Part 22

"By a miracle, sir, I must say, with a sword thrust in my chest, and nailing Monsieur le Comte de Wardes on the side of the Calais road like a butterfly to a tapestry."

"There you go again! De Wardes, one of the Cardinal's men, a cousin of Rochefort. Look here, my dear friend, an idea occurs to me."

"Tell me, sir."

"In your place, I would do one thing."

"What?"

"While His Eminence has me searched for in Paris, I, without drum or trumpet, would take the Picardy road again, and go find out news of my three companions. What the devil! They well deserve this little attention from you."

"The advice is good, sir, and tomorrow I shall leave."

"Tomorrow! And why not tonight?"

"Tonight, sir, I am detained in Paris by an indispensable affair."

"Ah! young man! young man! Some little love affair? Take care, I repeat: it is woman who has ruined us, each and every one. Believe me, leave tonight."

"Impossible, sir!"

"Then you have given your word?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then it is another matter; but promise me that if you are not killed tonight, you will leave tomorrow."

"I promise you."

"Do you need money?"

"I still have fifty pistoles. That is as much as I need, I think."

"But your companions?"

"I think they cannot be wanting. We each left Paris with seventy-five pistoles in our pockets."

"Shall I see you again before you leave?"

"No, not that I think, sir, unless there is something new."

"Well, bon voyage!"

"Thank you, sir."

And d'Artagnan took leave of Monsieur de Tréville, more touched than ever by his almost paternal solicitude for his musketeers.

He went successively to Athos's, Porthos's, and Aramis's quarters. None of them had returned. Their lackeys were also absent, and there was no news of either masters or servants.

He would have inquired about them from their mistresses, but he knew neither Porthos's nor Aramis's; as for Athos, he had none.

Passing in front of the Guards' Hotel, he cast a glance into the stable: three horses out of four had already returned. Planchet, quite bewildered, was grooming them, and had already finished with two of them.

"Ah! sir," said Planchet, catching sight of d'Artagnan, "how glad I am to see you!"

"And why is that, Planchet?" asked the young man.

"Would you trust Monsieur Bonacieux, our landlord?"

"I? Not in the least."

"Oh! how right you are, sir."

"But what prompts this question?"

"Because, while you were talking with him, I was watching you without listening to you; sir, his face changed color two or three times."

"Bah!"

"Sir didn't notice that, preoccupied as you were with the letter you had just received; but I, on the contrary, put on my guard by the strange way that letter had reached the house, did not miss a single movement of his countenance."

"And you found it...?"

"Treacherous, sir."

"Really!"

"Moreover, as soon as you had left him and disappeared around the corner of the street, Monsieur Bonacieux took his hat, closed his door, and ran off down the opposite street."

"Indeed, you are right, Planchet, all this seems very fishy to me, and, rest assured, we will not pay him our rent until the matter has been categorically explained to us."

"Sir is joking, but sir will see."

"What do you want, Planchet? What is to happen is written!"

"Then sir is not giving up his evening promenade?"

"Quite the contrary, Planchet; the more I shall bear a grudge against Monsieur Bonacieux, the more I shall go to the rendezvous given me by that letter which worries you so much."

"Then, if that is sir's resolve..."

"Unshakeable, my friend; so, be ready here at the hotel at nine o'clock; I shall come to fetch you."

Planchet, seeing that there was no longer any hope of making his master give up his project, heaved a deep sigh and set about grooming the third horse.

As for d'Artagnan, being at bottom a very prudent fellow, instead of returning home, he went to dine with that Gascon priest who, at the time of the four friends' distress, had given them a breakfast of chocolate.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE PAVILION

At nine o'clock, d'Artagnan was at the Guards' Hotel; he found Planchet armed. The fourth horse had arrived.

Planchet was armed with his musketoon and a pistol. D'Artagnan had his sword and thrust two pistols into his belt; then both mounted their horses and rode off without a sound. It was pitch dark, and no one saw them leave. Planchet followed his master, riding ten paces behind.

D'Artagnan crossed the quays, went out through the Porte de la Conférence, and then followed the road, much finer then than now, which leads to Saint-Cloud.

As long as they were in the city, Planchet respectfully kept the distance he had imposed upon himself; but as soon as the road began to grow more deserted and darker, he gradually drew closer, so that when they entered the Bois de Boulogne, he naturally found himself riding side by side with his master. Indeed, we must not conceal that the swaying of the tall trees and the reflection of the moon in the dark thickets caused him keen anxiety. D'Artagnan noticed that something extraordinary was happening to his lackey.

"Well, Monsieur Planchet," he asked, "what is the matter with us?"

"Do you not think, sir, that woods are like churches?"

"Why is that, Planchet?"

"Because one dare not speak aloud in them, just as in churches."

