The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [16]
“Did that letter contain anything valuable?” the host asked, after some useless investigations.
“Sandis! I should say so!” cried the Gascon, who was counting on the letter to make his way at court. “It contained my fortune.”
“Savings bonds?” asked the worried host.
“Bonds on His Majesty’s private treasury,” replied d’Artagnan, who, counting on entering into the king’s service thanks to this introduction, believed he could make that somewhat rash reply without lying.
“Devil take it!” said the utterly desperate host.
“But never mind,” d’Artagnan went on with his national aplomb, “never mind, the money’s nothing—that letter was everything. I’d rather have lost a thousand pistoles than that letter.”
He would have risked nothing more if he had said twenty thousand, but a certain youthful modesty held him back.
A ray of light suddenly struck the mind of the host, who was sending himself to the devil for not finding anything.
“The letter isn’t lost,” he cried.
“Ah!” said d’Artagnan.
“No, it was taken from you.”
“Taken? But by whom?”
“By yesterday’s gentleman. He went down to the kitchen, where your doublet was. He was alone there. I’ll bet it was he who stole it.”
“You think so?” replied d’Artagnan, little convinced; for he knew better than anyone the entirely personal import of the letter, and saw nothing in it that could tempt greed. The fact is that none of the servants, none of the travelers present could have gained anything by the possession of that piece of paper.
“So you say,” d’Artagnan picked up, “that you suspect that impertinent gentleman?”
“I say to you that I’m sure of it,” the host went on. “When I announced to him that Your Lordship was the protégé of M. de Tréville, and that you even had a letter for that illustrious gentleman, he looked terribly worried, asked me where the letter was, and went down at once to the kitchen, where he knew he’d find your doublet.”
“Then he’s my thief,” replied d’Artagnan. “I’ll complain to M. de Tréville, and M. de Tréville will complain to the king.” And he majestically took two écus from his pocket, gave them to the host, who accompanied him to the door hat in hand, and got back on his yellow horse, which brought him without further incident to the porte Saint-Antoine in Paris, where its owner sold it for three écus—a very good price, considering that d’Artagnan had badly overtaxed it during the last stage. The horse dealer to whom d’Artagnan surrendered it for the abovementioned nine livres did not conceal from the young man that he was paying that exorbitant sum only because of the originality of its color.
D’Artagnan thus entered Paris on foot, carrying his little pack over his arm, and walked on until he found a room suited to the scantiness of his resources. This room was a sort of garret, situated on the rue des Fossoyeurs near the Luxembourg.10
Having paid down his key money, d’Artagnan took possession of his lodgings and spent the rest of the day sewing braid to his doublet and hose that his mother had removed from an almost new doublet of M. d’Artagnan Sr. and given him in secret. Then he went to the quai de la Ferraille and had his sword fitted with a new blade; then he went back to the Louvre to find out from the first musketeer he met the whereabouts of the hôtel of M. de Tréville, which was located on the rue du Vieux-Colombier, that is, just in the neighborhood of the room d’Artagnan had taken—a circumstance which to him seemed to augur well for the success of his journey.
After which, content with the way he had conducted himself at Meung, with no remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he went to bed and slept the sleep of the brave.
This sleep, still quite provincial, stayed with him till nine o’clock in the morning, at which hour he got up to go to this famous M. de Tréville, the third personage of the realm in his father’s