The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [195]
“Quick, Kitty quick!” D’Artagnan whispered behind the locked door. “Help me get out of here! Unless we look sharp, she will have me killed by the servants.”
“But you can’t go out like that,” Kitty objected. “You are stark naked.”
“Why, so I am,” D’Artagnan exclaimed, realizing for the first time how he was dressed—or rather undressed. “Get me some clothes, any clothes, but hurry, my dear girl, it is a matter of life and death.”
Kitty understood this only too well. In a turn of the hand she muffled him up in a flowered robe, a big hood and a cloak and she gave him some slippers to cover his bare feet. Then she ushered him downstairs. It was in the nick of time; Milady had already awakened the whole mansion. The porter had not finished drawing the cord to open the street door when Milady, half-naked too, screamed from her window:
“Porter! Don’t let anyone out!”
The young man fled down the street as Milady threatened him with an impotent gesture. When he rounded the corner and vanished, Milady fell back, fainting, into her room.
XXXVIII
HOW ATHOS WITHOUT LIFTING A FINGER PROCURED HIS EQUIPMENT FOR THE CAMPAIGN
D’Artagnan rushed on, too bewildered to worry about what would happen to Kitty; he dashed across half Paris, and stopped only when he reached the sanctuary he hoped Athos might provide for him in the Rue Férou. His extreme mental confusion, the terror that spurred him, the cries of some patrolmen who started in pursuit of him, and the hooting of passersby, off to work despite the early hour, all combined to make him run the faster.
Crossing the court, he leaped up the two flights to his friend’s apartment and at long last came to a halt. Before even catching his breath, he pounded at the door as if to wake the dead. As Grimaud appeared, rubbing his eyes still swollen with sleep, D’Artagnan sprang so violently into the room that he almost overturned the astonished lackey. In spite of Grimaud’s disciplined taciturnity, this time the poor lad found his tongue:
“Ho, there, what do you want? What are you doing here, you strumpet?”
D’Artagnan threw off his hood and freed his hands from the folds of the cloak. At the sight of his mustache and naked sword, Grimaud realized that he had to deal with a man and concluded it must be an assassin.
“Help! murder! help!” he shouted.
“Hold your tongue, you idiot!” the young man warned him, “I am D’Artagnan, can’t you recognize me? Where is your master?”
“You, Monsieur d’Artagnan? Impossible!”
Athos emerged from his room, clad in a dressing gown.
“Grimaud, did I hear you permitting yourself to speak?”
“But, Monsieur, I—”
“Silence!”
Grimaud contented himself with pointing his finger at D’Artagnan, then gazing askance at his master. Athos recognized D’Artagnan and, phlegmatic though he was, burst into laughter. Certainly he had ample cause to as he contemplated D’Artagnan’s amazing masquerade: the hood askew over one shoulder, the petticoat and skirt falling in waves over the slippers, the sleeves tucked up awry, and the mustache bristling with agitation.
“For God’s sake, don’t laugh, my friend!” D’Artagnan besought him. “Don’t laugh, for upon my soul this is no laughing matter.”
He uttered the words with such a solemn air and with such genuine terror that Athos at once seized his hand, crying:
“Are you wounded, my friend? How pale you are!”
“No, but something frightful has just happened to me. Are you alone, Athos!”
“Ye Gods, who would you expect to find here at this hour?”
“Good! Good!” And D’Artagnan rushed into the musketeer’s bedroom.
After closing the door and bolting it so that they would not be disturbed, Athos turned to the Gascon.
“Come, speak. Is the King dead? Have you killed Monsieur le Cardinal? You seem terribly upset. Come, come, tell me, what happened. I am really very much worried.”
Shedding his female garments and emerging in his shirt:
“Athos,” D’Artagnan said solemnly, “brace yourself up to hear an unheard-of, an incredible story.”
“Slip on this dressing-gown first,” Athos