The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [170]
D’Artagnan went back to Milady’s the next day and the day after that, and each time Milady gave him a more gracious welcome.
Each time, too, either in the antechamber, in the corridor, or on the stairs, he ran into the pretty soubrette.
But, as we have said, d’Artagnan paid no attention to poor Kitty’s persistence.
XXXII
A PROCUREUR’S DINNER
Meanwhile, the duel in which Porthos had played so brilliant a role had not made him forget the dinner to which the procureur’s wife had invited him. The next day, towards one o’clock, he had Mousqueton give him a last brushing off and made his way to the rue aux Ours, with the stride of a man who is in double good fortune.
His heart was throbbing, but not, like d’Artagnan’s, with young and impatient love. No, a more material interest whipped up his blood; he was finally going to cross that mysterious threshold and climb that unknown stairway which the old écus of Master Coquenard had gone up one by one.
He was going to see in reality a certain chest that he had seen the image of twenty times in his dreams; a chest long and deep in form, padlocked, bolted, fixed to the floor; a chest he had heard spoken of so often, and which the hands of the procureuse—slightly dry, true, but not without elegance—were going to open to his admiring gaze.
And then he, a man wandering over the earth, a man without fortune, a man without family, a soldier accustomed to inns, taverns, posadas, a gourmet forced most of the time to content himself with chance mouthfuls, was going to sample family meals, savor a comfortable interior, and give himself up to those little attentions that are the more pleasant the tougher one is, as old soldiers say.
To come in the quality of a cousin and sit every day at a good table, smooth the old procureur’s yellow and wrinkled brow, fleece the young clerks a bit by teaching them the finer points of basset, passe-dix, and lansquenet,134 and winning their month’s savings from them by way of an honorarium for the lesson he would give them in an hour—all this smiled enormously upon Porthos.
The musketeer recalled now and then the bad reports on procureurs that were already current at that time and have long outlived it: stinginess, cheese paring, fasting—but since, after all, except for a few fits of economy, which Porthos had always found untimely, he had seen the procureuse be rather liberal (for a procureuse, that is), he hoped to find a household set up on a satisfactory footing.
At the door, however, the musketeer had a few doubts. The access was hardly meant to be enticing: a dark and stinking alley; a stairway poorly lit by a barred window, through which the gray light of the neighboring courtyard filtered; on the second floor, a low door studded with huge nails like the main door of the Grand Châtelet.135
Porthos rapped with his knuckle. A tall clerk, pale and buried under a forest of virgin hair, came to open the door, and bowed with the air of a man forced to respect simultaneously in another the great size, indicative of strength, the military uniform, indicative of condition, and the bright red face, indicative of a habit of living well.
Another smaller clerk behind the first, another bigger clerk behind the second, a twelve-year-old errand boy behind the third.
Three and a half clerks in all, which, at that time, spoke for a well-patronized office.
Though the musketeer was only due to arrive at one o’clock, the procureuse had been on the lookout since noon, and was reckoning on the heart, and perhaps also the stomach, of her adorer to bring him there ahead of time.
Mme Coquenard thus came to the door of her private apartment almost at the same time that her guest came to the door from the stairs, and the worthy lady’s appearance got him out of a great quandary.