The Three Musketeers | Page 9

upon Spain?" asked the disturbed host.
"Bills upon his Majesty's private treasury," answered d'Artagnan, who, reckoning upon
entering into the king's service in consequence of this recommendation, believed he could
make this somewhat hazardous reply without telling of a falsehood.
"The devil!" cried the host, at his wit's end.
"But it's of no importance," continued d'Artagnan, with natural assurance; "it's of no
importance. The money is nothing; that letter was everything. I would rather have lost a
thousand pistoles than have lost it." He would not have risked more if he had said twenty
thousand; but a certain juvenile modesty restrained him.
A ray of light all at once broke upon the mind of the host as he was giving himself to the
devil upon finding nothing.

"That letter is not lost!" cried he.
"What!" cried d'Artagnan.
"No, it has been stolen from you."
"Stolen? By whom?"
"By the gentleman who was here yesterday. He came down into the kitchen, where your
doublet was. He remained there some time alone. I would lay a wager he has stolen it."
"Do you think so?" answered d'Artagnan, but little convinced, as he knew better than
anyone else how entirely personal the value of this letter was, and was nothing in it likely
to tempt cupidity. The fact was that none of his servants, none of the travelers present,
could have gained anything by being possessed of this paper.
"Do you say," resumed d'Artagnan, "that you suspect that impertinent gentleman?"
"I tell you I am sure of it," continued the host. "When I informed him that your lordship
was the protege of Monsieur de Treville, and that you even had a letter for that illustrious
gentleman, he appeared to be very much disturbed, and asked me where that letter was,
and immediately came down into the kitchen, where he knew your doublet was."
"Then that's my thief," replied d'Artagnan. "I will complain to Monsieur de Treville, and
Monsieur de Treville will complain to the king." He then drew two crowns majestically
from his purse and gave them to the host, who accompanied him, cap in hand, to the gate,
and remounted his yellow horse, which bore him without any further accident to the gate
of St. Antoine at Paris, where his owner sold him for three crowns, which was a very
good price, considering that d'Artagnan had ridden him hard during the last stage. Thus
the dealer to whom d'Artagnan sold him for the nine livres did not conceal from the
young man that he only gave that enormous sum for him on the account of the originality
of his color.
Thus d'Artagnan entered Paris on foot, carrying his little packet under his arm, and
walked about till he found an apartment to be let on terms suited to the scantiness of his
means. This chamber was a sort of garret, situated in the Rue des Fossoyeurs, near the
Luxembourg.
As soon as the earnest money was paid, d'Artagnan took possession of his lodging, and
passed the remainder of the day in sewing onto his doublet and hose some ornamental
braiding which his mother had taken off an almost-new doublet of the elder M.
d'Artagnan, and which she had given her son secretly. Next he went to the Quai de
Feraille to have a new blade put to his sword, and then returned toward the Louvre,
inquiring of the first Musketeer he met for the situation of the hotel of M. de Treville,
which proved to be in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier; that is to say, in the immediate
vicinity of the chamber hired by d'Artagnan--a circumstance which appeared to furnish a
happy augury for the success of his journey.

After this, satisfied with the way in which he had conducted himself at Meung, without
remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he retired to
bed and slept the sleep of the brave.
This sleep, provincial as it was, brought him to nine o'clock in the morning; at which
hour he rose, in order to repair to the residence of M. de Treville, the third personage in
the kingdom, in the paternal estimation.

2 THE ANTECHAMBER OF M. DE TREVILLE
M. de Troisville, as his family was still called in Gascony, or M. de Treville, as he has
ended by styling himself in Paris, had really commenced life as d'Artagnan now did; that
is to say, without a sou in his pocket, but with a fund of audacity, shrewdness, and
intelligence which makes the poorest Gascon gentleman often derive more in his hope
from the paternal inheritance than the richest Perigordian or Berrichan gentleman derives
in reality from his. His insolent bravery, his still more insolent success at a time when
blows poured down like hail,