The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [162]
“I’ll make up for it. Come, my dear Porthos!”
“Besides, what was I asking of you, eh?” Porthos went on with a jovial shake of the shoulders. “A loan, nothing else. After all, I’m not an unreasonable man. I know you’re not rich, Mme Coquenard, and your husband is obliged to leech onto poor clients in order to drag a few poor écus from them. Oh, if you were a countess, a marquise, or a duchess, that would be something else, and you would be unpardonable.”
The procureuse was stung.
“Be it known to you, M. Porthos,” she said, “that my strongbox, though it is only a procureuse’s strongbox, is perhaps better lined than those of all your ruined fair ladies.”
“Then you have doubly offended me,” said Porthos, disengaging the procureuse’s arm from his own, “for if you are rich, Mme Coquenard, then there is no more excuse for your refusal.”
“When I say rich,” the procureuse picked up, who saw that she had let herself get too carried away, “you mustn’t take the word literally. I’m not exactly rich, but I am well off.”
“Enough, Madame,” said Porthos, “let us speak no more of that, I beg you. You have misunderstood me. All sympathy between us is extinguished.”
“Ungrateful man!”
“Ah, I advise you to lodge a complaint!” said Porthos.
“Go off, then, with your beautiful duchess. I won’t keep you any longer!”
“Ah, she’s not such a withered hag yet, I believe!”
“Look here, M. Porthos, once more, and for the last time: do you still love me?”
“Alas, Madame!” said Porthos, in the most melancholy tone he could manage, “since we’re about to embark on a campaign, a campaign in which my presentiments tell me that I shall be killed…”
“Oh, don’t say such things!” cried the procureuse, bursting into sobs.
“Something tells me so,” Porthos continued, melancholizing more and more.
“Say rather that you have a new love.”
“Not so, I tell you frankly. No new object has touched me, and I even feel here, in the bottom of my heart, something that speaks for you. But in fifteen days, as you know or as you do not know, this fatal campaign will open; I shall be frightfully busy with my outfit. Then I must journey to see my family, in the depths of Brittany, in order to obtain the sum necessary for my departure.”
Porthos detected a last struggle between love and greed.
“And,” he went on, “as the duchess whom you have just seen in church has lands close to mine, we shall make the journey together. Journeys, as you know, seem much less long when you travel as two.”
“So you have no friends in Paris, M. Porthos?” asked the procureuse.
“I thought I did,” said Porthos, taking up his melancholy air, “but I have seen very well that I was mistaken.”
“You have, M. Porthos, you have!” the procureuse picked up in a transport that surprised even herself. “Come to the house tomorrow. You are my aunt’s son, and consequently my cousin; you come from Noyon in Picardy; you have several court cases in Paris and no procureur. Will you remember all that?”
“Perfectly, Madame.”
“Come at dinnertime.”
“Very well.”
“And stand firm before my husband, who is a shrewd man for all his seventy-six years.”
“Seventy-six years! damn! a fine age!” Porthos picked up.
“You mean a great age, M. Porthos. And so the poor dear man could leave me a widow from one minute to the next,” the procureuse went on, casting a meaningful glance at Porthos. “Fortunately, according to our marriage contract, we’ve left everything to the last survivor.”
“Everything?” asked Porthos.
“Everything.”
“I see you are a woman of foresight, my dear Mme Coquenard,” said Porthos, pressing the procureuse’s hand tenderly.
“So we’re reconciled, dear M. Porthos?” she said with a simper.
“For life,” Porthos replied to the same tune.
“Good-bye, then, my traitor.”
“Good-bye, my forgetful one.”
“Till tomorrow, my angel!”
“Till tomorrow, flame of my life!”
XXX
MILADY
D’Artagnan had followed Milady without being seen by her. He saw her climb into her carriage, and heard her order her coachman to go to Saint-Germain.