The Project Gutenberg EBook of Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas, Pere

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Title: Twenty Years After

Author: Alexandre Dumas, Pere

Posting Date: August 12, 2008 [EBook #1259]
Release Date: March, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY YEARS AFTER ***

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TWENTY YEARS AFTER

by Alexandre Dumas [Pere]

1. The Shade of Cardinal Richelieu.

In a splendid chamber of the Palais Royal, formerly styled the Palais
Cardinal, a man was sitting in deep reverie, his head supported on
his hands, leaning over a gilt and inlaid table which was covered with
letters and papers. Behind this figure glowed a vast fireplace alive
with leaping flames; great logs of oak blazed and crackled on the
polished brass andirons whose flicker shone upon the superb habiliments
of the lonely tenant of the room, which was illumined grandly by twin
candelabra rich with wax-lights.

Any one who happened at that moment to contemplate that red simar--the
gorgeous robe of office--and the rich lace, or who gazed on that
pale brow, bent in anxious meditation, might, in the solitude of that
apartment, combined with the silence of the ante-chambers and the
measured paces of the guards upon the landing-place, have fancied that
the shade of Cardinal Richelieu lingered still in his accustomed haunt.

It was, alas! the ghost of former greatness. France enfeebled, the
authority of her sovereign contemned, her nobles returning to their
former turbulence and insolence, her enemies within her frontiers--all
proved the great Richelieu no longer in existence.

In truth, that the red simar which occupied the wonted place was his
no longer, was still more strikingly obvious from the isolation which
seemed, as we have observed, more appropriate to a phantom than a living
creature--from the corridors deserted by courtiers, and courts crowded
with guards--from that spirit of bitter ridicule, which, arising from
the streets below, penetrated through the very casements of the room,
which resounded with the murmurs of a whole city leagued against the
minister; as well as from the distant and i