Louise de la Valliere, Alexandre Dumas [smallest ebook reader TXT] 📗

“Oh! you will kill him, certainly; you must take every precaution to do so. But there is no difficulty in these matters now; if you had lived in our early days,—ah, those were days worth living for!”

“My dear friend, you do not quite understand me. I mean, that M. de Saint-Aignan being a friend of the king, the affair will be more difficult to manage, since the king might learn beforehand—”

“Oh! no; that is not likely. You know my method: ‘Monsieur, you have just injured my friend, and—‘”

“Yes, I know it.”

“And then: ‘Monsieur, I have horses below.’ I carry him off before he can have spoken to any one.”

“Will he allow himself to be carried off like that?”

“I should think so! I should like to see it fail. It would be the first time, if it did. It is true, though, that the young men of the present day—Bah! I would carry him off bodily, if that were all,” and Porthos, adding gesture to speech, lifted Raoul and the chair he was sitting on off the ground, and carried them round the room.

“Very good,” said Raoul, laughing. “All we have to do is to state the grounds of the quarrel with M. de Saint-Aignan.”

“Well, but that is done, it seems.”

“No, my dear M. du Vallon, the usage of the present day requires that the cause of the quarrel should be explained.”

“Very good. Tell me what it is, then.”

“The fact is—”

“Deuce take it! how troublesome all this is! In former days we had no occasion to say anything about the matter. People fought for the sake of fighting; and I, for one, know no better reason than that.”

“You are quite right, M. du Vallon.”

“However, tell me what the cause is.”

“It is too long a story to tell; only, as one must particularize to a certain extent, and as, on the other hand, the affair is full of difficulties, and requires the most absolute secrecy, you will have the kindness merely to tell M. de Saint-Aignan that he has, in the first place, insulted me by changing his lodgings.”

“By changing his lodgings? Good,” said Porthos, who began to count on his fingers; “next?”

“Then in getting a trap-door made in his new apartments.”

“I understand,” said Porthos; “a trap-door: upon my word, that is very serious; you ought to be furious at that. What the deuce does the fellow mean by getting trap-doors made without first consulting you? Trap-doors! mordioux! I haven’t got any, except in my dungeons at Bracieux.”

“And you will please add,” said Raoul, “that my last motive for considering myself insulted is, the existence of the portrait that M. de Saint-Aignan well knows.”

“Is it possible? A portrait, too! A change of residence, a trap-door, and a portrait! Why, my dear friend, with but one of these causes of complaint there is enough, and more than enough, for all the gentlemen in France and Spain to cut each other’s throats, and that is saying but very little.”

“Well, my dear friend, you are furnished with all you need, I suppose?”

“I shall take a second horse with me. Select your own rendezvous, and while you are waiting there, you can practice some of the best passes, so as to get your limbs as elastic as possible.”

“Thank you. I shall be waiting for you in the wood of Vincennes, close to Minimes.”

“All goes well, then. Where am I to find this M. de Saint-Aignan?”

“At the Palais Royal.”

Porthos ran a huge hand-bell. “My court suit,” he said to the servant who answered the summons, “my horse, and a led horse to accompany me.” Then turning to Raoul, as soon as the servant had quitted the room, he said: “Does your father know anything about this?”

“No; I am going to write to him.”

“And D’Artagnan?”

“No, nor D’Artagnan either. He is very cautious, you know, and might have diverted me from my purpose.”

“D’Artagnan is a sound adviser, though,” said Porthos, astonished that, in his own loyal faith in D’Artagnan, any one could have thought of himself, so long as there was a D’Artagnan in the world.

“Dear M. du Vallon,” said Raoul, “do not question me any more, I implore you. I have told you all that I had to say; it is prompt action I now expect, sharp and decided as you know how to arrange it. That, indeed, is my reason for having chosen you.”

“You will be satisfied with me,” replied Porthos.

“Do not forget, either, that, except ourselves, no one must know anything of this meeting.”

“People generally find these things out,” said Porthos, dryly, “when a dead body is discovered in a wood. But I promise everything, my dear friend, except the concealment of the dead body. There it is, and it must be seen, as a matter of course. It is a principle of mine, not to bury bodies. That has a smack of the assassin about it. Every risk has its peculiarities.”

“To work, then, my dear friend.”

“Rely upon me,” said the giant, finishing the bottle, while a servant spread out upon a sofa the gorgeously decorated dress trimmed with lace.

Raoul left the room, saying to himself, with a secret delight, “Perfidious king! traitorous monarch! I cannot reach thee. I do not wish it; for kings are sacred objects. But your friend, your accomplice, your panderer—the coward who represents you—shall pay for your crime. I will kill him in thy name, and, afterwards, we will bethink ourselves of—Louise.”