The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [125]
The Captain of Musketeers listened patiently to his young protégé’s story. His serious attention proved that he saw more in the matter than a mere love affair. When D’Artagnan had finished:
“This all reeks of the Cardinal,” he commented.
“But what can be done, Monsieur?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, for the time being. You must leave Paris as soon as possible just as I told you last night. For my part I shall see the Queen and tell her about the disappearance of her maidservant. Probably Her Majesty knows nothing of it. At any rate I shall inform her and perhaps I shall have good news for you on your return.”
D’Artagnan knew that, although a Gascon, Monsieur de Tréville was not a man to make promises that he did not intend to keep; usually indeed he went beyond his word. Very grateful for past favors and confident in the future, he bowed deeply as he took his leave of the old soldier. Monsieur de Tréville for his part felt a lively interest in his brave and resolute young compatriot. Shaking D’Artagnan’s hand affably he wished him a pleasant journey.
Encouraged by Monsieur de Tréville’s attitude, D’Artagnan resolved to follow his advice immediately and made for the Rue des Fossoyeurs. Planchet would be waiting but his packing required supervision. There was Monsieur Bonacieux too.
D’Artagnan found his landlord on the doorstep, clad in morning dress and staring up at the sky. All that the prudent Planchet had said about the Bonacieux’s sinister personality the evening before now recurred to D’Artagnan’s mind and as he drew near he looked at his landlord more closely than he had ever done. The fellow’s complexion was yellow and sickly with that pallor which indicates an excess of bile in the blood. To be sure that might be accidental, yet D’Artagnan perceived something particularly crafty and perfidious in his wrinkled features. A rascal does not laugh in the same manner as an honest man nor does a hypocrite shed tears in the same way as a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask which, however well fashioned, reveals its shams upon close inspection. To D’Artagnan it seemed that Monsieur Bonacieux wore a mask and a very ugly one to look upon at that.
Repelled by Bonacieux’s unpleasing exterior, our Gascon intended to pass by without speaking but Monsieur Bonacieux accosted him as he had done the day before.
“Well young man!” he declared with mock joviality, “we seem to have made quite a night of it, eh? Home at seven in the morning, I see! You do turn things topsy-turvy, I declare; you come home to sleep just as other folk are setting out to work.”
“No one can hold that against you, Monsieur Bonacieux; you are a model of conventional behavior. Of course I cannot blame you. When a man possesses as young and as pretty a wife as you do, he need not seek happiness elsewhere because happiness comes to meet him, does it not?”
Bonacieux turned pale and smiled wrily.
“What a gay blade you are, Monsieur; you will have your joke, won’t you? But what the deuce were you up to last night?” He stared at D’Artagnan’s boots. “Very muddy, eh? Dirty work at the crossroads?”
D’Artagnan, having surveyed his own boots, noticed that the haberdasher’s shoes and stockings were muddy too. Suddenly D’Artagnan thought: a fat, short, elderly man with graying hair and dressed in mean black clothes . . . a man who was no nobleman for he wore no sword . . . a man whom the others ordered every which ways . . . a lackey, no doubt . . . Bonacieux himself! Yes, D’Artagnan was sure of it; the husband had actually presided at the brutality and outrage visited upon his wife.
A fury seized D’Artagnan; his fingers itched to grasp the haberdasher by the throat and throttle him. But for all his ardor our Gascon was prudent,