Page:Louise de la Valliere text.djvu/25

Rh LOmSE DE LA VALLIERE. 15 self, **and I shall not be able to learn what the letter con- tains." It was enough to drive him wild. "If I were in uniform," said D'Artagnan to himself, "I would have this fellow seized, and his letter with him. I could easily get assistance at the very first guardhouse; but the devil take me if I mention my name in an affair of this kind. If I were to treat him to something to drink, his suspicions would be roused: and, besides, he would make me drunk. Mordioux! my wits seems to have left me," said D'Artagnan; "it is all over with me. Yet, supposing I were to attack this poor devil, make him* draw his sword, and kill him for the sake of his letter? No harm in that, if it were a question of a letter from a queen to a nobleman, or a letter from a cardinal to a queen; but what miserable intrigues are those of Messieurs Aramis and Fouquet with Monsieur Colbert. A man's life for that! No, no, indeed; not even ten crowns." As he philosophized in this manner, biting, first his nails, and then his mustache, he perceive a group of archers and a commissary of the police engaged in carrying away a man of very gentlemanly exterior, who was struggling with all his might against them. The archers had torn his clothes, and were dragging him roughly away. He begged they would lead him along more respectfully, asserting that he was a gentleman and a soldier. And observing our soldier walking in the street he called out: "Help, comrade!" The soldier walked on with the same step toward the man who had called out to him, followed by the crowd. An idea suddenly occurred to D'Artagnan; it was his first one, and we shall find it was not a bad one either. During the time the gentleman was relating to the soldier that he had just been seized in a house as a thief, when the truth was he was only there as a lover; and while the soldier was pitying him, and offering him consolation and advice with that gravity which a French soldier has always ready when- ever his vanity or his esprit de corps is concerned, D'Ar- tagnan glided behind the soldier, who was closely hemmed in by the crowd, and with a rapid gesture drew the paper out of his belt. As at this moment the gentleman with the torn clothes was pulling about the soldier, to show how the commissary of police had pulled him about, D'Artagnan effected his capture of the letter without the slightest in- convenience. He stationed himself about ten paces distant,