The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [293]
The King traveled as fast as possible, for he was determined to reach Paris by September twenty-third. But on the road, now and then, the expedition would stop to fly the King’s falcons and hawks at magpies, larks and quails. Falconry was a favorite sport of the King’s; years ago, when Louis was still Dauphin, the Duc de Luynes had initiated him in the technique of this form of hunting and he had always retained a great predilection for it. Whenever the expedition paused for this hunting, sixteen of the twenty musketeers were jubilant, our friends alone cursing the delay roundly. D’Artagnan in particular felt a perpetual buzzing in his ears, a phenomenon Porthos readily diagnosed.
“A very great lady once told me,” he explained, “that when you experience a ringing in the auditory center, it is caused by the fact that somebody somewhere is talking about you!”
The escort finally crossed Paris on the night of the twenty-third; His Majesty thanked Monsieur de Tréville and permitted him to grant a four-day furlough to his men on condition that none thus favored should appear in a public place under penalty of immediate incarceration in the Bastille.
As may readily be imagined, the first four leaves granted went to our friends. Even better, Athos obtained six days instead of four, adding two nights as well, by prevailing upon Monsieur de Tréville to let them leave on the twenty-fourth at five o’clock in the evening and in his kindness, to postdate their orders to the morning of the twenty-fifth.
D’Artagnan, sanguine as only a Gascon and confidently making molehills of mountains, grumbled to his friends.
“I think we are making a great to do about something very simple,” he observed. “I can reach Béthune in forty-eight hours by riding three horses to the death, but that matters little for I have plenty of money. At Béthune, I merely hand the Queen’s letter to the Mother Superior and I convey my beloved Constance not to Lorraine nor to Belgium but back here to Paris. Don’t you agree that she can hide much more safely here, particularly so long as the Cardinal remains in La Rochelle? Then, when we return from the campaign, partly through the protection of her cousin, partly through what we have personally done for her, we can obtain what we wish from the Queen. I therefore suggest that you stay here, my friends, and take things easy. There is no point in tiring yourselves out needlessly. An errand as simple as this calls for only myself and Planchet to bestir ourselves.”
To which Athos countered very evenly:
“We too have plenty of money left. I have not yet drunk up all my share of the diamond; and Porthos and Aramis have not taken out all theirs in gourmandizing and gluttony. Thus we can each afford to wear out three horses apiece just as easily as you can.” His face clouded, and he resumed in a voice so gloomy that D’Artagnan shuddered: “Remember that Béthune is the town where the Cardinal has made an appointment with a woman who brings misery in her wake wherever she sets foot. If you had but to overcome four men, D’Artagnan, I would cheerfully allow you to go alone. But you have to face that woman. So the four of us shall go together and, with our four lackeys, pray God we shall prove numerous enough.”
“You terrify me, Athos. What in God’s name do you fear?”
“I fear the worst,” Athos replied. “To horse, then, gentlemen!”
As they rode out silently, D’Artagnan glanced at his comrades frequently; like Athos, the two others betrayed signs of deep anxiety.