The three musketeers
“Well, I am in a maze,” said Porthos; “do _you_ approve of what
D’Artagnan has done?”
“_Parbleu!_ Indeed I do,” said Athos; “I not only approve of what he
has done, but I congratulate him upon it.”
“And now, gentlemen,” said D’Artagnan, without stopping to explain his
conduct to Porthos, “All for one, one for all—that is our motto, is it
not?”
“And yet—” said Porthos.
“Hold out your hand and swear!” cried Athos and Aramis at once.
Overcome by example, grumbling to himself, nevertheless, Porthos
stretched out his hand, and the four friends repeated with one voice
the formula dictated by D’Artagnan:
“All for one, one for all.”
“That’s well! Now let us everyone retire to his own home,” said
D’Artagnan, as if he had done nothing but command all his life; “and
attention! For from this moment we are at feud with the cardinal.”
Chapter X.
A MOUSETRAP IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The invention of the mousetrap does not date from our days; as soon as
societies, in forming, had invented any kind of police, that police
invented mousetraps.
As perhaps our readers are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de
Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for
the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what is a
mousetrap.
When in a house, of whatever kind it may be, an individual suspected of
any crime is arrested, the arrest is held secret. Four or five men are
placed in ambuscade in the first room. The door is opened to all who
knock. It is closed after them, and they are arrested; so that at the
end of two or three days they have in their power almost all the
_habitués_ of the establishment. And that is a mousetrap.
The apartment of M. Bonacieux, then, became a mousetrap; and whoever
appeared there was taken and interrogated by the cardinal’s people. It
must be observed that as a separate passage led to the first floor, in
which D’Artagnan lodged, those who called on him were exempted from
this detention.
Besides, nobody came thither but the three Musketeers; they had all
been engaged in earnest search and inquiries, but had discovered
nothing. Athos had even gone so far as to question M. de Tréville—a
thing which, considering the habitual reticence of the worthy
Musketeer, had very much astonished his captain. But M. de Tréville
knew nothing, except that the last time he had seen the cardinal, the
king, and the queen, the cardinal looked very thoughtful, the king
uneasy, and the redness of the queen’s eyes donated that she had been
sleepless or tearful. But this last circumstance was not striking, as
the queen since her marriage had slept badly and wept much.
M. de Tréville requested Athos, whatever might happen, to be observant
of his duty to the king, but particularly to the queen, begging him to
convey his desires to his comrades.
As to D’Artagnan, he did not budge from his apartment. He converted his
chamber into an observatory. From his windows he saw all the visitors
who were caught. Then, having removed a plank from his floor, and
nothing remaining but a simple ceiling between him and the room
beneath, in which the interrogatories were made, he heard all that
passed between the inquisitors and the accused.
The interrogatories, preceded by a minute search operated upon the
persons arrested, were almost always framed thus: “Has Madame Bonacieux
sent anything to you for her husband, or any other person? Has Monsieur
Bonacieux sent anything to you for his wife, or for any other person?
Has either of them confided anything to you by word of mouth?”
“If they knew anything, they would not question people in this manner,”
said D’Artagnan to himself. “Now, what is it they want to know? Why,
they want to know if the Duke of Buckingham is in Paris, and if he has
had, or is likely to have, an interview with the queen.”
D’Artagnan held onto this idea, which, from what he had heard, was not
wanting in probability.
In the meantime, the mousetrap continued in operation, and likewise
D’Artagnan’s vigilance.
On the evening of the day after the arrest of poor Bonacieux, as Athos
had just left D’Artagnan to report at M. de Tréville’s, as nine o’clock
had just struck, and as Planchet, who had not yet made the bed, was
beginning his task, a knocking was heard at the street door. The door
was instantly opened and shut; someone was taken in the mousetrap.
D’Artagnan flew to his hole, laid himself down on the floor at full
length, and listened.
Cries were soon heard, and then moans, which someone appeared to be
endeavoring to stifle. There were no questions.
“The devil!” said D’Artagnan to himself. “It seems like a woman! They
search her; she resists; they use force—the scoundrels!”
In spite of his prudence, D’Artagnan restrained himself with great
difficulty from taking a part in the scene that was going on below.
“But I tell you that I am the mistress of the house, gentlemen! I tell
you I am Madame Bonacieux; I tell you I belong to the queen!” cried the
unfortunate woman.
“Madame Bonacieux!” murmured D’Artagnan. “Can I be so lucky as to find
what everybody is seeking for?”
The voice became more and more indistinct; a tumultuous movement shook
the partition. The victim resisted as much as a woman could resist four
men.
“Pardon, gentlemen—par—” murmured the voice, which could now only be
heard in inarticulate sounds.
“They are binding her; they are going to drag her away,” cried
D’Artagnan to himself, springing up from the floor. “My sword! Good, it
is by my side! Planchet!”
“Monsieur.”
“Run and seek Athos, Porthos and Aramis. One of the three will
certainly be at home, perhaps all three. Tell them to take arms, to
come here, and to run! Ah, I remember, Athos is at Monsieur de
Tréville’s.”
“But where are you going, monsieur, where are you going?”
“I am going down by the window, in order to be there the sooner,” cried
D’Artagnan. “You put back the boards, sweep the floor, go out at the
door, and run as I told you.”
