"Dumas, Alexandre - The Man In The Iron Mask" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dumas Alexandre)

brilliant and dazzling in the candle-light.
The old coquette understood the trick that had been played upon her.
She was standing immediately before a large mirror, in which all her
decrepitude, so carefully concealed, was only made more manifest by
the contrast. Thereupon, without even saluting Aramis, who bowed
with the ease and grace of the musketeer of early days, she hurried
away with tottering steps, which her very haste only the more impeded.
Aramis sprang across the room like a zephyr to lead her to the door.
Madame de Chevreuse made a sign to her huge lackey, who resumed his
musket; and she left the house where such tender friends had not
been able to understand each other only because they had understood
each other too well.
Chapter II: Wherein May Be Seen That a Bargain Which
Cannot Be Made with One Person Can Be
Carried Out with Another

ARAMIS had been perfectly correct in his supposition. Immediately on
leaving the house in the Place Baudoyer, Madame de Chevreuse had
proceeded homeward. She was doubtless afraid of being followed, and
had sought in this way to cover her steps; but as soon as she had
arrived within the door of the hotel, and assured herself that no
one who could cause her any uneasiness was on her track, she opened
the door of the garden leading into another street, and hurried
towards the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, where M. Colbert resided.
We have already said that evening, or rather night, had closed
in,- and it was a dark, thick night. Paris had once more sunk into its
calm, quiescent state, enshrouding alike within its indulgent mantle
the high-born duchess carrying out her political intrigue, and the
simple citizen's wife who having been detained late by a supper in the
city was proceeding homewards, on the arm of a lover, by the longest
possible route.
Madame de Chevreuse had been too well accustomed to nocturnal
politics not to know that a minister never denies himself, even at his
own private residence, to any young and beautiful woman who may chance
to object to the dust and confusion of a public office; or to old
women, as full of experience as of years, who dislike the indiscreet
echo of official residences. A valet received the duchess under the
peristyle, and received her, it must be admitted, with some
indifference of manner; he intimated, after having looked at her face,
that it was hardly at such an hour that one so advanced in years as
herself could be permitted to disturb M. Colbert's important
occupations. But Madame de Chevreuse, without disquietude, wrote her
name upon a leaf of her tablets,- a blusterous name, which had so
often sounded disagreeably in the ears of Louis XIII and of the
great cardinal. She wrote her name in the large ill-formed
characters of the higher classes of that period, folded the paper in a
manner peculiarly her own, and handed it to the valet without uttering
a word, but with so haughty and imperious a gesture that the fellow,
well accustomed to judge of people from their manners and
appearance, perceived at once the quality of the person before him,