Part 12

— My dear Bazin, we pagans, we men of the sword, we know well enough when a man is a colonel, or a camp master, or a marshal of France; but that he should be a bishop, an archbishop, or a pope... the devil take me! if the news reaches us before three quarters of the earth have turned it to their advantage.

— Hush! hush! said Bazin, with wide eyes, do not go and corrupt these children, to whom I am trying to instill such good principles.

The children had in fact gathered around d'Artagnan, whom they admired for his horse, his great sword, his spurs, and his martial air. Above all they admired his loud voice; so that, when he emphasized his oath, the whole school cried out: "The devil take me!" with a frightful noise of laughter, joy, and stamping of feet, which filled the musketeer with delight and drove the old schoolmaster out of his wits.

— There! said he, do be quiet, you brats!... There... here you are, Monsieur d'Artagnan, and all my good principles take flight... In short, with you, as usual, nothing but disorder here... Babel is found again!... Ah! good Lord! ah! you madcaps!

And the worthy Bazin dealt blows right and left which redoubled the cries of his pupils while changing their nature.

— At least, said he, you shall corrupt no one else here.

— You think so? said d'Artagnan with a smile that sent a shiver over Bazin's shoulders.

— He is capable of it, murmured he.

— Where is your master's diocese?

— Monseigneur René is bishop of Vannes.

— Who had him appointed?

— Why, Monsieur the Superintendent, our neighbor.

— What! Monsieur Fouquet?

— Assuredly.

— Then Aramis is on good terms with him?

— Monseigneur preached every Sunday at the Superintendent's, at Vaux; then they hunted together.

— Ah!

— And Monseigneur often worked on his homilies... no, I mean his sermons, with Monsieur the Superintendent.

— Bah! then this worthy bishop preaches in verse?

— Monsieur, do not jest about religious matters, for the love of God!

— Come, Bazin, come! so Aramis is at Vannes?

— At Vannes, in Brittany.

— You are a sly one, Bazin, that is not true.

— Monsieur, see, the rooms of the presbytery are empty.

"He is right," said d'Artagnan to himself, considering the house whose appearance announced solitude.

— But Monseigneur must have written to you of his promotion.

— How long ago was it?

— A month.

— Oh! then no time has been lost. Aramis could not yet have had need of me. But come, Bazin, why are you not following your pastor?

— Monsieur, I cannot, I have occupations.

— Your alphabet?

— And my penitents.

— What! you hear confession? are you then a priest?

— Much the same. I have such a vocation!

— But holy orders?

— Oh! said Bazin with assurance, now that Monseigneur is a bishop, I shall soon have my orders, or at least my dispensations.

And he rubbed his hands.

"Decidedly," thought d'Artagnan, "there is no rooting these people out."

— Have something served to me, Bazin.

— With pleasure, Monsieur.

— A chicken, a broth, and a bottle of wine.

— Today is Saturday, a fast day, said Bazin.

— I have a dispensation, said d'Artagnan.

Bazin looked at him with a suspicious air.

— Come now! you sanctimonious fellow, who do you take me for? said the musketeer; if you, who are but a servant, hope for dispensations to commit crimes, shall not I, the friend of your bishop, have a dispensation to eat meat according to the wish of my stomach? Bazin, be civil to me, or, by God! I shall complain to the king, and you shall never hear confession. Now, you know that the nomination of bishops belongs to the king; I am the stronger.

Bazin smiled hypocritically.

— Oh! we have Monsieur the Superintendent, we have, said he.

— And so you mock the king?

Bazin made no reply; his smile was eloquent enough.

— My supper, said d'Artagnan, it is getting on toward seven o'clock.

Bazin turned and ordered the eldest of his pupils to warn the cook. Meanwhile d'Artagnan looked at the presbytery.

— Puh! said he disdainfully, Monseigneur lodged His Grandeur rather poorly here.

— We have the château of Vaux, said Bazin.

— Which is perhaps worth the Louvre? replied d'Artagnan, bantering.

— Which is worth more, replied Bazin with the greatest coolness in the world.

— Ah! said d'Artagnan.

Perhaps he was going to prolong the discussion and uphold the supremacy of the Louvre; but the lieutenant had noticed that his horse had remained tied to the bars of a door.

— The devil! said he, have my horse looked after. Your master the bishop has none like that in his stables.

Bazin cast a sidelong glance at the horse and answered:

— Monsieur the Superintendent gave four from his stables, and a single one of those four is worth four like yours.

The blood rushed to d'Artagnan's face. His hand itched, and he contemplated on Bazin's head the place where his fist would fall. But the flash passed. Reflection came, and d'Artagnan contented himself with saying:

— The devil! the devil! I did well to leave the king's service. Tell me, worthy Bazin, added he, how many musketeers has Monsieur the Superintendent?

