Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Alexandre Dumas

  During this time nothing new occurred in the camp at La Rochelle; only the king, who was bored, as always, but perhaps a little more so in camp than elsewhere, resolved to go incognito and spend the festival of St. Louis at St. Germain, and asked the cardinal to order him an escort of only twenty Musketeers. The cardinal, who sometimes became weary of the king, granted this leave of absence with great pleasure to his royal lieutenant, who promised to return about the fifteenth of September.

  M. de Tréville, being informed of this by his Eminence, packed his portmanteau; and as without knowing the cause he knew the great desire and even imperative need which his friends had of returning to Paris, it goes without saying that he fixed upon them to form part of the escort.

  The four young men heard 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 conferred upon him in making him at last enter the Musketeers—for without that circumstance he would have been forced to remain in the camp while his companions left it.

  It goes without saying that this impatience to return toward Paris had for a cause the danger which Mme. Bonacieux would run of meeting at the convent of Béthune with Milady, her mortal enemy. Aramis therefore had written immediately to Marie Michon, the seamstress at Tours who had such fine acquaintances, to obtain from the queen authority for Mme. Bonacieux to leave the convent, and to retire either into Lorraine or Belgium. They had not long to wait for an answer. Eight or ten days afterward Aramis received the following letter:

  My dear Cousin, Here is the authorization from my sister to withdraw our little servant from the convent of Béthune, the air of which you think is bad for her. My sister sends you this authorization with great pleasure, for she is very partial to the little girl, to whom she intends to be more serviceable here after.

  I salute you,

  Marie Michon

  To this letter was added an order, conceived in these terms:

  At the Louvre, August 10, 1628

  The superior of the convent of Béthune will place in the hands of the person who shall present this note to her the novice who entered the convent upon my recommendation and under my patronage.

  Anne

  It may be easily imagined how the relationship between Aramis and a seamstress who called the queen her sister amused the young men; but Aramis, after having blushed two or three times up to the whites of his eyes at the gross pleasantry of Porthos, begged his friends not to revert to the subject again, declaring that if a single word more was said to him about it, he would never again implore his cousin to interfere in such affairs.

  There was no further question, therefore, about Marie Michon among the four Musketeers, who besides had what they wanted: that was, the order to withdraw Mme. Bonacieux from the convent of the Carmelites of Béthune. It was true that this order would not be of great use to them while they were in camp at La Rochelle; that is to say, at the other end of France. Therefore D’Artagnan was going to ask leave of absence of M. de Tréville, confiding to him candidly the importance of his departure, when the news was transmitted to him as well as to his three friends that the king was about to set out for Paris with an escort of twenty Musketeers, and that they formed part of the escort.

  Their joy was great. The lackeys were sent on before with the baggage, and they set out on the morning of the sixteenth.

  The cardinal accompanied his Majesty from Surgères to Mauzes; and there the king and his minister took leave of each other with great demonstrations of friendship.

  The king, however, who sought distraction, while traveling as fast as possible—for he was anxious to be in Paris by the twenty-third-stopped from time to time to fly the magpie, a pastime for which the taste had been formerly inspired in him by De Luynes, and for which he had always preserved a great predilection. Out of the twenty Musketeers sixteen, when this took place, rejoiced greatly at this relaxation; but the other four cursed it heartily. D’Artagnan, in particular, had a perpetual buzzing in his ears, which Porthos explained thus: “A very great lady has told me that this means that somebody is talking of you somewhere.”

  At length the escort passed through Paris on the twenty-third, in the night. The king thanked M. de Tréville, and permitted him to distribute furloughs for four days, on condition that the favored parties should not appear in any public place, under penalty of the Bastille.

  The first four furloughs granted, as may be imagined, were to our four friends. Still further, Athos obtained of M. de Tréville six days instead of four, and introduced into these six days two more nights—for they set out on the twenty-fourth at five o’clock in the evening, and as a further kindness M. de Tréville post-dated the leave to the morning of the twenty-fifth.

