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By Root 1272 0

upon what Athos had said about Madame Bonacieux. Although not given to sentimentality, D’Artagnan had been deeply stirred by the beauty and charm and loyalty of the haberdasher’s wife. As he said, he was ready to go to the ends of the earth in quest of her; but the earth being round has very many ends, so he knew not which way to turn. Meanwhile he proposed to investigate Milady. She had spoken to the man in the black cloak, therefore she must know him. And D’Artagnan was certain that the man in the black coat had carried off Madame Bonacieux the second time, just as he had carried her off the first. Thus when D’Artagnan told himself that by going in search of Milady he was going in search of Constance, he was lying only by half, which does not make a man much of a liar.

Lost in these thoughts and occasionally spurring on his horse in his impatience of a solution, D’Artagnan soon reached Saint-Germain. He passed the lodge where Louis XV was to be born ten years later. Then as he rode up a quiet, deserted street, looking to right and left in hope of finding some trace of the beautiful Englishwoman, suddenly he drew up his horse. On the ground floor of a pretty house which, as was then the fashion, had no window looking out onto the street, he fancied he recognized a familiar face. Immediately Planchet verified his suspicion by drawing D’Artagnan’s attention to that face rising up from amid the flowers lining a small terrace.

“Look, Monsieur,” Planchet said, “do you recall that gaping, blinking face?”

“I cannot say for sure, I thought I—”

“I know, Monsieur, it’s poor old Lubin, the lackey of the Comte de Vardes whose score you settled so nicely a month ago at Calais on the road to the Governor’s country house!”

“Of course, so it is. Now I recognize him. Do you suppose he will recognize you?”

“I doubt it, Monsieur. He was having much too hard a time of it to remember who it was drubbed him.”

“Well, go talk to the fellow and try to find out if his master is dead.”

Planchet dismounted and walked up to Lubin, who, as he had expected, failed to identify him. The two lackeys engaged in friendly conversation while D’Artagnan turned the two horses into a lane, circled the house, and returned to listen to the conference from behind a hedge of hazel bushes. Presently he heard the rumble of a carriage approaching and he saw Milady’s coach draw up in front of him. He was absolutely certain it was she because he had an unobstructed view of her. D’Artagnan crouched down to avoid observation.

Milady leaned out of the window, her lovely blonde head clearly visible, to give orders to her maid, a most attractive girl in her early twenties, spry and alert, the typical soubrette of a lady of quality. The maid jumped from the step upon which, according to the custom of the times, she had been sitting, and made for the terrace where D’Artagnan had first caught sight of Lubin.

D’Artagnan followed the girl’s progress with his eyes when suddenly an order from within the house summoned Lubin indoors; Planchet, left alone, stared about him to try to find out which way his master had gone. The maid then approached Planchet, whom she mistook for Lubin, and handed him a note.

“This is for your master,” she said.

“For my master?” Planchet replied in astonishment.

“Yes. The message is urgent, too. Take it quickly.”

Then she ran back to the carriage which had turned around and was headed homeward, jumped onto the step, and the carriage drove off.

Planchet twirled the note between his fingers. Then, accustomed as he was to passive obedience, he jumped down from the terrace, ran toward the lane and met D’Artagnan some sixty feet away.

“A note for you, Monsieur.”

“For me? Are you sure?”

“Certainly, Monsieur. The soubrette said: ‘For your master!’ I have no other master but you, so . . . A fetching little baggage, that maid!”

D’Artagnan opened the letter and read:

A person who takes more interest in you than she is willing to confess, wishes to know on what day it would suit you to take a walk in the forest of Saint-Germain.

Tomorrow at