The boy, the hostess, and all the house had the same regard for D’Artagnan that one would have for Hercules should he return to earth to repeat his twelve labors.
But when he was alone with the hostess he said: “Now, pretty Madeleine, you know the difference between a Swiss and a gentleman. As for you, you have acted like a barmaid. So much the worse for you, for by such conduct you have lost my esteem and my patronage. I have driven away the Swiss to humiliate you, but I shall lodge here no longer. I will not sleep where I must scorn. Ho, there, boy! Have my valise carried to the Muid d’Amour, Rue des Bourdonnais. Adieu, madame.”
In saying these words D’Artagnan appeared at the same time majestic and grieved. The hostess threw herself at his feet, asked his pardon and held him back with a sweet violence. What more need be said? The spit turned, the stove roared, the pretty Madeleine wept; D’Artagnan felt himself invaded by hunger, cold and love. He pardoned, and having pardoned he remained.
And this explains how D’Artagnan had quarters in the Rue Tiquetonne, at the Hotel de la Chevrette.
D’Artagnan then returned home in thoughtful mood, finding a somewhat lively pleasure in carrying Mazarin’s bag of money and thinking of that fine diamond which he had once called his own and which he had seen on the minister’s finger that night.
“Should that diamond ever fall into my hands again,” he reflected, “I would turn it at once into money; I would buy with the proceeds certain lands around my father’s chateau, which is a pretty place, well enough, but with no land to it at all, except a garden about the size of the Cemetery des Innocents; and I should wait in all my glory till some rich heiress, attracted by my good looks, rode along to marry me. Then I should like to have three sons; I should make the first a nobleman, like Athos; the second a good soldier, like Porthos; the third an excellent abbé, like Aramis. Faith! that would be a far better life than I lead now; but Monsieur Mazarin is a mean wretch, who won’t dispossess himself of his diamond in my favor.”
On entering the Rue Tiquetonne he heard a tremendous noise and found a dense crowd near the house.
“Oho!” said he, “is the hotel on fire?” On approaching the hotel of the Roe he found, however, that it was in front of the next house the mob was collected. The people were shouting and running about with torches. By the light of one of these torches D’Artagnan perceived men in uniform.
He asked what was going on.
He was told that twenty citizens, headed by one man, had attacked a carriage which was escorted by a troop of the cardinal’s bodyguard; but a reinforcement having come up, the assailants had been put to flight and the leader had taken refuge in the hotel next to his lodgings; the house was now being searched.