped, and inquired, - "Who has summoned me?"
"I," said the Franciscan, who turned towards the confessor, saying, "My good father, leave us for a moment together; when this gentleman leaves, you will return here." The Jesuit left the room, and, doubtless, availed himself of this momentary exile from the presence of the dying man to ask the host for some explanation about this strange penitent, who treated his confessor no better than he would a man servant. The baron approached the bed, and wished to speak, but the hand of the Franciscan imposed silence upon him.
"Every moment is precious," said the latter, hurriedly. "You have come here for the competition, have you not?"
"Yes, my father."
"You hope to be elected general of the order?"
"I hope so."
"You know on what conditions only you can possibly attain this high position, which makes one man the master of monarchs, the equal of popes?"
"Who are you," inquired the baron, "to subject me to these interrogations?"
"I am he whom you expected."
"The elector-general?"
"I am the elected."
"You are - "
The Franciscan did not give him time to reply; he extended his shrunken hand, on which glittered the ring of the general of the order. The baron drew back in surprise; and then, immediately afterwards, bowing with the profoundest respect, he exclaimed, - "Is it possible that you are here, monseigneur; you, in this wretched room; you, upon this miserable bed; you, in search of and selecting the future general, that is, your own successor?"
"Do not distress yourself about that, monsieur, but fulfil immediately the principal condition, of furnishing the order with a secret of importance, of such importance that one of the greatest courts of Europe will, by your instrumentality, forever be subjected to the order. Well! do you possess the secret which you promised, in your request, addressed to the grand council?"
"Monseigneur - "
"Let us proceed, however, in due order," said the monk. "You are the Baron de Wostpur?"
"Yes, monseigneur."
"And this letter is from you?"
"Yes, monseigneur."
The general of the Jesuits drew a paper from his bundle, and presented it to the baron, who glanced at it, and made a sign in the affirmative, saying, "Yes, monseigneur, this letter is mine."
"Can you show me the reply which the secretary of the grand council returned to you?"
"Here it is," said the baron, holding towards the Franciscan a letter bearing simply the address, "To his excellency the Baron de Wostpur," and containing only this phrase, "From the 15th to the 22nd May, Fontainebleau, the hotel of the Beau Paon. - A. M. D. G." (7)
"Right," said the Franciscan, "and now speak."
"I have a body of troops, composed of 50,000 men; all the officers are gained over. I am encamped on the Danube. I four days I can overthrow the emperor, who is, as you are aware, opposed to the progress of our order, and can replace him by whichever of the princes of his family the order may determine upon." The Franciscan listened, unmoved.
"Is that all?" he said.
"A revolution throughout Europe is included in my plan," said the baron.
"Very well, Monsieur de Wostpur, you will receive a reply; return to your room, and leave Fontainebleau within a quarter of an hour." The baron withdrew backwards, as obsequiously as if he were taking leave of the emperor he was ready to betray. "There is no secret there," murmured the Franciscan, "it is a plot. Besides," he added, after a moment's reflection, "the future of Europe is no longer in the hands of the House of Austria."
And with a pencil he held in his hand, he struck the Baron de Wostpur's name from the list.
"Now for the cardinal," he said; "we ought to get something more serious from the side of Spain."
Raising his head, he perceived the confessor, who was awaiting his orders as respectfully as a school-boy.
"Ah, ah!" he said, noticing his submissive air, "you have been talking with the landlord."
"Yes, monseigneur; and to the physician."
"To Grisart?"
"Yes."
"He is here, then?"
"He is waiting with the potion he promised."
"Very well; if I require him, I will call; you now understand the great importance of my confession, do you not?"
"Yes, monseigneur."
"Then go and fetch me the Spanish Cardinal Herrebia. Make haste. Only, as you now understand the matter in hand, you will remain near me, for I begin to feel faint."
"Shall I summon the physician?"
"Not yet, not yet... the Spanish cardinal, no one else. Fly."
Five minutes afterwards, the cardinal, pale and disturbed, entered the little room.
"I am informed, monseigneur, - "stammered the cardinal.
"To the point," said the Franciscan, in a faint voice, showing the cardinal a letter which he had written to the grand council. "Is that your handwriting?"
"Yes, but - " "And your summons?"
The cardinal hesitated to answer. His purple revolted against the mean garb of the poor Franciscan, who stretched out his hand and displayed the ring, which produced its effect, greater in proportion to the greatness of the person over whom the Franciscan exercised his influence.
