Devil’s Dance
~ or ~
Louise de La Vallière
By Alexandre Dumas
Edited and Translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
In Last Week’s Episode
At the Proud Peacock Inn in Fontainebleau village, the incognito Aramis helped the mysterious dying Franciscan monk to his room and then withdrew. The Franciscan summoned a Jesuit physician who lived in Fontainebleau, revealed that he was the General of the Jesuits, leader of their order, and demanded he be told the truth of his condition. The doctor confirmed that his condition was terminal and he had only hours to live. The Franciscan ordered the doctor to send for a confessor.
Chapter XXXIII
The State Secret
A few moments after the departure of Doctor Grisart, the confessor arrived. As soon as he crossed the threshold the Franciscan fixed his piercing gaze upon him. Then he shook his pale head and said to himself, “Here is a weak-minded fool. I hope God will forgive me for dying without asking this walking embarrassment for last rites.”
The confessor, for his part, looked in fearful amazement at the dying man. He had never seen eyes so fiery when about to close forever, such a terrible gaze from one so close to his end.
The Franciscan indicated the chair with a quick and imperative gesture. “Sit here, Father,” he said, “and listen to me.”
The Jesuit confessor, a simple priest who was a sincere and naïve initiate, barely introduced into the mysteries of the order, obeyed the commands of his superior.
“There are several other guests at this inn,” continued the Franciscan.
“But I thought I had come to hear a confession,” said the priest. “Is this the beginning of it?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“To know whether I should keep your words secret.”
“Everything I tell you is part of my confession, and I entrust it to your duty as a confessor.”
“Very well!” said the priest, settling into the armchair that the Franciscan had just left to laboriously lever himself onto the bed.
Lying down, the Franciscan continued, “There are, as I told you, several other guests at this inn.”
“So you said.”
“The guests should be eight in total.”
The Jesuit nodded.
“The first one I wish to speak to,” said the dying man, “is a German from Vienna called the Graf von Wostpur. Kindly find him and say that the one he’s been waiting for has arrived.”
The confessor looked at his penitent in surprise; this seemed a strange sort of confession.
“Obey,” said the Franciscan in an imperious tone of command.
The good Jesuit, subjugated, got up and left the room.
After the Jesuit left, the Franciscan pulled out the papers that the fever attack had forced him to put away earlier. “Graf von Wostpur?” he said. “Ah, yes: ambitious, greedy, short-sighted.” He folded his papers and slid them under the covers.
Rapid footsteps sounded from the corridor. The confessor returned, followed by the Graf von Wostpur, walking with his chin up as if trying to tickle the ceiling with his hat’s plume. He looked at the bedroom, empty of belongings, at the dark-eyed monk on the bed, and sniffed, “Who asks for me?”
“I!” said the Franciscan. Then, turning to the confessor, he added, “Good Father, leave us alone for a moment. When monsieur leaves, you may return.”
The Jesuit went out, taking advantage of his temporary dismissal to go ask the host about this strange penitent who treated his confessor as a footman.
The graf approached the bed and opened his mouth to speak, but the Franciscan raised a hand to silence him. “The moments are precious,” he said quickly. “You came for the election, did you not?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You hope to become the general?”
“So I hope.”
“You know by what conditions a single member can reach this high rank which makes a man a master of kings and an equal to popes?”
“Who are you to interrogate me?” demanded the graf.
“I’m the one you awaited.”
“The general?”
“I am he.”
“You say….”
The Franciscan didn’t give him time to finish, simply stretched out his emaciated hand upon which glittered the Ring of the General.
The graf drew back in surprise but then recovered, and, bowing deeply, said, “What, you, here, Monseigneur? You, on this poor bed, in this empty room, seeking our future general, your own successor?”
“Don’t concern yourself with such things, Monsieur. Just quickly fulfill the main condition, which is to provide the order with a state secret of such importance that, through it, one of the leading courts of Europe will be subservient to us. Now, do you have such a secret, as you promised in your request to the Grand Council?”
“Monseigneur….”
“But let’s do this properly. You are the Graf von Wostpur?”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“This letter is from you?” The General of the Jesuits drew a paper from his stack and presented it to the graf.
