The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [51]
D’Artagnan thus found himself rather humiliated to have only a meal and a half, for the breakfast with the priest could count as only half a meal, to offer his companions in exchange for the feasts procured by Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. He felt himself a burden to the society, forgetting in his quite youthful good faith that he had fed that society for a month, and his worried mind began working actively. He reflected that this coalition of four brave, enterprising, and active young men should have some other end than swaggering promenades, fencing lessons, and more or less witty gibes.
Indeed, four men like them, four men devoted to each other from their money to their lives, four men always supporting each other, never retreating, performing singly or together the resolutions they had made in common; four arms threatening the four points of the compass or all turning to a single point, must inevitably, be it surreptitiously, be it openly, be it by mines, by entrenchments, by guile, or by force, open a way to the end they wanted to reach, however well defended or far off it might be. The only thing that surprised d’Artagnan was that his companions had never thought of it.
He was thinking of it, and even seriously, racking his brain to find a direction for this single force multiplied four times, with which he had no doubt that, as with the lever sought by Archimedes,47 they would be able to lift the world—when someone knocked softly on his door. D’Artagnan woke Planchet and ordered him to go and open it.
This phrase—d’Artagnan woke Planchet—should not lead the reader to conclude that it was night or that day had not yet come. No, it had just struck four! Two hours earlier, Planchet had come to ask his master for dinner, and in reply had received the proverb: “He who sleeps, eats.” And so Planchet ate by sleeping.
A man was ushered in, of rather simple bearing and with the air of a bourgeois.
Planchet would have liked to listen to the conversation for dessert, but the bourgeois declared to d’Artagnan that, as what he had to tell him was important and confidential, he wished to be alone with him.
D’Artagnan dismissed Planchet and invited his visitor to sit down.
There was a moment of silence during which the two men looked at each other as if to make a preliminary acquaintance, after which d’Artagnan nodded as a sign that he was listening.
“I have heard M. d’Artagnan spoken of as a brave young man,” said the bourgeois, “and that reputation which he justly enjoys made me decide to entrust him with a secret.”
“Speak, Monsieur, speak,” said d’Artagnan, who instinctively scented something advantageous.
The bourgeois paused again and then went on:
“My wife is a seamstress to the queen, Monsieur, and is lacking neither in wisdom nor in beauty. It will soon be three years since she was married to me, though she had only a little fortune, because M. de La Porte,48 the queen’s cloak bearer, is her godfather and protector…”
“Well, then, Monsieur?” asked d’Artagnan.
“Well, then,” the bourgeois picked up, “well, then, Monsieur, my wife was abducted yesterday morning as she was coming out of her workroom.”
“And by whom was your wife abducted?”
“I know nothing for certain, Monsieur, but there is someone I suspect.”
“And who is this person you suspect?”
“A man who has been pursuing her for a long time.”
“Devil take it!”
“But let me tell you, Monsieur,” the bourgeois went on, “I myself am convinced that there is less love than politics in all this.”
“Less love than politics,” d’Artagnan picked up with a very thoughtful air, “and what do you suspect?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you what I suspect…”
“Monsieur, I will point out to you that I am demanding absolutely nothing from you. It is you who have come to me. It is you who have told me that you have a secret to entrust