The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [252]
“Eh, gentlemen politicians!” the cardinal picked up, frowning in his turn. “One might find the secret of many an unknown thing in your brains, if one could read them as you were reading that letter you hid when you saw me coming.”
The color rose to Athos’s face. He took a step towards His Eminence.
“One would think that you really suspect us, Monseigneur, and that we are undergoing a genuine interrogation. If that is so, let Your Eminence deign to explain himself, and we will at least know what we have to deal with.”
“And if it comes to interrogation,” replied the cardinal, “others than you have undergone it, M. Athos, and have known how to answer.”
“And so, Monseigneur, I have said to Your Eminence that he has only to ask, and we are ready to answer.”
“What was that letter you were about to read, M. Aramis, and that you have hidden?”
“A woman’s letter, Monseigneur.”
“Oh, I conceive you!” said the cardinal. “One must be discreet with those sorts of letters; and yet one can show them to a confessor, and, you know, I have received holy orders.”
“Monseigneur,” said Athos, with a calm all the more terrible in that he was risking his head in making this reply, “the letter is from a woman, but it is signed neither Marion de Lorme nor Mme d’Aiguillon.”180
The cardinal turned as pale as death, a wild gleam came from his eyes; he turned as if to give an order to Cahusac and La Houdinière. Athos saw the movement. He took a step towards the muskets, on which the three friends had their eyes fixed like men ill disposed to let themselves be arrested. There were three in the cardinal’s party; the musketeers, including their lackeys, were seven. The cardinal judged that the game would be that much less equal if Athos and his friends really were conspirators; and by one of those quick turnabouts that he always kept at his disposal, all his anger melted into a smile.
“Come, come!” he said. “You are brave young men, proud in the sunlight, faithful in the darkness. There’s no harm in keeping a watch on oneself, when one watches so well over others. Gentlemen, I have not forgotten the night when you served as my escort on the way to the Red Dovecote. If there were any danger to be feared on the road I am about to take, I would beg you to accompany me. But as there is not, stay where you are, finish your bottles, your game, and your letter. Good-bye, gentlemen.”
And, getting back on his horse, which Cahusac had brought for him, he saluted them with his hand and rode off.
The four young men, standing motionless, followed him with their eyes without saying a word until he disappeared.
Then they looked at each other.
They all had dismayed faces, for, despite His Eminence’s friendly good-bye, they understood that the cardinal went away with rage in his heart.
Athos alone smiled a strong and scornful smile. When the cardinal was out of hearing and out of sight, Porthos, who had a great desire to unload his bad humor on someone, said:
“Grimaud here cried out rather late!”
Grimaud was about to excuse himself in reply. Athos raised a finger, and he kept silent.
“Would you have surrendered the letter, Aramis?” asked d’Artagnan.
“I?” said Aramis, in his most flutelike voice. “I had made up my mind: if he had demanded that the letter be given to him, I would have handed it to him with one hand, and with the other I would have run him through with my sword.”
“I anticipated just that,” said Athos, “which is why I threw myself between the two of you. In truth, the man is rather imprudent to speak to other men like that. You’d think he only ever had to do with women and children.”
“My dear Athos,” said d’Artagnan, “I admire you, but all the same we were in the wrong, after all.”
“How, in the wrong!” replied Athos. “Whose, then, is this air we breathe? Whose is this ocean we look out across? Whose is this sand we were lying on? Whose is this letter from your mistress? Are they all the cardinal’s? On my