The graf glanced at it, nodded, and said, “Yes, Monseigneur, that is my letter.”
“And can you show me the reply from the secretary of the Grand Council?”
“Here it is, Monseigneur.” The graf handed the Franciscan a letter addressed simply, To His Excellency the Graf von Wostpur. It contained a note with only one sentence: May 15 through May 22, Fontainebleau, Proud Peacock Inn. –A.M.D.G.
“Good!” said the Franciscan. “Now that you’re here, speak.”
“I have a corps of fifty thousand troops, all of its officers won over to our cause. We are camped on the Danube. In four days, I could overthrow the Holy Roman Emperor, who is, as you know, opposed to the progress of the order, and replace him with whichever prince from his family the order prefers.”
The Franciscan listened without reaction. “Is that all?” he said.
“I plan to follow this with a general European revolt,” said the graf.
“Very well, Monsieur de Wostpur, you will receive an answer shortly. Return home, leaving Fontainebleau within the hour.”
The graf backed out of the room bowing, as obsequious as if he were taking leave of the emperor he’d just offered to betray.
“Is that a secret?” murmured the Franciscan. “No, merely an insurrection. Besides,” he added, after a moment of reflection, “the future of Europe no longer lies with the House of Austria.”69
He picked up his list and drew a line with a red pencil through the name of the Graf von Wostpur.
“On to the cardinal,” he said. “The Spanish chapter should be able to provide us something more significant.”
Looking up, he saw the confessor awaiting his orders, as submissive as a schoolboy. “Ah!” he said, taking note of the confessor’s attitude. “I take it you’ve spoken to our host.”
“Yes, Monseigneur, and to the doctor.”
“Grisart?”
“Yes.”
“He’s returned, then?”
“He’s waiting, with the promised potion.”
“Fine! If I need him, I’ll call him. Now you understand the importance of my confession, don’t you?
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“So, go get me that Spanish cardinal, Herrebia. And hurry. But now that you know what it’s all about, stay nearby this time, because I’m growing weak.”
“Should I call the doctor?”
“Not yet, not yet. Just the Spanish cardinal. Now, go.”
Five minutes later, into the room came the cardinal, pale and anxious. He stammered, “I’ve been told, Monseigneur….”
“Let’s get down to business,” said the Franciscan wearily. And he showed the cardinal a letter written by the latter to the Grand Council. “Did you send this?”
“Yes, but….”
“And your invitation?”
The cardinal hesitated to answer; a Prince of the Church, he was reluctant to obey a mere monk in a shabby robe.
The dying man stretched out his hand and displayed the ring. It had its intended effect, all the greater given the high rank of the beholder.
“The secret, the state secret—quickly!” demanded the Franciscan, leaning on his confessor.
“Coram isti?” asked the cardinal anxiously, nodding toward the Jesuit. “Before him?”
“Speak Spanish,” said the Franciscan, focusing his attention.
“You know, Monseigneur,” said the cardinal, continuing the conversation in Castilian, “that a condition of the marriage of the Spanish Infanta with the King of France was an absolute renunciation of the rights of the said infanta, and therefore of King Louis as well, to all claims on the Spanish crown?”
The Franciscan nodded.
“It follows,” continued the cardinal, “that the peace and alliance of the two kingdoms depends upon observance of that clause of the marriage contract.”
The Franciscan nodded again.
“Not only France and Spain, but all Europe would be shaken if the clause were violated by one of the parties to it.”
Another nod.
“It further follows,” continued the orator, “that he who could foresee events and find certainty among the cloudy mists of human intention, in other words, determine the time and nature of good or ill to come, could save the world from an immense catastrophe, especially if the mind that could so perceive did so to the benefit of the order.”
“Pronto! Pronto!” murmured the Franciscan, growing pale and leaning heavily on the priest.
The cardinal approached the dying man’s ear. “Well, Monseigneur!” he said. “I know that the King of France has decided that, at the first pretext, say, the death of the King of Spain or of the brother of the infanta,70 France will claim the Spanish crown, under arms and banners. I possess the complete plan prepared by Louis XIV for this contingency.”
“Where is this plan?” said the Franciscan.
“Right here,” said the cardinal.
“In whose hand is it written?”
“My own.”
“Do you have anything more to say?”
