The three musketeers
stumbled at anything. “It appears to me that we are making a great
trouble of a very simple thing. In two days, and by using up two or
three horses (that’s nothing; I have plenty of money), I am at Béthune.
I present my letter from the queen to the superior, and I bring back
the dear treasure I go to seek—not into Lorraine, not into Belgium, but
to Paris, where she will be much better concealed, particularly while
the cardinal is at La Rochelle. Well, once returned from the country,
half by the protection of her cousin, half through what we have
personally done for her, we shall obtain from the queen what we desire.
Remain, then, where you are, and do not exhaust yourselves with useless
fatigue. Myself and Planchet are all that such a simple expedition
requires.”
To this Athos replied quietly: “We also have money left—for I have not
yet drunk all my share of the diamond, and Porthos and Aramis have not
eaten all theirs. We can therefore use up four horses as well as one.
But consider, D’Artagnan,” added he, in a tone so solemn that it made
the young man shudder, “consider that Béthune is a city where the
cardinal has given rendezvous to a woman who, wherever she goes, brings
misery with her. If you had only to deal with four men, D’Artagnan, I
would allow you to go alone. You have to do with that woman! We four
will go; and I hope to God that with our four lackeys we may be in
sufficient number.”
“You terrify me, Athos!” cried D’Artagnan. “My God! what do you fear?”
“Everything!” replied Athos.
D’Artagnan examined the countenances of his companions, which, like
that of Athos, wore an impression of deep anxiety; and they continued
their route as fast as their horses could carry them, but without
adding another word.
On the evening of the twenty-fifth, as they were entering Arras, and as
D’Artagnan was dismounting at the inn of the Golden Harrow to drink a
glass of wine, a horseman came out of the post yard, where he had just
had a relay, started off at a gallop, and with a fresh horse took the
road to Paris. At the moment he passed through the gateway into the
street, the wind blew open the cloak in which he was wrapped, although
it was in the month of August, and lifted his hat, which the traveler
seized with his hand the moment it had left his head, pulling it
eagerly over his eyes.
D’Artagnan, who had his eyes fixed upon this man, became very pale, and
let his glass fall.
“What is the matter, monsieur?” said Planchet. “Oh, come, gentlemen, my
master is ill!”
The three friends hastened toward D’Artagnan, who, instead of being
ill, ran toward his horse. They stopped him at the door.
“Well, where the devil are you going now?” cried Athos.
“It is he!” cried D’Artagnan, pale with anger, and with the sweat on
his brow, “it is he! let me overtake him!”
“He? What he?” asked Athos.
“He, that man!”
“What man?”
“That cursed man, my evil genius, whom I have always met with when
threatened by some misfortune, he who accompanied that horrible woman
when I met her for the first time, he whom I was seeking when I
offended our Athos, he whom I saw on the very morning Madame Bonacieux
was abducted. I have seen him; that is he! I recognized him when the
wind blew upon his cloak.”
“The devil!” said Athos, musingly.
“To saddle, gentlemen! to saddle! Let us pursue him, and we shall
overtake him!”
“My dear friend,” said Aramis, “remember that he goes in an opposite
direction from that in which we are going, that he has a fresh horse,
and ours are fatigued, so that we shall disable our own horses without
even a chance of overtaking him. Let the man go, D’Artagnan; let us
save the woman.”
“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried a hostler, running out and looking after
the stranger, “monsieur, here is a paper which dropped out of your hat!
Eh, monsieur, eh!”
“Friend,” said D’Artagnan, “a half-pistole for that paper!”
“My faith, monsieur, with great pleasure! Here it is!”
The hostler, enchanted with the good day’s work he had done, returned
to the yard. D’Artagnan unfolded the paper.
“Well?” eagerly demanded all his three friends.
“Nothing but one word!” said D’Artagnan.
“Yes,” said Aramis, “but that one word is the name of some town or
village.”
“_Armentières_,” read Porthos; “Armentières? I don’t know such a
place.”
“And that name of a town or village is written in her hand!” cried
Athos.
“Come on, come on!” said D’Artagnan; “let us keep that paper carefully,
perhaps I have not thrown away my half-pistole. To horse, my friends,
to horse!”
And the four friends flew at a gallop along the road to Béthune.
Chapter LXI.
THE CARMELITE CONVENT AT BÉTHUNE
Great criminals bear about them a kind of predestination which makes
them surmount all obstacles, which makes them escape all dangers, up to
the moment which a wearied Providence has marked as the rock of their
impious fortunes.
It was thus with Milady. She escaped the cruisers of both nations, and
arrived at Boulogne without accident.
When landing at Portsmouth, Milady was an Englishwoman whom the
persecutions of the French drove from La Rochelle; when landing at
Boulogne, after a two days’ passage, she passed for a Frenchwoman whom
the English persecuted at Portsmouth out of their hatred for France.
Milady had, likewise, the best of passports—her beauty, her noble
appearance, and the liberality with which she distributed her pistoles.
Freed from the usual formalities by the affable smile and gallant
manners of an old governor of the port, who kissed her hand, she only
remained long enough at Boulogne to put into the post a letter,
conceived in the following terms:
“_To his Eminence Monseigneur the Cardinal Richelieu, in his camp
before La Rochelle_.
