The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [120]
“How so, Planchet?”
“Well, Monsieur, we daren’t speak aloud in either.”
“Why not, Planchet? Are you afraid?”
“Yes, Monsieur, that I am.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of being overheard, Monsieur.”
“Of being overheard?” D’Artagnan laughed. “Is there anything immoral in our conversation? Who could possibly object to it?”
Planchet, sighing, returned to his besetting idea.
“Monsieur,” he said, “There is something about Bonacieux . . . something evil in his eyebrows and something downright vicious in the play of his lips. . . .”
“Why mention Bonacieux now?”
“Monsieur, a man thinks as he can, not as he will.”
“That is because you are a coward.”
“Monsieur, cowardice and caution are horses of a different color; I am cautious, not cowardly. Prudence is a virtue.”
“And you are very virtuous, eh?”
“Look Monsieur, there to the left. Don’t you see a musket gleaming? Let us duck quickly—”
“God help us,” D’Artagnan mused, “this wretch of a lackey will end by terrifying me.” He recalled Monsieur de Treville’s advice in all its particulars. (“Be sure your lackey follows you,” Tréville had said, “if incidentally, you are sure you can trust your lackey.”) And D’Artagnan roused his horse to a trot, Planchet clinging to him like his shadow.
“Are we to ride on and on all night, Monsieur?” Planchet inquired.
“No, Planchet, you have gone far enough.”
“I, Monsieur? And what of you?”
“I am going on a little.”
“And you are leaving me here alone, Monsieur?”
“Are you frightened?”
“Not in the least, Monsieur. But I beg leave to observe that it is turning very cold and likely to turn colder . . . that cold brings on chills . . . that chills cause rheumatism . . . and that a lackey with rheumatism is worse than useless, particularly to as active a master as you, Monsieur. . . .”
“Very well, Planchet, if you feel cold, you can go into one of those huts there. Turn in, keep warm, and wait at the door for me at six sharp tomorrow morning.”
“Begging your pardon, Monsieur, I respectfully ate and drank up the crown Monsieur gave me this morning. I have not a sou and if I should happen to need the wherewithal to warm up—”
“Here’s half a pistole, Planchet. Remember: tomorrow at six.”
D’Artagnan dismounted, tossed his steed’s bridle to Planchet, and muffling himself snugly in his coat, vanished into the darkness. He was not out of sight before Planchet, shivering with cold and eager to thaw out, made for the hovel, which looked like a typical suburban tavern, and knocked loudly at the door.
Meanwhile D’Artagnan took a side path and presently reached Saint-Cloud. There, instead of following the main street of the village, he turned behind the château, found a tiny lane, and in a few minutes reached the lodge which, the note had said, stood “at right angles to the mansion of Monsieur d’Estrées.”
It was very bleak and stood in a very lonely spot. On one side the outer wall of the mansion loomed high above the lane; on the other a tall hedge screened off a small garden at the end of which stood a shabby hut. D’Artagnan, having reached the place appointed, waited; having received no instructions about announcing his presence, he took up his stand between hedge and wall. All was silence, an eerie silence that made him feel a hundred leagues from the capital. He glanced carefully about him, then leaned against the hedge, staring across the garden and beyond the lodge at the dense fog that swathed the mysterious immensity of Paris. Faintly, out of the shadowy void, he could distinguish a few lights, so many stars twinkling faintly over Sodom and Gomorrah. . . .
Dismal though the prospect was, D’Artagnan found everything to his taste; dark though the night, his ideas were roseate and opaque, they glimmered diaphanous through the shadows. Presently the chimes of the church of Saint-Cloud boomed the hour of ten. As D’Artagnan counted the strokes, happy and expectant as he was, he could not help feeling how lugubriously this sonorous bronze voice echoed across the unfriendly night. At the last stroke, his heart racing within him, he stared