  “Good Lord!” said D’Artagnan, who, as we have often said, never stumbled at anything. “It appears to me that we are making a great trouble of a very simple thing. In two days, and by using up two or three horses (that’s nothing; I have plenty of money), I am at Béthune. I present my letter from the queen to the superior, and I bring back the dear treasure I go to seek—not into Lorraine, not into Belgium, but to Paris, where she will be much better concealed, particularly while the cardinal is at La Rochelle. Well, once returned from the country, half by the protection of her cousin, half through what we have personally done for her, we shall obtain from the queen what we desire. Remain, then, where you are, and do not exhaust yourselves with useless fatigue. Myself and Planchet are all that such a simple expedition requires.”

  To this Athos replied quietly: “We also have money left—for I have not yet drunk all my share of the diamond, and Porthos and Aramis have not eaten all theirs. We can therefore use up four horses as well as one. But consider, D‘Artagnan,” added he, in a tone so solemn that it made the young man shudder, “consider that Béthune is a city where the cardinal has given rendezvous to a woman who, wherever she goes, brings misery with her. If you had only to deal with four men, D’Artagnan, I would allow you to go alone. You have to do with that woman! We four will go; and I hope to God that with our four lackeys we may be in sufficient number.”

  “You terrify me, Athos!” cried D’Artagnan. “My God! what do you fear?”

  “Everything!” replied Athos.

  D’Artagnan examined the countenances of his companions, which, like that of Athos, wore an impression of deep anxiety; and they continued their route as fast as their horses could carry them, but without adding another word.

  On the evening of the twenty-fifth, as they were entering Arras, and as D’Artagnan was dismounting at the inn of the Golden Harrow to drink a glass of wine, a horseman came out of the post yard, where he had just had a relay, started off at a gallop, and with a fresh horse took the road to Paris. At the moment he passed through the gateway into the street, the wind blew open the cloak in which he was wrapped, although it was in the month of August, and lifted his hat, which the traveler seized with his hand the moment it had left his head, pulling it eagerly over his eyes.

  D’Artagnan, who had his eyes fixed upon this man, became very pale, and let his glass fall.

  “What is the matter, monsieur?” said Planchet. “Oh, come, gentlemen, my master is ill!”

  The three friends hastened toward D’Artagnan, who, instead of being ill, ran toward his horse. They stopped him at the door.

  “Well, where the devil are you going now?” cried Athos.

  “It is he!” cried D’Artagnan, pale with anger, and with the sweat on his brow, “it is he! let me overtake him!”

  “He? What he?” asked Athos.

  “He, that man!”

  “What man?”

  “That cursed man, my evil genius, whom I have always met with when threatened by some misfortune, he who accompanied that horrible woman when I met her for the first time, he whom I was seeking when I offended our Athos, he whom I saw on the very morning Madame Bonacieux was abducted. I have seen him; that is he! I recog
nized him when the wind blew open his cloak.”

  “The devil!” said Athos, musingly.

  “To saddle, gentlemen! to saddle! Let us pursue him, and we shall overtake him!”

  “My dear friend,” said Aramis, “remember that he goes in an opposite direction from that in which we are going, that he has a fresh horse, and ours are fatigued, so that we shall disable our own horses without even a chance of overtaking him. Let the man go, D’Artagnan; let us save the woman.”

  “Monsieur, monsieur!” cried a hostler, running out and looking after the stranger, “monsieur, here is a paper which dropped out of your hat! Eh, monsieur, eh!”

  “Friend,” said D’Artagnan, “a half-pistole for that paper!”

  “My faith, monsieur, with great pleasure! Here it is!”

  The hostler, enchanted with the good day’s work he had done, returned to the yard. D’Artagnan unfolded the paper.

  “Well?” eagerly demanded all his three friends.

  “Nothing but one word!” said D’Artagnan.

