The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [95]
The two spouses, as they had not seen each other for eight days, and during that week serious events had occurred on both sides, came together then with a certain uneasiness. Nonetheless, M. Bonacieux showed real joy and went to his wife with open arms.
Mme Bonacieux offered him her brow.
“Let’s talk a little,” she said.
“What’s that?” said Bonacieux, surprised.
“Yes, to be sure, I have something of the highest importance to tell you.”
“By the way, I also have several rather serious questions to ask you. Give me some explanation of your abduction, I beg you.”
“That’s hardly the point right now,” said Mme Bonacieux.
“And what is the point, then? My imprisonment?”
“I learned of it the same day. But as you were incapable of any crime, as you were not an accomplice in any intrigue, as you knew nothing, finally, that could compromise either you or anyone else, I attached no more importance to that event than it deserved.”
“That’s easy enough for you to say, Madame!” Bonacieux picked up, offended by the slight interest he wife showed in him. “Do you know I was plunged for a day and a night into a cell of the Bastille?”
“A day and a night are soon past. Let’s drop your imprisonment and come back to what has brought me here to you.”
“How’s that? What has brought you here to me? So it’s not the wish to see again a husband from whom you have been separated for eight days?” asked the mercer, stung to the quick.
“That first, and then something else.”
“Speak!”
“Something of the highest interest and on which our future fortunes may depend.”
“Our fortunes have changed countenance greatly since I last saw you, Mme Bonacieux, and I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few months they didn’t become the envy of many folk.”
“Yes, above all if you will follow the instructions I’m about to give you.”
“Give me?”
“Yes, you. There is a good and holy action to be performed, Monsieur, and a lot of money to be made at the same time.”
Mme Bonacieux knew that in mentioning money to her husband, she was taking him by his weak side.
But a man, though he be a mercer, who has once talked for ten minutes with Cardinal Richelieu, is no longer the same man.
“A lot of money to be made!” said Bonacieux, spreading his lips.
“Yes, a lot.”
“How much, approximately?”
“Maybe a thousand pistoles.”
“So what you’re going to ask of me is something really serious?”
“Yes.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You’ll leave at once, I will give you a paper which you will not let go of under any pretext, and you will deliver it into the proper hands.”
“And where will I leave for?”
“For London.”
“I, for London? Come now, you’re joking, I have no business in London.”
“But others need you to go there.”
“Who are these others? I warn you, I will no longer act blindly, and I want to know not only to what I’m exposing myself, but also for whom I’m exposing myself.”
“An illustrious person is sending you, an illustrious person awaits you: the reward will exceed your desires, that is all I can promise you.”
“More intrigues, always more intrigues! Thank you, but I guard against them now, and M. le cardinal has enlightened me on the subject.”
“The cardinal?” cried Mme Bonacieux. “You’ve seen the cardinal?”
“He sent for me,” the mercer replied proudly.
“And you went there on his invitation, imprudent as you are!”
“I must say that I had no choice whether to go there or not, because I was between two guards. It is also true to say that, as I didn’t know His Eminence then, I would have been quite delighted if I