The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [202]
At this moment the clock of La Samaritaine struck six and the four friends, pleading an engagement, took their leave of the Captain of Musketeers.
A lively canter brought them to the Route de Chaillot by twilight. The traffic moved by, to and fro, as D’Artagnan, his friends watching over him from some distance, peered into every carriage as it passed him. But he failed to recognize a single face. At length, after they had waited a quarter of an hour, just as night was falling, a carriage appeared, speeding down the Sévres road. A presentiment told D’Artagnan instantly that this carriage bore the person who had arranged the rendezvous; he himself was astonished to feel his heart beating so violently against his ribs. Suddenly a woman’s face appeared at the window, two fingers on her mouth as though to enjoin silence or to blow him a kiss. D’Artagnan uttered a cry of joy. The carriage had passed by, swift as a vision, but the apparition was a woman and the woman was Madame Bonacieux.
Involuntarily and despite the warning given, D’Artagnan spurred his horse into a gallop, overtaking the carriage in a few strides. But he found the window hermetically closed and the vision had vanished.
Then he recalled the injunction: “If you value your life and the lives of those who love you do not utter a word or make the slightest gesture. . . .” He stopped therefore trembling not on his own account but for the poor woman who had obviously exposed herself to danger by arranging for this rendezvous.
The carriage pursued its way at the same swift pace, entered Paris and disappeared. D’Artagnan, dumbfounded, stood rooted to the spot. What was he to think? If it was Madame Bonacieux and if she was returning to Paris, why this fugitive meeting, why this simple exchange of glances, why this lost kiss? If, on the other hand, it was not Madame Bonacieux—a perfectly plausible conjecture, since his eyes might well have mistaken him in the near-darkness—was this not a plot in which his enemies were using for decoy the woman he was known to love?
His three friends joined him. All had clearly distinguished a woman’s face at the carriage window, but only Athos knew Madame Bonacieux. According to him, it was certainly she; but as Athos was less intent upon that pretty face, he had, he fancied, seen a man beside her in the carriage.
“In that case,” D’Artagnan said, “they are undoubtedly transferring her from one prison to another. But what can they intend to do to the poor girl? And how shall I ever meet her again?”
“My friend,” Athos told him gravely, “remember this: it is only the dead whom we are not likely to meet again on earth. You know something about this just as I myself. Well, if your mistress is not dead and if it is she we have just seen, you will meet her again one of these days. And perhaps,” he added in a characteristically misanthropic tone, “perhaps sooner than you wish.”
They heard the half-hour strike from a belfry nearby; it was seven thirty. His friends reminded D’Artagnan that he had a visit to pay, adding significantly that he still had time to change his mind. But at once headstrong and curious, D’Artagnan was determined to go to the Cardinal’s palace. He must at all cost find out what His Eminence had to say to him. Nothing could possibly dissuade him from following his plans.
Soon they were in the Rue Saint-Honoré and presently in the Place du Palais-Cardinal. They found the nine comrades they had summoned to support them. These gentlemen had reported punctually to a man without knowing what was expected of them.
Apprised of the situation, they were delighted to stand by,