Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (21 page)

“How can it be otherwise, my dear Bonacieux?” replied D’Artagnan; “trust me, I am fully grateful for such unparalleled conduct, and if, as I have told you, I can be of any service to you—”

“I believe you, monsieur, I believe you; and as I was about to say, by the word of Bonacieux, I have confidence in you.”

“Finish, then, what you were about to say.”

The citizen took a paper from his pocket, and presented it to D’Artagnan.

“A letter?” said the young man.

“Which I received this morning.”

D’Artagnan opened it, and as the day was beginning to decline, he approached the window to read it. The citizen followed him.

“ ‘Do not seek your wife,’ read D‘Artagnan; ” ’she will be restored to you when there is no longer occasion for her. If you make a single step to find her you are lost.’ ”

“That’s pretty positive,” continued D’Artagnan; “but after all, it is but a menace.”

“Yes; but that menace terrifies me. I am not a fighting man at all, monsieur, and I am afraid of the Bastille.”

“Hum!” said D’Artagnan. “I have no greater regard for the Bastille than you. If it were nothing but a sword thrust, why then—”

“I have counted upon you on this occasion, monsieur.”

“Yes?”

“Seeing you constantly surrounded by Musketeers of a very superb appearance, and knowing that these Musketeers belong to Monsieur de Tréville, and were consequently enemies of the cardinal, I thought that you and your friends, while rendering justice to our poor queen, would be pleased to play his Eminence an ill turn.”

“Without doubt.”

“And then I have thought that considering three months’ lodging, about which I have said nothing—”

“Yes, yes; you have already given me that reason, and I find it excellent.”

“Reckoning still further, that as long as you do me the honor to remain in my house I shall never speak to you about rent—”

“Very kind!”

“And adding to this, if there be need of it, meaning to offer you fifty pistoles, if, against all probability, you should be short at the present moment.”

“Admirable! you are rich then, my dear Monsieur Bonacieux?”

“I am comfortably off, monsieur, that’s all; I have scraped together some such thing as an income of two or three thousand crown in the haberdashery business, but more particularly in venturing some funds in the last voyage of the celebrated navigator Jean Moquet; so that you understand, monsieur—But!” cried the citizen.

“What!” demanded D’Artagnan.

“Whom do I see yonder?”

“Where?”

“In the street, facing your window, in the embrasure of that door—a man wrapped in a cloak.”

“It is he!” cried D’Artagnan and the citizen at the same time, each having recognized his man.

“Ah, this time,” cried D’Artagnan, springing to his sword, “this time he will not escape me!”

Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he rushed out of the apartment. On the staircase he met Athos and Porthos, who were coming to see him. They separated, and D’Artagnan rushed between them like a dart.

“Pah! where are you going?” cried the two Musketeers in a breath.

“The man of Meung! replied D’Artagnan, and disappeared.

D’Artagnan had more than once related to his friends his adventure with the stranger, as well as the apparition of the beautiful foreigner, to whom this man had confided some important missive.

The opinion of Athos was that D‘Artagnan had lost his letter in the skirmish. A gentleman, in his opinion—and according to D’Artagnan’s portrait of him, the stranger must be a gentleman—would be incapable of the baseness of stealing a letter.

Porthos saw nothing in all this but a love meeting, given by a lady to a cavalier, or by a cavalier to a lady, which had been disturbed by the presence of D’Artagnan and his yellow horse. Aramis said that as these sorts of affairs were mysterious, it was better not to fathom them.

They understood, then, from the few words which escaped from D‘Artagnan, what affair was in hand, and as they thought that after overtaking his man, or losing sight of him, D’Artagnan would return to his rooms, they kept on their way.

When they entered D‘Artagnan’s chamber, it was empty; the landlord, dreading the consequences of the encounter which was doubtless about to take place between the young man and the stranger, had, consistent with the character he had given himself, judged it prudent to decamp.

A
s Athos and Porthos had foreseen, at the expiration of a half hour D‘Artagnan returned. He had again missed his man, who had disappeared as if by enchantment. D’Artagnan had run, sword in hand, through all the neighboring streets, but had found nobody resembling the man he sought for. Then he came back to the point where, perhaps, he ought to have begun, and that was to knock at the door against which the stranger had leaned; but this proved useless—for though he knocked ten or twelve times in succession, no one answered, and some of the neighbors, who put their noses out of their windows or were brought to their doors by the noise, had assured him that that house, all the openings of which were tightly closed, had not been inhabited for six months.

While D’Artagnan was running through the streets and knocking at doors, Aramis had joined his companions; so that on returning home D’Artagnan found the reunion complete.

“Well!” cried the three Musketeers all together, on seeing D’Artagnan enter with his brow covered with perspiration and his countenance upset with anger.

“Well! cried he, throwing his sword upon the bed, ”this man must be the devil in person; he has disappeared like a phantom, like a shade, like a specter.”

“Do you believe in apparitions?” asked Athos of Porthos.

“I never believe in anything I have not seen, and as I never have seen apparitions, I don’t believe in them.”

“The Bible,” said Aramis, “makes our belief in them a law; the ghost of Samuel appeared to Saul, and it is an article of faith that I should be very sorry to see any doubt thrown upon, Porthos.”

“At all events, man or devil, body or shadow, illusion or reality, this man is born for my damnation; for his flight has caused us to miss a glorious affair, gentlemen—an affair by which there were a hundred pistoles, and perhaps more, to be gained.”

“How is that?” cried Porthos and Aramis in a breath.

As to Athos, faithful to his system of reticence, he contented himself with interrogating D’Artagnan by a look.

