The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [256]
“Enough!” he said affably, “I know you to be brave young men, proud in the daylight and loyal in the dark. There is no harm in posting men to watch over yourselves when you watch so well over others. I have not forgotten the night when you escorted me to and from the Red Dovecote, gentlemen. Were there any danger on the road I am about to take, I would beg you to accompany me. But since I am quite safe, pray stay where you are and finish your bottles, your gambling and your love letters. Gentlemen, I bid you adieu.”
Cahusac led up the Cardinal’s horse. His Eminence sprang into the saddle, waved his hand in farewell and rode off. The four young men watched him disappear and looked at one another in dismay. To be sure his leave-taking had been friendly but each knew that the Cardinal was in a towering rage. Only Athos smiled, an authoritative and disdainful smile. The Cardinal out of sight, Porthos, venting his ill humor on the nearest butt at hand, growled:
“That fellow Grimaud warned us too late!”
The lackey was about to apologize; but Athos raised his hand, enjoining silence.
“Would you have handed over your letter?” D’Artagnan asked Aramis.
“I?” Aramis asked back in his most melodious voice. The others looked at him curiously. “Yes,” he said. “My mind was made up. I would have given him the letter with one hand and, with the other, plunged my sword through his body.”
“So I thought,” said Athos. “That is why I stepped forward between you and His Eminence. I must say that cleric is rash to speak to any self-respecting men as he did to us. You might suppose he had dealt all his life with women and children.”
“Heaven knows I admire you, Athos,” D’Artagnan said. “But after all you were in the wrong.”
“I, in the wrong? God help us, whose is this air we breathe, whose this ocean we survey, whose this sand we rest on, whose the letter from your mistress, D’Artagnan? Do any of these belong to the Cardinal? I swear I think that man imagines that he owns the entire world. And there you stood before that man, flustered, stammering, stultified. Anyone might have supposed the Bastille gaped to receive you or the gigantic Medusa had turned you to stone. You are in love; does that make you a conspirator? You are in love with a woman His Eminence clapped into jail and you want to get her back for yourself. There you stand, gambling against His Eminence; the letter is the ace in your hand, why expose it to your opponent? No one ever does that. Let him guess, well and good; we can guess what trumps he holds.”
D’Artagnan conceded that what Athos said was eminently sensible.
“In that case, let us forget this unpleasant interlude. Come, Aramis, read us the letter from your cousin. I must say I have forgotten how it ran, what with all these interruptions.”
Aramis pulled the letter from his pocket, his friends drew together around him, the three lackeys took their stand around the demijohn as though the Cardinal had never appeared.
“You had only read a line or two,” said D’Artagnan. “Start again from the beginning.”
“With pleasure,” said Aramis. “Here you are:
My dear Cousin:
I think I shall decide to leave for Stenay where my sister has entered our little maid in the Carmelite convent. The poor child is quite resigned to this as she knows she cannot live elsewhere without endangering her hopes of sanctity and salvation.
If our family affairs permit, as we hope, I believe she will ultimately return to those she longs for, even though she run the risk of being damned for it. I say this because I know how she realizes that they think of her constantly.