Part 29

The three friends—for, as we have said, Athos had sworn not to take a single step toward equipping himself—the three friends therefore went out early in the morning and returned very late at night. They wandered through the streets, peering at every paving stone to see if the people who had passed before them had left a purse behind. You might have thought they were tracking a trail, so attentive were they everywhere they went. When they met, they exchanged desolate looks that meant: "Have you found anything?"

However, since Porthos had been the first to find his idea, and since he had pursued it with persistence, he was the first to act. This worthy Porthos was a man of action. D'Artagnan caught sight of him one day as he was heading toward the Church of Saint-Leu, and instinctively followed him. He entered the holy place after having curled his mustache and elongated his imperial, which always announced his most conquering intentions. Since D'Artagnan took some precautions to hide himself, Porthos thought he had not been seen. D'Artagnan entered behind him. Porthos went and leaned against a pillar; D'Artagnan, still unnoticed, leaned against the other side.

As it happened, there was a sermon, which made the church very crowded. Porthos took advantage of the circumstance to ogle the women. Thanks to Mousqueton's good care, his exterior was far from announcing the distress within. His felt hat was indeed a little threadbare, his feather a little faded, his embroidery a little tarnished, his lace a little frayed; but in the half-light, all these trifles disappeared, and Porthos was still the handsome Porthos.

D'Artagnan noticed, on the bench closest to the pillar against which Porthos and he were leaning, a sort of mature beauty, a little sallow, a little dried up, but stiff and haughty under her black coifs. Porthos's eyes furtively lowered toward this lady, then fluttered far off into the nave.

For her part, the lady, who blushed from time to time, cast a lightning-quick glance at the flighty Porthos, and immediately Porthos's eyes fluttered furiously. It was clear that this was a game that stung the lady in the black coifs to the quick, for she bit her lips until they bled, scratched the tip of her nose, and fidgeted desperately on her seat.

Seeing this, Porthos again curled his mustache, once more elongated his imperial, and began making signals to a beautiful lady who was near the choir, who was not only a beautiful lady, but also undoubtedly a great lady, for behind her there was a little black boy who had brought the cushion on which she was kneeling, and a maidservant who held the emblazoned bag in which the book from which she read her mass was kept.

The lady in the black coifs followed Porthos's gaze through all its detours and recognized that it stopped at the lady with the velvet cushion, the little black boy, and the maidservant.

Meanwhile, Porthos played a close game: there were winks, fingers placed on lips, little deadly smiles that truly assassinated the beautiful scorned woman.

So she let out, in the form of a *mea culpa* and while striking her breast, a "Hm!" so vigorous that everyone, even the lady with the red cushion, turned toward her. Porthos held firm; he had understood well enough, but he pretended to be deaf.

The lady with the red cushion made a great impression, for she was very beautiful, on the lady in the black coifs, who saw in her a truly formidable rival; a great impression on Porthos, who found her prettier than the lady in the black coifs; a great impression on D'Artagnan, who recognized the lady of Meung, of Calais, and of Dover, whom his persecutor, the man with the scar, had addressed as Milady.

D'Artagnan, without losing sight of the lady with the red cushion, continued to follow Porthos's game, which amused him greatly. He thought he could guess that the lady in the black coifs was the solicitor's wife from the Rue aux Ours, especially since the Church of Saint-Leu was not very far from that street.

He then deduced by induction that Porthos was trying to take his revenge for his defeat at Chantilly, when the solicitor's wife had shown herself so recalcitrant regarding the purse.

But in the midst of all this, D'Artagnan also noticed that no face responded to Porthos's gallantries. They were nothing but chimeras and illusions; but for a real love, for a true jealousy, is there any other reality than illusions and chimeras?

The sermon ended. The solicitor's wife advanced toward the holy water font. Porthos reached it before her and, instead of a finger, plunged his whole hand into it. The solicitor's wife smiled, believing that Porthos was going to such trouble for her; but she was quickly and cruelly disillusioned. When she was only three steps away from him, he turned his head away, fixing his eyes invariably on the lady with the red cushion, who had risen and was approaching, followed by her little black boy and her chambermaid.

