“You speak very quickly of love, Monsieur!” said the young woman, shaking her head.
“It’s just that love has conquered me quickly, for the first time— and because I’m only twenty years old.”
The young woman stole a glance at him, then looked down.
“You may as well tell me, because I’m already on the track. Listen,” said d’Artagnan. “About three months ago, I nearly fought with Aramis over a handkerchief like the one you showed to the woman in his house, over a handkerchief that I’m sure bore the same coat of arms.”
“Monsieur, I swear, you’re exhausting me with all these questions,” said the young woman.
“But think, Madame, if you go about alone and are arrested with that handkerchief, won’t you be compromised?”
“Not at all. The initials on it are my own: C.B.—Constance Bonacieux.”
“Or Camille de Bois-Tracy.”
“Hush, Monsieur!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Since endangering me won’t silence you, think of the danger to yourself!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You could be imprisoned, even killed, just for knowing me.”
“Then I definitely mustn’t leave you.”
“Monsieur,” said the young woman, clasping her hands, “Monsieur, in the name of heaven, by the honor of a soldier, in the name of the courtesy of a gentleman, leave here! There, midnight is sounding—that’s when I’m expected!”
“Madame,” said the young man, bowing, “I can refuse nothing asked of me thus; be content, I depart.”
“And you won’t follow me, won’t spy on me?”
“I return home this instant.”
“Ah! I knew I could depend on you!” said Madame Bonacieux as she held out her hand to him. She placed the other on the knocker of a door so small it could easily be overlooked.
D’Artagnan seized her hand and kissed it passionately. “Ah! I wish I’d never seen you,” he cried, with that naïve roughness that women often prefer over affectations of politeness, because they reveal the heart and prove that emotion prevails over reason.
“Well,” replied Madame Bonacieux tenderly, pressing d’Artagnan’s hand, “well, I won’t go that far: what’s lost for today isn’t lost for tomorrow. Who knows, when this is all over, whether I won’t satisfy your curiosity?”
“And will you make the same promise about my love?” cried d’Artagnan, elated.
“Oh! On that, I can’t commit myself. That depends on the feelings you inspire in me.”
“Then, today, Madame . . .”
“Today, Monsieur, I haven’t yet gotten beyond gratitude.”
“You abuse my love,” said d’Artagnan sadly.
“No, I use your generosity, that’s all. But, believe me, with some people, everything comes around.”
D’Artagnan brightened. “Then I’m the happiest man alive. Promise me you’ll never forget this evening—and never forget that promise.”
“Dear friend, in the proper time and place I will remember everything. But go, now, go, in the name of heaven! They expect me at midnight exactly, and I’m late.”
“By five minutes.”
“Yes, but sometimes five minutes are five centuries.”
“When one loves.”
“Well, who says I don’t have business with a lover?”
“It’s a man who awaits you?” cried d’Artagnan. “A man!”
“Here we go again,” said Madame Bonacieux with a half-smile that wasn’t free from a certain tinge of impatience.
“No, no, I’m going, I depart; I believe in you, and I want all the credit for my devotion, even if that devotion is stupidity. Adieu, Madame, adieu!”
And as if he lacked the strength to detach himself from her hand except by a jolt, he turned and left at a run. Madame Bonacieux knocked, as she had at the shutter, with three light, evenly spaced taps. When d’Artagnan arrived at the corner of the next street, he turned for a final look, but the door had already opened and closed and the pretty mercer’s wife had disappeared.
D’Artagnan continued on his way. He had given his word not to spy on Madame Bonacieux, and if his life depended on knowing where she was going, or with whom, he would still have gone home. Five minutes later, he was in the Rue des Fossoyeurs.
“Poor Athos,” he said. “He’ll never know what this was all about. He’ll have fallen asleep waiting for me, or returned home and been told that a woman has been there. A woman in Athos’s house! Well, after all,” continued d’Artagnan, “there was certainly one in Aramis’s house. All this is very strange, and I’m very curious to know how it will end.”
