The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [54]
Porthos had seen nothing in it all but an amorous rendezvous granted by a lady to a cavalier or by a cavalier to a lady, and which had been disturbed by the presence of d’Artagnan and his yellow horse.
Aramis had said that, such things being mysterious, it was better not to go into them.
They understood, then, from the few words d’Artagnan let drop, what the matter was, and as they thought that, after overtaking his man or losing sight of him, d’Artagnan would in any case come back home, they continued on their way.
When they came into d’Artagnan’s room, the room was empty: the landlord, fearing the consequences of the encounter that was undoubtedly about to take place between the young guard and the unknown man, had, in consequence of the display of character he himself had just made, judged it prudent to decamp.
IX
D’ARTAGNAN SHOWS HIMSELF
As Athos and Porthos had foreseen, d’Artagnan came back in half an hour. This time, too, he had missed his man, who had disappeared as if by magic. D’Artagnan had run, sword in hand, through all the surrounding streets, but had found nothing resembling the man he was looking for; then he had finally come back to what he perhaps should have started with, which was to knock on the door against which the unknown man had been leaning. He had rapped with the knocker ten or twelve times, but in vain; no one had answered, and the neighbors, who, attracted by the noise, had come running to their doorways or stuck their noses out the window, had assured him that the house, in which, moreover, all the openings were closed up, had been uninhabited for six months.
While d’Artagnan was running through the streets and knocking at doors, Aramis had joined his two companions, so that when he came home, d’Artagnan found the reunion at full strength.
“Well, then?” the three musketeers said at once, on seeing d’Artagnan come in, sweat on his brow and his face distorted with wrath.
“Well, then,” he cried, throwing his sword on the bed, “the man must be the devil himself! He disappeared like a phantom, a shade, a ghost.”
“Do you believe in apparitions?” Athos asked Porthos.
“Me? I only believe what I’ve seen, and since I’ve never seen any apparitions, I don’t believe in them.”
“The Bible,” said Aramis, “makes it a law for us to believe in them: the shade of Samuel appeared to Saul,50 and that is an article of faith I would be sorry to see put in doubt, Porthos.”
“In any case, man or devil, body or shade, illusion or reality, that man was born for my damnation, for his escape has cost us a splendid business, gentlemen, a business in which there were a hundred pistoles to be gained and maybe more.”
“How’s that?” Porthos and Aramis said at once.
As for Athos, faithful to his system of silence, he contented himself with questioning d’Artagnan with a look.
“Planchet,” d’Artagnan said to his servant, who just then stuck his head through the half-open door to try to catch some shreds of the conversation, “go downstairs to the landlord, M. Bonacieux, and tell him to send us a half dozen bottles of Beaugency—it’s my favorite wine.”
“Ah, well, so you have open credit with your landlord?” asked Porthos.
“Yes,” replied d’Artagnan, “starting from today, and don’t worry, if his wine is bad, we’ll send him out for better.”
“One must use, not abuse,” Aramis said sententiously.
“I’ve always said that d’Artagnan had the best head of the four of us,” said Athos, who, after coming out with this opinion, to which d’Artagnan responded with a bow, relapsed at once into his customary silence.
“But, look here, what’s he got finally?” asked Porthos.
“Yes,” said Aramis, “confide it to us, my dear friend, unless the honor of some lady happens to be involved in the confidence, in which case you’d do better to keep it to yourself.”
“Don’t worry,” replied d’Artagnan, “nobody’s honor will find fault with what I have to tell you.”
And then he told his friends,