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Updated: May 27, 2025
Bernouin, in great terror, rushed into the cabinet to give the order, and the piqueur, who hastened to fetch the physician, passed the king's carriage in the Rue Saint Honore. The cardinal's order was pressing; Guenaud quickly obeyed it. He found his patient stretched on his bed, his legs swelled, his face livid, and his stomach collapsed. Mazarin had a severe attack of gout.
"I do not know," said the valet de chambre, "but I don't like the countenance of your young man who goes on so well." "Well, well, Bernouin! We don't stand in need of your advice. Place yourself there: take the pen and write." "I am ready, monseigneur; what am I to write?" "There, that's the place: after the two lines already traced." "I am there." "Write seven hundred and sixty thousand livres."
"And what sum could we find, after collecting all our resources?" "Thirty-nine millions two hundred and sixty thousand." "That is correct, Bernouin; that is all I wanted to know. Leave us now," said the cardinal, fixing his brilliant eye upon the young king, who sat mute with stupefaction. "However " stammered the king. "What, do you still doubt, sire?" said the cardinal.
He was beginning, then, to dart at them glances full of mistrust and uneasiness, inviting Anne of Austria to throw perturbation in the midst of the unlawful assembly, when, suddenly, Bernouin, entering from behind the tapestry of the bedroom, whispered in the ear of Mazarin, "Monseigneur, an envoy from his majesty, the king of England."
The gentlemen left the room. The door had scarcely closed before the cardinal, who had no mask for Bernouin, took off that which had so recently covered his face, and with a most dismal expression, "Call M. de Brienne," said he. Five minutes afterward the secretary entered. "Monsieur," said Mazarin, "I have just rendered a great service to the monarchy, the greatest I have ever rendered it.
"No, sir," replied Anne of Austria, "and you may retire until the time that I mentioned to you." D'Artagnan bowed and went out. "Diable!" he exclaimed when the door was shut, "they seem to have the greatest need of me just now." Then, as the half hour had already glided by, he crossed the gallery and knocked at the cardinal's door. Bernouin introduced him.
*This secret passage is still to be seen in the Palais Royal. In the bedroom in which this passage ended, Bernouin encountered Madame de Beauvais, like himself intrusted with the secret of these subterranean love affairs; and Madame de Beauvais undertook to prepare Anne of Austria, who was in her oratory with the young king, Louis XIV., to receive the cardinal.
"And what sum could we find, after collecting all our resources?" "Thirty-nine millions two hundred and sixty thousand." "That is correct, Bernouin; that is all I wanted to know. Leave us now," said the cardinal, fixing his brilliant eye upon the young king, who sat mute with stupefaction. "However " stammered the king. "What, do you still doubt, sire?" said the cardinal.
On entering the courtyard of the old chateau the first person seen by our ambassador was Maitre Bernouin in person, who, standing on the threshold, awaited news of his vanished master. At the sight of D'Artagnan, who entered the courtyard on horseback, Bernouin rubbed his eyes and thought he must be mistaken.
Bernouin smiled after his own fashion that is, like a man who believes no more than he is willing to believe whilst preparing the cardinal's night draught, and putting his pillow to rights. "Oh!" said Mazarin, when the valet had gone out; "not yet forty millions! I must, however, attain that sum, which I had set down for myself. But who knows whether I shall have time?
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