The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [14]
“What! Monsieur is leaving us already?”
“You know very well I am, since I gave you orders to saddle my horse. Have they not been obeyed?”
“They have, and as Your Excellency may have seen, his horse is under the main gate, all fitted out for departure.”
“That’s good, now do as I just told you.”
“Hah!” the host said to himself, “can he be afraid of the little lad?”
But an imperative glance from the unknown man brought him up short. He bowed humbly and left.
“The scamp mustn’t catch sight of Milady,”* the stranger went on. “She ought to be passing soon; she’s even already late. It will decidedly be better if I get on my horse and go to meet her…If only I knew what’s in that letter to Tréville!”
And the unknown man, muttering all the while, made his way to the kitchen.
During this time the host, who had no doubt that it was the young man’s presence that drove the unknown man from his inn, had gone back up to his wife’s room and found d’Artagnan finally master of his wits. Therefore, making him understand that the police might give him a bad time for having sought a quarrel with a great lord—for, in the host’s opinion, the unknown man could only be a great lord—he persuaded him, despite his weakness, to get up and continue on his way. D’Artagnan, half-dazed, without his doublet, and his head all swathed in linen, got up then and, propelled by the host, began going downstairs; but, arriving in the kitchen, the first thing he saw was his provoker, calmly chatting away on the footboard of a heavy carriage harnessed to two big Normandy horses.
His interlocutrice, whose head appeared framed by the carriage door, was a woman of twenty or twenty-two. We have already said with what rapidity of investigation d’Artagnan could take in a whole physiognomy; he thus saw at first glance that the woman was young and beautiful. Now, this beauty struck him all the more in that it was perfectly foreign to the southern lands which d’Artagnan had inhabited up to then. This was a pale and blond person, with long curly hair falling on her shoulders, with large, languishing blue eyes, with rosy lips and hands of alabaster. She was having a very lively chat with the unknown man.
“And so, His Eminence orders me…” said the lady.
“To return to England this very instant, and to inform him right away if the duke7 leaves London.”
“And as for my other instructions?” asked the beautiful traveler.
“They’re contained in this box, which you are to open only on the other side of the Channel.”
“Very good. And you, what are you doing?”
“Me? I’m returning to Paris.”
“Without punishing that insolent little boy?” asked the lady.
The unknown man was about to respond, but the moment he opened his mouth, d’Artagnan, who had heard everything, came leaping out of the doorway.
“It’s that insolent little boy who punishes others,” he cried, “and I hope that this time the one he must punish will not escape him as he did the first time.”
“Will not escape him?” the unknown man picked up, frowning.
“No, before a woman I presume you won’t dare to run away.”
“Consider,” cried Milady, seeing the gentleman reaching for his sword, “consider that the least delay may ruin everything.”
“You’re right,” cried the gentleman. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”
And nodding to the lady in farewell, he leaped onto his horse, while the coachman vigorously whipped up his team. The two interlocutors thus set out at a gallop, moving off along opposite sides of the road.
“Hey, your expenses!” shouted the host, whose affection for his traveler had changed to a deep contempt, seeing him go off without settling his accounts.
“Pay the rascal,” the traveler, still galloping, cried to his lackey, who threw two or three silver pieces at the host’s feet and went galloping after his master.
“Ah, you coward! ah, you wretch! ah, you bogus gentleman!” cried d’Artagnan, rushing in turn after the lackey.
But the wounded man was still too weak to withstand such a shock.