The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [59]
“Twenty-five past nine!” cried Monsieur de Tréville, looking at his clock. “But that’s impossible.”
“Clocks don’t lie, Monsieur.”
“That’s true. But I would have thought it was much later. Well, tell me what I can do for you?”
D’Artagnan proceeded to spin Monsieur de Tréville a long yarn about the Queen. He voiced the fears he entertained with respect to Her Majesty; he repeated what he had heard about the Cardinal’s plans with regard to Buckingham, carrying the whole thing off with such calm and such candor that Monsieur de Tréville was duped the more easily because he had himself noticed some fresh trouble brewing between Cardinal, King and Queen.
As Monsieur de Tréville’s clock struck ten D’Artagnan took his leave. Thanking him for the information he had brought, the Captain of Musketeers urged him always to keep the service of King and Queen at heart. At the foot of the staircase, D’Artagnan suddenly remembered that he had forgotten his cane. He therefore ran upstairs again, returned to Monsieur de Tréville’s office, and, with a turn of the finger, set the clock right again so that on the morrow no one would know it had been tampered with. Then, certain that he had secured a witness to prove his alibi, he sauntered downstairs and found himself in the street.
XI
IN WHICH THE PLOT THICKENS
Having paid his visit to Monsieur de Tréville, D’Artagnan, deep in thought, took the longest possible way homeward. And of what was he meditating as he strayed from his path, gazed at the stars, and found himself now sighing, now smiling?
He was thinking of Madame Bonacieux. To an apprentice musketeer, she represented virtually the ideal of love. Pretty, mysterious, privy to almost all the secrets of the Court, her delicate features reflecting such charming gravity, she might be supposed not entirely indifferent to him. So fond a hope acts like an irresistible magnet to novices in love. Moreover D’Artagnan had delivered her out of the hands of the demons who had sought to violate her privacy and do her bodily harm. Did not this important service establish a bond of gratitude which might well assume a more tender character?
How swiftly our dreams soar on the wings of imagination! Already D’Artagnan saw himself being accosted by a messenger from the young woman and receiving from his hands a note appointing a meeting or a gold chain or a diamond even. As we have seen, young cavaliers accepted presents from their King without shame; and in that period of easy morals, they were no more delicate with regard to their mistresses. Invariably the ladies left them some valuable and lasting token of their affection, as though they were attempting to conquer the fragility of masculine sentiments by the solidity of feminine gifts.
Men unblushingly made their way in the world thanks to the largesse of women. Those women whose sole assets consisted in their beauty made a glad gift of that, whence doubtless the proverb: “La plus belle fille du monde ne peut donner que ce qu’elle a, The fairest maid in the world can give no more than what she has!” But those who were rich gave a part of their money as well, and many a hero of that gallant period would neither have won his spurs in the first place nor his battles afterward were it not for the purse his mistress fastened to his saddle-bow.
D’Artagnan possessed nothing. The bashfulness of your provincial—that slight patina, that ephemeral blossom, that down on a peach—soon evaporated before the blasts of scarcely orthodox advice the three musketeers offered their friend. D’Artagnan, following the strange customs of the times, considered himself fighting the campaign of Paris, just as though he were on active service on the battlefield. On the Flanders front, the Spaniard; on the Paris front, woman—in either place an enemy to contend with and contributions to be levied!
In all justice to D’Artagnan it must be added that at this moment he was moved by nobler and more generous sentiments. When the haberdasher confessed to being a wealthy man, D’Artagnan concluded that, Bonacieux being