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Alexandre Dumas
D'Artagnan runs home at three in the morning. Planchet says no one brought a letter, but one has come of itself: it was on the green table in a room whose windows were sealed. Constance thanks him and names St. Cloud at ten, in front of the pavilion at the corner of M. d'Estrées's house. Planchet calls it magic and bad business. D'Artagnan calls himself the happiest of men, gives him a crown, and orders two horses and pistols for seven. If Planchet is afraid, he will go alone.
In the street Bonacieux is suddenly all politeness. He talks of the Bastille and of Laffemas, then pales when D'Artagnan may come back late or not at all. He says his wife is detained at the Louvre that evening. D'Artagnan laughs and walks on. At Tréville's hôtel the captain is joyful about the ball and blunt about the cost. The cardinal never forgets a mystification. The diamond on D'Artagnan's finger can betray a Gascon cadet. Tréville tells him to sell it or at least turn the stone inward, to see enemies everywhere, and to mistrust a mistress above all. D'Artagnan will not sell a ring from the queen. He will not put off the meeting either.
Tréville wants him on the Picardy road that night to find Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. D'Artagnan has given his word for tonight and promises to go tomorrow. Planchet, grooming the new English horses, reports that Bonacieux's face changed colour during the talk and that the mercer left the other way the moment D'Artagnan turned the corner. D'Artagnan keeps the appointment anyway. He dines with the Gascon priest who once fed the four friends chocolate, and tells Planchet to be ready at the hôtel at nine.
The warning you most need often arrives on the same morning as the letter you most want. Planchet reports that Bonacieux changed colour while they talked and left the other way the moment D'Artagnan turned the corner, and D'Artagnan still keeps the pavilion hour.
When three people name a risk you have already decided to ignore, write their words down before you go.
At nine the fourth horse has arrived. D'Artagnan and Planchet ride out in the dark toward St. Cloud. In the Bois de Boulogne Planchet talks of churches, muskets, and the play of Bonacieux's lips. Then his master leaves him at a cabaret and goes on alone.
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is Loyalty When It Costs — Breakfast on a Bastion.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into Dumas's yard at Meung, the noon fight, the diamond road, the bastion breakfast, and the trial on the Lys.
Loyalty When It Costs
A billet appears in a room whose windows were sealed. Constance names St. Cloud at ten. D'Artagnan runs toward a pavilion. Planchet talks of muskets in the underwood and Bonacieux's mouth. Loyalty here is showing up to a meeting the other side already owns.
Key Insight
The appointment that flatters your devotion may be a trap built from that devotion. Arrive, but take the warning from the person who watched the husband's lips.
Chapter 23
D’Artagnan ran home immediately, and although it was three o’clock in the morning and he had some of the worst quarters of Paris to traverse, he met with no misadventure. Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting deity. He found the door of his passage open, sprang up the stairs and knocked softly in a manner agreed upon between him and his lackey. Planchet, whom he had sent home two hours before from the Hôtel de Ville, telling him to sit up for him, opened the door for him. The reader may ask, “How came Planchet here?”…
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On one page copy, in short lines, every warning D'Artagnan receives in this chapter: the sealed letter, Planchet's magic, Bonacieux's pallor and Louvre excuse, Tréville's mine and mistress, Planchet's opposite walk. Mark which one he actually uses. Then write the one sentence he would have to believe in order to stay in Paris only until dawn and ride for Picardy instead.
Which warning in your week did you treat as someone else's fear, and what would it cost to treat it as information?
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