Everything happened as Madame Bonacieux said it would. On hearing the password, Germain bowed; ten minutes after La Porte was at the lodge; with two words D’Artagnan told him what was going on, and informed him where Madame Bonacieux was. La Porte assured himself, by having it twice repeated, of the exact address, and set off at a run. He had, however, scarcely gone ten steps before he returned.
“Young man,” said he to D’Artagnan, “I have a piece of advice to give you.”
“What is it?”
“You may get into trouble by what has taken place.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes. Have you any friend whose clock is too slow?”
“What then?”
“Go and call upon him, in order that he may give evidence of your having been with him at half-past nine. In law that is called an alibi.”
D’Artagnan found this advice prudent. He took to his heels, and was soon at M. de Tréville’s; but instead of going into the drawing-room with everybody, he asked to be introduced to M. de Tréville’s office. As D’Artagnan was one of the frequenters of the h?tel, no difficulty was made in complying with his request, and a servant went to inform M. de Tréville that his young compatriot, having something important to communicate, solicited a private audience. Five minutes after, M. de Tréville was asking D’Artagnan what he could do for him, and to what he was indebted for his visit at so late an hour.
“Pardon me, sir,” said D’Artagnan, who had profited by the moment he had been left alone to put back M. de Tréville’s clock three-quarters of an hour; “I thought, as it was yet only twenty-five minutes past nine, it was not too late to wait upon you.”
“Twenty five minutes past nine!” cried M. de Tréville, looking at the clock; “why, that’s impossible!”
“Look, rather, sir,” said D’Artagnan; “the clock shows it.”
“That’s true,” said M. de Tréville; “I should have thought it was later. But what can I do for you?”
Then D’Artagnan told M. de Tréville a long history about the queen. He expressed to him the fears he entertained with respect to her Majesty; he related to him what he had heard of the projects of the cardinal with regard to Buckingham; and all with a tranquillity and sereneness which deceived M. de Tréville the more because he had himself, as we have said, observed something new between the cardinal, the king, and the queen.
As ten o’clock was striking D’Artagnan left M. de Tréville, who thanked him for his information, recommended him to have the service of the king and queen always at heart, and returned to the drawing-room. But at the foot of the stairs D’Artagnan remembered he had forgotten his cane. He consequently rushed up again, re-entered the office, with a turn of his finger set the clock right again, that they might not perceive the next day it had been tampered with; and sure henceforth that he had a witness to prove his alibi, he ran downstairs and soon gained the street.
Chapter 11 - The Plot Thickens
His visit to M. de Tréville being paid, D’Artagnan, quite thoughtful, took the longest way homewards.
Of what was D’Artagnan thinking, that he strayed thus from his path, gazing at the stars in the heavens, and sometimes sighing, sometimes smiling?
He was thinking of Madame Bonacieux. For an apprentice musketeer the young woman was almost an ideal of love. Pretty, mysterious, initiated into almost all the secrets of the court, which reflected such a charming gravity over her pleasing features, he suspected her of not being insensible to wooing, which is an irresistible charm for novices in love. Besides, D’Artagnan had delivered her from the hands of the demons who wished to search and maltreat her; and this important service had established between them one of those sentiments of gratitude which so easily take on a more tender character.
D’Artagnan, reflecting on his future loves, addressing himself to the beautiful night and smiling at the stars, went up the Rue Cherche-Midi, Chasse-Midi, as it was then called. As he found himself in the quarter in which Aramis lived, he took it into his head to pay his friend a visit, in order to explain to him why he had sent Planchet to him with a request that he would come instantly to the mouse-trap. Now if Aramis was at home when Planchet came to his abode, he had doubtless hastened to the Rue des Fossoyeurs, and finding nobody but his two companions there, perhaps they would not be able to conceive, any of them, what all this meant. This result required an explanation; at least, so D’Artagnan thought.
D’Artagnan had just passed the Rue Cassette, and already caught sight of the door of his friend’s house, shaded by a mass of sycamores and clematis, which formed a vast arch above it, when he perceived something like a shadow issuing from the Rue Servandoni. This something was enveloped in a cloak, and D’Artagnan at first believed it was a man; but by the smallness of the form, the hesitation of the gait, and the indecision of the step, he soon discovered that it was a woman. Further, this woman, as if not certain of the house she was seeking, lifted up her eyes to look around her, stopped, went a little back, and then returned again. D’Artagnan was perplexed.