“MONSEIGNEUR, Let your Eminence be reassured. His Grace the Duke of
Buckingham _will not set out_ for France.
“MILADY DE ——
“BOULOGNE, evening of the twenty-fifth.
“P.S.—According to the desire of your Eminence, I report to the convent
of the Carmelites at Béthune, where I will await your orders.”
Accordingly, that same evening Milady commenced her journey. Night
overtook her; she stopped, and slept at an inn. At five o’clock the
next morning she again proceeded, and in three hours after entered
Béthune. She inquired for the convent of the Carmelites, and went
thither immediately.
The superior met her; Milady showed her the cardinal’s order. The
abbess assigned her a chamber, and had breakfast served.
All the past was effaced from the eyes of this woman; and her looks,
fixed on the future, beheld nothing but the high fortunes reserved for
her by the cardinal, whom she had so successfully served without his
name being in any way mixed up with the sanguinary affair. The ever-new
passions which consumed her gave to her life the appearance of those
clouds which float in the heavens, reflecting sometimes azure,
sometimes fire, sometimes the opaque blackness of the tempest, and
which leave no traces upon the earth behind them but devastation and
death.
After breakfast, the abbess came to pay her a visit. There is very
little amusement in the cloister, and the good superior was eager to
make the acquaintance of her new boarder.
Milady wished to please the abbess. This was a very easy matter for a
woman so really superior as she was. She tried to be agreeable, and she
was charming, winning the good superior by her varied conversation and
by the graces of her whole personality.
The abbess, who was the daughter of a noble house, took particular
delight in stories of the court, which so seldom travel to the
extremities of the kingdom, and which, above all, have so much
difficulty in penetrating the walls of convents, at whose threshold the
noise of the world dies away.
Milady, on the contrary, was quite conversant with all aristocratic
intrigues, amid which she had constantly lived for five or six years.
She made it her business, therefore, to amuse the good abbess with the
worldly practices of the court of France, mixed with the eccentric
pursuits of the king; she made for her the scandalous chronicle of the
lords and ladies of the court, whom the abbess knew perfectly by name,
touched lightly on the amours of the queen and the Duke of Buckingham,
talking a great deal to induce her auditor to talk a little.
But the abbess contented herself with listening and smiling without
replying a word. Milady, however, saw that this sort of narrative
amused her very much, and kept at it; only she now let her conversation
drift toward the cardinal.
But she was greatly embarrassed. She did not know whether the abbess
was a royalist or a cardinalist; she therefore confined herself to a
prudent middle course. But the abbess, on her part, maintained a
reserve still more prudent, contenting herself with making a profound
inclination of the head every time the fair traveler pronounced the
name of his Eminence.
Milady began to think she should soon grow weary of a convent life; she
resolved, then, to risk something in order that she might know how to
act afterward. Desirous of seeing how far the discretion of the good
abbess would go, she began to tell a story, obscure at first, but very
circumstantial afterward, about the cardinal, relating the amours of
the minister with Mme. d’Aiguillon, Marion de Lorme, and several other
gay women.
The abbess listened more attentively, grew animated by degrees, and
smiled.
“Good,” thought Milady; “she takes a pleasure in my conversation. If
she is a cardinalist, she has no fanaticism, at least.”
She then went on to describe the persecutions exercised by the cardinal
upon his enemies. The abbess only crossed herself, without approving or
disapproving.
This confirmed Milady in her opinion that the abbess was rather
royalist than cardinalist. Milady therefore continued, coloring her
narrations more and more.
“I am very ignorant of these matters,” said the abbess, at length; “but
however distant from the court we may be, however remote from the
interests of the world we may be placed, we have very sad examples of
what you have related. And one of our boarders has suffered much from
the vengeance and persecution of the cardinal!”
“One of your boarders?” said Milady; “oh, my God! Poor woman! I pity
her, then.”
“And you have reason, for she is much to be pitied. Imprisonment,
menaces, ill treatment—she has suffered everything. But after all,”
resumed the abbess, “Monsieur Cardinal has perhaps plausible motives
for acting thus; and though she has the look of an angel, we must not
always judge people by the appearance.”
“Good!” said Milady to herself; “who knows! I am about, perhaps, to
discover something here; I am in the vein.”
She tried to give her countenance an appearance of perfect candor.
“Alas,” said Milady, “I know it is so. It is said that we must not
trust to the face; but in what, then, shall we place confidence, if not
in the most beautiful work of the Lord? As for me, I shall be deceived
all my life perhaps, but I shall always have faith in a person whose
countenance inspires me with sympathy.”
“You would, then, be tempted to believe,” said the abbess, “that this
young person is innocent?”
“The cardinal pursues not only crimes,” said she: “there are certain
virtues which he pursues more severely than certain offenses.”
“Permit me, madame, to express my surprise,” said the abbess.
“At what?” said Milady, with the utmost ingenuousness.
“At the language you use.”
“What do you find so astonishing in that language?” said Milady,
smiling.
“You are the friend of the cardinal, for he sends you hither, and yet—”
“And yet I speak ill of him,” replied Milady, finishing the thought of
the superior.
“At least you don’t speak well of him.”