an to affect him, and he took a
perfectly physical sensation for a moral impression.

Then the idea seized him that he had read incorrectly, and that the
appointment was for eleven o'clock. He drew near to the window, and
placing himself so that a ray of light should fall upon the letter as
he held it, he drew it from his pocket and read it again; but he had not
been mistaken, the appointment was for ten o'clock. He went and resumed
his post, beginning to be rather uneasy at this silence and this
solitude.

Eleven o'clock sounded.

D'Artagnan began now really to fear that something had happened to Mme.
Bonacieux. He clapped his hands three times--the ordinary signal of
lovers; but nobody replied to him, not even an echo.

He then thought, with a touch of vexation, that perhaps the young woman
had fallen asleep while waiting for him. He approached the wall,
and tried to climb it; but the wall had been recently pointed, and
d'Artagnan could get no hold.

At that moment he thought of the trees, upon whose leaves the light
still shone; and as one of them drooped over the road, he thought
that from its branches he might get a glimpse of the interior of the
pavilion.

The tree was easy to climb. Besides, d'Artagnan was but twenty years
old, and consequently had not yet forgotten his schoolboy habits. In an
instant he was among the branches, and his keen eyes plunged through the
transparent panes into the interior of the pavilion.

It was a strange thing, and one which made d'Artagnan tremble from the
sole of his foot to the roots of his hair, to find that this soft light,
this calm lamp, enlightened a scene of fearful disorder. One of the
windows was broken, the door of the chamber had been beaten in and hung,
split in two, on its hinges. A table, which had been covered with an
elegant supper, was overturned. The decanters broken in pieces, and
the fruits crushed, strewed the floor. Everything in the apartment gave
evidence of a violent and desperate struggle. D'Artagnan even fancied he
could recognize amid this strange disorder, fragments of garments, and
some bloody spots staining the cloth and the curtains. He hastened
to descend into the street, with a frightful beating at his heart; he
wished to see if he could find other traces of violence.

The little soft light shone on in the calmness of the night. d'Artagnan
then perceived a thing that he had not before remarked--for nothing
had led him to the examination-