“I had no intention of fighting today, sir; I was charged, indeed, with a mission to the cardinal and had set out for Rueil, when, seeing Monsieur de Châtillon charge, an invincible desire possessed me to charge at his side. It was then that he told me two cavaliers of the Parisian army were seeking me and named the Comte de la Fère.”
“What! you knew we were there and yet wished to kill your friend the chevalier?”
“I did not recognize the chevalier in armor, sir!” said Raoul, blushing; “though I might have known him by his skill and coolness in danger.”
“Thank you for the compliment, my young friend,” replied Aramis, “we can see from whom you learned courtesy. Then you were going to Rueil?”
“Yes! I have a despatch from the prince to his Eminence.”
“You must still deliver it,” said Athos.
“No false generosity, count! the fate of our friends, to say nothing of our own, is perhaps in that very despatch.”
“This young man must not, however, fail in his duty,” said Athos.
“In the first place, count, this youth is our prisoner; you seem to forget that. What I propose to do is fair in war; the vanquished must not be dainty in the choice of means. Give me the despatch, Raoul.”
The young man hesitated and looked at Athos as if seeking to read in his eyes a rule of conduct.
“Give him the despatch, Raoul! you are the chevalier’s prisoner.”
Raoul gave it up reluctantly; Aramis instantly seized and read it.
“You,” he said, “you, who are so trusting, read and reflect that there is something in this letter important for us to see.”
Athos took the letter, frowning, but an idea that he should find something in this letter about d’Artagnan conquered his unwillingness to read it.
“My lord, I shall send this evening to your Eminence in order to reinforce the troop of Monsieur de Comminges, the ten men you demand. They are good soldiers, fit to confront the two violent adversaries whose address and resolution your Eminence is fearful of.”
“Oh!” cried Athos.
“Well,” said Aramis, “what think you about these two enemies whom it requires, besides Comminges’s troop, ten good soldiers to confront; are they not as like as two drops of water to d’Artagnan and Porthos?”
“We’ll search Paris all day long,” said Athos, “and if we have no news this evening we will return to the road to Picardy; and I feel no doubt that, thanks to d’Artagnan’s ready invention, we shall then find some clue which will solve our doubts.”
“Yes, let us search Paris and especially inquire of Planchet if he has yet heard from his former master.”
“That poor Planchet! You speak of him very much at your ease, Aramis; he has probably been killed. All those fighting citizens went out to battle and they have been massacred.”
It was, then, with a sentiment of uneasiness whether Planchet, who alone could give them information, was alive or dead, that the friends returned to the Place Royale; to their great surprise they found the citizens still encamped there, drinking and bantering each other, although, 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.
LXXIX
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 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 clue 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. … 2nd 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
