Constance Bonacieux's abduction from Saint-Cloud transforms a promised lovers' meeting into a scene of violence and disappearance. Drawn there by a note arranging a rendezvous, d'Artagnan the younger arrives to find Constance absent; a wrecked pavilion and an eyewitness's account reveal that a party of men has carried her away in a carriage. The episode replaces romantic expectation with urgent uncertainty: he can establish what happened, but not where she has been taken.

The Appointment and the Journey

The event begins with a letter from Constance Bonacieux, received by d'Artagnan the younger after the mysterious delivery of a message into the house. It thanks him on behalf of others and asks him to be at ten that evening in Saint-Cloud, in front of the pavilion at the corner of M. d'Estrees's house. Signed C.B., the brief note is his first billet from her and his first promised rendezvous. Its effect is immediate: he reads it with the excitement of a young lover, treating the appointment as an entrance into a long-awaited happiness.

The message gives him a precise place and hour, but no password or sign by which the pair will recognize one another. At nine, d'Artagnan is at the Hotel des Gardes with Planchet, who has prepared a fourth horse. Planchet carries a musketoon and a pistol; d'Artagnan takes his sword and two pistols. They leave quietly in the dark, Planchet following ten paces behind. The practical preparations for a potentially dangerous journey accompany the romantic purpose of the appointment, though d'Artagnan proceeds without knowing that violence has already overtaken the rendezvous.

The Empty Pavilion

At Saint-Cloud, d'Artagnan avoids the main street, goes behind the chateau, and reaches the secluded lane named in the letter. A high wall runs beside the pavilion; across the lane, a poor cottage and its hedge separate the spot from the surrounding darkness. Finding no signal and hearing no sound, he waits. When eleven o'clock strikes and Constance has still not appeared, he claps his hands three times, the ordinary signal between lovers. No one answers.

He first considers ordinary explanations: perhaps he has misread the hour, or Constance has fallen asleep, been delayed, or been kept in Paris by her duties. He checks the letter by the light near the window and confirms that the appointment is for ten. Unable to climb the recently pointed wall, he scales a tree whose branches reach over the road and peers through the pavilion's panes. The interior contradicts every reassuring possibility. A window is broken; the chamber door hangs split on its hinges; an overturned table, broken decanters, crushed fruit, torn clothing, and apparent bloodstains mark a violent struggle. The lamp still shines over the disorder, making the room's calm light an unsettling contrast to what has happened within it.

Traces and Testimony

Outside, d'Artagnan finds further evidence. The soft ground has been trampled by men and horses, and carriage wheels have pressed a deep track into it. The wheel marks lead from the direction of Paris, the political center, reach the pavilion, and turn back toward the city rather than continuing beyond it. Near the wall, he discovers a woman's torn, perfumed glove. These clues make the scene more than an unexplained absence, but they do not by themselves identify the woman or the men responsible. D'Artagnan's fear grows as each object narrows the range of explanations without revealing Constance's whereabouts.

He runs to the ferry and questions the boatman, who recalls taking a young woman across at about seven that evening. Wrapped in a black mantle, she seemed anxious not to be recognized; the more she tried to escape notice, the more closely the boatman observed her. He remembers that she was young and pretty. Although other women might have had reasons to visit Saint-Cloud unseen, d'Artagnan is convinced that this was Constance. He rereads her note by the light in the ferryman's cabin, checking that it names Saint-Cloud and the pavilion rather than another destination. His certainty rests on matching the appointment to the boatman's recollection, not on the note identifying the passenger.

A poor old man at the cottage supplies a direct account of the seizure, though at first he is afraid to speak. D'Artagnan offers him a pistole and promises to keep his words to himself. The man says that shortly before nine he heard someone trying to open his gate. When he went out, he saw three men dressed as cavaliers, a carriage with two horses, and additional saddlehorses. Their apparent leader asked to borrow the cottage's ladder and paid him a crown, warning him not to disclose what he might see or hear. The old man pretended to return indoors, then slipped out through a back door and watched from cover among the elder bushes.

The three men quietly brought the carriage nearer and removed from it a short, stout, elderly man in dark clothes. He climbed the ladder, looked through the pavilion window, and came down to report that the woman was inside. The leader then used a key to enter the pavilion, while the other two men climbed the ladder. The elderly man remained by the carriage, with the coachman and a lackey attending the horses. Cries followed. A woman appeared at the window as if to escape through it, but, seeing the two men on the ladder, retreated into the room. The men entered; the old witness heard furniture breaking and the woman's cries for help, which were soon stifled.

The Seizure and Its Immediate Meaning

Two of the men emerged carrying the woman in their arms and put her into the carriage. The elderly man climbed in after her. The leader came out by the door, closed the window, and checked that she was in the carriage before mounting his horse. His two companions were already mounted; the lackey took his place beside the coachman. The carriage set off quickly, escorted by the horsemen. The witness says he saw and heard nothing more. His account confirms the central fact that the scene's physical clues could only suggest: the absent woman was forcibly removed, not merely delayed or absent from the meeting.

The account does not name Constance as the captive, identify the men, or disclose their destination. D'Artagnan nonetheless takes the boatman's description and the pavilion's location as confirmation that she was the woman taken. Overwhelmed, he remains motionless and silent, with anger and jealousy in his heart. The old man offers one limited reassurance: the men did not kill her. The abduction thus ends not with a rescue or an explanation, but with a change in the immediate stakes. A rendezvous that had promised intimacy becomes a disappearance supported by converging traces and eyewitness testimony; Constance is known to have been carried off alive, while her fate remains unresolved.