The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [176]
“Two thousand livres! Why, that’s a fortune!”
Porthos made a significantly deprecatory grimace which Madame Coquenard understood perfectly.
“I asked you to tell me some of the items,” she explained, “because I have many relatives and connections in business. I am sure I could obtain things for you at one hundred percent less than you could get them for yourself.”
“Ah well, if that is what you meant—”
“Yes, dear Monsieur Porthos, that is all I meant. For example, to begin with, you do need a horse, don’t you.”
“Yes, I do indeed.”
“Well, I have just the thing for you.”
“Ah, so much for the horse!” Porthos beamed. “Of course I need a complete equipment for him too. It consists of a variety of things that only a musketeer can buy. That shouldn’t amount to more than three hundred livres.”
“Three hundred livres!” Madame Attorney sighed. “Very well then, three hundred livres!”
(Porthos smiled angelically. On one hand there was the saddle, a gift from My Lord of Buckingham; on the other, three hundred livres which he could quickly pocket!)
“Then there is a horse for my lackey. And my valise. And—no! as for my weapons, I need not trouble you, I already have them.”
“A horse for your lackey?” Madame Coquenard faltered. “Surely you are doing things on a very lordly scale, my friend.”
“Do you take me for a beggar, Madame?”
“No, I only meant to say that a pretty mule often looks quite as well as a horse. It seems to me that if you get Mousqueton a pretty mule—”
“So be it, Madame, a pretty mule for Mousqueton. I have seen the greatest Spanish grandees whose whole suites were mounted on mules. But of course you understand, Madame, a mule with plumes and bells—”
“That is quite easy.”
“There remains my valise, Madame—”
“Do not fret, dear Monsieur Porthos, my husband has five or six valises. You shall choose the best. There is one in particular which he always preferred to travel with; it is huge; it could hold all the world.”
“So your valise is empty, Madame?” Porthos inquired, naïvely.
“Certainly,” Madame Attorney replied, matching his candor.
“But the valise I need is a well-fitted one, my dear.”
Again Madame sighed profusely.
(At the time, Molière had not written his play L’Avare; the avarice of the attorney’s lady was not yet outdone by the celebrated Harpagon.)
Item by item, the rest of the equipment was successively broached, taken under advisement, discussed and settled. In the end, Madame Attorney pledged herself to give eight hundred livres in money and to furnish the horse and the mule which were to have the honor of carrying Porthos and Mousqueton to glory. There terms agreed upon, Porthos took his leave of his inamorata. Madame sought to detain him by gazing tenderly at him from under lowered lashes. But Porthos pleaded the exigencies of duty and the lawyer’s wife had perforce to yield in prerogative to His Majesty the King.
The musketeer returned home hungry as a hunter and angry as a bear.
XXXIII
THE SOUBRETTE AND HER MISTRESS
Meanwhile as we have said, despite the cries of his conscience and the wise counsels of Athos, D’Artagnan became more infatuated with Milady hour by hour. Convinced that she must inevitably respond sooner or later, our adventurous Gascon never once failed to pay her his daily court.
One evening when he arrived, his head in the air and as light of heart as a man who awaits a shower of gold, he found Milady’s chambermaid under the gateway of the mansion. This time pretty Kitty was not content merely to touch him as he passed, she took him gently by the hand.
“Good!” thought D’Artagnan, “her mistress has charged her with some message for me; the soubrette is about to appoint some rendezvous which Milady dared not make orally.”
And he looked at the pretty girl with the most triumphant air imaginable.
“May I have two words with you, Monsieur le Chevalier?” the maid stammered.
“Speak, my child, speak, I am listening.”
“Here? Impossible. What I have to say is too complicated and above all too secret.”
“Well,