“Do you know where the Duchesse de Chevreuse and the Duke of Buckingham were concealed?”
“No, monseigneur. My people could tell me nothing positive in regard to that.”
“But I know.”
“You, monseigneur?”
“Yes, or at least I suspect. They were, one in the Rue de Vaugirard, No. 25, the other in the Rue de la Harpe, No. 75.”
“Does your Eminence wish them both to be arrested?”
“It is too late; they will be gone.”
“But still we can make sure of it.”
“Take ten men of my guards, and search both houses thoroughly.”
“Instantly, monseigneur.”
The cardinal, upon being left alone, reflected for an instant, and then rang the bell a third time.
The same officer appeared.
“Bring the prisoner in again,” said the cardinal.
M. Bonacieux was introduced anew, and upon a sign from the cardinal the officer retired.
“You have deceived me!” said the cardinal sternly.
“I,” cried Bonacieux—“I deceive your Eminence!”
“Your wife, when going to Rue de Vaugirard and Rue de la Harpe, did not go to any linen-drapers.”
“Then where, in God’s name, did she go?”
“She went to the house of the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and she went to the Duke of Buckingham’s.”
“Yes,” cried Bonacieux, recalling all the circumstances—“yes, that’s it. Your Eminence is right. I told my wife several times that it was surprising that linen-drapers should live in such houses—in houses that had no signs—and every time she began to laugh. Ah, monseigneur!” continued Bonacieux, throwing himself at his Eminence’s feet—“ah, how truly you are the cardinal, the great cardinal, the man of genius whom all the world reveres!”
However contemptible might be the triumph gained over so vulgar a being as Bonacieux, the cardinal did not the less enjoy it for an instant. Then, almost immediately, as if a new thought had entered his mind, a smile passed over his lips, and reaching out his hand to the mercer,
“Rise, my friend,” said he; “you are an honest man.”
“The cardinal has touched me with his hand! I have touched the hand of the great man!” cried Bonacieux. “The great man has called me his friend!”
“Yes, my friend, yes,” said the cardinal, with that paternal tone which he sometimes knew how to assume, but which deceived only those who did not know him; “and as you have been unjustly suspected—well, you must be indemnified. Here! take this purse of a hundred pistoles, and pardon me.”