When the lady with the red cushion was near Porthos, Porthos pulled out his hand, dripping from the font. The beautiful devotee touched Porthos's large hand with her slender one, made the sign of the cross while smiling, and left the church.

That was too much for the solicitor's wife. She no longer doubted that this lady and Porthos were engaged in gallantry. If she had been a great lady, she would have fainted, but since she was only a solicitor's wife, she contented herself with saying to the musketeer, with concentrated fury:

"Eh! Monsieur Porthos, won't you offer me some holy water?"

At the sound of this voice, Porthos started as a man would who awakens after a hundred years of sleep.

"Ma... madame!" he exclaimed, "is it really you? How is your husband, that dear Monsieur Coquenard? Is he still as miserly as he was? Where were my eyes that I didn't even notice you during the two hours this sermon lasted?"

"I was two steps away from you, sir," replied the solicitor's wife, "but you didn't notice me because you had eyes only for the beautiful lady to whom you just gave holy water."

Porthos pretended to be embarrassed.

"Ah!" he said, "you noticed..."

"One would have to be blind not to see it."

"Yes," said Porthos carelessly, "that is a duchess friend of mine whom I have great difficulty meeting because of her husband's jealousy, and who had informed me that she would come today, just to see me, to this wretched church in the depths of this lost neighborhood."

"Monsieur Porthos," said the solicitor's wife, "would you have the kindness to offer me your arm for five minutes? I would gladly have a word with you."

"Of course, madame," said Porthos, winking to himself like a gambler who laughs at the dupe he is about to make.

At that moment, D'Artagnan was passing by, pursuing Milady. He cast a sidelong glance at Porthos and saw that triumphant wink.

"Ah! ah!" he said to himself, reasoning in accordance with the strangely easy morality of that gallant era, "here is one who might well be equipped by the appointed time."

Porthos, yielding to the pressure of his solicitor's wife's arm as a boat yields to the rudder, arrived at the Cloister of Saint-Magloire, a little-frequented passage, enclosed by a turnstile at both ends. During the day, you saw only beggars eating or children playing there.

"Ah! Monsieur Porthos!" cried the solicitor's wife, when she had assured herself that no one foreign to the usual inhabitants of the place could see or hear them, "ah! Monsieur Porthos! you are a great conqueror, it seems!"

"I, madame?" said Porthos, puffing out his chest, "and why is that?"

"And the signs earlier, and the holy water? Why, that lady with her little black boy and her chambermaid must be at least a princess!"

"You are mistaken; good heavens, no," replied Porthos, "she is simply a duchess."

"And that footman waiting at the door, and that carriage with a coachman in fine livery waiting on his box?"

Porthos had seen neither the footman nor the carriage; but, with her jealous woman's eye, Madame Coquenard had seen everything.

Porthos regretted not having made the lady with the red cushion a princess right away.

"Ah! you are the darling of the beauties, Monsieur Porthos!" resumed the solicitor's wife with a sigh.

"But," replied Porthos, "you understand that with a physique such as nature has bestowed upon me, I do not lack good fortune."

"Heavens! How quickly men forget!" cried the solicitor's wife, raising her eyes to heaven.

"Still less quickly than women, it seems to me," replied Porthos; "for after all, madame, I may say that I was your victim, when, wounded and dying, I found myself abandoned by the surgeons; I, the scion of an illustrious family, who had trusted in your friendship, I nearly died of my wounds first, and then of hunger in a miserable inn at Chantilly, and all without your deigning to reply even once to the burning letters I wrote you."

"But, Monsieur Porthos..." murmured the solicitor's wife, who felt that, judging by the conduct of the greatest ladies of that time, she was in the wrong.

"I, who had sacrificed for you the Countess of Penaflor..."

"I know it well."

"The Baroness of..."

