The three musketeers
the windows was broken, the door of the chamber had been beaten in and
hung, split in two, on its hinges. A table, which had been covered with
an elegant supper, was overturned. The decanters broken in pieces, and
the fruits crushed, strewed the floor. Everything in the apartment gave
evidence of a violent and desperate struggle. D’Artagnan even fancied
he could recognize amid this strange disorder, fragments of garments,
and some bloody spots staining the cloth and the curtains. He hastened
to descend into the street, with a frightful beating at his heart; he
wished to see if he could find other traces of violence.
The little soft light shone on in the calmness of the night. D’Artagnan
then perceived a thing that he had not before remarked—for nothing had
led him to the examination—that the ground, trampled here and
hoofmarked there, presented confused traces of men and horses. Besides,
the wheels of a carriage, which appeared to have come from Paris, had
made a deep impression in the soft earth, which did not extend beyond
the pavilion, but turned again toward Paris.
At length D’Artagnan, in pursuing his researches, found near the wall a
woman’s torn glove. This glove, wherever it had not touched the muddy
ground, was of irreproachable odor. It was one of those perfumed gloves
that lovers like to snatch from a pretty hand.
As D’Artagnan pursued his investigations, a more abundant and more icy
sweat rolled in large drops from his forehead; his heart was oppressed
by a horrible anguish; his respiration was broken and short. And yet he
said, to reassure himself, that this pavilion perhaps had nothing in
common with Mme. Bonacieux; that the young woman had made an
appointment with him before the pavilion, and not in the pavilion; that
she might have been detained in Paris by her duties, or perhaps by the
jealousy of her husband.
But all these reasons were combated, destroyed, overthrown, by that
feeling of intimate pain which, on certain occasions, takes possession
of our being, and cries to us so as to be understood unmistakably that
some great misfortune is hanging over us.
Then D’Artagnan became almost wild. He ran along the high road, took
the path he had before taken, and reaching the ferry, interrogated the
boatman.
About seven o’clock in the evening, the boatman had taken over a young
woman, wrapped in a black mantle, who appeared to be very anxious not
to be recognized; but entirely on account of her precautions, the
boatman had paid more attention to her and discovered that she was
young and pretty.
There were then, as now, a crowd of young and pretty women who came to
St. Cloud, and who had reasons for not being seen, and yet D’Artagnan
did not for an instant doubt that it was Mme. Bonacieux whom the
boatman had noticed.
D’Artagnan took advantage of the lamp which burned in the cabin of the
ferryman to read the billet of Mme. Bonacieux once again, and satisfy
himself that he had not been mistaken, that the appointment was at St.
Cloud and not elsewhere, before the D’Estrées’s pavilion and not in
another street. Everything conspired to prove to D’Artagnan that his
presentiments had not deceived him, and that a great misfortune had
happened.
He again ran back to the château. It appeared to him that something
might have happened at the pavilion in his absence, and that fresh
information awaited him. The lane was still deserted, and the same calm
soft light shone through the window.
D’Artagnan then thought of that cottage, silent and obscure, which had
no doubt seen all, and could tell its tale. The gate of the enclosure
was shut; but he leaped over the hedge, and in spite of the barking of
a chained-up dog, went up to the cabin.
No one answered to his first knocking. A silence of death reigned in
the cabin as in the pavilion; but as the cabin was his last resource,
he knocked again.
It soon appeared to him that he heard a slight noise within—a timid
noise which seemed to tremble lest it should be heard.
Then D’Artagnan ceased knocking, and prayed with an accent so full of
anxiety and promises, terror and cajolery, that his voice was of a
nature to reassure the most fearful. At length an old, worm-eaten
shutter was opened, or rather pushed ajar, but closed again as soon as
the light from a miserable lamp which burned in the corner had shone
upon the baldric, sword belt, and pistol pommels of D’Artagnan.
Nevertheless, rapid as the movement had been, D’Artagnan had had time
to get a glimpse of the head of an old man.
“In the name of heaven!” cried he, “listen to me; I have been waiting
for someone who has not come. I am dying with anxiety. Has anything
particular happened in the neighborhood? Speak!”
The window was again opened slowly, and the same face appeared, only it
was now still more pale than before.
D’Artagnan related his story simply, with the omission of names. He
told how he had a rendezvous with a young woman before that pavilion,
and how, not seeing her come, he had climbed the linden tree, and by
the light of the lamp had seen the disorder of the chamber.
The old man listened attentively, making a sign only that it was all
so; and then, when D’Artagnan had ended, he shook his head with an air
that announced nothing good.
“What do you mean?” cried D’Artagnan. “In the name of heaven, explain
yourself!”
“Oh! Monsieur,” said the old man, “ask me nothing; for if I dared tell
you what I have seen, certainly no good would befall me.”
“You have, then, seen something?” replied D’Artagnan. “In that case, in
the name of heaven,” continued he, throwing him a pistole, “tell me
what you have seen, and I will pledge you the word of a gentleman that
not one of your words shall escape from my heart.”
