leave him.”
“This reassures me more than all the royal signatures,”
thought D’Artagnan. “Now that I have the word of Athos I can
set out.”
D’Artagnan started alone on his journey, without other
escort than his sword, and with a simple passport from
Mazarin to secure his admission to the queen’s presence. Six
hours after he left Pierrefonds he was at Saint Germain.
The disappearance of Mazarin was not as yet generally known.
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Anne of Austria was informed of it and concealed her
uneasiness from every one. In the chamber of D’Artagnan and
Porthos the two soldiers had been found bound and gagged. On
recovering the use of their limbs and tongues they could, of
course, tell nothing but what they knew — that they had
been seized, stripped and bound. But as to what had been
done by Porthos and D’Artagnan afterward they were as
ignorant as all the inhabitants of the chateau.
Bernouin alone knew a little more than the others. Bernouin,
seeing that his master did not return and hearing the stroke
of midnight, had made an examination of the orangery. The
first door, barricaded with furniture, had aroused in him
certain suspicions, but without communicating his suspicions
to any one he had patiently worked his way into the midst of
all that confusion. Then he came to the corridor, all the
doors of which he found open; so, too, was the door of
Athos’s chamber and that of the park. From the latter point
it was easy to follow tracks on the snow. He saw that these
tracks tended toward the wall; on the other side he found
similar tracks, then footprints of horses and then signs of
a troop of cavalry which had moved away in the direction of
Enghien. He could no longer cherish any doubt that the
cardinal had been carried off by the three prisoners, since
the prisoners had disappeared at the same time; and he had
hastened to Saint Germain to warn the queen of that
disappearance.
Anne had enforced the utmost secrecy and had disclosed the
event to no one except the Prince de Conde, who had sent
five or six hundred horsemen into the environs of Saint
Germain with orders to bring in any suspicious person who
was going away from Rueil, in whatsoever direction it might
be.
Now, since D’Artagnan did not constitute a body of horsemen,
since he was alone, since he was not going away from Rueil
and was going to Saint Germain, no one paid any attention to
him and his journey was not obstructed in any way.
On entering the courtyard of the old chateau the first
person seen by our ambassador was Maitre Bernouin in person,
who, standing on the threshold, awaited news of his vanished
master.
At the sight of D’Artagnan, who entered the courtyard on
horseback, Bernouin rubbed his eyes and thought he must be
mistaken. But D’Artagnan made a friendly sign to him with
his head, dismounted, and throwing his bridle to a lackey
who was passing, he approached the valet-de-chambre with a
smile on his lips.
“Monsieur d’Artagnan!” cried the latter, like a man who has
the nightmare and talks in his sleep, “Monsieur d’Artagnan!”
“Himself, Monsieur Bernouin.”
“And why have you come here?”
“To bring news of Monsieur de Mazarin — the freshest news
there is.”
“What has become of him, then?”
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Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
“He is as well as you and I.”
“Nothing bad has happened to him, then?”
“Absolutely nothing. He felt the need of making a trip in
the Ile de France, and begged us — the Comte de la Fere and
Monsieur du Vallon — to accompany him. We were too devoted
servants to refuse him a request of that sort. We set out
last evening and here we are.”
“Here you are.”
“His eminence had something to communicate to her majesty,
something secret and private — a mission that could be
confided only to a sure man — and so has sent me to Saint
Germain. And therefore, my dear Monsieur Bernouin, if you
wish to do what will be pleasing to your master, announce to