"Quick, the secret, the secret!" said the dying man, leaning upon his confessor.
"Coram isto?" inquired the Spanish cardinal. (8)
"Speak in Spanish," said the Franciscan, showing the liveliest attention.
"You are aware, monseigneur," said the cardinal, continuing the conversation in Castilian, "that the condition of the marriage of the Infanta with the king of France was the absolute renunciation of the rights of the said Infanta, as well as of King Louis XIV., to all claim to the crown of Spain." The Franciscan made a sign in the affirmative.
"The consequence is," continued the cardinal, "that the peace and alliance between the two kingdoms depend upon the observance of that clause of the contract." A similar sign from the Franciscan. "Not only France and Spain," continued the cardinal, "but the whole of Europe even, would be violently rent asunder by the faithlessness of either party." Another movement of the dying man's head.
"It further results," continued the speaker, "that the man who might be able to foresee events, and to render certain that which is no more than a vague idea floating in the mind of man, that is to say, the idea of a future good or evil, would preserve the world from a great catastrophe; and the event, which has no fixed certainty even in the brain of him who originated it, could be turned to the advantage of our order."
"Pronto, pronto!" murmured the Franciscan, in Spanish, who suddenly became paler, and leaned upon the priest. The cardinal approached the ear of the dying man, and said, "Well, monseigneur, I know that the king of France has determined that, at the very first pretext, a death for instance, either that of the king of Spain, or that of a brother of the Infanta, France will, arms in hand, claim the inheritance, and I have in my possession, already prepared, the plan of policy agreed upon by Louis XIV. for this occasion."
"And this plan?" said the Franciscan.
"Here it is," returned the cardinal.
"In whose handwriting is it?"
"My own." "Have you anything further to say to me?"
"I think I have said a good deal, my lord," replied the cardinal.
"Yes, you have rendered the order a great service. But how did you procure the details, by the aid of which you have constructed your plan?"
"I have the under-servants of the king of France in my pay, and I obtain from them all the waste papers, which have been saved from being burnt."
"Very ingenious," murmured the Franciscan, endeavoring to smile; "you will leave this hotel, cardinal, in a quarter of an hour, and a reply shall be sent you." The cardinal withdrew.
"Call Grisart, and desire the Venetian Marini to come," said the sick man.
While the confessor obeyed, the Franciscan, instead of striking out the cardinal's name, as he had done the baron's, made a cross at the side of it. Then, exhausted by the effort, he fell back on his bed, murmuring the name of Dr. Grisart. When he returned to his senses, he had drunk about half of the potion, of which the remainder was left in the glass, and he found himself supported by the physician, while the Venetian and the confessor were standing close to the door. The Venetian submitted to the same formalities as his two predecessors, hesitated as they had done at the sight of the two strangers, but his confidence restored by the order of the general, he revealed that the pope, terrified at the power of the order, was weaving a plot for the general expulsion of the Jesuits, and was tampering with the different courts of Europe in order to obtain their assistance. He described the pontiff's auxiliaries, his means of action, and indicated the particular locality in the Archipelago where, by a sudden surprise, two cardinals, adepts of the eleventh year, and, consequently, high in authority, were to be transported, together with thirty-two of the principal affiliated members of Rome. The Franciscan thanked the Signor Marini. It was by no means a slight service he had rendered the society by denouncing this pontifical project. The Venetian thereupon received directions to set off in a quarter of an hour, and left as radiant as if he already possessed the ring, the sign of the supreme authority of the society. As, however, he was departing, the Franciscan murmured to himself: "All these men are either spies, or a sort of police, not one of them a general; they have all discovered a plot, but not one of them a secret. It is not by means of ruin, or war, or force, that the Society of Jesus is to be governed, but by that mysterious influence moral superiority alone confers. No, the man is not yet found, and to complete the misfortune, Heaven strikes me down, and I am dying. Oh! must the society indeed fall with me for want of a column to support it? Must death, which is waiting for me, swallow up with me the future of the order; that future which ten years more of my own life would have rendered eternal? for that future, with the reign of the new king, is opening radiant and full of splendor." These words, which had been half-reflected, half-pronounced aloud, were listened to by the Jesuit confessor with a terror similar to that with which one listens to the wanderings of a person attacked by fever, whilst Grisart, with a mind of higher order, devoured them as the revelations of an unknown world, in which his looks were plunged without ability to comprehend. Suddenly the Franciscan recovered himself.
