“Ma-madame!” cried he; “is that you? How is your husband, our dear Monsieur Coquenard? Is he still as stingy as ever? Where can my eyes have been not to have seen you during the two hours of the sermon?”
“I was within two paces of you, monsieur,” replied the procurator’s wife; “but you did not perceive me because you had no eyes but for the pretty lady to whom you just now gave the holy water.”
Porthos pretended to be confused. “Ah,” said he, “you have remarked–”
“I must have been blind not to have seen.”
“Yes,” said Porthos, “that is a duchess of my acquaintance whom I have great trouble to meet on account of the jealousy of her husband, and who sent me word that she should come today to this poor church, buried in this vile quarter, solely for the sake of seeing me.”
“Monsieur Porthos,” said the procurator’s wife, “will you have the kindness to offer me your arm for five minutes? I have something to say to you.”
“Certainly, madame,” said Porthos, winking to himself, as a gambler does who laughs at the dupe he is about to pluck.
At that moment d’Artagnan passed in pursuit of Milady; he cast a passing glance at Porthos, and beheld this triumphant look.
“Eh, eh!” said he, reasoning to himself according to the strangely easy morality of that gallant period, “there is one who will be equipped in good time!”
Porthos, yielding to the pressure of the arm of the procurator’s wife, as a bark yields to the rudder, arrived at the cloister St. Magloire–a little-frequented passage, enclosed with a turnstile at each end. In the daytime nobody was seen there but mendicants devouring their crusts, and children at play.
“Ah, Monsieur Porthos,” cried the procurator’s wife, when she was assured that no one who was a stranger to the population of the locality could either see or hear her, “ah, Monsieur Porthos, you are a great conqueror, as it appears!”
“I, madame?” said Porthos, drawing himself up proudly; “how so?”
“The signs just now, and the holy water! But that must be a princess, at least–that lady with her Negro boy and her maid!”
“My God! Madame, you are deceived,” said Porthos; “she is simply a duchess.”
“And that running footman who waited at the door, and that carriage with a coachman in grand livery who sat waiting on his seat?”
Porthos had seen neither the footman nor the carriage, but with he eye of a jealous woman, Mme. Coquenard had seen everything.
Porthos regretted that he had not at once made the lady of the red cushion a princess.
“Ah, you are quite the pet of the ladies, Monsieur Porthos!” resumed the procurator’s wife, with a sigh.
“Well,” responded Porthos, “you may imagine, with the physique with which nature has endowed me, I am not in want of good luck.”
“Good Lord, how quickly men forget!” cried the procurator’s wife, raising her eyes toward heaven.
“Less quickly than the women, it seems to me,” replied Porthos; “for I, madame, I may say I was your victim, when wounded, dying, I was abandoned by the surgeons. I, the offspring of a noble family, who placed reliance upon your friendship–I was near dying of my wounds at first, and of hunger afterward, in a beggarly inn at Chantilly, without you ever deigning once to reply to the burning letters I addressed to you.”
“But, Monsieur Porthos,” murmured the procurator’s wife, who began to feel that, to judge by the conduct of the great ladies of the time, she was wrong.
“I, who had sacrificed for you the Baronne de–”
“I know it well.”
“The Comtesse de–”
“Monsieur Porthos, be generous!”
“You are right, madame, and I will not finish.”
“But it was my husband who would not hear of lending.”
“Madame Coquenard,” said Porthos, “remember the first letter you wrote me, and which I preserve engraved in my memory.”
The procurator’s wife uttered a groan.
“Besides,” said she, “the sum you required me to borrow was rather large.”
“Madame Coquenard, I gave you the preference. I had but to write to the Duchesse–but I won’t repeat her name, for I am incapable of compromising a woman; but this I know, that I had but to write to her and she would have sent me fifteen hundred.”