The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [175]
D’Artagnan glanced around him. The little room was charming in its taste and cleanliness; but, despite himself, his eyes fastened on the door that Kitty had said led to Milady’s bedroom.
Kitty guessed what was going on in the young man’s soul and heaved a sigh.
“So you really love my mistress, Monsieur le chevalier?” she said.
“Oh, more than I can say! I’m mad about her!”
Kitty heaved a second sigh.
“Alas, Monsieur,” she said, “that is a real pity!”
“What the devil do you find so sad about it?” asked d’Artagnan.
“It’s just that my mistress doesn’t love you at all, Monsieur,” replied Kitty.
“Hm!” said d’Artagnan. “Did she order you to tell me that?”
“Oh, no, Monsieur! It was I who, out of concern for you, took the decision to inform you of it.”
“Thanks, my good Kitty, but for the intention alone, because the secret itself, you’ll agree, is hardly pleasant.”
“You mean to say that you don’t believe what I’ve told you, isn’t that so?”
“It’s always hard to believe such things, my lovely girl, if only out of vanity.”
“So you don’t believe me?”
“I confess that, until you deign to give me some proof of what you assert…”
“What do you say to this?”
And Kitty drew a small note from her bosom.
“For me?” asked d’Artagnan, quickly snatching the letter.
“No, for another man.”
“Another man?”
“Yes.”
“His name! His name!” cried d’Artagnan.
“Look at the address.”
“M. le comte de Wardes.”
The memory of the scene in Saint-Germain came at once to the presumptuous Gascon’s mind. With a movement quick as thought, he tore open the envelope, despite the cry that Kitty uttered on seeing what he was about to do, or rather, what he was doing.
“Oh, my God! Monsieur le chevalier,” she said, “what are you doing?”
“I? Nothing!” said d’Artagnan, and he read:
You have not replied to my first note. Are you then so unwell, or might you have forgotten what eyes you made at me during Mme de Guise’s139 ball? Here is your chance, count! Do not let it slip away.
D’Artagnan paled. It was his vanity that was wounded, but he thought it was his love.
“Poor dear M. d’Artagnan!” said Kitty, in a voice filled with compassion, and pressing the young man’s hand again.
“You feel sorry for me, kind child?” said d’Artagnan.
“Oh, yes, with all my heart! For I know what love is myself!”
“You know what love is?” said d’Artagnan, looking at her for the first time with a certain attention.
“Alas, yes!”
“Well, then, instead of feeling sorry for me, you’d do better to help me take revenge on your mistress.”
“And what sort of revenge would you like to take?”
“I’d like to conquer her, to supplant my rival.”
“I’ll never help you in that, Monsieur le chevalier,” Kitty said sharply.
“And why not?” asked d’Artagnan.
“For two reasons.”
“Which are?”
“First, that my mistress will never love you.”
“How do you know?”
“You have offended her heart.”
“I? How could I have offended her—I, who, ever since I’ve known her, have lived at her feet like a slave! Speak, I beg you!”
“I will never confess that except to the man…who can read to the bottom of my soul!”
D’Artagnan looked at Kitty for the second time. The young girl was of a freshness and beauty that many a duchess would have purchased with her coronet.
“Kitty,” he said, “I’ll read to the bottom of your soul whenever you like; don’t insist on that, my dear child.”
And he gave her a kiss that made the poor girl turn red as a cherry.
“Oh, no!” cried Kitty, “you don’t love me! It’s my mistress you love, you just told me so.”
“And does that keep you from telling me the second reason?”
“The second reason, Monsieur le chevalier,” Kitty picked up, emboldened first of all by the kiss and then by the look in the young man’s eyes, “is that in love it’s every man for himself.”
Only then did d’Artagnan remember the languishing glances Kitty gave him, the meetings in the antechamber, on the stairs, in the corridor, those brushings of the hand each time she met him, and those stifled sighs. But, absorbed by the desire to please the grand lady, he had scorned the soubrette: