The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [12]
Throwing down his spit and ordering his wife and servants to cast away their respective weapons, the innkeeper himself inaugurated the search for the missing document.
“Was there anything valuable in your letter?” he asked after a few moments of futile endeavor.
“God’s blood I should say so!” cried the Gascon. Had he not been counting on this letter to speed his advancement at court? “It contained my whole fortune!”
“Drafts on the Spanish Treasury?” mine host asked with a worried air.
“No,” D’Artagnan answered. “Drafts on the Privy Treasury of His Majesty of France.” Having expected to enter the King’s service on the strength of this recommendation, he believed himself justified in hazarding this somewhat misleading reply without incurring the stigma of lying.
“God help us all!” wailed the host.
“It is of no moment!” D’Artagnan said with true Gascon phlegm. “It is of no moment! Money means nothing to me!” He paused. “But that letter meant everything! I would rather have lost one thousand pistoles than that letter!”
He might as readily have risked twenty thousand but a certain youthful modesty restrained him.
Just as the innkeeper, finding no trace of the letter, was about to commit himself to the Devil, a ray of light pierced his skull.
“That letter is not lost!” he said.
“What!”
“That letter is not lost! It was stolen from you!”
“Stolen? Who stole it?”
“The gentleman who was here yesterday. He came down here to the kitchen where you left your doublet. He was alone here for quite a while. I’ll wager he stole your letter.”
“You think so?” D’Artagnan asked. He was somewhat skeptical for he knew the letter better than anybody else. It was purely personal; how then could it have become valuable enough to steal? No servant, no traveler could have gained anything by possessing it.
“You say you suspect that impertinent gentleman?”
“Sure as I stand here! I told him you, Monsieur, were the protégé of Monsieur de Tréville; I said you even had a letter for this illustrious gentleman. Well, the stranger looked very much disturbed. He asked me where the letter was and went straightway down to the kitchen. He knew your doublet was there.”
“He’s the thief, then!” D’Artagnan scowled. “I shall complain to Monsieur de Tréville, and Monsieur de Tréville will complain to the King.”
Majestically, he drew two crowns from his purse, handed them to the innkeeper, and made for the gate, mine host close on his heels, hat in hand. The yellow nag awaited him; he leaped into the saddle and rode off. His steed bore him without further misadventure to the Porte Saint-Antoine, the northern gate of Paris, where its owner sold it for three crowns—an excellent price, considering that D’Artagnan had pressed it hard during the last stage of his journey. The dealer to whom D’Artagnan sold it for the aforesaid nine livres did not fail to make it clear that he was disbursing this exorbitant sum solely because of the originality of the beast’s color.
So D’Artagnan entered Paris on foot, carrying his kit under his arm, roaming the city until he found a room suited to his scanty means. It was a sort of garret situated in the Rue des Fossoyeurs—Gravediggers’ Row—near the Luxembourg Palace.
Having paid a deposit, D’Artagnan took possession of his lodging and spent the rest of the day sewing. His specific task was to stitch on to his doublet and hose some ornamental braiding which his mother had ripped off an almost new doublet of her husband’s and given to her son secretly. Next he repaired to the Quai de la Ferraille to have a new blade put to his sword. Then he walked back toward the Louvre, to ask the first musketeer he met where Monsieur de Tréville’s mansion was. It proved to be in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, quite close to where D’Artagnan had taken a room. The circumstance appeared to him to augur well for the success of his journey.
After this, gratified with the way in which he had behaved at Meung, clear of all remorse for the past, confident in the present and full of hope for the future, he retired to bed and slept the sleep of the