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 Treville, and were consequently enemies of the cardinal, I thought that you and your friends, while rendering justice to your 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 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.
Chapter 9 D’ARTAGNAN SHOWS HIMSELF
As 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, “make 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, ah! 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 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