"Why do you not dare to speak aloud, Planchet? Because you are afraid?"

"Afraid of being heard, yes, sir."

"Afraid of being heard! Yet our conversation is moral, my dear Planchet, and no one could find fault with it."

"Ah! sir," replied Planchet, returning to his main idea, "that Monsieur Bonacieux has something so sly in his eyebrows and so unpleasant in the play of his lips!"

"Who the devil makes you think of Bonacieux?"

"Sir, one thinks of what one can, not of what one wants."

"Because you are a coward, Planchet."

"Sir, let us not confuse prudence with cowardice; prudence is a virtue."

"And you are virtuous, aren't you, Planchet?"

"Sir, is that not the barrel of a musket gleaming over there? Shall we duck our heads?"

"Truly," muttered d'Artagnan, to whom Monsieur de Tréville's recommendations were coming back to mind, "truly, this animal will end up frightening me."

And he put his horse into a trot.

Planchet followed his master's movement exactly as if he were his shadow, and found himself trotting beside him again.

"Are we going to ride like this all night, sir?" he asked.

"No, Planchet, for you have arrived, you have."

"How, I have arrived? And sir?"

"I am going on a little further."

"And sir leaves me alone here?"

"You are afraid, Planchet?"

"No, but I only observe to sir that the night will be very cold, that chills bring on rheumatism, and that a lackey with rheumatism is a poor servant, especially for an active master like sir."

"Well, if you are cold, Planchet, you will go into one of those taverns you see over there, and wait for me tomorrow morning at six o'clock at the door."

"Sir, I respectfully drank and ate the écu you gave me this morning; so I have not a single cursed sou left in case I get cold."

"Here is half a pistole. Until tomorrow."

D'Artagnan dismounted, threw the bridle over Planchet's arm, and walked away quickly, wrapping himself in his cloak.

"Lord, how cold I am!" cried Planchet as soon as he had lost sight of his master; and, eager to warm himself, he hastened to knock at the door of a house adorned with all the attributes of a suburban tavern.

Meanwhile, d'Artagnan, who had plunged into a small side path, continued on his way and reached Saint-Cloud; but instead of following the main street, he turned behind the castle, gained a kind of very secluded lane, and soon found himself facing the designated pavilion. It was situated in a completely deserted spot. A high wall, at the corner of which stood this pavilion, ran along one side of the lane, and on the other a hedge protected a little garden from passersby, at the far end of which rose a mean hovel.

He had arrived at the rendezvous, and since he had not been told to announce his presence by any signal, he waited.

No sound was heard; one might have thought oneself a hundred leagues from the capital. D'Artagnan leaned against the hedge after glancing behind him. Beyond that hedge, that garden, that hovel, a dark mist enveloped in its folds that immensity where Paris lies sleeping—empty, gaping—an immensity where a few luminous points shone forth, funereal stars of that hell.

But for d'Artagnan, all aspects wore a happy form, all ideas had a smile, all shadows were transparent. The hour of the rendezvous was about to strike.

Indeed, after a few moments, the belfry of Saint-Cloud slowly let fall ten strokes from its wide, bellowing throat.

There was something somber in that bronze voice lamenting thus in the midst of the night.

But each of those hours composing the awaited hour vibrated harmoniously in the young man's heart.

His eyes were fixed on the little pavilion situated at the corner of the street, all the windows of which were closed by shutters except one on the first floor.

Through that window shone a gentle light that silvered the trembling foliage of two or three lime trees that stood in a clump outside the park. Evidently, behind that little window, so gracefully lit, the pretty Madame Bonacieux was waiting for him.

Lulled by this sweet thought, d'Artagnan waited on his side for half an hour without any impatience, his eyes fixed on that charming little dwelling, of which he could see part of the ceiling with its gilded moldings, attesting to the elegance of the rest of the apartment.

The belfry of Saint-Cloud struck half-past ten.

This time, without d'Artagnan understanding why, a shiver ran through his veins. Perhaps the cold was beginning to get to him, and he was taking a purely physical sensation for a moral impression.

Then the thought came to him that he had misread, and that the rendezvous was only for eleven o'clock.

He approached the window, placed himself in a ray of light, pulled the letter from his pocket, and re-read it; he had not been mistaken: the rendezvous was indeed for ten o'clock.

He went back to his post, beginning to be quite anxious about this silence and solitude.

Eleven o'clock struck.

D'Artagnan began truly to fear that something had happened to Madame Bonacieux.

He clapped his hands three times, the usual signal of lovers; but no one answered him—not even the echo.

Then he thought with a certain vexation that perhaps the young woman had fallen asleep while waiting for him.

He approached the wall and tried to climb it; but the wall was freshly plastered, and d'Artagnan tore his fingernails uselessly.