"Monsieur Porthos, do not overwhelm me."

"The Duchess of..."

"Monsieur Porthos, be generous!"

"You are right, madame, and I will not finish."

"But it is my husband who will not hear of lending."

"Madame Coquenard," said Porthos, "remember the first letter you wrote me, which I keep engraved in my memory."

The solicitor's wife let out a groan.

"But then," she said, "the sum you asked to borrow was a little too large."

"Madame Coquenard, I gave you the preference. I had only to write to the Duchess of... I do not wish to say her name, for I know not what it is to compromise a woman; but what I do know is that I had only to write to her for her to send me fifteen hundred."

The solicitor's wife shed a tear.

"Monsieur Porthos," she said, "I swear to you that you have greatly punished me, and that if in the future you found yourself in a similar pass, you would have only to address yourself to me."

"Fie, madame!" said Porthos, as if revolted, "let us not speak of money, if you please; it is humiliating."

"So you no longer love me!" said the solicitor's wife slowly and sadly.

Porthos maintained a majestic silence.

"That is how you reply to me? Alas! I understand."

"Think of the offense you did me, madame; it remains here," said Porthos, placing his hand on his heart and pressing it forcefully.

"I will repair it; come now, my dear Porthos!"

"Besides, what was I asking of you?" resumed Porthos with a good-natured shrug of the shoulders. "A loan, nothing more. After all, I am not an unreasonable man. I know that you are not rich, Madame Coquenard, and that your husband is obliged to bleed the poor litigants to extract a few paltry crowns. Oh! if you were a countess, a marquise, or a duchess, it would be a different matter, and you would be unforgivable."

The solicitor's wife was stung.

"Know this, Monsieur Porthos," she said, "that my strongbox, solicitor's wife's strongbox though it may be, is perhaps better furnished than that of all your ruined minxes."

"A double offense you have then done me," said Porthos, freeing the solicitor's wife's arm from his own, "for if you are rich, Madame Coquenard, then your refusal has no excuse."

"When I say rich," resumed the solicitor's wife, seeing that she had let herself be carried away too far, "you must not take the word literally. I am not precisely rich; I am comfortable."

"Look here, madame," said Porthos, "let us speak no more of all this, I beg you. You misjudged me; all sympathy between us is extinguished."

"Ingrate that you are!"

"Ah! I advise you to complain!" said Porthos.

"Go then to your beautiful duchess! I detain you no longer."

"Eh! she is not so skinny, I think!"

"Come, Monsieur Porthos, once more, this is the last: do you still love me?"

"Alas! madame," said Porthos in the most melancholy tone he could assume, "when we are about to enter a campaign, a campaign in which my presentiments tell me I shall be killed..."

"Oh! do not say such things!" cried the solicitor's wife, bursting into sobs.

"Something tells me so," continued Porthos, growing more and more melancholy.

"Say rather that you have a new love."

"No, I speak frankly. No new object touches me, and I even feel here, at the bottom of my heart, something that speaks for you. But, in a fortnight, as you know or as you do not know, this fatal campaign opens. I shall be frightfully preoccupied with my equipment. Then I am going to make a journey to my family, deep in Brittany, to raise the sum necessary for my departure."

Porthos noticed a final struggle between love and avarice.

"And since," he continued, "the duchess you just saw in the church has estates near mine, we will travel together. Journeys, you know, seem much less long when taken by two."

"So you have no friends in Paris, Monsieur Porthos?" said the solicitor's wife.

"I thought I had," said Porthos, putting on his melancholy air, "but I have seen that I was mistaken."

"You have some, Monsieur Porthos, you have some," resumed the solicitor's wife in a transport that surprised even herself. "Come back to the house tomorrow. You are my aunt's son, consequently my cousin; you come from Noyon in Picardy; you have several lawsuits in Paris and no solicitor. Will you remember all that?"

"Perfectly, madame."

"Come at dinnertime."

"Very well."

"And stand firm before my husband, who is cunning, despite his seventy-six years."