The young woman continued to advance, for, in addition to the lightness of her step, which had betrayed her, she had just given a slight cough which betrayed a clear, sweet voice. D’Artagnan believed this cough to be a signal.
Nevertheless, whether this cough had been answered by an equivalent signal which had driven away the hesitation of the nocturnal seeker, or whether she had recognized that she had arrived at the end of her journey, she boldly drew near to Aramis’s shutter, and tapped at three equal intervals with her bent finger.
The three blows were scarcely struck when the inside casement was opened, and a light appeared through the panes of the shutter.
At the end of some seconds two sharp taps were heard on the inside. The young woman in the street replied by a single tap, and the shutter was opened a little way.
D’Artagnan then saw that the young woman took from her pocket a white object which she unfolded quickly, and which took the form of a handkerchief. She made her interlocutor look at the corner of this unfolded object.
This immediately recalled to D’Artagnan’s mind the handkerchief he had found at the feet of Madame Bonacieux, which had reminded him of the one he had dragged from under Aramis’s foot.
“What the devil could that handkerchief mean?”
Placed where he was, D’Artagnan could not see the face of Aramis. We say the face of Aramis, because the young man entertained no doubt that it was his friend who held this dialogue inside with the lady outside. Curiosity prevailed over prudence, and taking advantage of the preoccupation in which the sight of the handkerchief appeared to have plunged the two personages now on the scene, he stole from his hiding-place, and quick as lightning, but stepping with the utmost caution, he went and placed himself close to the angle of the wall, from which his eye could plunge into the interior of the apartment.
Upon gaining this advantage D’Artagnan came near uttering a cry of surprise. It was not Aramis who was conversing with the nocturnal visitor; it was a woman! D’Artagnan, however, could only see enough to recognize the form of her vestments, not enough to distinguish her features.
At the same instant the woman of the apartment drew a second handkerchief from her pocket, and exchanged it for the one which had just been shown to her. Then some words were pronounced by the two women. At length the shutter was closed. The woman who was outside the window turned round, and passed within four steps of D’Artagnan, pulling down the hood of her cloak; but the precaution was too late. D’Artagnan had already recognized Madame Bonacieux.
It must be, then, for some very important affair; and what is the affair of the greatest importance to a pretty woman of twenty-five? Love.
But was it on her own account or on account of another person that she exposed herself to such risks? This was a question the young man asked himself, the demon of jealousy already gnawing at his heart, neither more nor less than at the heart of an accepted lover.
There was, besides, a very simple means of satisfying himself where Madame Bonacieux was going. This was to follow her. The means was so simple that D’Artagnan employed it quite naturally and instinctively.
But at the sight of the young man, who came out from the wall like a statue walking from its niche, and at the noise of the steps which she heard resound behind her, Madame Bonacieux uttered a little cry and fled.
D’Artagnan ran after her. It was not a very difficult thing for him to overtake a woman embarrassed with her cloak. He came up to her before she had traversed a third of the street. The unfortunate woman was exhausted, not by fatigue, but by terror; and when D’Artagnan placed his hand upon her shoulder, she sank upon one knee, crying in a choking voice,
“Kill me, if you will; you shall know nothing!”
D’Artagnan raised her by passing his arm round her waist; but as he felt by her weight she was on the point of fainting, he made haste to reassure her by protestations of devotion. These protestations were nothing for Madame Bonacieux, for such protestations may be made with the worst intentions in the world; but the voice was all. The young woman thought she recognized the sound of that voice. She opened her eyes, cast a quick glance upon the man who had terrified her so, and at once perceiving it was D’Artagnan, she uttered a cry of joy.
“Oh, it is you, it is you! Thank God, thank God!”
“Yes, it is I,” said D’Artagnan—“it is I, whom God has sent to watch over you.”
“Was it with that intention you followed me?”
“No,” said D’Artagnan—“no, I confess it; it was chance that threw me in your way. I saw a female knocking at the window of one of my friends.”
“One of your friends?” interrupted Madame Bonacieux.
“Without doubt; Aramis is one of my most intimate friends.”
“Aramis! Who is he?”