At that moment he noticed the trees, whose leaves the light continued to silver, and since one of them overhung the path, he thought that from amidst its branches his gaze might penetrate the pavilion.

The tree was easy to climb. Besides, d'Artagnan was barely twenty, and consequently remembered his schoolboy skills. In an instant he was among the branches, and through the transparent panes his eyes plunged into the interior of the pavilion.

Strange thing, and one that made d'Artagnan shudder from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair: that gentle light, that calm lamp illuminated a scene of frightful disorder; one of the window panes was broken, the door of the room had been forced and, half-shattered, hung on its hinges; a table that must have been covered with an elegant supper lay on the floor; shattered bottles, crushed fruits strewed the parquet; everything in that room bore witness to a violent and desperate struggle; d'Artagnan thought he even recognized amidst this strange jumble scraps of clothing and some bloody stains staining the tablecloth and curtains.

He hurriedly climbed back down into the street with a horrible beating heart; he wanted to see if he would not find other traces of violence.

The little soft light still shone in the calm of the night. D'Artagnan then noticed, something he had not observed at first because nothing had prompted him to examine it, that the ground, beaten here, hollowed there, showed confused traces of men's footsteps and horses' hooves. Moreover, the wheels of a carriage, which seemed to have come from Paris, had sunk a deep imprint in the soft earth that did not go beyond the height of the pavilion and turned back toward Paris.

Finally, d'Artagnan, continuing his search, found near the wall a torn woman's glove. Yet this glove, in all the places where it had not touched the muddy ground, was spotlessly fresh. It was one of those perfumed gloves that lovers love to tear from a pretty hand.

As d'Artagnan pursued his investigations, a more abundant and colder sweat beaded on his forehead; his heart was gripped by a horrible anguish; his breath came in gasps; and yet he told himself, to reassure himself, that this pavilion perhaps had nothing to do with Madame Bonacieux; that the young woman had given him a rendezvous in front of the pavilion, not inside it; that she might have been detained in Paris by her duties, perhaps by the jealousy of her husband.

But all these reasonings were battered, destroyed, overturned by that feeling of intimate pain which, on certain occasions, seizes our whole being and cries out to us, through all that is destined in us to hear, that a great misfortune hovers over us.

Then d'Artagnan became almost mad; he ran down the main road, took the same path he had already traveled, went as far as the ferry, and questioned the ferryman.

Toward seven o'clock in the evening, the ferryman had taken across the river a woman wrapped in a black cloak, who seemed to have the greatest interest in not being recognized; but precisely because of the precautions she took, the ferryman had paid greater attention, and had recognized that the woman was young and pretty.

There were then, as today, a host of young and pretty women who came to Saint-Cloud and had an interest in not being seen, and yet d'Artagnan did not doubt for an instant that it was Madame Bonacieux the ferryman had noticed.

D'Artagnan took advantage of the lamp burning in the ferryman's hut to read Madame Bonacieux's note once more and assure himself that he had not been mistaken, that the rendezvous was indeed at Saint-Cloud and not elsewhere, in front of Monsieur d'Estrées' pavilion and not in some other street.

Everything conspired to prove to d'Artagnan that his presentiments did not deceive him and that a great misfortune had occurred.

He retraced his steps toward the château at a run; it seemed to him that in his absence something new might have happened at the pavilion and that information awaited him there.

The lane was still deserted, and the same calm, gentle light flowed from the window.

D'Artagnan then thought of that mute and blind hovel which had doubtless seen and which perhaps could speak.

The garden gate was locked, but he jumped over the hedge, and despite the barking of the chained dog, he approached the hovel.

At the first blows he struck, nothing answered.

A deathly silence reigned in the hovel as in the pavilion; however, since this hovel was his last resource, he persisted.

Soon he thought he heard a slight sound from inside, a fearful sound, that seemed itself to tremble at being heard.

Then d'Artagnan stopped knocking and prayed, with an accent so full of anxiety and promises, of fear and coaxing, that his voice was of a nature to reassure more fearful folk. At last an old worm-eaten shutter opened, or rather half-opened, and closed again as soon as the light from a miserable lamp burning in a corner had illuminated d'Artagnan's baldric, sword hilt, and pistol pommels. However, rapid as the movement had been, d'Artagnan had time to catch a glimpse of an old man's head.

"In the name of Heaven!" he said, "listen to me: I was waiting for someone who is not coming; I am dying of anxiety. Has some misfortune happened in the vicinity? Speak."

The window slowly reopened, and the same face appeared again; only it was even paler than the first time.

D'Artagnan told his story simply, omitting names; he told how he had a rendezvous with a young woman in front of that pavilion, and how, not seeing her come, he had climbed the lime tree and, by the lamplight, had seen the disorder in the room.

