THE THREE MUSKETEERS - Complete Series: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise da la Valliere & The Man in the Iron Mask. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ himself in some other way, or that at all events, if he drew likenesses, he would not put mottoes underneath them. The next day the prisoner’s room was full of pictures and mottoes. Monsieur de Beaufort, in common with many other prisoners, was bent upon doing things that were prohibited; and the only resource the governor had was, one day when the duke was playing at tennis, to efface all these drawings, consisting chiefly of profiles. M. de Beaufort did not venture to draw the cardinal’s fat face.

      The duke thanked Monsieur de Chavigny for having, as he said, cleaned his drawing-paper for him; he then divided the walls of his room into compartments and dedicated each of these compartments to some incident in Mazarin’s life. In one was depicted the “Illustrious Coxcomb” receiving a shower of blows from Cardinal Bentivoglio, whose servant he had been; another, the “Illustrious Mazarin” acting the part of Ignatius Loyola in a tragedy of that name; a third, the “Illustrious Mazarin” stealing the portfolio of prime minister from Monsieur de Chavigny, who had expected to have it; a fourth, the “Illustrious Coxcomb Mazarin” refusing to give Laporte, the young king’s valet, clean sheets, and saving that “it was quite enough for the king of France to have clean sheets every three months.”

      The governor, of course, thought proper to threaten his prisoner that if he did not give up drawing such pictures he should be obliged to deprive him of all the means of amusing himself in that manner. To this Monsieur de Beaufort replied that since every opportunity of distinguishing himself in arms was taken from him, he wished to make himself celebrated in the arts; since he could not be a Bayard, he would become a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. Nevertheless, one day when Monsieur de Beaufort was walking in the meadow his fire was put out, his charcoal all removed, taken away; and thus his means of drawing utterly destroyed.

      The poor duke swore, fell into a rage, yelled, and declared that they wished to starve him to death as they had starved the Marechal Ornano and the Grand Prior of Vendome; but he refused to promise that he would not make any more drawings and remained without any fire in the room all the winter.

      His next act was to purchase a dog from one of his keepers. With this animal, which he called Pistache, he was often shut up for hours alone, superintending, as every one supposed, its education. At last, when Pistache was sufficiently well trained, Monsieur de Beaufort invited the governor and officers of Vincennes to attend a representation which he was going to have in his apartment.

      The party assembled, the room was lighted with waxlights, and the prisoner, with a bit of plaster he had taken out of the wall of his room, had traced a long white line, representing a cord, on the floor. Pistache, on a signal from his master, placed himself on this line, raised himself on his hind paws, and holding in his front paws a wand with which clothes used to be beaten, he began to dance upon the line with as many contortions as a rope-dancer. Having been several times up and down it, he gave the wand back to his master and began without hesitation to perform the same evolutions over again.

      The intelligent creature was received with loud applause.

      The first part of the entertainment being concluded Pistache was desired to say what o’clock it was; he was shown Monsieur de Chavigny’s watch; it was then half-past six; the dog raised and dropped his paw six times; the seventh he let it remain upraised. Nothing could be better done; a sun-dial could not have shown the hour with greater precision.

      Then the question was put to him who was the best jailer in all the prisons in France.

      The dog performed three evolutions around the circle and laid himself, with the deepest respect, at the feet of Monsieur de Chavigny, who at first seemed inclined to like the joke and laughed long and loud, but a frown succeeded, and he bit his lips with vexation.

      Then the duke put to Pistache this difficult question, who was the greatest thief in the world?

      Pistache went again around the circle, but stopped at no one, and at last went to the door and began to scratch and bark.

      “See, gentlemen,” said M. de Beaufort, “this wonderful animal, not finding here what I ask for, seeks it out of doors; you shall, however, have his answer. Pistache, my friend, come here. Is not the greatest thief in the world, Monsieur (the king’s secretary) Le Camus, who came to Paris with twenty francs in his pocket and who now possesses ten millions?”

      The dog shook his head.

      “Then is it not,” resumed the duke, “the Superintendent Emery, who gave his son, when he was married, three hundred thousand francs and a house, compared to which the Tuileries are a heap of ruins and the Louvre a paltry building?”

      The dog again shook his head as if to say “no.”

      “Then,” said the prisoner, “let’s think who it can be. Can it be, can it possibly be, the ‘Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin de Piscina,’ hey?”

      Pistache made violent signs that it was, by raising and lowering his head eight or ten times successively.

      “Gentlemen, you see,” said the duke to those present, who dared not even smile, “that it is the ‘Illustrious Coxcomb’ who is the greatest thief in the world; at least, according to Pistache.”

      “Let us go on to another of his exercises.”

      “Gentlemen!”—there was a profound silence in the room when the duke again addressed them—“do you not remember that the Duc de Guise taught all the dogs in Paris to jump for Mademoiselle de Pons, whom he styled ‘the fairest of the fair?’ Pistache is going to show you how superior he is to all other dogs. Monsieur de Chavigny, be so good as to lend me your cane.”

      Monsieur de Chavigny handed his cane to Monsieur de Beaufort. Monsieur de Beaufort placed it horizontally at the height of one foot.

      “Now, Pistache, my good dog, jump the height of this cane for Madame de Montbazon.”

      “But,” interposed Monsieur de Chavigny, “it seems to me that Pistache is only doing what other dogs have done when they jumped for Mademoiselle de Pons.”

      “Stop,” said the duke, “Pistache, jump for the queen.” And he raised his cane six inches higher.

      The dog sprang, and in spite of the height jumped lightly over it.

      “And now,” said the duke, raising it still six inches higher, “jump for the king.”

      The dog obeyed and jumped quickly over the cane.

      “Now, then,” said the duke, and as he spoke, lowered the cane almost level with the ground; “Pistache, my friend, jump for the ‘Illustrious Coxcomb, Mazarin de Piscina.’”

      The dog turned his back to the cane.

      “What,” asked the duke, “what do you mean?” and he gave him the cane again, first making a semicircle from the head to the tail of Pistache. “Jump then, Monsieur Pistache.”

      But Pistache, as at first, turned round on his legs and stood with his back to the cane.

      Monsieur de Beaufort made the experiment a third time, but by this time Pistache’s patience was exhausted; he threw himself furiously upon the cane, wrested it from the hands of the prince and broke it with his teeth.

      Monsieur de Beaufort took the pieces out of his mouth and presented them with great formality to Monsieur de Chavigny, saying that for that evening the entertainment was ended, but in three months it should be repeated, when Pistache would have learned a few new tricks.

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