“Come, come, you won’t tell me you don’t know Aramis?”
“This is the first time I ever heard his name.”
“This is the first time, then, that you ever went to that house?”
“Certainly it is.”
“And you did not know that it was inhabited by a young man?”
“No.”
“My dear Madame Bonacieux, you are charming; but at the same time you are the most mysterious of women.”
“Do I lose much by that?”
“No; you are, on the contrary, adorable!”
“Give me your arm, then.”
“Most willingly. And now?”
“Now take me with you.”
“Where?”
“Where I am going.”
“But where are you going?”
“You will see, because you will leave me at the door.”
“Shall I wait for you?”
“That will be useless.”
“You will return alone, then?”
“Yes.”
“Well, madame, I perceive I must act in accordance with your wishes.”
D’Artagnan offered his arm to Madame Bonacieux, who took it, half laughing, half trembling, and both went up Rue la Harpe. When they reached there the young woman seemed to hesitate, as she had before done in the Rue Vaugirard. Nevertheless, by certain signs she appeared to recognize a door; and approaching that door,
“And now, sir,” she said, “it is here I have business. A thousand thanks for your honourable company, which has saved me from all the dangers to which, alone, I might have been exposed. But the moment has come for you to keep your word; I have reached the place of my destination.”
“If you could see my heart,” said D’Artagnan, “you would there read in it so much curiosity that you would pity me, and so much love that you would instantly satisfy my curiosity. We have nothing to fear from those who love us.”
“You speak very soon of love, sir!” she said, shaking her head.
“That is because love has come suddenly upon me, and for the first time, and because I am not twenty years old.”
“Sir,” said the young woman, supplicating him and clasping her hands together—“sir, in the name of Heaven, by a soldier’s honour, by the courtesy of a gentleman, depart! There! hear midnight striking; that is the hour at which I am expected.”
“Madame,” said the young man, bowing, “I can refuse nothing asked of me thus. Be satisfied; I will go.”
And as if he felt that only a violent effort would give him the strength to detach himself from the hand he held, he sprang away, running; while Madame Bonacieux knocked, as she had done at the shutter, three slow regular taps. Then, when he had gained the corner of the street, he looked around. The door had been opened and shut again; the mercer’s pretty wife had disappeared.
D’Artagnan pursued his way. He had given his word not to watch Madame Bonacieux, and if his life had depended upon the place to which she was going, or the person who should accompany her, D’Artagnan would still have returned home, since he had promised that he would do so. In five minutes he was in the Rue des Fossoyeurs.
“Poor Athos!” said he; “he will never guess what all this means. He must have fallen asleep waiting for me, or else he must have returned home, where he will have learned that a woman had been there. A woman at Athos’s house! After all,” continued D’Artagnan, “there was certainly one in Aramis’s house. All this is very strange; I should like to know how it will all end.”
“Badly, sir, badly!” replied a voice, which the young man recognized as Planchet’s; for, soliloquizing aloud, as very preoccupied people do, he had entered the alley, at the end of which were the stairs which led to his chamber.
“How badly? What do you mean by that, you stupid fellow?” asked D’Artagnan. “What has happened, then?”
“All sorts of misfortunes.”
“What?”
“In the first place, M. Athos is arrested.”
“Arrested! Athos arrested! What for?”
“He was found in your lodging; they took him for you.”
“And who arrested him?”
“The guard brought by the men in black whom you put to flight.”
“Why did he not tell them his name? Why did he not tell them he knew nothing about this affair?”
“He took care not to do so, sir. On the contrary, he came up to me, and said, ‘It is your master who needs his liberty at this moment, and not I, since he knows everything and I know nothing. They will believe he is arrested, and that will give him time. In three days I will tell them who I am, and they cannot fail to set me at liberty again.”
“Bravo, Athos! noble heart!” murmured D’Artagnan.
And his legs, already a little fatigued with running about during the day, carried D’Artagnan as fast as they could towards the Rue du Colombier.
M. de Tréville was not at his h?tel. His company was on guard at the Louvre; he was at the Louvre with his company.
He must get at M. de Tréville; it was important that he should be informed of what was going on. D’Artagnan resolved to endeavour to get into the Louvre. His costume of a guard in the company of M. des Essarts would, he thought, be a passport for him.