— He will have all those of the kingdom with his money, replied Bazin, closing his book and dismissing the children with great blows of the ferule.

— The devil! the devil! said d'Artagnan once more.

And as he was told that he was served, he followed the cook, who led him into the dining room, where supper awaited him.

D'Artagnan sat down to table and attacked the chicken bravely.

— It seems to me, said d'Artagnan, biting heartily into the fowl that had been served him and that had visibly been forgotten in the fattening, it seems to me I was wrong not to go at once to seek service with that master.

"He is a powerful lord, it would seem, this Superintendent. In truth, we at court know nothing, and the rays of the sun keep us from seeing the great stars, which are also suns, only a little farther from our earth, that is all."

As d'Artagnan greatly liked, both for pleasure and from principle, to make people talk about things that interested him, he plied Master Bazin as best he could; but it was in pure waste: apart from the wearisome and hyperbolic praise of Monsieur the Superintendent of finances, Bazin, who for his part was on his guard, yielded absolutely nothing but platitudes to d'Artagnan's curiosity, so that d'Artagnan, in rather ill humor, asked to go to bed as soon as his meal was finished.

D'Artagnan was shown by Bazin into a rather mean room, where he found a rather poor bed; but d'Artagnan was not hard to please. He had been told that Aramis had carried off the keys of his private apartment, and as he knew that Aramis was a man of order and generally had many things to hide in his apartment, this had not at all surprised him. He had therefore, though he had appeared comparatively more put out, attacked the bed as bravely as he had attacked the chicken, and as he had as good a sleep as a good appetite, he took hardly more time to fall asleep than he had taken to suck the last bone of his roast.

Since he was in no one's service, d'Artagnan had promised himself to have sleep as sound as it had once been light; but however sincerely d'Artagnan had made this promise, and whatever desire he had to keep it religiously, he was awakened in the middle of the night by a great noise of carriages and mounted lackeys. A sudden illumination set the walls of his room ablaze; he leapt from his bed in his shirt and ran to the window.

"Can the king be coming back, by any chance?" thought he, rubbing his eyes, "for in truth here is a train that can belong only to a royal person."

— Long live Monsieur the Superintendent! cried, or rather bawled, from a ground-floor window a voice he recognized as Bazin's, who, while crying out, waved a handkerchief with one hand and held a great candle in the other.

D'Artagnan then saw something like a brilliant human form leaning from the door of the principal carriage; at the same time long bursts of laughter, called forth no doubt by Bazin's strange figure, and issuing from the same carriage, left a sort of trail of merriment in the wake of the swift cortège.

— I might have seen well enough, said d'Artagnan, that it was not the king; one does not laugh so heartily when the king passes. Ho! Bazin! he cried to his neighbor, who was leaning three-quarters out of the window to follow the carriage longer with his eyes, ho! what is all this?

— It is Monsieur Fouquet, said Bazin with an air of patronage.

— And all these people?

— It is the court of Monsieur Fouquet.

— Oh! oh! said d'Artagnan, what would Monsieur de Mazarin say if he heard that? And he lay down again, full of reverie, asking himself how it came about that Aramis was always protected by the most powerful man in the kingdom.

"Is it that he has more luck than I, or that I am sillier than he? Bah!"

That was the conclusive word with which d'Artagnan, now grown wise, ended each thought and each period of his style. Formerly he used to say "Mordioux!" which was a kick of the spur. But now he had aged, and he murmured that philosophical "bah!" which serves as a bridle to all passions.

Chapter XVIII — Where d'Artagnan seeks Porthos and finds only Mousqueton

When d'Artagnan had thoroughly convinced himself that the absence of the Vicar-General of Herblay was real, and that his friend was not to be found at Melun or in the neighborhood, he left Bazin without regret, cast a sly glance at the magnificent château of Vaux, which was beginning to shine with that splendor which proved its ruin, and, pinching his lips like a man full of distrust and suspicion, he spurred his piebald horse, saying:

— Come, come, it is at Pierrefonds that I shall find the best man and the best strongbox. Now, that is all I need, since I have the idea.

We shall spare our readers the prosaic incidents of d'Artagnan's journey, who touched at Pierrefonds on the morning of the third day. D'Artagnan arrived by Nanteuil-le-Haudouin and Crépy. From afar he caught sight of the château of Louis d'Orléans, which, having become Crown property, was guarded by an old concierge. It was one of those marvelous manors of the Middle Ages, with walls twenty feet thick and towers a hundred feet high.

