Shadow of the Bastille
Being the Fourth Part of Le Vicomte de Bragelonne
By Alexandre Dumas
Edited and Translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
UPDATE ON ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ MUSKETEERS CYCLE
All nine volumes of the Musketeers Cycle will be in print and available by early 2025.
Books One through Seven are already available—see links in the list below.
Book Eight, Shadow of the Bastille, is what you’re reading right now in weekly instalments on Substack, in serial form just as originally presented by Alexandre Dumas in 1849. Bastille will complete its serialization later this year and will appear in book form shortly thereafter.
With Book Nine, The Man in the Iron Mask, the series concludes with a return to mainstream book publication, to be released in the first quarter of next year. Further publishing details will be announced soon.
I’d like to thank you all for your support of this epic decade-long literary project. It’s been quite a journey.
Shadow of the Bastille 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
o Now serializing here! Available in book form in late 2024.
- The Man in the Iron Mask, Book Nine
o To be published in early 2025.
In Last Week’s Episode
At the behest of Madame Henrietta, Vicomte Raoul de Bragelonne was summoned back to Paris from the court of England’s King Charles II, and he hurried to take passage across the Channel for France, leaving heartbreak behind him in the bosom of Mary Grafton.
Chapter XXX
Saint-Aignan Follows Malicorne’s Advice
The king criticized the portrait of La Vallière in detail, as much from the desire for it to resemble her as to make sure the painting of it took a long time. He had to approve the sketch, watch as an area of color was applied, and advise the painter on various improvements to which the latter consented with respectful amiability. Then, when the painter, following Malicorne’s instructions, was late to arrive, and Saint-Aignan was briefly absent, and no one was there to see them, there were long, meaningful silences in which two souls were united in a sigh, in perfect understanding, and in eagerness for calm and mutual meditation.
This time together was magical. The king moved closer and closer to his mistress until he burned with the fire of her gaze and the heat of her breath. Then a sound came from the anteroom, the painter arrived, and Saint-Aignan returned with apologies. The king resumed speaking while La Vallière answered hastily—and their eyes told Saint-Aignan that during his absence they had lived for a century.
In short, Malicorne, that instinctive philosopher, had known how to inspire the king with appetite in the midst of abundance and desire in the certainty of possession. The loss of control La Vallière had feared didn’t occur.
No one else guessed that during the day La Vallière was often away from her room for two or three hours. She pretended to be in poor health, so those who came to her door knocked before entering. Malicorne, the man of ingenious invention, had devised an acoustic alarm whereby La Vallière, when in Saint-Aignan’s apartments, was warned of visitors knocking at her door. Thus, she could quickly return home, with an appearance slightly delayed perhaps, but quickly enough to allay the suspicions of even the most skeptical.
Malicorne had asked Saint-Aignan for news of the day the painter came late, and Saint-Aignan had to admit that a quarter of an hour of privacy had put the king in the best possible mood. “We must double the dose,” said Malicorne, “but not too soon; wait until desire is at its peak.”
The pair were so desirous that on the evening of the fourth day, when the painter was packing up in the next room, and Saint-Aignan returned after a brief absence, he saw on La Vallière’s face a shadow of annoyance she was unable to conceal. The king was less reserved and expressed his own impatience with an irritated shrug, at which La Vallière blushed.
Well, Saint-Aignan thought, Monsieur Malicorne will be delighted to hear this.
In fact, when he told him of it that evening, Malicorne was enchanted. “It’s obvious that Mademoiselle de La Vallière was hoping you’d be gone for another ten minutes,” he said.
“And the king hoped for another half hour.”
“You’d be a poor servant to the king if you refused him that half hour,” Malicorne replied.
“What about the painter?” objected Saint-Aignan.
“I’ll take care of that,” said Malicorne, “but I’ll have to adapt to conditions and circumstances. That’s my specialty, and just as astrologers plot the paths of the sun, moon, and constellations with their astrolabes, so I observe if eyes are sunken and dark, and the mouth’s curve is concave or convex.”
“Observe away!”
“I shall, never fear.”
And there was plenty for the cunning Malicorne to observe. That very evening, when the king went with the queens to Madame’s, he moped so markedly, and heaved so many sighs while gazing at La Vallière with eyes so melancholy, that Malicorne said to Montalais, “It must be tomorrow!” And he went to visit the painter at his house in Rue Jardins-Saint-Paul to beg him not to come at all the next day.
