The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [294]
On the evening of September twenty-fifth, they entered Arras. D’Artagnan had just alighted before the inn called the Herse d’Or, At the Sign of the Golden Harrow, and was slaking his thirst, when a horseman, emerging from the posting yard where he had just changed horses, galloped off toward Paris. As he was passing through the gateway into the street, a gust of wind blew open the cloak in which he was muffled and unsettled his hat. Hastily the stranger caught it and crammed it down over his eyes. D’Artagnan, who had recognized him, turned deathly pale and let his glass clatter to the pavement.
“What is the matter, Monsieur?” Planchet inquired. “Help, gentlemen,” he called to the others. “Please come here, my master is ill!”
The three friends rushed to D’artagnan’s assistance, but far from being ill he waved them away and sprang for his horse. They stood fast and held him at the door.
“What the devil are you up to now?” Athos demanded.
“Where on earth are you going?” Aramis asked.
“The fellow is mad!” Porthos commented.
Trembling with anger, white as a sheet, a cold sweat pouring in beads over his forehead:
“That’s the man!” D’Artagnan cried, “my enemy! Let me catch up with him!”
“What man?” Athos inquired; and Aramis: “Please explain what all this is about?”
“That man who just rode by—”
“What about him?”
“He is my evil genius, the curse upon my life, the bane of my existence. Always I have met him when threatened with some terrible misfortune. He was with that horrible woman when I met her for the first time . . . I was after him when I offended Athos . . . I saw him the very morning of the day when Madame Bonacieux was carried off . . . and now I see him again. . . . I recognized him clearly when the wind blew his cloak open.”
“Devil take it,” Athos murmured, lost in thought.
“To horse, gentlemen, to horse; let us pursue and overtake him.”
Aramis offered sager advice.
“My dear fellow,” he remarked, “remember that he is going in an opposite direction from ours . . . that he has a fresh horse and ours are tired . . . that we would only disable ours to no effect . . . and that you should let the man go and save the woman. . . .”
Suddenly a stable boy came running out of the posting yard in search of the stranger.
“Ho, Monsieur, ho!” he called, “here is a paper that fell out of your hat!” And he looked vainly about him.
“My friend,” said D’Artagnan, “a half-pistole for that paper.”
“With pleasure, Monsieur, here it is.”
Enchanted with his financial coup, the stable boy returned to the yard, bowing.
“Well?”—“What is it?”—“Read it?” asked the friends.
“Nothing. Just one word!”
“Yes, but that word is the name of some town or village,” Aramis pointed out.
“Armentières,” Porthos read, “Armentières! I never heard of it.”
“The name of that town or village is in her handwriting,” Athos reported.
“Come, let us preserve this piece of paper carefully,” D’Artagnan suggested. “Perhaps I have not wasted my last pistole. To horse, my friends, to horse!”
And they galloped off toward Béthune.
LXI
OF WHAT OCCURRED AT THE CONVENT OF THE
CARMELITE NUNS IN BETHUNE
Great criminals bear a kind of predestination which enables them to overcome all obstacles and to escape all perils until a wearied Providence sets up a pitfall to mark the end of their impious fortunes.
So it was with Milady. She had the good luck to sail blithely through the fleets of two enemy nations without mishap until Fate was presently to catch up with her.
Landing at Portsmouth, Milady was an Englishwoman driven from La Rochelle by the persecutions of the French; landing at Boulogne after a two days’ crossing, she was a Frenchwoman driven from Portsmouth by the persecution of the English.
Milady also possessed the most efficient of passports: her beauty, her noble manner and the generosity with which she distributed her pistoles. Freed from the usual formalities by the affable smile and gallant manners of the aged Governor of the Port, who kissed her hand and conducted her unexamined