The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (phonics books .TXT) 📗

As soon as these studs shall be in your possession, inform me.

On the day after these events had taken place, Athos not having reappeared, M. de Tréville was informed by d’Artagnan and Porthos of the circumstance. As to Aramis, he had asked for leave of absence for five days, and was gone, it was said, to Rouen on family business.

M. de Tréville was the father of his soldiers. The lowest or the least known of them, as soon as he assumed the uniform of the company, was as sure of his aid and support as if he had been his own brother.

He repaired, then, instantly to the office of the Lieutenant-Criminel. The officer who commanded the post of the Red Cross was sent for, and by successive inquiries they learned that Athos was then lodged in Fort L’Évêque.

Athos had passed through all the examinations we have seen Bonacieux undergo.

We were present at the scene in which the two captives were confronted with each other. Athos, who had till that time said nothing for fear that d’Artagnan, interrupted in his turn, should not have the time necessary, from this moment declared that his name was Athos, and not d’Artagnan. He added that he did not know either Monsieur or Madame Bonacieux; that he had never spoken to the one or the other; that he had come, at about ten o’clock in the evening, to pay a visit to his friend M. d’Artagnan, but that till that hour he had been at M. de Tréville’s, where he had dined. “Twenty witnesses,” added he, “could attest the fact”; and he named several distinguished gentlemen, and among them was M. le Duc de la Trémouille.

The second commissary was as much bewildered as the first had been by the simple and firm declaration of the musketeer, upon whom he was anxious to take the revenge which men of the robe like at all times to gain over men of the sword; but the name of M. de Tréville, and that of M. de la Trémouille, commanded a little reflection.

Athos was then sent to the cardinal; but unfortunately the cardinal was at the Louvre with the king.

It was precisely at this moment that M. de Tréville, on leaving the residence of the lieutenant-criminel and the governor of Fort L’Évêque without being able to find Athos, arrived at the palace.

As captain of the Musketeers, M. de Tréville had the right of entry at all times.

It is well known how violent the king’s prejudices were against the queen, and how carefully these prejudices were kept up by the cardinal, who in affairs of intrigue mistrusted women infinitely more than men. One of the grand causes of this prejudice was the friendship of Anne of Austria for Madame de Chevreuse. These two women gave him more uneasiness than the war with Spain, the quarrel with England, or the embarrassment of the finances. In his eyes and to his conviction, Madame de Chevreuse not only served the queen in her political intrigues, but, what tormented him still more, in her amorous intrigues.

At the first word the cardinal spoke of Madame de Chevreuse⁠—who, though exiled to Tours and believed to be in that city, had come to Paris, remained there five days, and outwitted the police⁠—the king flew into a furious passion. Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

But when the cardinal added that not only Madame de Chevreuse had been in Paris, but still further, that the queen had renewed with her one of those mysterious correspondences which at that time was named a cabal; when he affirmed that he, the cardinal, was about to unravel the most closely twisted thread of this intrigue; that at the moment of arresting in the very act, with all the proofs about her, the queen’s emissary to the exiled duchess, a musketeer had dared to interrupt the course of justice violently, by falling sword in hand upon the honest men of the law, charged with investigating impartially the whole affair in order to place it before the eyes of the king⁠—Louis XIII could not contain himself, and he made a step toward the queen’s apartment with that pale and mute indignation which, when it broke out, led this prince to the commission of the most pitiless cruelty. And yet, in all this, the cardinal had not yet said a word about the Duke of Buckingham.

At this instant M. de Tréville entered, cool, polite, and in irreproachable costume.

Informed of what had passed by the presence of the cardinal and the alteration in the king’s countenance, M. de Tréville felt himself something like Samson before the Philistines.

Louis XIII had already placed his hand on the knob of the door; at the noise of M. de Tréville’s entrance he turned round. “You arrive in good time, Monsieur,” said the king, who, when his passions were raised to a certain point, could not dissemble; “I have learned some fine things concerning your Musketeers.”

“And I,” said Tréville, coldly, “I have some pretty things to tell your Majesty concerning these gownsmen.”

“What?” said the king, with hauteur.

“I have the honor to inform your Majesty,” continued M. de Tréville, in the same tone, “that a party of procureurs, commissaries, and men of the police⁠—very estimable people, but very inveterate, as it appears, against the uniform⁠—have taken upon themselves to arrest in a house, to lead away through the open street, and throw into Fort L’Évêque, all upon an order which they have refused to show me, one of my, or rather your Musketeers, sire, of irreproachable conduct, of an almost illustrious reputation, and whom your Majesty knows favorably, M. Athos.”

“Athos,” said the king, mechanically; “yes, certainly I know that name.”

“Let your Majesty remember,” said Tréville, “that M. Athos is the musketeer who, in the annoying duel which you are