THE WORKS OF
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
IN THIRTY VOLUMES
THE
QUEEN’S NECKLACE
ILLUSTRATED WITH DRAWINGS ON WOOD BY
EMINENT FRENCH AND AMERICAN ARTISTS
NEW YORK
P. F. COLLIER AND SON
MCMIV
THE QUEEN’S NECKLACE.
PROLOGUE.—THE PREDICTIONS.
AN OLD NOBLEMAN AND AN OLD MAÎTRE-D’HÔTEL.
It was the beginning of April, 1784, between twelveand one o’clock. Our old acquaintance, the Marshal deRichelieu, having with his own hands colored his eyebrowswith a perfumed dye, pushed away the mirror whichwas held to him by his valet, the successor of his faithfulRaffè and shaking his head in the manner peculiar tohimself, “Ah!” said he, “now I look myself;” andrising from his seat with juvenile vivacity, he commencedshaking off the powder which had fallen from hiswig over his blue velvet coat, then, after taking a turnor two up and down his room, called for his maître-d’hôtel.
In five minutes this personage made his appearance,elaborately dressed.
The marshal turned towards him, and with a gravitybefitting the occasion, said, “Sir, I suppose you have preparedme a good dinner?”
“Certainly, your grace.”
“You have the list of my guests?”
“I remember them perfectly, your grace; I have prepareda dinner for nine.”
“There are two sorts of dinners, sir,” said the marshal.
“True, your grace, but——”
The marshal interrupted him with a slightly impatientmovement, although still dignified.
“Do you know, sir, that whenever I have heard theword ‘but,’ and I have heard it many times in the courseof eighty-eight years, it has been each time, I am sorryto say, the harbinger of some folly.”
“Your grace——”
“In the first place, at what time do we dine?”
“Your grace, the citizens dine at two, the bar at three,the nobility at four——”
“And I, sir?”
“Your grace will dine to-day at five.”
“Oh, at five!”
“Yes, your grace, like the king——”
“And why like the king?”
“Because, on the list of your guests, is the name of aking.”
“Not so, sir, you mistake; all my guests to-day aresimply noblemen.”
“Your grace is surely jesting; the Count Haga,[A] whois among the guests——”
“Well, sir!”
“The Count Haga is a king.”
“I know no king so called.”
“Your grace must pardon me then,” said the maître-d’hôtel,bowing, “but, I believed, supposed——”
“Your business, sir, is neither to believe nor suppose;your business is to read, without comment, the orders Igive you. When I wish a thing to be known, I tell it;when I do not tell it, I wish it unknown.”
The maître-d’hôtel bowed again, more respectfully, perhaps,than he would have done to a reigning monarch.
“Therefore, sir,” continued the old marshal, “youwill, as I have none but noblemen to dinner, let us dineat my usual hour, four o’clock.”
At this order, the countenance of the maître-d’hôtelbecame clouded as if he had heard his sentence of death;he grew deadly pale; then, recovering himself, with thecourage of despair he said, “In any event, your gracecannot dine before five o’clock.”
“Why so, sir?” crie