“Oh, monsieur! Monsieur! You will kill yourself,” cried Planchet.
“Hold your tongue, stupid fellow,” said D’Artagnan; and laying hold of
the casement, he let himself gently down from the first story, which
fortunately was not very elevated, without doing himself the slightest
injury.
He then went straight to the door and knocked, murmuring, “I will go
myself and be caught in the mousetrap, but woe be to the cats that
shall pounce upon such a mouse!”
The knocker had scarcely sounded under the hand of the young man before
the tumult ceased, steps approached, the door was opened, and
D’Artagnan, sword in hand, rushed into the rooms of M. Bonacieux, the
door of which, doubtless acted upon by a spring, closed after him.
Then those who dwelt in Bonacieux’s unfortunate house, together with
the nearest neighbors, heard loud cries, stamping of feet, clashing of
swords, and breaking of furniture. A moment after, those who, surprised
by this tumult, had gone to their windows to learn the cause of it, saw
the door open, and four men, clothed in black, not _come_ out of it,
but _fly_, like so many frightened crows, leaving on the ground and on
the corners of the furniture, feathers from their wings; that is to
say, patches of their clothes and fragments of their cloaks.
D’Artagnan was conqueror—without much effort, it must be confessed, for
only one of the officers was armed, and even he defended himself for
form’s sake. It is true that the three others had endeavored to knock
the young man down with chairs, stools, and crockery; but two or three
scratches made by the Gascon’s blade terrified them. Ten minutes
sufficed for their defeat, and D’Artagnan remained master of the field
of battle.
The neighbors who had opened their windows, with the coolness peculiar
to the inhabitants of Paris in these times of perpetual riots and
disturbances, closed them again as soon as they saw the four men in
black flee—their instinct telling them that for the time all was over.
Besides, it began to grow late, and then, as today, people went to bed
early in the quarter of the Luxembourg.
On being left alone with Mme. Bonacieux, D’Artagnan turned toward her;
the poor woman reclined where she had been left, half-fainting upon an
armchair. D’Artagnan examined her with a rapid glance.
She was a charming woman of twenty-five or twenty-six years, with dark
hair, blue eyes, and a nose slightly turned up, admirable teeth, and a
complexion marbled with rose and opal. There, however, ended the signs
which might have confounded her with a lady of rank. The hands were
white, but without delicacy; the feet did not bespeak the woman of
quality. Happily, D’Artagnan was not yet acquainted with such niceties.
While D’Artagnan was examining Mme. Bonacieux, and was, as we have
said, close to her, he saw on the ground a fine cambric handkerchief,
which he picked up, as was his habit, and at the corner of which he
recognized the same cipher he had seen on the handkerchief which had
nearly caused him and Aramis to cut each other’s throat.
From that time, D’Artagnan had been cautious with respect to
handkerchiefs with arms on them, and he therefore placed in the pocket
of Mme. Bonacieux the one he had just picked up.
At that moment Mme. Bonacieux recovered her senses. She opened her
eyes, looked around her with terror, saw that the apartment was empty
and that she was alone with her liberator. She extended her hands to
him with a smile. Mme. Bonacieux had the sweetest smile in the world.
“Ah, monsieur!” said she, “you have saved me; permit me to thank you.”
“Madame,” said D’Artagnan, “I have only done what every gentleman would
have done in my place; you owe me no thanks.”
“Oh, yes, monsieur, oh, yes; and I hope to prove to you that you have
not served an ingrate. But what could these men, whom I at first took
for robbers, want with me, and why is Monsieur Bonacieux not here?”
“Madame, those men were more dangerous than any robbers could have
been, for they are the agents of the cardinal; and as to your husband,
Monsieur Bonacieux, he is not here because he was yesterday evening
conducted to the Bastille.”
“My husband in the Bastille!” cried Mme. Bonacieux. “Oh, my God! What
has he done? Poor dear man, he is innocence itself!”
And something like a faint smile lighted the still-terrified features
of the young woman.
“What has he done, madame?” said D’Artagnan. “I believe that his only
crime is to have at the same time the good fortune and the misfortune
to be your husband.”
“But, monsieur, you know then—”
“I know that you have been abducted, madame.”
“And by whom? Do you know him? Oh, if you know him, tell me!”
“By a man of from forty to forty-five years, with black hair, a dark
complexion, and a scar on his left temple.”
“That is he, that is he; but his name?”
“Ah, his name? I do not know that.”
“And did my husband know I had been carried off?”
“He was informed of it by a letter, written to him by the abductor
himself.”
“And does he suspect,” said Mme. Bonacieux, with some embarrassment,
“the cause of this event?”
“He attributed it, I believe, to a political cause.”
“I doubted from the first; and now I think entirely as he does. Then my
dear Monsieur Bonacieux has not suspected me a single instant?”
“So far from it, madame, he was too proud of your prudence, and above
all, of your love.”
A second smile, almost imperceptible, stole over the rosy lips of the
pretty young woman.
“But,” continued D’Artagnan, “how did you escape?”
“I took advantage of a moment when they left me alone; and as I had
known since morning the reason of my abduction, with the help of the
sheets I let myself down from the window. Then, as I believed my
husband would be at home, I hastened hither.”