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Alexandre Dumas
D'Artagnan keeps paying daily court to Milady. Kitty takes his hand under the gateway and leads him to her neat room, which shares a door with her mistress. She says the mistress does not love him. As proof she shows a note to the Comte de Wardes about glances at Madame de Guise's ball. He tears it open. The wound is to his pride. He asks her to help him supplant the rival. She refuses: the mistress will never love him, he has cut her to the heart, and in love everyone for herself. He kisses her and sees the use of her confession: letters, news, and the adjoining room.
He offers to spend the evening with her. At midnight Milady rings. He hides in the closet among her robes. He hears the voice she hides in company. She has this Gascon safe. He nearly cost her credit with the cardinal. She detests him. He held Lord de Winter's life and did not kill him, so she missed three hundred thousand livres until her son's majority. The cardinal asked her to conciliate him. She orders another answer from de Wardes. D'Artagnan comes out pale and names her abominable. Kitty begs him to go; the wainscot carries every word. He stays, then asks after Madame Bonacieux. Kitty swears she is not dead, and that the mistress never tells her half her secrets.
The next night Milady is cross, then milder, and gives him her hand to kiss. Kitty brings a third letter: love three times, beware a fourth that says I detest you. He writes as de Wardes, claims illness, and promises to come at eleven. He warns Kitty her mistress will not limit vengeance if the intercept is found. She cries that he does not love her, then carries the sealed note after he promises to leave the mistress and go up with the maid.
The person who lets you into the next room can also let you hear the voice the great lady never uses in company. From the closet among Milady's robes, D'Artagnan hears her detest him for not killing Lord de Winter and for costing her three hundred thousand livres, while Kitty has to smile and ask for another letter to the Comte de Wardes.
Before you use a junior person's loyalty as a corridor, stop and write down the sentence you actually heard when they thought you were gone.
The four have stopped meeting daily while each hunts his equipment. They gather once a week at Athos's rooms, because he will not cross his own threshold. After Kitty leaves, D'Artagnan walks to the Rue Férou and finds Athos and Aramis already talking, with Aramis leaning again toward the cassock.
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is Honour vs. Necessity — A Trial Honour Will Not Name.
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.
Honour vs. Necessity
Milady's maid carries letters and bodies between a mistress who uses her and a Guardsman who wants the house. Honour would name the use. Necessity keeps Kitty moving because both rooms need a door that does not speak.
Key Insight
When a third person has to live in the corridor, someone else's honour is using them as furniture. Name the corridor.
Chapter 33
Meantime, as we have said, despite the cries of his conscience and the wise counsels of Athos, D’Artagnan became hourly more in love with Milady. Thus he never failed to pay his diurnal court to her; and the self-satisfied Gascon was convinced that sooner or later she could not fail to respond. One day, when he arrived with his head in the air, and as light at heart as a man who awaits a shower of gold, he found the soubrette under the gateway of the hôtel; but this time the pretty Kitty was not contented with touching him as…
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List what D'Artagnan hears from the closet, then list what he asks Kitty to carry the next morning. In one sentence, name the voice he heard and the task he still gave the maid.
When did you stay in a junior person's space because it opened a door, and what sentence did you hear that you later pretended not to use?
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