The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [161]
“M. Porthos,” said the procureuse, “would you kindly offer me your arm for five minutes? I should like to speak with you.”
“How now, Madame?” said Porthos, winking to himself like a gambler laughing at the dupe he is about to trick.
At that moment, d’Artagnan passed by, following Milady. He threw Porthos a sidelong glance and caught that triumphant look.
“Aha!” he said to himself, reasoning according to the strangely easy morality of that gallant epoch, “there’s one who may well be outfitted in time.”
Porthos, yielding to the pressure of his procureuse’s arm as a boat yields to the tiller, arrived at the cloister of Saint-Magloire,130 a little frequented passage closed at both ends by turnstiles. There was no one to be seen there during the day but beggars eating and children playing.
“Ah, M. Porthos!” cried the procureuse, when she was sure that no one who was a stranger to the usual population of the place could see or hear them. “Ah, M. Porthos, you are a great conqueror, it would seem!”
“I, Madame?” said Porthos, puffing out his chest. “And why so?”
“And all those signs just now, and the holy water? But she’s a princess at the very least, this lady, with her little black boy and her chambermaid!”
“You are mistaken. My God, no,” replied Porthos, “she’s quite simply a duchess.”
“And that footman waiting at the door, and that carriage with a coachman in grand livery waiting on his seat?”
Porthos had seen neither the footman nor the carriage, but Mme Coquenard, with her jealous woman’s eye, had seen everything.
Porthos regretted that he had not made the woman with the red cushion a princess right from the start.
“Ah, you’re the spoiled child of all the beauties, M. Porthos!” the procureuse went on with a sigh.
“But,” replied Porthos, “you understand that, with a physique like that with which nature has endowed me, I can’t help being a success with the ladies.”
“My God, how quickly men forget!” cried the procureuse, raising her eyes to heaven.
“Less quickly than women, it seems to me,” replied Porthos. “For in the end, Madame, I may say that I was your victim, when I lay bleeding, dying, and saw myself given up by the surgeons. I, the scion of an illustrious family, who had trusted in your friendship, nearly died of my wounds first and of hunger afterwards, in a wretched inn in Chantilly, and that without your deigning to reply to a single one of the ardent letters I wrote to you.”
“But, M. Porthos…” murmured the procureuse, who felt that, judging by the conduct of the grand ladies of that time, she had been in the wrong.
“I, who had sacrificed the countess of Penaflor for you…”
“I know that very well…”
“The baroness of…”
“M. Porthos, do not crush me!”
“The duchess of…”
“M. Porthos, be generous!”
“You’re right, Madame, I shall not finish the list.”
“But it was my husband who would hear no talk of lending money.”
“Mme Coquenard,” said Porthos, “remember the first letter you wrote to me, which I have kept engraved in my memory.”
The procureuse let out a groan.
“But it’s also,” she said, “that the sum you were asking to borrow was a bit too large.”
“Mme Coquenard, I gave you the preference. I had only to write to the duchess of…I do not wish to speak her name, for it has never been my way to compromise a woman; but what I do know is that I had only to write to her and she would have sent me fifteen hundred.”
The procureuse shed a tear.
“M. Porthos,” she said, “I swear to you that you have punished me greatly, and that if in the future you find yourself in such a pass again, you will have only to turn to me.”
“Fie upon it, Madame!” said Porthos, as if revolted. “Let us not speak of money, if you please, it is humiliating.”
“So you don’t love me anymore?” the procureuse said slowly and sadly.
Porthos kept a majestic silence.
“Is that how you answer me? Alas, I understand!”
“Consider your offense to me, Madame: it remains