doubtless, mourned by their families, who thought they were
at Charenton in the thickest of the fighting.
Athos and Aramis again questioned Planchet, but he had seen
nothing of D’Artagnan; they wished to take Planchet with
them, but he could not leave his troop, who at five o’clock
returned home, saying that they were returning from the
battle, whereas they had never lost sight of the bronze
equestrian statue of Louis XIII.
79
The Road to Picardy.
On leaving Paris, Athos and Aramis well knew that they would
be encountering great danger; but we know that for men like
these there could be no question of danger. Besides, they
felt that the denouement of this second Odyssey was at hand
and that there remained but a single effort to make.
Besides, there was no tranquillity in Paris itself.
Provisions began to fail, and whenever one of the Prince de
Conti’s generals wished to gain more influence he got up a
little popular tumult, which he put down again, and thus for
the moment gained a superiority over his colleagues.
In one of these risings. the Duc de Beaufort pillaged the
house and library of Mazarin, in order to give the populace,
as he put it, something to gnaw at. Athos and Aramis left
Paris after this coup-d’etat, which took place on the very
evening of the day in which the Parisians had been beaten at
Charenton.
They quitted Paris, beholding it abandoned to extreme want,
bordering on famine; agitated by fear, torn by faction.
Parisians and Frondeurs as they were, the two friends
expected to find the same misery, the same fears, the same
intrigue in the enemy’s camp; but what was their surprise,
after passing Saint Denis, to hear that at Saint Germain
people were singing and laughing, and leading generally
Page 539
Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
cheerful lives. The two gentlemen traveled by byways in
order not to encounter the Mazarinists scattered about the
Isle of France, and also to escape the Frondeurs, who were
in possession of Normandy and who never failed to conduct
captives to the Duc de Longueville, in order that he might
ascertain whether they were friends or foes. Having escaped
these dangers, they returned by the main road to Boulogne,
at Abbeville, and followed it step by step, examining every
track.
Nevertheless, they were still in a state of uncertainty.
Several inns were visited by them, several innkeepers
questioned, without a single clew being given to guide their
inquiries, when at Montreuil Athos felt upon the table that
something rough was touching his delicate fingers. He turned
up the cloth and found these hieroglyphics carved upon the
wood with a knife:
“Port …. D’Art …. 2d February.”
“This is capital!” said Athos to Aramis, “we were to have
slept here, but we cannot — we must push on.” They rode
forward and reached Abbeville. There the great number of
inns puzzled them; they could not go to all; how could they
guess in which those whom they were seeking had stayed?
“Trust me,” said Aramis, “do not expect to find anything in
Abbeville. If we had only been looking for Porthos, Porthos
would have stationed himself in one of the finest hotels and
we could easily have traced him. But D’Artagnan is devoid of
such weaknesses. Porthos would have found it very difficult
even to make him see that he was dying of hunger; he has
gone on his road as inexorable as fate and we must seek him
somewhere else.”
They continued their route. It had now become a weary and
almost hopeless task, and had it not been for the threefold
motives of honor, friendship and gratitude, implanted in
their hearts, our two travelers would have given up many a
time their rides over the sand, their interrogatories of the
peasantry and their close inspection of faces.
They proceeded thus to Peronne.
Athos began to despair. His noble nature felt that their
ignorance was a sort of reflection upon them. They had not
looked carefully enough for their lost friends. They had not
shown sufficient pertinacity in their inquiries. They were
willing and ready to retrace their steps, when, in crossing