Page:Louise de la Valliere text.djvu/58

Rh 48 lOIJISE DE LA VALLIERB. ing slowly, her head bent down, absorbed in the deepest meditation. ^'Mordioux! niordioux! I must and will learn who that woman is/^ said the musketeer again; and then, without further deliberation, he set oS in pursuit of her. As he was passing along, he tried to think how he could possibly contrive to make her raise her veil. "She is not young," he said, "and is a woman of high rank in society. I ought to know that figure and peculiar style of walk." As he ran, the sound of his spurs and of his boots upon the hard ground of the street made a strange, jingling noise; a for- tunate circumstance in itself, which he was far from reckon- ing upon. The noise disturbed the lady; she seemed to fancy she was being either followed or pursued, which was indeed the case, and turned round. D'Artagnan started as if he had received a charge of small shot in his legs, and then turning round as if he were going back the same way he had come, he murmured, "Madame de Chevreuse!" D'Artagnan would not go home until he had learned every- thing. He asked Celestin to inquire of the grave-digger whose body it was they had buried that morning. "A poor Franciscan mendicant friar," replied the latter, "who had not even a dog to love him in this world, and to accompany him to his last resting-place." "If that were really the case," thought D'Artagnan, "we should not have found Aramis present at his funeral. The Bishop of Vannes is not precisely a dog as far as devotion goes; his scent, however, is quite as keen, I admit." CHAPTEE VII. HOW PORTHOS, TRUCHEN AND PLAKCHET PARTED WITH ONE ANOTHER ON FRIENDLY TERMS, THANKS TO D'ARTAGNAN. There was good living in Planchet^s house. Porthos broke a ladder and two cherry-trees, stripped the raspberry- bushes, and was only unable to succeed in reaching the strawberry-beds on account, as he said, of his belt. Triichen, who had got quite sociable with the giant, said that it was not the belt so much as his corporation; and Porthos, in the state of the highest delight, embraced Triichen, who gathered him a handful of strawberries, and made him eat them out of her hand. D'Artagnan, who arrived in the midst of Uiese little innocent flirtations, scolded Porthos