The old man read so much truth and so much grief in the face of the
young man that he made him a sign to listen, and repeated in a low
voice: “It was scarcely nine o’clock when I heard a noise in the
street, and was wondering what it could be, when on coming to my door,
I found that somebody was endeavoring to open it. As I am very poor and
am not afraid of being robbed, I went and opened the gate and saw three
men at a few paces from it. In the shadow was a carriage with two
horses, and some saddlehorses. These horses evidently belonged to the
three men, who were dressed as cavaliers. ‘Ah, my worthy gentlemen,’
cried I, ‘what do you want?’ ‘You must have a ladder?’ said he who
appeared to be the leader of the party. ‘Yes, monsieur, the one with
which I gather my fruit.’ ‘Lend it to us, and go into your house again;
there is a crown for the annoyance we have caused you. Only remember
this—if you speak a word of what you may see or what you may hear (for
you will look and you will listen, I am quite sure, however we may
threaten you), you are lost.’ At these words he threw me a crown, which
I picked up, and he took the ladder. After shutting the gate behind
them, I pretended to return to the house, but I immediately went out a
back door, and stealing along in the shade of the hedge, I gained
yonder clump of elder, from which I could hear and see everything. The
three men brought the carriage up quietly, and took out of it a little
man, stout, short, elderly, and commonly dressed in clothes of a dark
color, who ascended the ladder very carefully, looked suspiciously in
at the window of the pavilion, came down as quietly as he had gone up,
and whispered, ‘It is she!’ Immediately, he who had spoken to me
approached the door of the pavilion, opened it with a key he had in his
hand, closed the door and disappeared, while at the same time the other
two men ascended the ladder. The little old man remained at the coach
door; the coachman took care of his horses, the lackey held the
saddlehorses. All at once great cries resounded in the pavilion, and a
woman came to the window, and opened it, as if to throw herself out of
it; but as soon as she perceived the other two men, she fell back and
they went into the chamber. Then I saw no more; but I heard the noise
of breaking furniture. The woman screamed, and cried for help; but her
cries were soon stifled. Two of the men appeared, bearing the woman in
their arms, and carried her to the carriage, into which the little old
man got after her. The leader closed the window, came out an instant
after by the door, and satisfied himself that the woman was in the
carriage. His two companions were already on horseback. He sprang into
his saddle; the lackey took his place by the coachman; the carriage
went off at a quick pace, escorted by the three horsemen, and all was
over. From that moment I have neither seen nor heard anything.”
D’Artagnan, entirely overcome by this terrible story, remained
motionless and mute, while all the demons of anger and jealousy were
howling in his heart.
“But, my good gentleman,” resumed the old man, upon whom this mute
despair certainly produced a greater effect than cries and tears would
have done, “do not take on so; they did not kill her, and that’s a
comfort.”
“Can you guess,” said D’Artagnan, “who was the man who headed this
infernal expedition?”
“I don’t know him.”
“But as you spoke to him you must have seen him.”
“Oh, it’s a description you want?”
“Exactly so.”
“A tall, dark man, with black mustaches, dark eyes, and the air of a
gentleman.”
“That’s the man!” cried D’Artagnan, “again he, forever he! He is my
demon, apparently. And the other?”
“Which?”
“The short one.”
“Oh, he was not a gentleman, I’ll answer for it; besides, he did not
wear a sword, and the others treated him with small consideration.”
“Some lackey,” murmured D’Artagnan. “Poor woman, poor woman, what have
they done with you?”
“You have promised to be secret, my good monsieur?” said the old man.
“And I renew my promise. Be easy, I am a gentleman. A gentleman has but
his word, and I have given you mine.”
With a heavy heart, D’Artagnan again bent his way toward the ferry.
Sometimes he hoped it could not be Mme. Bonacieux, and that he should
find her next day at the Louvre; sometimes he feared she had had an
intrigue with another, who, in a jealous fit, had surprised her and
carried her off. His mind was torn by doubt, grief, and despair.
“Oh, if I had my three friends here,” cried he, “I should have, at
least, some hopes of finding her; but who knows what has become of
them?”
It was past midnight; the next thing was to find Planchet. D’Artagnan
went successively into all the cabarets in which there was a light, but
could not find Planchet in any of them.
At the sixth he began to reflect that the search was rather dubious.
D’Artagnan had appointed six o’clock in the morning for his lackey, and
wherever he might be, he was right.
Besides, it came into the young man’s mind that by remaining in the
environs of the spot on which this sad event had passed, he would,
perhaps, have some light thrown upon the mysterious affair. At the
sixth cabaret, then, as we said, D’Artagnan stopped, asked for a bottle
of wine of the best quality, and placing himself in the darkest corner
of the room, determined thus to wait till daylight; but this time again
his hopes were disappointed, and although he listened with all his
ears, he heard nothing, amid the oaths, coarse jokes, and abuse which
passed between the laborers, servants, and carters who comprised the
honorable society of which he formed a part, which could put him upon
the least track of her who had been stolen from him. He was compelled,
then, after having swallowed the contents of his bottle, to pass the
time as well as to evade suspicion, to fall into the easiest position
in his corner and to sleep, whether well or ill. D’Artagnan, be it
remembered, was only twenty years old, and at that age sleep has its