Chapter 34

Chapter XXXIV
Among Women
D’Artagnan had not been able to hide his feelings from his friends so much as he would have wished. The stoical soldier, the impassible man-at-arms, overcome by fear and presentiments, had yielded for a few minutes to human weakness. When therefore he had silenced his heart and calmed the agitation of his nerves, turning towards his lackey, a silent servant, always listening in order to obey the more promptly, “Rabaud,” said he, “mind, we must travel thirty leagues a day.”

“At your pleasure, Captain,” replied Rabaud.

And from that moment, d’Artagnan, accommodating his action to the pace of his horse, like a true centaur, employed his thoughts about nothing,- that is to say, about everything. He asked himself why the King had recalled him; why the Iron Mask had thrown the silver plate at the feet of Raoul. As to the first subject, the reply was only of a negative character. He knew right well that the King’s calling him was from necessity; he still further knew that Louis XIV must experience an imperious want of a private conversation with one whom the possession of such a secret placed on a level with the highest powers of the kingdom; but as to saying exactly what the King’s wish was d’Artagnan found himself completely at a loss.

The musketeer had no longer any doubt as to the reason which had urged the unfortunate Philippe to reveal his character and his birth. Philippe, hidden forever beneath a mask of iron, exiled to a country where the men seemed little more than slaves of the elements; Philippe, deprived even of the society of d’Artagnan, who had loaded him with honors and delicate attentions,- had nothing more to look forward to than spectres and griefs in this world; and despair beginning to devour him, he poured himself forth in complaints, in the belief that his revelations would raise an avenger for him.

The manner in which the musketeer had been near killing his two best friends, the destiny which had so strangely brought Athos to participate in the great state secret, the farewell of Raoul, the obscurity of that future which threatened to end in a melancholy death,- all this threw d’Artagnan incessantly back to lamentable predictions and forebodings which the rapidity of his pace did not dissipate, as it used formerly to do. D’Artagnan passed from these considerations to the remembrance of the proscribed Porthos and Aramis. He saw them both, fugitives, tracked, ruined,- laborious architects of a fortune they must lose; and as the King called for his man of execution in the hours of vengeance and malice, d’Artagnan trembled at the idea of receiving some commission that would make his very heart bleed.

Sometimes when ascending hills, when the winded horse breathed hard from his nostrils, and heaved his flanks, the captain, left to more