A Candle For d'Artagnan by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Author:Chelsea Quinn Yarbro [Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 1994-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Text of a letter from Pere Pascal Chape to a man identified only as Le Fouet, written in code.

To my great and patriotic friend, my greetings. Once again I have the opportunity to aid you and your cause and to bring you news of the adulterous Queen and her bastard offspring.

As you have undoubtedly learned before now, the Queen is much taken with the notion that there are those plotting to kill her children and herself. We have known for a long time that she is prone to fancies and suspicions that were the product of her dreams and woman’s weaknesses. Given the way she comported herself while her husband lived, it is not surprising to any of us that she would feel herself in such danger, for she continues to foist off her by-blows on the people of France as if they had the Right instead of being the living proofs of her lusts.

It is true that her Italian lover has been diligent, and in his Cardinal’s robes he presents a very attractive picture of virtue, which masks all the more his great sins with the perfidious Queen. They are constantly in each other’s company and she has made it apparent that she depends upon him for every kindness and aid, as if his position as First Minister gave him privilege with her. But no one is fooled. They rut like animals and their stench rises to God and fills all France.

You have said that you are with us, that you seek to aid our cause in bringing down this despicable pair and the two brats of her lascivious couplings with the loathed Richelieu. Your position and nobility are beyond any dispute and this shows to those who doubt that we are not malcontents seeking to rise in the world while France is in the hands of a weak and capricious woman, but that we have justice and righteousness in our cause, and we proceed from the most elevated of principles for the most worthy gains.

As I have said, the Queen dreads poison, and she has spent hours with the physician appointed to treat her sons, pestering him with her fancies about this mania of hers, requiring that the boy be purged often, in the hope that any poison that might have escaped detection before might be driven from his body before it can do its work.

While I seek no evil whatsoever to come to the Royal House, I am constrained to pray for the downfall of this Spanish whore and her two whelps so that France may once again be free of this intolerable taint. The Hapsburgs have no place in France, and the children of a Hapsburg woman must not be allowed to sully the Royal House of France for one day longer than is absolutely necessary for our purposes and the success of our cause.

You have said many times that you are sworn to the cause of the righteousness of the Throne. I and those who

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