“I think I’ve already said a great deal,” said the cardinal.
“It’s true, you’ve rendered a great service to the order. But how did you acquire the details from which you compiled this plan?”
“I have in my pay the French king’s under-valets, and they provide me with all the paper trash that should have been burned.”
“Quite ingenious,” murmured the Franciscan, struggling to smile. “Monsieur le Cardinal, you will leave this inn within a quarter of an hour; an answer will be sent to you. Go!”
The cardinal withdrew.
“Call Grisart, and go get me the Venetian, Marini,” said the sick man.
As the confessor obeyed, the Franciscan, instead of striking out the cardinal’s name as he had the graf’s, marked a cross next to it. Then, exhausted by the effort, he fell back on the bed, muttering Doctor Grisart’s name.
When he came to, he was sitting up, supported by Grisart, and had drunk half a glass of the doctor’s concoction. His confessor and the Venetian waited at the door.
The Venetian went through the same formalities as his two competitors, hesitating at first at the sight of the two strangers, and reassured by the display of the general’s ring. He revealed that the pope, frightened by the growing power of the order, was preparing a plan for the sudden expulsion of the Jesuits, and was sounding out the various courts of Europe in hopes of obtaining their support. He listed the pope’s allies, their plan of action, and told of an isle in the Greek archipelago where two Cardinal-Adepts of the Eleventh Year were to be exiled, along with thirty-two of their principal Roman affiliates.
The Franciscan thanked Signor Marini, as the exposure of this plot against the society was no small service to the order. The Venetian was told to depart within a quarter hour and left radiant, as if he already wore the ring that denoted his command of the society.
But, as he walked away, the Franciscan muttered on his bed of pain, “All these men are mere spies or mercenaries; not one is a true general. All they bring me are plots rather than state secrets. It is not with mayhem, war, or force that one can rule the Society of Jesus, it’s with the mysterious power of that which is unknown to all others. No, I have not found my successor, and all is lost, for now God strikes me down and I die. Oh! Must the edifice of the society fall for the lack of a strong pillar to support it? Must the death that awaits to devour me swallow the order as well? With only ten more years I could have made the society eternal, as we commanded the glorious future that opens with the reign of the new king!”
To these half-understood words that exposed the Franciscan’s thoughts, the good Jesuit confessor listened in terror as if at the ramblings of a feverish mind, while Grisart, a superior man, heard in them a glimpse into an unknown world that opened just beyond his reach.
Suddenly the Franciscan sat up. “Let’s finish this,” he said. “Death is coming for me. Oh! I’d hoped to go peacefully and ready, but unless I find the one I need… Grisart! Grisart, I must live another hour!”
Grisart approached the dying man and had him swallow a few drops, not of the concoction in his glass, but from a vial he had with him.
“Call the Scot!” cried the Franciscan. “Call the Bremen merchant! Quickly! Lord Jesus, I’m dying. I’m choking!”
The confessor turned to seek help, as if there was any human force that could lift the finger of death from his penitent, but in the doorway he met Aramis, who, with a finger on his lips like the statue of Harpocrates, god of silence,71 urged him back into the room with a look.
The doctor and the confessor glanced at each other and then took a step toward Aramis, but the latter, making a new and more imperious sign of the cross, froze them in place. “A Master!” they murmured.
Aramis slowly entered the room where the dying man was entering his final agonies. But either the elixir had its effect or the appearance of Aramis gave him strength, for the Franciscan lurched and sat up in bed, eyes afire, mouth gaping, hair dripping with sweat.
Aramis felt the air in the room was suffocating—the windows were closed, the fire blazed on the hearth, and two candles of yellow wax were melting in their copper sconce and emitting a dense vapor. Aramis opened the window, and then, regarding the dying man with a look of intelligence and respect, he said, “Monseigneur, I beg your pardon for coming in advance of your summons, because I’m in the sixth position on your list, but your condition alarms me.”
The dying man blinked and pawed at his list. “You are the one formerly known as Aramis and the Chevalier d’Herblay, now the Bishop of Vannes?”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“I know you, I’ve seen you before.”
“At the last papal jubilee, we were both in the presence of the Holy Father.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right, I remember. And you place yourself in the ranks of this election?”
