The three musketeers
unable to give her those thousands of nothings. At least, when the
woman is rich and the lover is not, that which he cannot offer she
offers to herself; and although it is generally with her husband’s
money that she procures herself this indulgence, the gratitude for it
seldom reverts to him.
Then D’Artagnan, disposed to become the most tender of lovers, was at
the same time a very devoted friend. In the midst of his amorous
projects for the mercer’s wife, he did not forget his friends. The
pretty Mme. Bonacieux was just the woman to walk with in the Plain St.
Denis or in the fair of St. Germain, in company with Athos, Porthos,
and Aramis, to whom D’Artagnan had often remarked this. Then one could
enjoy charming little dinners, where one touches on one side the hand
of a friend, and on the other the foot of a mistress. Besides, on
pressing occasions, in extreme difficulties, D’Artagnan would become
the preserver of his friends.
And M. Bonacieux, whom D’Artagnan had pushed into the hands of the
officers, denying him aloud although he had promised in a whisper to
save him? We are compelled to admit to our readers that D’Artagnan
thought nothing about him in any way; or that if he did think of him,
it was only to say to himself that he was very well where he was,
wherever it might be. Love is the most selfish of all the passions.
Let our readers reassure themselves. If D’Artagnan forgets his host, or
appears to forget him, under the pretense of not knowing where he has
been carried, we will not forget him, and we know where he is. But for
the moment, let us do as did the amorous Gascon; we will see after the
worthy mercer later.
D’Artagnan, reflecting on his future amours, addressing himself to the
beautiful night, and smiling at the stars, ascended the Rue
Cherish-Midi, or Chase-Midi, as it was then called. As he found himself
in the quarter in which Aramis lived, he took it into his head to pay
his friend a visit in order to explain the motives which had led him to
send Planchet with a request that he would come instantly to the
mousetrap. Now, if Aramis had been at home when Planchet came to his
abode, he had doubtless hastened to the Rue des Fossoyeurs, and finding
nobody there but his other two companions perhaps, they would not be
able to conceive what all this meant. This mystery required an
explanation; at least, so D’Artagnan declared to himself.
He likewise thought this was an opportunity for talking about pretty
little Mme. Bonacieux, of whom his head, if not his heart, was already
full. We must never look for discretion in first love. First love is
accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy be allowed to
overflow, it will stifle you.
Paris for two hours past had been dark, and seemed a desert. Eleven
o’clock sounded from all the clocks of the Faubourg St. Germain. It was
delightful weather. D’Artagnan was passing along a lane on the spot
where the Rue d’Assas is now situated, breathing the balmy emanations
which were borne upon the wind from the Rue de Vaugirard, and which
arose from the gardens refreshed by the dews of evening and the breeze
of night. From a distance resounded, deadened, however, by good
shutters, the songs of the tipplers, enjoying themselves in the
cabarets scattered along the plain. Arrived at the end of the lane,
D’Artagnan turned to the left. The house in which Aramis dwelt was
situated between the Rue Cassette and the Rue Servandoni.
D’Artagnan had just passed the Rue Cassette, and already perceived the
door of his friend’s house, shaded by a mass of sycamores and clematis
which formed a vast arch opposite the front of it, when he perceived
something like a shadow issuing from the Rue Servandoni. This something
was enveloped in a cloak, and D’Artagnan at first believed it was a
man; but by the smallness of the form, the hesitation of the walk, and
the indecision of the step, he soon discovered that it was a woman.
Further, this woman, as if not certain of the house she was seeking,
lifted up her eyes to look around her, stopped, went backward, and then
returned again. D’Artagnan was perplexed.
“Shall I go and offer her my services?” thought he. “By her step she
must be young; perhaps she is pretty. Oh, yes! But a woman who wanders
in the streets at this hour only ventures out to meet her lover. If I
should disturb a rendezvous, that would not be the best means of
commencing an acquaintance.”
Meantime the young woman continued to advance, counting the houses and
windows. This was neither long nor difficult. There were but three
hôtels in this part of the street; and only two windows looking toward
the road, one of which was in a pavilion parallel to that which Aramis
occupied, the other belonging to Aramis himself.
“_Pardieu!_” said D’Artagnan to himself, to whose mind the niece of the
theologian reverted, “_pardieu_, it would be droll if this belated dove
should be in search of our friend’s house. But on my soul, it looks so.
Ah, my dear Aramis, this time I shall find you out.” And D’Artagnan,
making himself as small as he could, concealed himself in the darkest
side of the street near a stone bench placed at the back of a niche.
The young woman continued to advance; and in addition to the lightness
of her step, which had betrayed her, she emitted a little cough which
denoted a sweet voice. D’Artagnan believed this cough to be a signal.
Nevertheless, whether the cough had been answered by a similar signal
which had fixed the irresolution of the nocturnal seeker, or whether
without this aid she saw that she had arrived at the end of her
journey, she resolutely drew near to Aramis’s shutter, and tapped, at
three equal intervals, with her bent finger.
“This is all very fine, dear Aramis,” murmured D’Artagnan. “Ah,
Monsieur Hypocrite, I understand how you study theology.”