“Badly, Monsieur, badly,” replied a voice, for d’Artagnan, preoccupied, had been soliloquizing aloud. The young man recognized Planchet, waiting in the alley at the base of the stairway that led to his apartment.
“What do you mean, badly? What kind of stupid remark is that?” d’Artagnan asked. “Has something happened?”
“All sorts of misfortunes.”
“Such as?”
“First of all, Monsieur Athos is arrested.”
“Arrested! Athos, arrested! Why?”
“They found him in your house and took him for you.”
“Who arrested him?”
“The city guards sent by those men in black you chased off.”
“Why didn’t he name himself? Why didn’t he tell them he was a stranger to this affair?”
“He was careful not to, Monsieur. On the contrary, he approached me and said, ‘It’s your master who needs his liberty right now, and not me, since he knows everything and I know nothing. They’ll believe d’Artagnan’s been arrested, and that will give him time; in three days I’ll reveal who I am, and they’ll have to let me go.’”
“Bravo, Athos! Noble heart,” murmured d’Artagnan, “That sounds like him, all right! And what did the guardsmen do?”
“Four of them took him someplace: maybe the Bastille, maybe the prison at For-l’Évêque.50 Two stayed behind, guarding the door, while those men in black searched everywhere and took all your papers. When they were finished, they all went away, leaving the house wide open.”
“And Porthos and Aramis?”
“I couldn’t find them.”
“But you left word that I awaited them?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“Good. They might show up at any moment, so don’t budge from here. If they come, tell them what’s happened, and ask them to wait for me at the Pomme-de-Pin cabaret. It’s too dangerous to wait here; the house might be spied upon. I’ll run to Monsieur de Tréville’s to acquaint him with all of this, and then I’ll join them.”
“Very well, Monsieur,” said Planchet.
D’Artagnan started to leave, then had second thoughts and turned back. “You’ll stay, won’t you, even if you’re afraid?” he said to Planchet.
“Don’t worry, Monsieur,” said Planchet. “You don’t really know me yet. I’m brave once I get going; it’s all a matter of setting myself up. Besides, I’m a Picard.”
“So, you’d be killed rather than quit your post?”
“Oh, yes, Monsieur. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to prove to Monsieur how attached I am to him.”
“Excellent,” said d’Artagnan to himself. “It seems the method I adopted for managing this fellow was a good one. I’ll have to repeat it now and then.”
And with what speed was left in his legs after all the running around he’d already done, d’Artagnan took himself to the Rue du Vieux-Colombier. However, Monsieur de Tréville was not at his hôtel; he was with his company, on guard at the Louvre.
He had to get to Tréville; it was important that he be told what had happened. D’Artagnan resolved to try to enter the Louvre. His uniform of a guard in des Essart’s company would have to be his passport.
He went down to the river by the Rue des Petits-Augustins and turned right along the quay to take the Pont Neuf51 across to the royal palace. He’d considered crossing by the
ferry, but on arriving at the water’s edge and checking his purse, he’d discovered he didn’t have enough money for the fee.
As he passed the opening of the Rue Guénégaud he saw two people coming out of the Rue Dauphine ahead of him. He was struck by their appearance: one was a man, one a woman. The woman was shaped like Madame Bonacieux, and wore that black cloak d’Artagnan had seen silhouetted against the shutter on the Rue de Vaugirard. The man resembled no one so much as Aramis, and wore the uniform of the musketeers. The woman’s hood was lowered, while the man held his handkerchief to his face, precautions that showed the pair had an interest in not being recognized.
They walked onto the bridge. That was d’Artagnan’s road, too, since his destination was the Louvre, so he followed them. He hadn’t gone twenty paces before he was convinced that the woman was Madame Bonacieux and the man was Aramis.
Instantly he was overwhelmed by jealousy. He felt doubly betrayed, by his friend, and by the woman whom he already loved like a mistress. Madame Bonacieux had sworn to him by all that was holy that she didn’t know Aramis, and here, a quarter of an hour later, he found her on Aramis’s arm.