“Monseigneur, I heard that the order was seeking the possessor of a great state secret, and hearing that from modesty you planned to resign your duties in favor of one who could bring the society such a secret, I requested an invitation to compete, knowing that I could offer the greatest possible secret.”
“Speak, then,” said the Franciscan. “I am ready to listen and judge the significance of this secret.”
“Monseigneur, a secret as profound as the one I have to confide to you cannot safely be uttered aloud. An idea given voice no longer belongs to he who voiced it—speech can be overhead by an attentive or hostile listener, and a secret, once spoken, is a secret no more.”
“How, then, do you intend to convey your secret?” asked the dying man.
With one hand, Aramis gestured to dismiss the doctor and the confessor, while with the other he handed the Franciscan a sheet of paper in a double envelope.
“Writing,” said the Franciscan. “Isn’t that even riskier than saying it aloud?”
“No, Monseigneur,” said Aramis, “for you will find in this envelope writing that only you and I can understand.”
The Franciscan looked at Aramis in increasing amazement. “This,” said the latter, “is written in the cipher you employed in 1655, and which only your secretary, the late Juan Jujan, could decipher were he still alive.”
“And yet you know my secretary’s cipher?”
“He learned it from me, for I devised it.”
And Aramis, after bowing with graceful respect, turned toward the door as if to leave. But a gesture from the Franciscan, with a cry of appeal, restrained him.
“Lord Jesus!” said the monk. “Ecce homo!”72 Then, after reading the paper a second time, he said, “Come here! Quickly!”
Aramis approached the Franciscan with the same calm expression and respectful attitude.
The Franciscan stretched out his arm to the candle and burned the paper Aramis had given him. Then he grasped Aramis’s hand and drew him forward. “How and from whom did you learn such a secret?” he demanded.
“From Madame de Chevreuse,* the queen’s intimate friend and confidante.”
“And Madame de Chevreuse…?”
“She is dead,” he said, and mentally added, at least to the Court.
“And others, did any others know?”
“Only a man and a woman, servants.”
“And who were they?”
“Those who raised him.”
“What has become of them?”
“Also dead. This secret burns like fire.”
“But you survived?”
“No one is aware that I know it.”
“How long have you known this secret?”
“For fifteen years.”
“And you never shared it?”
“I wanted to stay alive.”
“And you give it to the order without ambition or expectation?”
“I give it to the order with both ambition and expectation,” said Aramis, “for if you live, Monseigneur, now that you know me, you will make of me what I can and should become.”
“But instead I die,” cried the Franciscan, “and so I make you my successor. Here!”
And, pulling off the Ring of the General, he placed it on Aramis’s finger.
Then, turning to the two spectators in the doorway, he said, “You hereby witness and attest that I, sick in body but sane of mind, freely give this ring, the symbol of my omnipotence, to Monseigneur d’Herblay, Bishop of Vannes, whom I name my successor, and before whom I, a humble sinner preparing to meet my God, am the first to bow as an example to all other initiates.”
And the Franciscan did bow, while the doctor and the confessor fell to their knees.
Aramis, though turning even more pale than the dying man, looked down, one by one, upon each of the other actors in this scene. His heart swelled with satisfied ambition.
“Quickly, now,” said the Franciscan. “I still have things I must do here, but I’m eaten up within, I’ll never complete it all.”
“I will do it,” said Aramis.
“That is well,” said the Franciscan. Then, addressing the confessor and the doctor, he said, “Leave us alone.”
They obeyed.
“With this symbol,” the Franciscan said to Aramis, “you become a man who can move the Earth. With this symbol you will raze, and with it you will rebuild. In hoc signo vinces!73 Now close the door.”
Aramis locked the door and turned back to the Franciscan. “The pope has conspired against the order,” said the Franciscan. “The pope must die.”
“He will die,” said Aramis calmly.
“A merchant of Bremen named Bonstett, who came here seeking my signature, is owed seven hundred thousand livres.”
“He will be paid,” said Aramis.
“Six Knights of Malta,74 whose names are listed here, discovered, through the indiscretion of an Eleventh-Year affiliate, the secret of the Third Mystery. You must find out what these men have done with their knowledge, foil their plans, and eliminate all knowledge of the secret.”