That next day, when La Vallière, already comfortable with the trap door, opened the floor and went down the stairs, Saint-Aignan was not home. The king, as usual, awaited her at the foot of the stairs with a bouquet in his hand, and seeing her, took her in his arms. La Vallière, profoundly moved, looked around and, seeing only the king, made no complaints. They sat down next to each other.
Louis, lying on the cushions at her feet, his head resting on his mistress’s knees as if he would never willingly move it, gazed into her eyes as if nothing could part their two souls, and she gazed back just as ardently. In her eyes, so sweet, so pure, there rose a fire that first warmed the heart of her royal lover and then inflamed it. Aroused by the touch of her trembling knees, shivering with bliss when Louise’s hand stroked his hair, the king’s rising joy mingled with the fear that at any moment Saint-Aignan or the painter would enter. In painful anticipation, he tried to dampen the fire in his veins, to restrain the fever of his senses, to push it back into the slumber of delay. But the door didn’t open for either Saint-Aignan or the painter, no other presence trembled the tapestries, and a silence of sensuous mystery hushed even the canaries in their golden cage.
The king, surrendering, turned his head and placed his burning lips on La Vallière’s hands, and she lost all restraint and pressed them convulsively against her lover’s mouth. Louis half-rose, trembling, to his knees, and when his forehead was level with La Vallière’s lips, she touched his brow with an ecstatic kiss and then buried her face in his fragrant hair. The king took her unresisting into his arms and they exchanged their first real kiss, that fiery kiss that turns love into delirium.
Neither the painter nor Saint-Aignan returned that day.
In time, a kind of heavy and sweet intoxication, which arouses the senses while it drags the body toward sleep, drew the lovers into a languishing bliss that rose like a mist between the life of the past and the life to come. Through this mist like sleep, a repeated noise from upstairs disturbed La Vallière without quite rousing her.
But the noise continued, and as she gradually realized what it was, reality burst through the mist of illusion. She stood up in alarm, lovely despite her disordered clothing, and cried, “Someone is calling on me upstairs. Louis! Louis, don’t you hear it?”
“Didn’t I have to wait for you?” said the king tenderly. “Now let others wait.”
But, tears starting, gently shaking her head, she said, “Secret bliss, hidden majesty, now may my pride be as secret as my love.”
The noise resumed, louder. “I hear Montalais’s voice,” she said, and hurried to the staircase.
The king came up behind her, not yet ready to let her go and covering her hand and the hem of her dress with kisses.
“Yes, yes,” repeated La Vallière, halfway through the trap door, “yes, that’s Montalais calling. Something important must have happened.”
“Go then, dear love,” said the king, “and then return to me quickly.”
“Oh! Not today. Adieu! Adieu!” And she stooped to give her lover a final kiss and then escaped.
In fact, it was Montalais who awaited her, pale and agitated. “Quick, quick,” she said, “he’s coming upstairs.”
“Who’s coming upstairs?”
“Him! I’d hoped to warn you.”
“Who? Who? You’re killing me!”
“Raoul,” whispered Montalais.
“Yes, it’s me, I’m here!” called a joyful voice from the great stair.
La Vallière uttered a terrible cry and fell back.
“I’m here! I’m here, dear Louise,” said Raoul, running up. “Oh! I knew you still loved me!”
La Vallière cringed in terror and waved him away. She tried to speak but could only say, “No! No!” and then collapsed into Montalais’s arms. “Keep away from me,” she murmured.
Montalais held a hand up before Raoul, who, petrified, was frozen on the threshold. Then she glanced behind the screen and murmured, “Oh, reckless! The trap isn’t even shut.” She sidled around the screen to close it.
But up from the trap door burst the king, who’d heard La Vallière’s cry and leapt to her aid. He knelt in front of Louise, babbling questions, overwhelming Montalais, who scarcely knew how to answer.
As the king fell to his knees, an agonized cry came from the landing, and footsteps clattered down the stairs. The king rose to follow, to see who it was; Montalais tried to hold him back, but in vain. Leaving La Vallière, the king dashed out the door, but Raoul was already gone, and the king saw only his shadow as it disappeared down the stairway.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ MUSKETEERS CYCLE
Shadow of the Bastille 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 seven are already in print, the first five from Pegasus Books, while Books Six, Court of Daggers, and Seven, Devil’s Dance, are available as independent publications. Each week now brings a new episode in the serialization of Book Eight, Shadow of the Bastille.
If you’re interested in my work, you can learn more about it at swashbucklingadventure.net. Also, be sure to check out my parallel Substack, cinemaofswords.substack.com.
Welcome, fellow cavaliers, and enjoy the ride!
—Lawrence Ellsworth
Copyright © 2024 Lawrence Schick. All rights reserved.