  “Yes,” said Aramis, “but that one word is the name of some town or village.”

  “Armentières,” read Porthos; “Armentières? I don’t know such a place.”

  “And that name of a town or village is written in her hand!” cried Athos.

  “Come on, come on!” said D’Artagnan; “let us keep that paper carefully, perhaps I have not thrown away my half-pistole. To horse, my friends, to horse!”

  And the four friends flew at a gallop along the road to Béthune.

  61

  THE CARMELITE CONVENT AT BÉTHUNE

  Great criminals bear about them a kind of predestination which makes them surmount all obstacles, which makes them escape all dangers, up to the moment which a wearied Providence has marked as the rock of their impious fortunes.

  It was thus with Milady. She escaped the cruisers of both nations, and arrived at Boulogne without accident.

  When landing at Portsmouth, Milady was an Englishwoman whom the persecutions of the French drove from La Rochelle; when landing at Boulogne, after a two days’ passage, she passed for a Frenchwoman whom the English persecuted at Portsmouth out of their hatred for France.

  Milady had, likewise, the best of passports—her beauty, her noble appearance, and the liberality with which she distributed her pistoles. Freed from the usual formalities by the affable smile and gallant manners of an old governor of the port, who kissed her hand, she only remained long enough at Boulogne to put into the post a letter, conceived in the following terms:

  To his Eminence Monseigneur the Cardinal Richelieu, in his camp before La Rochelle.

  Monseigneur, Let your Eminence be reassured. His Grace the Duke of Buckingham will not set out for France.

  Milady de—

  Boulogne, evening of the twenty-fifth.

  PS.—According to the desire of your Eminence, I report at the convent of the Carmelites at Béthune, where I will await your orders.

  Accordingly, that same evening Milady commenced her journey. Night overtook her; she stopped, and slept at an inn. At five o’clock the next morning she again proceeded, and in three hours after entered Béthune.

  She inquired for the convent of the Carmelites, and went thither immediately.

  The superior met her; Milady showed her the cardinal’s order. The abbess assigned her a chamber, and had breakfast served.

  All the past was effaced from the eyes of this woman; and her looks, fixed on the future, beheld nothing but the high fortunes reserved for her by the cardinal, whom she had so successfully served without his name being in any way mixed up with the sanguinary affair. The ever-new passions which consumed her gave to her life the appearance of those clouds which float in the heavens, reflecting sometimes azure, sometimes fire, sometimes the opaque blackness of the tempest, and which leave no traces upon the earth behind them but devastation and death.

  After breakfast, the abbess came to pay her a visit. There is very little amusement in the cloister, and the good superior was eager to make the acquaintance of her new boarder.

  Milady wished to please the abbess. This was a very easy matter for a woman so really superior as she was. She tried to be agreeable, and she was charming, winning the good superior by her varied conversation and by the graces of her whole personality.

  The abbess, who was the daughter of a noble house, took particular delight in stories of the court, which so seldom travel to the extremities of the kingdom, and which, above all, have so much difficulty in penetrating the walls of convents, at whose threshold the noise of the world dies away.

  Milady, on the contrary, was quite conversant with all aristocratic intrigues, amid which she had constantly lived for five or six years. She made it her business, therefore, to amuse the good abbess with the worldly practices of the court of France, mixed with the eccentric pursuits of the king; she made for her the scandalous chronicle of the lords and ladies of the court, whom the abbess knew perfectly by name, touched lightly on the amours of the queen and the Duke of Buckingham, talking a great deal to induce her auditor to talk a little.

  But the abbess contented herself with listening and smiling without replying a word. Milady, however, saw that this sort of narrative amused her very much, and kept at it; only she now let her conversation drift toward the cardinal.

  But she was greatly embarrassed. She did not know whether the abbess was a royalist or a cardinalist; she therefore confined herself to a prudent middle course. But the abbess, on her part, maintained a reserve still more prudent, contenting herself with making a profound inclination of the head every time the fair traveler pronounced the name of his Eminence.

