Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers

“Which?”

“That which I found at your feet, and replaced in your pocket.”

“Silence! Silence! you imprudent man! Would you ruin me?”

“You see now that there is still some danger, since one word makes you tremble, and you confess that if this word was heard you would be ruined. Come now, madame,” continued d’Artagnan, seizing her hand, “be more generous; put some confidence in me; have you not read in my eyes that my heart is full of sympathy and devotion?”

“Yes,” said Madame Bonancieux; “and do but ask me for my own secrets, and I will trust you with them all; but those of others are a different matter.”

“Very well!” replied d’Artagnan, “then I will find them out. Since these secrets have an influence on your life, it is necessary that they should become mine also.”

“Have a care!” exclaimed the young woman, in a tone of seriousness which made d’Artagnan shudder involuntarily. “Oh! do not interfere in anything that concerns me; do not seek to aid me in any of my undertakings; avoid them, I beseech you, in the name of the interest that you feel for me, and in the name of that service which you rendered to me, and which I never shall forget whilst my life lasts! Let me advise you rather to think of me no more; let my existence be obliterated from your mind; let me be to you as though you had never chanced to see me.”

“Would you like Aramis to do the same, madame?” asked d’Artagnan, full of jealousy.

“This makes the second or third time that you have mentioned that name, sir, although I have already told you that I do not know the owner of it.”

“You do not know the man at whose window-shutters you went to knock? Come, madame, you must think me credulous indeed!”

“Confess that it is to keep me talking here, that you have invented this tale, and this person.”

“I invent nothing, madame—nothing. I am telling the exact truth!”

“And you say that one of your friends lives in that house?”

“I say it, and I repeat it for the third time—that house is inhabited by a friend of mine, and that friend is Aramis.”

“All this will be explained by and by,” murmured the young woman; “and now, sir, be silent.”

“If you could see into my heart,” said d’Artagnan, “you would discover so much curiosity, that you would have pity on me: and so much love, that you would directly satisfy my curiosity. You ought not to distrust those who love you!”

“You come quickly to love, sir,” said the young woman, shaking her head.

“It is because love has come quickly on me, and for the first time; and I am not yet twenty years of age.”

The young woman stole a glance at him.

“Listen,” continued d’Artagnan; “I am already on the track: three months ago I was near fighting a duel with Aramis on account of a handkerchief like that which you showed the lady who was at his house; it was on account of a handkerchief marked in the same manner, I am positive.”

“Sir,” said the young woman, “you really bore me, I declare, with these questions.”

“But you, madame, prudent as you are, suppose you were arrested with this handkerchief upon you, and the handkerchief was seized, would you not be compromised?”

“How so? Are not the initials my own—C. B.—Constance Bonancieux?”

“Or, Camille de Bois Tracy.”

“Silence, sir! Again I say, silence! Oh, since the dangers which I run do not deter you, think of those you may run yourself.”

“I?”

“Yes, you. There is the danger of imprisonment and death in knowing me.”

“Then I will never leave you!”

“Sir,” said the young woman, in a tone of supplication, clasping her hands as she spoke; “in the name of heaven, by the honour of a soldier, by the courtesy of a gentleman, I implore you to leave me. See! it is now striking twelve, the very hour at which I am expected.”

“Madame,” said the young man, bowing, “I can refuse nothing solicited in those terms. Be reassured; I leave you.”

“But you will not follow—will not watch me?”

“No, I shall return home immediately.”

“Ah! I was convinced that you were an honourable man!” exclaimed Madame Bonancieux, offering one of her hands to him, as she placed the other on the knocker of a small door, which was well-nigh concealed in a recess.

D’Artagnan seized the hand which was offered to him, and kissed it eagerly.

“Alas!” exclaimed d’Artagnan, with that unpolished simplicity which women sometimes prefer to the delicacies of politeness, because it illuminates the depths of thought, and proves that feeling is more powerful than reason, “I wish I had never seen you!”

“Well!” said Madame Bonancieux, in a tone almost affectionate, and pressing the hand which held hers, “well! I will not say the same as you do; that which is lost today may not be lost for ever. Who knows whether, when I am freed from my present embarrassments, I may not satisfy your curiosity?”

“And do you make the same promise regarding my love?” asked the overjoyed d’Artagnan.

“Oh! I dare give no promises in that respect. It must depend upon the sentiments with which you may inspire me.”

“But, at present, madame?”

“At present, sir, I have not got beyond gratitude.”

“Alas! you are too charming; and only take advantage of my love.”

“No, I take advantage of your generosity, that’s all. But, believe me, with some people, nothing can be wholly lost.”

“You make me the happiest of men. Oh! do not forget this evening, and this promise?”

“Be assured, I will remember everything at the right time and place. But now go; go, in heaven’s name! I was expected at midnight, and am behind my time.”

“By five minutes.”

“But, under certain circumstances, five minutes are five ages.”

“Yes! when one loves.”

“Well, who has told you that this is not a love-affair?”

“It is a man who expects you!” cried d’Artagnan; “a man!”

“There, now, the discussion is about to be renewed,” cried Madame Bonancieux, with a half smile, which was not altogether exempt from impatience.

“No! I am going. I trust you; I wish to have all the merit of my devotion, even if I am a fool for it! Adieu! madame, adieu.”

Then, as though he felt himself too weak to relinquish the fair hand he held but by a shock, he hastily ran off, whilst Madame Bonancieux rapped three times at the door, slowly and regularly, as she had before done at the window-shutter.

At the corner of the street he turned, but the door had been opened and closed again, and the mercer’s pretty wife had disappeared.

D’Artagnan proceeded on his way. He had promised Madame Bonancieux not to watch her; and, had his life depended on a knowledge of the place that she was going to, or the person who went with her, he would still have gone home, as he had promised to do. In five minutes he was in the Rue des Fossoyeurs.

“Poor Athos,” said he, “he will not understand this. He will have fallen asleep waiting for me, or he will have returned home, and will have learned that there has been a woman there. A woman at his house! After all,” continued d’Artagnan, “there certainly was one at Aramis’s. All this is very strange, and I shall be extremely curious to know how it will end.”

“Badly, sir, badly,” replied a voice, which the young man recognised as that of Planchet, for in soliloquising aloud, in the manner of persons who are deeply occupied, he had entered the passage, at the bottom of which was his own staircase.

“How, badly! what are you saying, you fool?” said d’Artagnan, “and what has happened?”

“All sorts of misfortunes.”