The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [99]
“Oh, don’t worry,” cried d’Artagnan after a moment’s reflection, “I’ll surmount this one!”
“How?”
“I’ll go and find M. de Tréville this very evening, and charge him with asking this favor for me from his brother-inlaw, M. des Essarts.”
“Now, another thing.”
“What?” asked d’Artagnan, seeing that Mme Bonacieux hesitated to go on.
“Perhaps you have no money?”
“Perhaps isn’t the word,” d’Artagnan said, smiling.
“In that case,” Mme Bonacieux picked up, opening a wardrobe and taking from it the pouch that her husband had caressed so lovingly half an hour earlier, “take this pouch.”
“The cardinal’s?” cried d’Artagnan, bursting into laughter. As we remember, thanks to the removed floor tiles, he had not missed a single syllable of the conversation between the mercer and his wife.
“The cardinal’s,” replied Mme Bonacieux. “You see it comes in rather respectable guise.”
“Pardieu!” cried d’Artagnan, “it will be twice as amusing to save the queen with His Eminence’s money!”
“You are a kind and charming young man,” said Mme Bonacieux. “Don’t think that Her Majesty will be ungrateful.”
“Oh, I’m already richly rewarded!” cried d’Artagnan. “I love you, and you allow me to tell you so; that’s already more happiness than I dared hope for.”
“Hush!” said Mme Bonacieux, shuddering.
“What?”
“Talking in the street.”
“That’s the voice…”
“Of my husband. Yes, I recognized it!”
D’Artagnan rushed to the door and slid the bolt.
“He won’t come in before I’ve gone,” he said, “and when I’ve gone, you can open it for him.”
“But I must go, too. How can the disappearance of that money be justified if I’m here?”
“You’re right, you’ll have to leave.”
“Leave how? He’ll see us if we go out.”
“Then you’ll have to come up to my place.”
“Ah!” cried Mme Bonacieux, “you say that in a tone that frightens me!”
Mme Bonacieux uttered these words with tears in her eyes. D’Artagnan saw those tears, and, troubled, moved, he threw himself on his knees.
“In my place,” he said, “you’ll be as safe as in a temple, I give you my word for it as a gentleman.”
“Let’s go,” she said, “I trust you, my friend.”
D’Artagnan carefully slid the bolt open again, and the two of them, light as shadows, slipped through the inner door into the alley, silently climbed the stairs, and went into d’Artagnan’s room.
Once there, for greater security, the young man barricaded the door. They both went up to the window, and through a slat in the blind they saw M. Bonacieux talking with a man in a cloak.
At the sight of the man in the cloak, d’Artagnan leaped back and, half drawing his sword, rushed for the door.
It was the man from Meung.
“What are you doing?” cried Mme Bonacieux. “You’ll ruin us!”
“But I’ve sworn to kill that man!” said d’Artagnan.
“Your life has been given up for the moment and no longer belongs to you. In the name of the queen, I forbid you to throw yourself into any danger that lies outside that of the journey.”
“And don’t you order anything in your own name?”
“And in my own name,” said Mme Bonacieux with strong emotion, “and in my own name, I beg of you. But listen, I think they’re talking about me.”
D’Artagnan went up to the window and cocked his ear. M. Bonacieux had opened his door and, seeing the place empty, had gone back to the man in the cloak, whom he had left alone for a moment.
“She’s gone,” he said. “She’ll have returned to the Louvre.”
“You’re sure,” asked the stranger, “that she didn’t suspect your intentions in leaving?”
“No,” replied M. Bonacieux with self-assurance, “she’s too superficial a woman.”
“Is the cadet of the guards at home?”
“I don’t think so. As you see, his blinds are closed, and I don’t see any light coming through the slats.”
“Never mind, we must make sure.”
“How?”
“By knocking on his door.”
“I’ll ask his valet.”
“Go on.”
Bonacieux went back to his place, passed through the same door that had just given passage to the two fugitives, went up to d’Artagnan’s landing, and knocked.
No one answered. Porthos, in order to cut a grander figure, had borrowed Planchet