The old man listened attentively, while nodding that it was indeed so; then, when d'Artagnan had finished, he shook his head with an air that boded no good.

"What do you mean?" cried d'Artagnan. "In the name of Heaven! come, explain yourself."

"Oh! sir," said the old man, "ask me nothing; for if I told you what I have seen, surely nothing good would come to me."

"Then you have seen something?" resumed d'Artagnan. "In that case, in the name of Heaven!" he continued, throwing him a pistole, "speak, speak what you have seen, and I give you my word as a gentleman that not a word of yours shall escape my heart."

The old man read so much frankness and grief on d'Artagnan's face that he made a sign for him to listen and said to him in a low voice:

"It was about nine o'clock; I had heard some noise in the street and wanted to know what it might be, when, approaching my door, I noticed that someone was trying to enter. Since I am poor and not afraid of being robbed, I went to open, and I saw three men a few paces away. In the shadow was a carriage with horses harnessed and spare horses. Those spare horses obviously belonged to the three men, who were dressed as cavalrymen.

"'Ah, my good sirs!' I cried, 'what do you want?'

"'You must have a ladder?' said the one who seemed to be the leader of the escort.

"'Yes, monsieur; the one I use to pick my fruit.'

"'Give it to us, and go back inside; here is an écu for the trouble we cause you. Only remember that if you say a word of what you are about to see and hear (for you will look and listen, whatever threats we make, I am sure of it), you are lost.'

"With these words, he threw me an écu, which I picked up, and he took my ladder.

"Indeed, after closing the garden gate behind them, I pretended to go back into the house; but I immediately went out by the back door, and, slipping through the shadows, I reached that clump of elder bushes, from the midst of which I could see everything without being seen.

"The three men had brought the carriage forward without any noise; they pulled out of it a little man, short, stout, gray-haired, meanly dressed in dark colors, who cautiously climbed the ladder, furtively looked inside the room, climbed down again with stealthy steps, and muttered in a low voice:

"'It is she!'

"Immediately he who had spoken to me approached the door of the pavilion, opened it with a key he had on him, closed the door, and disappeared, while the other two men climbed the ladder. The little old man remained by the carriage door; the coachman held the carriage horses in check, and a lackey held the saddle horses.

"Suddenly loud cries resounded from the pavilion; a woman ran to the window and opened it as if to throw herself out. But as soon as she saw the two men, she drew back; the two men rushed after her into the room.

"Then I saw nothing more; but I heard the noise of furniture being broken. The woman cried out and called for help. But soon her cries were stifled; the three men came back to the window, carrying the woman in their arms; two came down by the ladder and carried her to the carriage, where the little old man entered after her. The one who had remained in the pavilion closed the window, came out a moment later by the door, and made sure the woman was indeed in the carriage; his two companions were already waiting on horseback; he in turn vaulted into the saddle; the lackey resumed his place beside the coachman; the carriage drove off at a gallop, escorted by the three riders, and all was over. From that moment on, I have seen nothing, heard nothing more."

D'Artagnan, crushed by such terrible news, remained motionless and mute, while all the demons of anger and jealousy howled in his heart.

"But, my gentleman," resumed the old man, upon whom this silent despair certainly produced more effect than cries and tears would have done, "come, do not grieve; they have not killed her, that is the main thing."

"Do you know roughly," said d'Artagnan, "who was the man who led this infernal expedition?"

"I do not know him."

"But since he spoke to you, you must have seen him."

"Ah! it is his description you are asking for?"

"Yes."

"A tall, lean man, swarthy, black mustache, black eyes, the air of a gentleman."

"That is it," cried d'Artagnan; "him again! always him! He is my demon, it seems! And the other?"

"Which?"

"The little one."

"Oh! that one is not a lord, I can vouch for that; besides, he did not wear a sword, and the others treated him without any consideration."

"Some lackey," murmured d'Artagnan. "Ah! poor woman! poor woman! what have they done with her?"

"You have promised me secrecy," said the old man.

"And I renew my promise; be easy, I am a gentleman. A gentleman has only his word, and I have given you mine."

D'Artagnan, with a stricken heart, took the road back to the ferry. At one moment he could not believe it was Madame Bonacieux, and hoped the next day to find her again at the Louvre; at another, he feared she might have had an intrigue with someone else and that a jealous lover had surprised and abducted her. He wavered, he grieved, he despaired.

"Oh! if only I had my friends here!" he cried. "I would at least have some hope of finding her again; but who knows what has become of them themselves!"

It was about midnight; it was a question of finding Planchet. D'Artagnan had one after another all the taverns opened where he saw a bit of light; in none of them did he find Planchet.

At the sixth, he began to reflect that the search was somewhat risky. D'Artagnan had given his lackey a rendezvous only for six o'clock in the morning, and wherever he might be, he was within his rights.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”