The three blows were scarcely struck, when the inside blind was opened
and a light appeared through the panes of the outside shutter.
“Ah, ah!” said the listener, “not through doors, but through windows!
Ah, this visit was expected. We shall see the windows open, and the
lady enter by escalade. Very pretty!”
But to the great astonishment of D’Artagnan, the shutter remained
closed. Still more, the light which had shone for an instant
disappeared, and all was again in obscurity.
D’Artagnan thought this could not last long, and continued to look with
all his eyes and listen with all his ears.
He was right; at the end of some seconds two sharp taps were heard
inside. The young woman in the street replied by a single tap, and the
shutter was opened a little way.
It may be judged whether D’Artagnan looked or listened with avidity.
Unfortunately the light had been removed into another chamber; but the
eyes of the young man were accustomed to the night. Besides, the eyes
of the Gascons have, as it is asserted, like those of cats, the faculty
of seeing in the dark.
D’Artagnan then saw that the young woman took from her pocket a white
object, which she unfolded quickly, and which took the form of a
handkerchief. She made her interlocutor observe the corner of this
unfolded object.
This immediately recalled to D’Artagnan’s mind the handkerchief which
he had found at the feet of Mme. Bonacieux, which had reminded him of
that which he had dragged from under the feet of Aramis.
“What the devil could that handkerchief signify?”
Placed where he was, D’Artagnan could not perceive the face of Aramis.
We say Aramis, because the young man entertained no doubt that it was
his friend who held this dialogue from the interior with the lady of
the exterior. Curiosity prevailed over prudence; and profiting by the
preoccupation into which the sight of the handkerchief appeared to have
plunged the two personages now on the scene, he stole from his hiding
place, and quick as lightning, but stepping with utmost caution, he ran
and placed himself close to the angle of the wall, from which his eye
could pierce the interior of Aramis’s room.
Upon gaining this advantage D’Artagnan was near uttering a cry of
surprise; it was not Aramis who was conversing with the nocturnal
visitor, it was a woman! D’Artagnan, however, could only see enough to
recognize the form of her vestments, not enough to distinguish her
features.
At the same instant the woman inside drew a second handkerchief from
her pocket, and exchanged it for that which had just been shown to her.
Then some words were spoken by the two women. At length the shutter
closed. The woman who was outside the window turned round, and passed
within four steps of D’Artagnan, pulling down the hood of her mantle;
but the precaution was too late, D’Artagnan had already recognized Mme.
Bonacieux.
Mme. Bonacieux! The suspicion that it was she had crossed the mind of
D’Artagnan when she drew the handkerchief from her pocket; but what
probability was there that Mme. Bonacieux, who had sent for M. Laporte
in order to be reconducted to the Louvre, should be running about the
streets of Paris at half past eleven at night, at the risk of being
abducted a second time?
This must be, then, an affair of importance; and what is the most
important affair to a woman of twenty-five! Love.
But was it on her own account, or on account of another, that she
exposed herself to such hazards? This was a question the young man
asked himself, whom the demon of jealousy already gnawed, being in
heart neither more nor less than an accepted lover.
There was a very simple means of satisfying himself whither Mme.
Bonacieux was going; that was to follow her. This method was so simple
that D’Artagnan employed it quite naturally and instinctively.
But at the sight of the young man, who detached himself from the wall
like a statue walking from its niche, and at the noise of the steps
which she heard resound behind her, Mme. Bonacieux uttered a little cry
and fled.
D’Artagnan ran after her. It was not difficult for him to overtake a
woman embarrassed with her cloak. He came up with her before she had
traversed a third of the street. The unfortunate woman was exhausted,
not by fatigue, but by terror, and when D’Artagnan placed his hand upon
her shoulder, she sank upon one knee, crying in a choking voice, “Kill
me, if you please, you shall know nothing!”
D’Artagnan raised her by passing his arm round her waist; but as he
felt by her weight she was on the point of fainting, he made haste to
reassure her by protestations of devotedness. These protestations were
nothing for Mme. Bonacieux, for such protestations may be made with the
worst intentions in the world; but the voice was all. Mme. Bonacieux
thought she recognized the sound of that voice; she reopened her eyes,
cast a quick glance upon the man who had terrified her so, and at once
perceiving it was D’Artagnan, she uttered a cry of joy, “Oh, it is you,
it is you! Thank God, thank God!”
“Yes, it is I,” said D’Artagnan, “it is I, whom God has sent to watch
over you.”
“Was it with that intention you followed me?” asked the young woman,
with a coquettish smile, whose somewhat bantering character resumed its
influence, and with whom all fear had disappeared from the moment in
which she recognized a friend in one she had taken for an enemy.
“No,” said D’Artagnan; “no, I confess it. It was chance that threw me
in your way; I saw a woman knocking at the window of one of my
friends.”
“One of your friends?” interrupted Mme. Bonacieux.
“Without doubt; Aramis is one of my best friends.”
“Aramis! Who is he?”
“Come, come, you won’t tell me you don’t know Aramis?”
“This is the first time I ever heard his name pronounced.”
“It is the first time, then, that you ever went to that house?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And you did not know that it was inhabited by a young man?”
“No.”