Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Under the Red Robe by Stanley John Weyman (trending books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: Stanley John Weyman
Book online «Under the Red Robe by Stanley John Weyman (trending books to read .txt) 📖». Author Stanley John Weyman
And certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard, where, some mornings, when the Court was in Paris, I had seen a score of coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now emptiness and sunshine and stillness. The officer on guard, twirling his moustachios, looked at me in wonder as I passed him; the lackeys lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up with whispering to make a pretence of being of service, grinned at my appearance. But that which happened when I had mounted the stairs and came to the door of the ante-chamber outdid all. The man on guard would have opened the door, but when I went to enter, a major-domo who was standing by, muttering with two or three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.
‘Your business, Monsieur, if you please?’ he said inquisitively; while I wondered why he and the others looked at me so strangely.
‘I am M. de Berault,’ I answered sharply. ‘I have the entree.’
He bowed politely enough.
‘Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to know your face,’ he said. ‘But—pardon me. Have you business with his Eminence?’
‘I have the common business,’ I answered sharply. ‘By which many of us live, sirrah! To wait on him.’
‘But—by appointment, Monsieur?’
‘No,’ I said, astonished. ‘It is the usual hour. For the matter of that, however, I have business with him.’
The man still looked at me for a moment in seeming embarrassment. Then he stood aside and signed to the door-keeper to open the door. I passed in, uncovering; with an assured face and steadfast mien, ready to meet all eyes. In a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained.
The room was empty.
CHAPTER XV. ST MARTIN’S SUMMER
Yes, at the great Cardinal’s levee I was the only client! I stared round the room, a long, narrow gallery, through which it was his custom to walk every morning, after receiving his more important visitors. I stared, I say, from side to side, in a state of stupefaction. The seats against either wall were empty, the recesses of the windows empty too. The hat sculptured and painted here and there, the staring R, the blazoned arms looked down on a vacant floor. Only on a little stool by the farther door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or pretended to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those men, blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.
Suddenly, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought—for I had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu’s old hotel so crowded that he could not walk through it—this man closed his book, rose and came noiselessly towards me.
‘M. de Berault?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me.’
I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the Cardinal know that I was here? How could he have known when he gave the order? But I had short time to think of these things, or others. We passed through two rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing, we stopped at a third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher knocked, opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain and signed to me to enter. I did so and found myself behind a screen.
‘Is that M. de Berault?’ asked a thin, high-pitched voice.
‘Yes, Monseigneur,’ I answered trembling.
‘Then come, my friend, and talk to me.’
I went round the screen, and I know not how it was, the watching crowd outside, the vacant ante-chamber in which I had stood, the stillness and silence all seemed to be concentrated here, and to give to the man I saw before me a dignity which he had never possessed for me when the world passed through his doors, and the proudest fawned on him for a smile. He sat in a great chair on the farther side of the hearth, a little red skull-cap on his head, his fine hands lying still in his lap. The collar of lawn which fell over his cape was quite plain, but the skirts of his red robe were covered with rich lace, and the order of the Holy Ghost, a white dove on a gold cross, shone on his breast. Among the multitudinous papers on the great table near him I saw a sword and pistols; and some tapestry that covered a little table behind him failed to hide a pair of spurred riding-boots. But as I advanced he looked towards me with the utmost composure; with a face mild and almost benign, in which I strove in vain to read the traces of last night’s passion. So that it flashed across me that if this man really stood (and afterwards I knew that he did) on the thin razor-edge between life and death, between the supreme of earthly power, lord of France and arbiter of Europe, and the nothingness of the clod, he justified his fame. He gave weaker natures no room for triumph.
The thought was no sooner entertained than it was gone.
‘And so you are back at last, M. de Berault,’ he said gently. ‘I have been expecting to see you since nine this morning.’
‘Your Eminence knew, then—’ I muttered.
‘That you returned to Paris by the Orleans gate last evening alone?’ he answered, fitting together the ends of his fingers, and looking at me over them with inscrutable eyes. ‘Yes, I knew all that last night. And now, of your business. You have been faithful and diligent, I am sure. Where is he?’
I stared at him and was dumb. In some way the strange things I had seen since I had left my lodgings, the surprises I had found awaiting me here, had driven my own fortunes, my own peril, out of my head—until this moment. Now, at this question, all returned with a rush, and I remembered where I stood. My heart heaved suddenly in my breast. I strove for a savour of the old hardihood, but for the moment I could not find a word.
‘Well,’ he said lightly, a faint smile lifting his moustache. ‘You do not speak. You left Auch with him on the twenty-fourth, M. de Berault. So much I know. And you reached Paris without him last night. He has not given you the slip?’
‘No, Monseigneur,’ I muttered.
‘Ha! that is good,’ he answered, sinking back again in his chair. ‘For the moment—but I knew that I could depend on you.
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