“But,” cried the bandit, “that is only another way of killing me. How can I go and fetch that letter under the fire of the bastion?”
“You must nevertheless make up your mind to go and get it, or I swear you shall die by my hand.”
“Pardon, monsieur; pity! In the name of that young lady you love, and whom you perhaps believe dead but who is not!” cried the bandit, throwing himself upon his knees and leaning upon his hand–for he began to lose his strength with his blood.
“And how do you know there is a young woman whom I love, and that I believed that woman dead?” asked d’Artagnan.
“By that letter which my comrade has in his pocket.”
“You see, then,” said d’Artagnan, “that I must have that letter. So no more delay, no more hesitation; or else whatever may be my repugnance to soiling my sword a second time with the blood of a wretch like you, I swear by my faith as an honest man–” and at these words d’Artagnan made so fierce a gesture that the wounded man sprang up.
“Stop, stop!” cried he, regaining strength by force of terror. “I will go–I will go!”
D’Artagnan took the soldier’s arquebus, made him go on before him, and urged him toward his companion by pricking him behind with his sword.
It was a frightful thing to see this wretch, leaving a long track of blood on the ground he passed over, pale with approaching death, trying to drag himself along without being seen to the body of his accomplice, which lay twenty paces from him.
Terror was so strongly painted on his face, covered with a cold sweat, that d’Artagnan took pity on him, and casting upon him a look of contempt, “Stop,” said he, “I will show you the difference between a man of courage and such a coward as you. Stay where you are; I will go myself.”
And with a light step, an eye on the watch, observing the movements of the enemy and taking advantage of the accidents of the ground, d’Artagnan succeeded in reaching the second soldier.
There were two means of gaining his object–to search him on the spot, or to carry him away, making a buckler of his body, and search him in the trench.
D’Artagnan preferred the second means, and lifted the assassin onto his shoulders at the moment the enemy fired.
A slight shock, the dull noise of three balls which penetrated the flesh, a last cry, a convulsion of agony, proved to d’Artagnan that the would-be assassin had saved his life.
D’Artagnan regained the trench, and threw the corpse beside the wounded man, who was as pale as death.
Then he began to search. A leather pocketbook, a purse, in which was evidently a part of the sum which the bandit had received, with a dice box and dice, completed the possessions of the dead man.
He left the box and dice where they fell, threw the purse to the wounded man, and eagerly opened the pocketbook.
Among some unimportant papers he found the following letter, that which he had sought at the risk of his life:
“Since you have lost sight of that woman and she is now in safety in the convent, which you should never have allowed her to reach, try, at least, not to miss the man. If you do, you know that my hand stretches far, and that you shall pay very dearly for the hundred louis you have from me.”
No signature. Nevertheless it was plain the letter came from Milady. He consequently kept it as a piece of evidence, and being in safety behind the angle of the trench, he began to interrogate the wounded man. He confessed that he had undertaken with his comrade–the same who was killed–to carry off a young woman who was to leave Paris by the Barriere de La Villette; but having stopped to drink at a cabaret, they had missed the carriage by ten minutes.
“But what were you to do with that woman?” asked d’Artagnan, with anguish.
“We were to have conveyed her to a hotel in the Place Royale,” said the wounded man.