"Let us finish this," he said; "death is approaching. Oh! just now I was dying resignedly, for I hoped... while now I sink in despair, unless those who remain... Grisart, Grisart, give me to live a single hour longer."
Grisart approached the dying monk, and made him swallow a few drops, not of the potion which was still left in the glass, but of the contents of a small bottle he had upon his person.
"Call the Scotchman!" exclaimed the Franciscan; "call the Bremen merchant. Call, call quickly. I am dying. I am suffocated."
The confessor darted forward to seek assistance, as if there had been any human strength which could hold back the hand of death, which was weighing down the sick man; but, at the threshold of the door, he found Aramis, who, with his finger on his lips, like the statue of Harpocrates, the god of silence, by a look motioned him back to the end of the apartment. The physician and the confessor, after having consulted each other by looks, made a movement as if to push Aramis aside, who, however, with two signs of the cross, each made in a different manner, transfixed them both in their places.
"A chief!" they both murmured.
Aramis slowly advanced into the room where the dying man was struggling against the first attack of the agony which had seized him. As for the Franciscan, whether owing to the effect of the elixir, or whether the appearance of Aramis had restored his strength, he made a movement, and his eyes glaring, his mouth half open, and his hair damp with sweat, sat up upon the bed. Aramis felt that the air of the room was stifling; the windows were closed; the fire was burning upon the hearth; a pair of candles of yellow wax were guttering down in the copper candlesticks, and still further increased, by their thick smoke, the temperature of the room. Aramis opened the window, and fixing upon the dying man a look full of intelligence and respect, said to him: "Monseigneur, pray forgive my coming in this manner, before you summoned me, but your state alarms me, and I thought you might possibly die before you had seen me, for I am but the sixth upon your list."
The dying man started and looked at the list.
"You are, therefore, he who was formerly called Aramis, and since, the Chevalier d'Herblay? You are the bishop of Vannes?"
"Yes, my lord."
"I know you, I have seen you." "At the last jubilee, we were with the Holy Father together."
"Yes, yes, I remember; and you place yourself on the list of candidates?"
"Monseigneur, I have heard it said that the order required to become possessed of a great state secret, and knowing that from modesty you had in anticipation resigned your functions in favor of the person who should be the depositary of such a secret, I wrote to say that I was ready to compete, possessing alone a secret I believe to be important."
"Speak," said the Franciscan; "I am ready to listen to you, and to judge the importance of the secret."
"A secret of the value of that which I have the honor to confide to you cannot be communicated by word of mouth. Any idea which, when once expressed, has thereby lost its safeguard, and has become vulgarized by any manifestation or communication of it whatever, no longer is the property of him who gave it birth. My words may be overheard by some listener, or perhaps by an enemy; one ought not, therefore, to speak at random, for, in such a case, the secret would cease to be one."
"How do you propose, then, to convey your secret?" inquired the dying monk.
With one hand Aramis signed to the physician and the confessor to withdraw, and with the other he handed to the Franciscan a paper enclosed in a double envelope.
"Is not writing more dangerous still than language?"
"No, my lord," said Aramis, "for you will find within this envelope characters which you and I alone can understand." The Franciscan looked at Aramis with an astonishment which momentarily increased.
"It is a cipher," continued the latter, "which you used in 1655, and which your secretary, Juan Jujan, who is dead, could alone decipher, if he were restored to life."
"You knew this cipher, then?"
"It was I who taught it him," said Aramis, bowing with a gracefulness full of respect, and advancing towards the door as if to leave the room: but a gesture of the Franciscan accompanied by a cry for him to remain, restrained him.
"Ecce homo!" he exclaimed; then reading the paper a second time, he called out, "Approach, approach quickly!"
Aramis returned to the side of the Franciscan, with the same calm countenance and the same respectful manner, unchanged. The Franciscan, extending his arm, burnt by the flame of the candle the paper which Aramis had handed him. Then, taking hold of Aramis's hand, he drew him towards him, and inquired: "In what manner and by whose means could you possibly become acquainted with such a secret?"
"Through Madame de Chevreuse, the intimate friend and confidante of the queen."
"And Madame de Chevreuse - "
"Is dead."
"Did any others know it?"
"A man and a woman only, and they of the lower classes."
"Who are they?"
"Persons who had brought him up."
"What has become of them?"