“Planchet,” said D’Artagnan to his domestic, who just then insinuated his head through the half-open door in order to catch some fragments of the conversation, “go down to my landlord, Monsieur Bonacieux, and ask him to send me half a dozen bottles of Beaugency wine; I prefer that.”

“Ah, ha! you have credit with your landlord, then?” asked Porthos.

“Yes,” replied D’Artagnan, “from this very day; and mind, if the wine is bad, we will send to him to find better.”

“We must use, and not abuse,” said Aramis, sententiously.

“I always said that D‘Artagnan had the longest head of the four,” said Athos, who, having uttered his opinion, to which D’Artagnan replied with a bow, immediately resumed his accustomed silence.

“But come, what is this about?” asked Porthos.

“Yes,” said Aramis, “impart it to us, my dear friend, unless the honor of any lady be hazarded by this confidence; in that case you would do better to keep it to yourself.”

“Be satisfied,” replied D’Artagnan; “the honor of no one will have cause to complain of what I have to tell.”

He then related to his friends, word for word, all that had passed between him and his host, and how the man who had abducted the wife of his worthy landlord was the same with whom he had had the difference at the hostelry of the Jolly Miller.

“Your affair is not bad,” said Athos, after having tasted like a connoisseur and indicated by a nod of his head that he thought the wine good; “and one may draw fifty or sixty pistoles from this good man. Then there only remains to ascertain whether these fifty or sixty pistoles are worth the risk of four heads.”

“But observe,” cried D’Artagnan, “that there is a woman in the affair—a woman carried off, a woman who is doubtless threatened, tortured perhaps, and all because she is faithful to her mistress.”

“Beware, D’Artagnan, beware,” said Aramis. “You grow a little too warm, in my opinion, about the fate of Madame Bonacieux. Woman was created for our destruction, and it is from her we inherit all our miseries.”

At this speech of Aramis, the brow of Athos became clouded and he bit his lips.

“It is not Madame Bonacieux about whom I am anxious,” cried D’Artagnan, “but the queen, whom the king abandons, whom the cardinal persecutes, and who sees the heads of all her friends fall, one after the other.”

“Why does she love what we hate most in the world, the Spaniards and the English?”

“Spain is her country,” replied D’Artagnan; “and it is very natural that she should love the Spanish, who are the children of the same soil as herself. As to the second reproach, I have heard it said that she does not love the English, but an Englishman.”

“Well, and by my faith,” said Athos, “it must be acknowledged that this Englishman is worthy of being loved. I never saw a man with a nobler air than his.”

“Without reckoning that he dresses as nobody else can,” said Porthos. “I was at the Louvre on the day when he scattered his pearls;
¹⁶
and,
pardieu,
I picked up two that I sold for ten pistoles each. Do you know him, Aramis?”

“As well as you do, gentlemen; for I was among those who seized him in the garden at Amiens, into which Monsieur Putange, the queen’s equerry, introduced me.
¹⁷
I was at school at the time, and the adventure appeared to me to be cruel for the king.”

“Which would not prevent me,” said D’Artagnan, “if I knew where the Duke of Buckingham was, from taking him by the hand and conducting him to the queen, were it only to enrage the cardinal. For our true, our only, our eternal enemy, gentlemen, is the cardinal, and if we could find means to play him a sharp turn, I vow that I would voluntarily risk my head in doing it.”

“And did the mercer, ”
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rejoined Athos, “tell you, D’Artagnan, that the queen thought that Buckingham had been brought over by a forged letter?”

“She is afraid so.”

“Wait a minute, then,” said Aramis.

“What for?” demanded Porthos.

“Go on, while I endeavor to recall certain circumstances.”

“And now I am convinced,” said D’Artagnan, “that this abduction of the queen’s woman is connected with the events of which we are speaking, and perhaps with the presence of Buckingham in Paris.”

“The Gascon is full of ideas,” said Porthos, with admiration.

“I like to hear him talk,” said Athos; “his dialect amuses me.”

“Gentlemen,” cried Aramis, “listen to this.”

“Listen to Aramis,” said his three friends.

“Yesterday I was at the house of a doctor of theology, whom I sometimes consult about my studies.”

Athos smiled.

“He resides in a quiet quarter,” continued Aramis; “his tastes and his profession require it. Now, at the moment when I left his house—”

Here Aramis paused.

“Well,” cried his auditors; “at the moment you left his house?”

Aramis appeared to make a strong inward effort, like a man who, in the full relation of a falsehood, finds himself stopped by some unforeseen obstacle; but the eyes of his three companions were fixed upon him, their ears were wide open, and there were no means of retreat.

“This doctor has a niece,” continued Aramis.

“Ah, he has a niece!” interrupted Porthos.

“A very respectable lady,” said Aramis.

The three friends burst into laughter.

“Ah, if you laugh, if you doubt me,” replied Amaris, “you shall know nothing.”

“We believe like Mohammedans, and are as mute as tomb-stones,” said Athos.

“I will continue, then,” resumed Aramis. “This niece comes sometimes to see her uncle; and by chance was there yesterday at the same time that I was, and it was my duty to offer to conduct her to her carriage.”

“Ah! She has a carriage, then, this niece of the doctor?” interrupted Porthos, one of whose faults was a great looseness of tongue. “A nice acquaintance, my friend!”

“Porthos,” replied Aramis, “I have had the occasion to observe to you more than once that you are very indiscreet; and that is injurious to you among the women.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” cried D’Artagnan, who began to get a glimpse of the result of the adventure, “the thing is serious. Let us try not to jest, if we can. Go on Aramis, go on.”

“All at once, a tall, dark gentleman—just like yours, D’Artagnan.”

“The same, perhaps,” said he.