D’Artagnan didn’t reflect that he’d only known the pretty mercer’s wife for three hours, that she owed him nothing but some gratitude for having delivered her from her abductors, and that she’d promised him nothing. He saw himself as an outraged lover, betrayed and scoffed at. The blood mounted to his face, and he decided it was time to clear up this affair.
The young woman and the young man noticed they were being watched and followed, and they doubled their pace. Breaking into a run, d’Artagnan cut across to the walkway on the right-hand side of the bridge, passed them, and ran all the way to the other end. Then he returned to accost them just as they passed in front of La Samaritaine. A lamp on the front of the great pumphouse lit this whole part of the bridge.
D’Artagnan halted before the couple, and they stopped short. “What do you want, Monsieur?” asked the musketeer, drawing back a step, and with a foreign accent that proved to d’Artagnan that he was wrong about at least one of his conclusions.
“It’s not Aramis!” d’Artagnan cried.
“No, Monsieur, it’s not Aramis. By your exclamation I see that you’ve taken me for another, so I pardon you.”
“You, pardon me!” said d’Artagnan.
“Yes,” replied the stranger. “Let me pass, then, since I’m not the one you have business with.”
“You’re right, Monsieur,” said d’Artagnan, “it’s not with you I have business, it’s with Madame.”
“With Madame! You don’t know her,” said the stranger.
“Wrong, Monsieur, I do know her.”
“Ah!” said Madame Bonacieux in a tone of reproach, “Ah, Monsieur! I had your word as a soldier and your faith as a gentleman. I’d hoped I could count on them.”
“And I, Madame,” said d’Artagnan, embarrassed, “you’ve promised me . . . that is . . .”
“Take my arm, Madame,” said the stranger, “and let’s continue on our way.” But d’Artagnan, though stunned and practically annihilated by all that had happened to him, still stood, arms crossed, before the musketeer and Madame Bonacieux.
The musketeer took two steps forward and shoved d’Artagnan aside. D’Artagnan leaped back and drew his sword. At the same time, like lightning, the stranger drew his.
“In the name of heaven, Milord!” cried Madame Bonacieux, throwing herself between the combatants and grabbing the blades in her gloved hands.
“Milord!” cried d’Artagnan, struck by a sudden idea. “Milord! Pardon, Monsieur, but are you then . . ..”
“Milord, the Duke of Buckingham,” said Madame Bonacieux in an undertone. “And now you can ruin us all.”
“Milord—Madame—pardon, a hundred pardons! I love her, Milord, and I was jealous. You know what it is to love, Milord! Pardon me, and tell me how I can get myself killed in Your Grace’s service.”
“You’re a brave young man,” said Buckingham. He gave d’Artagnan his hand, and he shook it respectfully. “I accept the offer of your services. Follow twenty paces behind us as far as the Louvre— and if anyone spies on us, kill him.”
D’Artagnan put his naked sword under his arm, let Madame Bonacieux and the duke go twenty steps ahead, and followed them, ready to execute to the letter the instructions of the noble and elegant minister of Charles I. Fortunately, the youth had no occasion to prove his devotion to the duke, and the young woman and the handsome “musketeer” entered the Louvre by the postern of l’École without trouble.
As for d’Artagnan, he went immediately to the Pomme-de-Pin cabaret, where he found Porthos and Aramis waiting for him. Without explaining any inconvenience he might have put them to, he told them he’d wound up the affair on his own and hadn’t needed their help.
Now, let’s leave the three friends, each to return to his home, and follow the Duke of Buckingham and his guide through the maze of the Louvre.
XII
George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham
Madame Bonacieux was known to belong to the queen, and the Duke of Buckingham wore the uniform of Tréville’s musketeers, who were on guard that night, so they were able to enter the Louvre without difficulty. Germain, the keeper of the postern gate, was one of the queen’s partisans, so the worst that could happen was that Madame Bonacieux might be accused of having brought her lover into the Louvre. Any blame would fall on her. Her reputation would be lost, of course—but of what value in the world was the reputation of a mercer’s little wife?
