The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [50]
“Believe me, my dear Monsieur Bonacieux, I am truly grateful to you for your consideration. As I told you, if I can be of any service to you—”
“I take you at your word, Monsieur, and, as I was about to tell you, as sure as I am Bonacieux, I believe in you implicitly.”
“Go ahead, then; go on with what you were about to say.”
Bonacieux took a sheet of paper from his pocket and presented it to D’Artagnan.
“A letter?”
“Ay, Monsieur, I received it this morning.”
It was dusk; the room was swathed in shadows. D’Artagnan moved toward the window to read it, Bonacieux at his heels. Unfolding the paper, D’Artagnan read:
Do not look for your wife. She will be sent back to you when her services will have ceased to be of use. Do you but take one step to attempt to find her, you are irremediably lost.
“That is positive enough,” D’Artagnan remarked. “But after all it is merely a threat.”
“Ay, but a threat that terrifies me, Monsieur. I am no soldier or duelist, and I dread the Bastille.”
“Hm! I’m no keener on the Bastille than you are. Were it but a question of dueling—”
“Ah, Monsieur, you cannot imagine how much I have been counting on you in this connection.”
“Really.”
“I have seen you constantly surrounded by musketeers, men of the proudest and most resolute bearing. I recognized them immediately as belonging to Monsieur de Tréville and therefore enemies of the Cardinal. Naturally, I supposed that you and your friends would be delighted at once to do the Queen Justice and the Cardinal an ill turn.”
“Undoubtedly, we—”
“I also bethought me that in view of the three months’ rental about which I have said nothing—”
“Yes, yes, yes, you have already used that argument. I find it excellent.”
“I also thought that so long as you remain under my roof, if I were never to mention the rent again—”
“Very good! What else?”
“Well . . . to go further . . . I thought I would make bold to offer you, say, about fifty pistoles . . . if it proved necessary . . . I mean if you should happen to be short of cash at the moment, which I am certain is not the case. . . .”
“Admirable! So you are a rich man, my dear Monsieur Bonacieux.”
“I am comfortably off, Monsieur, that’s all. I have scraped together an income of something like two or three hundred thousand crowns: first in the haberdashery business—I started in small wares—but particularly in an investment I made. I ventured some funds in the most recent voyage of Jean Mocquet, the celebrated navigator. You can judge for yourself, then, Monsieur, how I—But look, look!”
“What?”
“Over there!”
“Where?”
“In the street, facing your house, on the doorsill opposite: a man wrapped in a cloak.”
Suddenly both recognized their man:
“It’s the man I told you about!” said Bonacieux.
“It’s the man I’m after!” cried D’Artagnan, springing across the room for his sword. “This time he will not escape me.”
Drawing his sword from its scabbard, he rushed out of the apartment. On the staircase he met Athos and Porthos; they separated as D’Artagnan sped between them like a dart.
“What’s up? Where are you off to? What’s the matter?”
“The man of Meung!” D’Artagnan cried as he disappeared.
He had more than once told his friends about his adventure with the sinister stranger and the apparition of the beautiful English traveler to whom his enemy had confided some important missive. The musketeers had long since formed their own opinions about the incident.
According to Athos, D’Artagnan must have lost his letter in the skirmish. From D’Artagnan’s description, the stranger must have been a gentleman; no gentleman could possibly debase himself to pilfer a letter.
According to Porthos, the imbroglio was due to love. A lady had given her cavalier a rendezvous or vice versa and D’Artagnan, yellow nag and all, had interrupted them.
According to Aramis, affairs of this kind were buried in mysteries it was better not to fathom.
Athos and Porthos understood, from D’Artagnan’s cry, what the young Gascon was about. He would either meet his man of Meung and