In spite of his prudence, d’Artagnan had some trouble to restrain himself from interfering in the scene which was being enacted underneath.
“I tell you, gentlemen, that I am the mistress of the house; I am Madame Bonancieux. I tell you that I am a servant of the queen’s!” exclaimed the unfortunate woman.
“Madame Bonancieux!” murmured d’Artagnan; “shall I be so fortunate as to have found her whom everybody searches for in vain?”
“You are the very person we were waiting for,” replied the officers.
The voice became more and more stifled. Violent struggling made the wainscot rattle. The victim was offering all the resistance that one woman could offer against four men.
“Forgive me, gentlemen, by———” murmured the voice, which then
uttered only inarticulate sounds.
“They are gagging her! They are going to abduct her!” ejaculated d’Artagnan, raising himself up with a bound. “My sword!—Right! it is by my side!—Planchet!”
“Sir.”
“Run, and seek Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; one of the three must be at home; perhaps all. Tell them to arm themselves, and hasten here. Ah, now I remember Athos is with M. de Treville.”
“But where are you going, sir?—Where are you going?”
“I shall get down through the window,” said d’Artagnan, “that I may be there sooner. Replace the squares, sweep the floor, go out by the door, and hasten whither I have told you.”
“Oh! sir, you will be killed!” cried Planchet.
“Hold your tongue, idiot!” exclaimed d’Artagnan.
Then, grasping the window-sill, he dropped from the first storey, which was fortunately not high, without giving himself even a scratch. He then went immediately and knocked at the door, muttering—
“I in my turn am going to be caught in the mousetrap; but woe betide the cats who shall deal with such a mouse!”
Scarcely had the knocker sounded beneath the young man’s hand, ere the tumult ceased, and footsteps approached. The door was opened, and d’Artagnan, armed with his naked sword, sprang into the apartment of M. Bonancieux. The door, doubtless moved by a spring, closed automatically behind him.
Then might those who yet inhabited the unfortunate house of M. Bonancieux, as well as the nearest neighbours, hear loud outcries, stampings, and the clashing of swords and the continual crash of furniture. After a moment more, those who had looked from their windows to learn the cause of this surprising noise, might see the door open, and four men clothed in black, not merely go out, but fly like frightened crows, leaving on the ground, and at the corners of the house, their feathers and wings, that is to say, portions of their coats and fragments of their cloaks.
D’Artagnan had come off victorious, without much difficulty, it must be confessed; for only one of the officers was armed, and he had only gone through a form of defence. It is quite true that the other three had endeavoured to knock down the young man with chairs, stools, and crockery, but two or three scratches from the Gascon’s sword had scared them. Ten minutes had sufficed for their defeat, and d’Artagnan had remained master of the field of battle.
The neighbours, who had opened their windows with the indifference habitual to the inhabitants of Paris at that season of perpetual disturbances and riots, closed them again when they saw the four men escape; their instinct told them no more was to be seen for the time. Besides, it was getting late; and then, as well as now, people went to bed early in the quarter of the Luxembourg.
When d’Artagnan was left alone with Madame Bonancieux, he turned towards her. The poor woman was reclining in an easy chair, almost senseless. D’Artagnan examined her with a rapid glance.
She was a charming woman, about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age; with blue eyes, a nose slightly turned up, beautiful teeth, and a complexion of intermingled rose and opal. Here, however, ended the charms which might have confounded her with a lady of high birth. Her hands were white, but not delicately formed; and her feet did not indicate a woman of quality. Fortunately, d’Artagnan was not of an age to be nice in these matters.
Whilst d’Artagnan was examining Madame Bonancieux, and had got, as we have said, to her feet, he saw on the ground a fine cambric handkerchief, which, naturally, he picked up; and, at the corner of it, he discovered the same cipher that he had seen on the handkerchief which had nearly caused him and Aramis to cut one another’s throats. Since that time d’Artagnan had mistrusted all coronetted handkerchiefs; and he now put that which he had picked up into Madame Bonancieux’s pocket, without saying a word. At that moment Madame Bonancieux recovered her senses. She opened her eyes, looked around her in affright, and saw that the room was empty, and that she was alone with her deliverer. She immediately held out her hands to him, with a smile—and Madame Bonancieux had the most charming smile in the world.
“Ah! sir,” said she, “it is you who have saved me; allow me to thank you!”
“Madame,” replied d’Artagnan, “I have only done what any gentleman would have done in my situation. You owe me no thanks.”
“Yes, yes, sir, I do; and I hope to prove to you that this service has not been for naught. But what did these men, whom I at first took for robbers, want with me? and why is not M. Bonancieux here?”
“Madame, these men were far more dangerous than any robbers would have been, for they are agents of the cardinal; and as for your husband, M. Bonancieux, he is not here, because he was taken yesterday to the Bastile.”
“My husband in the Bastile!” cried Madame Bonancieux. “Oh, my God! what can he have done, poor, dear man! Why, he is innocence itself!”
And something like a smile glanced across the yet alarmed countenance of the young woman.
“As to what he has been doing, madame,” said d’Artagnan, “I believe that his only crime consists in having at the same time the good fortune and the misfortune of being your husband.”
“Then, sir, you know?”
“I know that you were carried off, madame.”
“But by whom? do you know that? Oh, if you know, pray tell me!”
“By a man about forty or forty-five years of age, with dark hair, a brown complexion, and a scar on the left temple.”
“Just so, just so: but his name?”
“Ah! his name—I don’t know it myself.”
“And did my husband know that I had been carried off?”
“He had been informed of it by a letter sent him by the ravisher himself.”
“And does he suspect,” demanded Madame Bonancieux, with some confusion, “the cause of this abduction?”
“He attributes it, I believe, to some political cause.”
“At first I doubted whether it was so, but now, as I think, he does; and so my dear M. Bonancieux did not mistrust me for a single instant?”
“Ah! so far from that, madame, he was too proud of your prudence and your love.”
A second smile, almost imperceptible, glided over the rosy lips of the beautiful young woman.
“But,” continued d’Artagnan, “how did you make your escape?”
“I profited by a moment in which I was left alone; and as I learned this morning the cause of my abduction, by the help of my sheets I got out of the window, and hurried here, where I expected to find my husband.”
“To place yourself under his protection?”
“Oh, no! poor dear man! I knew that he