The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [287]
He paled, brought his hand to his heart, which was breaking, and understood the whole betrayal.
“One last favor, Milord!” he said to the baron.
“Well?” the latter asked.
“What time is it?”
The baron took out his watch.
“Ten minutes to nine,” he said.
Milady had moved up the time of her departure by an hour and a half. Once she had heard the cannon shot that announced the fatal event, she had given the order to raise anchor.
The boat was sailing under a blue sky far away from the coast.
“It was God’s will,” said Felton, with a fanatic’s resignation, and yet without being able to tear his eyes from that ship, on board which he undoubtedly believed he could make out the white phantom of her to whom his life had been sacrificed.
De Winter followed his gaze, wondered at his suffering, and guessed everything.
“Be punished alone first of all, wretch,” Lord de Winter said to Felton, who let himself be dragged away with his eyes still turned to the sea. “But I swear to you by the memory of my brother, whom I loved so much, that your accomplice will not get away.”
Felton lowered his head without uttering a single syllable.
As for de Winter, he quickly went down the stairs and made his way to the port.
LX
IN FRANCE
The first fear of the king of England, Charles I, on learning of this death, was that such terrible news might discourage the Rochelois. He tried, says Richelieu in his memoirs,194 to keep it from them for as long as possible, closing the ports throughout the kingdom, and being very careful that no vessel should leave until Buckingham’s army was ready to depart, taking it upon himself, for want of Buckingham, to oversee the departure.
He even pushed the strictness of this order so far as to detain in England the ambassador of Denmark, who had taken leave, and the ambassador ordinary of Holland, who was to bring back to the port of Flushing the ships from the Indies that Charles I had restored to the United Provinces.195
But as he had not thought of giving this order until five hours after the event, that is to say, at two o’clock in the afternoon, two ships had already left port: one, as we know, carrying Milady, who, already suspecting what had happened, was confirmed in that belief on seeing the black flag unfurl from the mast of the admiral’s ship.
As for the second ship, we will say later whom it bore and how it left.
During this time, moreover, all was quiet in the La Rochelle camp. Only the king, who was terribly bored, as always, but perhaps still a bit more in camp than elsewhere, decided to go incognito to spend the feast of Saint Louis196 at Saint-Germain, and asked the cardinal to prepare him an escort of only twenty musketeers. The cardinal, who was sometimes infected by the king’s boredom, was very pleased to grant this leave to his royal lieutenant, who promised to come back around the fifteenth of September.
M. de Tréville, informed by His Eminence, packed his bags, and as he knew, though without knowing the cause of it, the intense desire and even imperious need his friends had to return to Paris, it goes without saying that he picked them as part of the escort.
The four young men learned the news a quarter of an hour after M. de Tréville, for they were the first to whom he communicated it. It was then that d’Artagnan appreciated the favor the cardinal had granted him in finally moving him to the musketeers. Without that circumstance, he would have been forced to remain in camp when his companions left.
It will be seen later that the cause of this impatience to return to Paris was the danger Mme Bonacieux would be running if she met with Milady, her mortal enemy, in the convent of Béthune. And so, as we have said, Aramis had written immediately to Marie Michon, the seamstress of Tours who had such fine acquaintances, so that she might get the queen to give her authorization for Mme Bonacieux to leave the convent and retire either to Lorraine or to Belgium. The reply was