"Seventy-six years! Peste! What a fine age!" replied Porthos.

"A great age, you mean, Monsieur Porthos. So the poor dear man may leave me a widow from one moment to the next," continued the solicitor's wife, throwing a significant look at Porthos. "Fortunately, by marriage contract, we have bequeathed everything to the last survivor."

"Everything?" said Porthos.

"Everything."

"You are a woman of foresight, I see, my dear Madame Coquenard," said Porthos, tenderly pressing the solicitor's wife's hand.

"So we are reconciled, dear Monsieur Porthos?" she said, simpering.

"For life," replied Porthos in the same tone.

"Au revoir, then, my traitor."

"Au revoir, my forgetful one."

"Until tomorrow, my angel!"

"Until tomorrow, flame of my life!"

CHAPTER XXX. MILADY

D'Artagnan had followed Milady without being seen by her. He saw her get into her carriage, and he heard her give her coachman the order to go to Saint-Germain.

It was useless to try to follow on foot a carriage carried off at the trot of two vigorous horses. D'Artagnan therefore returned to the Rue Férou.

In the Rue de Seine, he met Planchet, who was stopped in front of a pastry shop and seemed in ecstasy before a brioche of the most appetizing form.

He ordered him to go and saddle two horses in M. de Tréville's stables, one for himself, d'Artagnan, and the other for himself, Planchet, and to come and join him at Athos's—M. de Tréville, once and for all, having placed his stables at d'Artagnan's service.

Planchet headed toward the Rue du Colombier, and d'Artagnan toward the Rue Férou. Athos was at home, sadly emptying one of the bottles of that famous Spanish wine he had brought back from his journey to Picardy. He signaled to Grimaud to bring a glass for d'Artagnan, and Grimaud obeyed as usual.

D'Artagnan then told Athos everything that had happened in the church between Porthos and the solicitor's wife, and how their comrade was probably, at that hour, on the way to equipping himself.

"As for me," replied Athos to this whole story, "I am quite tranquil; it will not be women who will pay for my harness."

"And yet, handsome, polished, and grand seigneur as you are, my dear Athos, there would be neither princesses nor queens safe from your amorous shafts."

"How young this d'Artagnan is!" said Athos, shrugging his shoulders.

And he signaled to Grimaud to bring a second bottle.

At that moment, Planchet modestly thrust his head through the half-open door and announced to his master that the two horses were there.

"What horses?" asked Athos.

"Two that M. de Tréville lends me for the ride, and with which I am going for a turn at Saint-Germain."

"And what are you going to do at Saint-Germain?" asked Athos again.

Then d'Artagnan told him of the encounter he had had in the church, and how he had found again that woman who, with the lord in the black cloak and the scar near the temple, was his eternal preoccupation.

"That is to say, you are in love with that one, as you were with Madame Bonacieux," said Athos, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, as if he had taken pity on human weakness.

"I, not at all!" cried d'Artagnan. "I am merely curious to clear up the mystery with which she is connected. I do not know why, but I imagine that this woman, as unknown to me as I am to her, has an influence on my life."

"In fact, you are right," said Athos, "I do not know a woman worth seeking when she is lost. Madame Bonacieux is lost; too bad for her! Let her find herself again!"

"No, Athos, no, you are mistaken," said d'Artagnan; "I love my poor Constance more than ever, and if I knew the place where she is, were it at the end of the world, I would set out to free her from her enemies' hands; but I do not know it; all my searches have been useless. What would you have? One must amuse oneself."

"Amuse yourself then with Milady, my dear d'Artagnan; I wish it with all my heart, if that can amuse you."

"Listen, Athos," said d'Artagnan, "instead of staying shut up here as if you were under arrest, mount a horse and come take a ride with me to Saint-Germain."

"My dear fellow," replied Athos, "I ride my horses when I have them; otherwise, I go on foot."