"Dead also. This secret burns like vitriol."
"But you survive?"
"No one is aware that I know it."
"And for what length of time have you possessed this secret?"
"For the last fifteen years."
"And you have kept it?"
"I wished to live."
"And you give it to the order without ambition, without acknowledgement?"
"I give it to the order with ambition and with a hope of return," said Aramis; "for if you live, my lord, you will make of me, now you know me, what I can and ought to be."
"And as I am dying," exclaimed the Franciscan, "I constitute you my successor... Thus." And drawing off the ring, he passed it on Aramis's finger. Then, turning towards the two spectators of this scene, he said: "Be ye witnesses of this, and testify, if need be, that, sick in body, but sound in mind, I have freely and voluntarily bestowed this ring, the token of supreme authority, upon Monseigneur d'Herblay, bishop of Vannes, whom I nominate my successor, and before whom I, an humble sinner, about to appear before Heaven, prostrate myself, as an example for all to follow." And the Franciscan bowed lowly and submissively, whilst the physician and the Jesuit fell on their knees. Aramis, even while he became paler than the dying man himself, bent his looks successively upon all the actors of this scene. Profoundly gratified ambition flowed with life-blood towards his heart.
"We must lose no time," said the Franciscan; "what I had still to do on earth was urgent. I shall never succeed in carrying it out."
"I will do it," said Aramis.
"It is well," said the Franciscan, and then turning towards the Jesuit and the doctor, he added, "Leave us alone," a direction they instantly obeyed.
"With this sign," he said, "you are the man needed to shake the world from one end to the other; with this sign you will overthrow; with this sign you will edify; in hoc signo vinces!" (9)
"Close the door," continued the Franciscan after a pause. Aramis shut and bolted the door, and returned to the side of the Franciscan.
"The pope is conspiring against the order," said the monk; "the pope must die."
"He shall die," said Aramis, quietly.
"Seven hundred thousand livres are owing to a Bremen merchant of the name of Bonstett, who came here to get the guarantee of my signature."
"He shall be paid," said Aramis.
"Six knights of Malta, whose names are written here, have discovered, by the indiscretion of one of the affiliated of the eleventh year, the three mysteries; it must be ascertained what else these men have done with the secret, to get it back again and bury it."
"It shall be done."
"Three dangerous affiliated members must be sent away into Tibet, there to perish; they stand condemned. Here are their names."
"I will see that the sentence be carried out."
"Lastly, there is a lady at Anvers, grand-niece of Ravaillac; she holds certain papers in her hands that compromise the order. There has been payable to the family during the last fifty-one years a pension of fifty thousand livres. The pension is a heavy one, and the order is not wealthy. Redeem the papers, for a sum of money paid down, or, in case of refusal, stop the pension - but run no risk."
"I will quickly decide what is best to be done," said Aramis.
"A vessel chartered from Lima entered the port of Lisbon last week; ostensibly it is laden with chocolate, in reality with gold. Every ingot is concealed by a coating of chocolate. The vessel belongs to the order; it is worth seventeen millions of livres; you will see that it is claimed; here are the bills of landing."
"To what port shall I direct it to be taken?"
"To Bayonne."
"Before three weeks are over it shall be there, wind and weather permitting. Is that all?" The Franciscan made a sign in the affirmative, for he could no longer speak; the blood rushed to his throat and his head, and gushed from his mouth, his nostrils, and his eyes. The dying man had barely time to press Aramis's hand, when he fell in convulsions from his bed upon the floor. Aramis placed his hand upon the Franciscan's heart, but it had ceased to beat. As he stooped down, Aramis observed that a fragment of the paper he had given the Franciscan had escaped being burnt. He picked it up, and burnt it to the last atom. Then, summoning the confessor and the physician, he said to the former: "Your penitent is in heaven; he needs nothing more than prayers and the burial bestowed upon the pious dead. Go and prepare what is necessary for a simple interment, such as a poor monk only would require. Go."
The Jesuit left the room. Then, turning towards the physician, and observing his pale and anxious face, he said, in a low tone of voice: "Monsieur Grisart, empty and clean this glass; there is too much left in it of what the grand council desired you to put in."
Grisart, amazed, overcome, completely astounded, almost fell backwards in his extreme terror. Aramis shrugged his shoulders in sign of pity, took the glass, and poured out the contents among the ashes of the hearth. He then left the room, carrying the papers of the dead man with him.