hotel of the Roe he found, however, that it was in front of
the next house the mob was collected. The people were
shouting and running about with torches. By the light of one
of these torches D’Artagnan perceived men in uniform.
He asked what was going on.
He was told that twenty citizens, headed by one man, had
attacked a carriage which was escorted by a troop of the
cardinal’s bodyguard; but a reinforcement having come up,
the assailants had been put to flight and the leader had
taken refuge in the hotel next to his lodgings; the house
was now being searched.
In his youth D’Artagnan had often headed the bourgeoisie
against the military, but he was cured of all those
hot-headed propensities; besides, he had the cardinal’s
hundred pistoles in his pocket, so he went into the hotel
without a word. There he found Madeleine alarmed for his
safety and anxious to tell him all the events of the
evening, but he cut her short by ordering her to put his
supper in his room and give him with it a bottle of good
Burgundy.
He took his key and candle and went upstairs to his bedroom.
He had been contented, for the convenience of the house, to
lodge in the fourth story; and truth obliges us even to
confess that his chamber was just above the gutter and below
the roof. His first care on entering it was to lock up in an
old bureau with a new lock his bag of money, and then as
soon as supper was ready he sent away the waiter who brought
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Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
it up and sat down to table.
Not to reflect on what had passed, as one might fancy. No,
D’Artagnan considered that things are never well done when
they are not reserved to their proper time. He was hungry;
he supped, he went to bed. Neither was he one of those who
think that the necessary silence of the night brings counsel
with it. In the night he slept, but in the morning,
refreshed and calm, he was inspired with his clearest views
of everything. It was long since he had any reason for his
morning’s inspiration, but he always slept all night long.
At daybreak he awoke and took a turn around his room.
“In ’43,” he said, “just before the death of the late
cardinal, I received a letter from Athos. Where was I then?
Let me see. Oh! at the siege of Besancon I was in the
trenches. He told me — let me think — what was it? That he
was living on a small estate — but where? I was just
reading the name of the place when the wind blew my letter
away, I suppose to the Spaniards; there’s no use in thinking
any more about Athos. Let me see: with regard to Porthos, I
received a letter from him, too. He invited me to a hunting
party on his property in the month of September, 1646.
Unluckily, as I was then in Bearn, on account of my father’s
death, the letter followed me there. I had left Bearn when
it arrived and I never received it until the month of April,
1647; and as the invitation was for September, 1646, I
couldn’t accept it. Let me look for this letter; it must be
with my title deeds.”
D’Artagnan opened an old casket which stood in a corner of
the room, and which was full of parchments referring to an
estate during a period of two hundred years lost to his
family. He uttered an exclamation of delight, for the large
handwriting of Porthos was discernible, and underneath some
lines traced by his worthy spouse.
D’Artagnan eagerly searched for the heading of this letter;
it was dated from the Chateau du Vallon.
Porthos had forgotten that any other address was necessary;
in his pride he fancied that every one must know the Chateau
du Vallon.
“Devil take the vain fellow,” said D’Artagnan. “However, I
had better find him out first, since he can’t want money.
Athos must have become an idiot by this time from drinking.