"Well, I," replied d'Artagnan, smiling at Athos's misanthropy, which in another would certainly have offended him, "I am less proud than you; I ride whatever I find. So au revoir, my dear Athos."

"Au revoir," said the musketeer, signaling to Grimaud to uncork the bottle he had just brought.

D'Artagnan and Planchet mounted and took the road to Saint-Germain.

All along the way, what Athos had said to the young man about Madame Bonacieux came back to his mind. Although d'Artagnan was not of a very sentimental character, the pretty mercer had made a real impression on his heart. As he said, he was ready to go to the end of the world to seek her. But the world has many ends, precisely because it is round; so he did not know which way to turn.

In the meantime, he was going to try to find out who Milady was. Milady had spoken to the man in the black cloak, therefore she knew him. Now, in d'Artagnan's mind, it was the man in the black cloak who had abducted Madame Bonacieux a second time, as he had abducted her the first. D'Artagnan was therefore only half lying, which is very little lying, when he said that by setting out to search for Milady, he was at the same time setting out to search for Constance.

While thinking thus and now and then giving a spur to his horse, d'Artagnan had covered the road and arrived at Saint-Germain. He had just passed along the pavilion where, ten years later, Louis XIV was to be born. He was crossing a very deserted street, looking right and left to see if he could recognize any trace of his beautiful Englishwoman, when at the ground floor of a pretty house which, according to the custom of the time, had no window facing the street, he saw a familiar face appear. This face was walking on a sort of terrace adorned with flowers. Planchet recognized it first. "Eh! sir," he said, addressing d'Artagnan, "do you not recall that face gaping at the crows?"

"No," said d'Artagnan; "and yet I am certain it is not the first time I have seen that face."

"I believe it, by God!" said Planchet: "it is poor Lubin, the valet of the Count de Wardes, the one you so soundly thrashed a month ago, at Calais, on the road to the governor's country house."

"Ah! yes, indeed," said d'Artagnan, "I recognize him now. Do you think he will recognize you?"

"Faith, sir, he was so troubled that I doubt he has kept a very clear memory of me."

"Well, go and talk to that fellow," said d'Artagnan, "and find out in the conversation if his master is dead."

Planchet dismounted, walked straight to Lubin, who indeed did not recognize him, and the two valets began to converse in the best understanding in the world, while d'Artagnan drove the two horses into a lane and, going around a house, returned to watch the conference from behind a hedge of hazelnut trees.

After a moment's observation behind the hedge, he heard the noise of a carriage, and he saw Milady's carriage stop in front of him. There was no mistaking it. Milady was inside. D'Artagnan lay flat on his horse's neck, so as to see everything without being seen.

Milady put out her charming blond head through the carriage door and gave orders to her chambermaid.

The latter, a pretty girl of twenty to twenty-two, alert and lively, a true great lady's lady's maid, jumped down from the step on which she was sitting according to the custom of the time, and made her way toward the terrace where d'Artagnan had seen Lubin.

D'Artagnan followed the maid with his eyes, and saw her go toward the terrace. But, by chance, an order from inside had called Lubin away, so that Planchet was left alone, looking all around for which way d'Artagnan had disappeared.

The chambermaid approached Planchet, whom she took for Lubin, and holding out a little note:

"For your master," she said.

"For my master?" replied Planchet, astonished.

"Yes, and very urgent. Take it quickly."

Thereupon she fled toward the carriage, which had already turned around in the direction from which it had come. She sprang onto the step, and the carriage drove off.

Planchet turned the note over and over, then, accustomed to passive obedience, he jumped down from the terrace, went through the lane, and met at the end of twenty paces d'Artagnan, who, having seen everything, was coming toward him.

"For you, sir," said Planchet, presenting the note to the young man.

"For me?" said d'Artagnan; "are you quite sure?"

"Pardieu! If I am sure! The maid said: 'For your master.' I have no other master than you; thus... A pretty little piece, faith, that maid!"

D'Artagnan opened the letter and read these words:

“Stories of the world, in your language.”