  Milady began to think she should soon grow weary of a convent life; she resolved, then, to risk something in order that she might know how to act afterward. Desirous of seeing how far the discretion of the good abbess would go, she began to tell a story, obscure at first, but very circumstantial afterward, about the cardinal, relating the amours of the minister with Mme. d’Aiguillon, Marion de Lorme, and several other gay women.

  The abbess listened more attentively, grew animated by degrees, and smiled.

  “Good,” thought Milady; “she takes a pleasure in my conversation. If she is a cardinalist, she has no fanaticism, at least.”

  She then went on to describe the persecutions exercised by the cardinal upon his enemies. The abbess only crossed herself, without approving or disapproving.

  This confirmed Milady in her opinion that the abbess was rather royalist than cardinalist. Milady therefore continued, coloring her narrations more and more.

  “I am very ignorant of these matters,” said the abbess, at length; “but however distant from the court we may be, however remote from the interests of the world we may be placed, we have very sad examples of what you have related. And one of our boarders has suffered much from the vengeance and persecution of the cardinal.”

  “One of your boarders?” said Milady; “oh, my God! Poor woman! I pity her, then.”

  “And you have reason, for she is much to be pitied. Imprisonment, menaces, ill treatment—she has suffered everything. But after all,” resumed the abbess, “Monsieur Cardinal has perhaps plausible motives for acting thus; and though she has the look of an angel, we must not always judge people by the appearance.”

  “Good!” said Milady to herself; “who knows! I am about, perhaps, to discover something here; I am in the vein.”

  She tried to give her countenance an appearance of perfect candor.

  “Alas,” said Milady, “I know it is so. It is said that we must not trust to the face; but in what, then, shall we place confidence, if not in the most beautiful work of the Lord? As for me, I shall be deceived all my life perhaps, but I shall always have faith in a person whose countenance inspires me with sympathy.”

  “You would, then, be tempted to believe,” said the abbess, “that this young person is innocent?”

  “The cardinal pursues not only crimes,” said she
: “there are certain virtues which he pursues more severely than certain offenses.”

  “Permit me, madame, to express my surprise,” said the abbess.

  “At what?” said Milady, with the utmost ingenuousness.

  “At the language you use.”

  “What do you find so astonishing in that language?” said Milady, smiling.

  “You are the friend of the cardinal, for he sends you hither, and yet—”

  “And yet I speak ill of him,” replied Milady, finishing the thought of the superior.

  “At least you don’t speak well of him.”

  “That is because I am not his friend,” said she, sighing, “but his victim!”

  “But this letter in which he recommends you to me?”

  “Is an order for me to confine myself to a sort of prison, from which he will release me by one of his satellites.”

  “But why have you not fled?”

  “Whither should I go? Do you believe there is a spot on the earth which the cardinal cannot reach if he takes the trouble to stretch forth his hand? If I were a man, that would barely be possible; but what can a woman do? This young boarder of yours, has she tried to fly?”

  “No, that is true; but she—that is another thing; I believe she is detained in France by some love affair.”

  “Ah,” said Milady, with a sigh, “if she loves she is not altogether wretched.”

  “Then,” said the abbess, looking at Milady with increasing interest, “I behold another poor victim?”

  “Alas, yes,” said Milady.

  The abbess looked at her for an instant with uneasiness, as if a fresh thought suggested itself to her mind.

  “You are not an enemy of our holy faith?” said she, hesitatingly.

  “Who—I?” cried Milady; “I a Protestant? Oh, no! I call to witness the God who hears us, that on the contrary I am a fervent Catholic!”

  “Then, madame,” said the abbess, smiling, “be reassured; the house in which you are shall not be a very hard prison, and we will do all in our power to make you cherish your captivity. You will find here, moreover, the young woman of whom I spoke, who is persecuted, no doubt, in consequence of some court intrigue. She is amiable and well-behaved.”