Once within the grounds of the Louvre, the duke and the young woman followed the base of the wall for about twenty-five paces to a small service door that was open by day, but ordinarily closed at night. This door yielded to Madame Bonacieux’s hand and they entered. When she’d closed it again they were in darkness, but Madame Bonacieux knew all the ins and outs of the servants’ corridors in that part of the Louvre. She took the duke by the hand, felt her way forward a few steps, located a banister, and led him up a staircase. The duke counted two flights of stairs. At the top she turned right, led him down a long corridor, and descended another flight of stairs into another hall, where she put a key into a lock and opened a door. She conducted the duke into a chamber lit only by a night lamp, saying, “Remain here, Milord Duke. Someone will come for you.” Then she left by the same door, locking it with the key, so that Buckingham found himself literally a prisoner.
However, though left quite alone, it must be said that the Duke of Buckingham never felt a moment’s fear. A yen for adventure and the love of romance were the keynotes of his character. Brave, enterprising, even reckless, this was not the first time he’d risked his life in such an endeavor. He’d already learned that the pretended message from Anne of Austria, which had drawn him to Paris, was a snare— but instead of returning to England, he’d taken advantage of the situation to declare to the queen that he wouldn’t depart without seeing her. At first the queen had refused, but then she’d feared that if frustrated, the duke might do something rash. She decided to receive him and beg him to leave immediately—but Madame Bonacieux, whose task it was to find the duke and bring him to the Louvre, had been abducted on the very evening of the queen’s decision. For two days Anne and her people had no idea what had become of her, and everything hung in suspense. Once Madame Bonacieux was free and in contact again with La Porte, events had resumed their course, and she’d gone to complete the dangerous task that, but for her arrest, would have been accomplished three days earlier.
Buckingham, alone in the little room, noticed a mirror and approached it. The uniform of a King’s Musketeer suited him very well indeed. At thirty-five, he was justly called the most handsome gentleman and the most elegant cavalier of France or England. The favorite of two kings, wealthy beyond counting, all-powerful in a realm that he roiled at a whim and calmed at a caprice, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, lived one of those fabulous lives that are still astonishing centu
ries after the fact. Sure of himself, convinced of his power, certain that the laws that govern other men had no power over him, he went straight toward his goal no matter what it was, even if it were so elevated and so overwhelming that it would be madness for another to reach for it. This was how he’d managed repeatedly to approach the beautiful and haughty Anne of Austria, and make her love him by dazzling her.
George Villiers, still before the mirror, primped his striking blond hair to restore the curls the hat had flattened, and twisted his mustache into points. His heart swelling with joy at being so close to that moment he’d so long desired, he smiled at himself with hope and pride.
At that moment, a door hidden behind a tapestry opened, and a woman appeared. Buckingham saw this apparition in the mirror, and uttered a cry: it was the queen!
Anne of Austria was then twenty-six or twenty-seven, and in all the splendor of her youthful beauty. She had the poise of royalty, or divinity; her beautiful eyes, which shone with glints of emerald, were at the same time sweet and majestic. Her mouth was small and rosy, and though her lower lip, like those of the Hapsburg princes, protruded slightly, her lips were as eminently graceful when curved in a smile as they were profoundly disdainful when curled in contempt.
Her soft and velvety skin was renowned, and her hands and arms were of such surpassing beauty that all the poets of the time sang of them as incomparable. Her hair, which from blond in her youth had darkened to chestnut, and which she wore powdered and very lightly curled, framed her face admirably. It was a face that even the most rigorous critic could only wish wore a little less rouge, and in which the most exacting sculptor could only wish for a little more delicate shape to the nose.
Buckingham stood for a moment, dazzled: though he’d seen her at balls, fêtes, and promenades, never had Anne of Austria appeared more beautiful than at that moment, attired in a simple dress of white satin. She was accompanied by Doña Estefania,52 the only one of her Spanish women who had not been driven away by the jealousy of the king or the persecution of Richelieu.
Anne of Austria took two steps forward; Buckingham threw himself at her feet, and before the queen could prevent him, he kissed the hem of her dress.