“It will be done.”
“Three disloyal members have been exiled to Tibet, where they must perish. Here are their names.”
“I will execute the sentence.”
“Finally, there is a Dame d’Anvers, a grandniece of Ravaillac,75 who has in her possession certain papers that compromise the order. That family has received a pension of fifty thousand livres for the last fifty-one years, but the order’s wealth is limited, and the payment is a burden. Redeem the papers for a one-time payment, and if that’s refused, cancel the pension… without further risk.”
“I will resolve the matter,” said Aramis.
“A ship from Lima was due to enter the port of Lisbon last week; though ostensibly loaded with chocolate, its actual cargo is gold. Each ingot is hidden under a layer of chocolate. The vessel belongs to the order; its cargo is worth seventeen million livres, and you will see that it’s claimed on our behalf. Here are the deeds and manifests.”
“To which port should it be sent?”
“To Bayonne.”
“Winds permitting, within three weeks it will be there. Is that all?”
The Franciscan nodded, for he was choking and could no longer speak. Suddenly blood gushed from his mouth, nostrils, and eyes. The unfortunate man had time only to squeeze Aramis’s hand once before he fell limp to the floor.
Aramis put his hand on the monk’s heart; it had stopped beating. As he bent over, Aramis noticed that a fragment of the paper he’d given the Franciscan had escaped the flames. He picked it up and burned it to the last atom.
Then he recalled the confessor and the doctor. To the confessor he said, “Your penitent is with God; all he needs now are prayers and a proper burial. Make preparations for a simple interment, as would be appropriate for a humble monk. Go.”
The Jesuit left. Aramis turned to the doctor, and, seeing his pale and anxious face, he said softly, “Monsieur Grisart, empty this glass and clean it thoroughly; it still contains too much of what the Grand Council ordered you to put in it.”
Grisart gasped, dizzy and dismayed, and almost fell over backwards.
Aramis shrugged, took the glass, and emptied its contents into the fire in the hearth. Then he departed, taking the dead man’s papers with him.
Notes on the Text of Devil’s Dance
69. THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA: The Hapsburg dynasty that ruled both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire for three hundred years, from 1440 to 1740.
70. THE BROTHER OF THE INFANTA: Felipe Próspero, Prince of Asturias, son of King Philip IV of Spain and heir to the throne, who would die in November 1661.
71. HARPOCRATES, GOD OF SILENCE: The Greek god of silence and secrets, Harpocrates was usually depicted holding a finger to his lips.
72. ECCE HOMO: “Behold the man.”
73. IN HOC SIGNO VINCES: “By this sign you will conquer.” The phrase dates back to the Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity after seeing a cross in the sky above the Sun.
74. KNIGHTS OF MALTA: In 1661 the Knights Hospitaller, or Knights of Malta (full name: Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem) were the last surviving Catholic military order from the time of the Crusades, and had been fighting militant Islam in the Mediterranean for over five hundred years.
75. RAVAILLAC: The fanatical regicide who assassinated Henri IV in 1610.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ MUSKETEERS CYCLE
Devil’s Dance is part of a series. Everyone has heard of The Three Musketeers and its heroes d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, but what’s less well known nowadays is that Dumas followed up his greatest novel with a series of sequels that are just as great. Your Cheerful Editor Lawrence Ellsworth has been compiling all-new contemporary translations of these novels, and the entire series, when complete, will fill nine volumes:
- The Three Musketeers, Book One
- The Red Sphinx, Book Two
- Twenty Years After, Book Three
- Blood Royal, Book Four
- Between Two Kings, Book Five
- Court of Daggers, Book Six
- Devil’s Dance, Book Seven
- Shadow of the Bastille, Book Eight
- The Man in the Iron Mask, Book Nine
Volumes one through six are already in print, the first five from Pegasus Books, while Book Six, Court of Daggers, is available as an independent publication. Each week now brings a new episode in the serialization of Book Seven, Devil’s Dance.
If you’re interested in my work, you can learn more about it at swashbucklingadventure.net. So welcome, fellow cavaliers, and enjoy the ride!
—Lawrence Ellsworth
Copyright © 2023 Lawrence Schick. All rights reserved.