D'Artagnan skirted its walls, measured its towers with his eye, and descended into the valley. From afar he overlooked the château of Porthos, situated on the banks of a vast pond and adjoining a magnificent forest. It is the same one we have already had the honor of describing to our readers; we shall therefore content ourselves with indicating it. The first thing d'Artagnan perceived, after the fine trees, after the May sun gilding the green hillsides, after the long crested woods stretching toward Compiègne, was a great rolling box, pushed by two lackeys and dragged by two others. In this box was an enormous green-and-gold thing that, dragged and pushed, paced the smiling walks of the park. This thing, from afar, was without detail and meant absolutely nothing; nearer, it was a barrel tricked out in gallooned green cloth; nearer still, it was a man or rather a pasha whose lower extremity, spreading in the box, filled its contents; nearer yet, this man was Mousqueton, Mousqueton white of hair and red of face like Punch.

— Well, by God! cried d'Artagnan, it is that dear Monsieur Mousqueton!

— Ah!... cried the fat man, ah! what happiness! what joy! it is Monsieur d'Artagnan!... Stop, you rogues!

These last words were addressed to the lackeys who pushed and pulled him. The box stopped, and the four lackeys, with a thoroughly military precision, doffed their gallooned hats at once and ranged themselves behind the box.

— Oh! Monsieur d'Artagnan, said Mousqueton, that I could but embrace your knees! But I have become infirm, as you see.

— Why, my dear Mousqueton, it is age.

— No, Monsieur, it is not age: it is infirmities, it is sorrows.

— Sorrows, you, Mousqueton? said d'Artagnan, walking around the box; are you mad, my friend? Thank God! you are as hearty as a three-hundred-year-old oak.

— Ah! the legs, Monsieur, the legs! said the faithful servant.

— How, the legs?

— Yes, they will no longer carry me.

— The ungrateful things! Yet you feed them well, Mousqueton, as it seems to me.

— Alas! yes, they have nothing to reproach me with on that score, said Mousqueton with a sigh; I have always done all I could for my body; I am not selfish.

And Mousqueton sighed again.

"Is Mousqueton wanting to be a baron too, that he sighs thus?" thought d'Artagnan.

— My God! Monsieur, said Mousqueton, rousing from a painful reverie, my God! how happy Monseigneur will be that you thought of him.

— Good Porthos! cried d'Artagnan; I burn to embrace him!

— Oh! said Mousqueton, touched, I shall certainly write him so, Monsieur.

— What! cried d'Artagnan, you will write him so?

— This very day, without delay.

— Then he is not here?

— Why, no, Monsieur.

— But is he near? is he far?

— Eh! how should I know, Monsieur, how should I know? said Mousqueton.

— Mordioux! cried the musketeer, stamping his foot, my luck is wretched! Porthos, so stay-at-home!

— Monsieur, there is no man more sedentary than Monseigneur. But...

— But what?

— When a friend presses you...

— A friend?

— Why, assuredly; that worthy Monsieur d'Herblay.

— It is Aramis who pressed Porthos?

— This is how the thing happened, Monsieur d'Artagnan. Monsieur d'Herblay wrote to Monseigneur...

— Indeed?

— A letter, Monsieur, a letter so pressing that it threw everything here into fire and blood!

— Tell me that, dear friend, said d'Artagnan, but send these gentlemen away first.

Mousqueton uttered a "Be off, knaves!" with lungs so powerful that the breath alone, without the words, would have sufficed to evaporate the four lackeys. D'Artagnan sat on the shaft of the box and opened his ears.

— Monsieur, said Mousqueton, Monseigneur then received a letter from the Vicar-General of Herblay, some eight or nine days ago; it was the day of rural pleasures... yes, Wednesday therefore.

— How is that! said d'Artagnan; the day of rural pleasures?

— Yes, Monsieur; we have so many pleasures to take in this delicious country that we were encumbered with them; so that we were forced to regulate their distribution.

— How well I recognize Porthos's orderliness! That idea would never have come to me. It is true that I am not encumbered with pleasures, I.

— We were, said Mousqueton.

— And how did you regulate that, come now? asked d'Artagnan.

— It is a little long, Monsieur.

— No matter, we have time, and besides you speak so well, my dear Mousqueton, that it is a real pleasure to hear you.

— It is true, said Mousqueton with a sign of satisfaction that evidently came from the justice done him, it is true that I have made great progress in Monseigneur's company.

— I await the distribution of pleasures, Mousqueton, and with impatience; I want to know if I arrived on a good day.

— Oh! Monsieur d'Artagnan, said Mousqueton melancholically, since Monseigneur left, all pleasures have flown away!

— Well! my dear Mousqueton, recall your memories.

— On what day would you have us begin?

— Why, by God! begin with Sunday, it is the Lord's day.

— Sunday, Monsieur?

— Yes.

— Sunday, religious pleasures: Monseigneur goes to mass, distributes the blessed bread, has discourses and instructions given him by his ordinary chaplain. It is not very amusing, but we are expecting a Carmelite from Paris who will serve our chaplaincy and who, they say, speaks very well; that will wake us, for the present chaplain always puts us to sleep. So Sunday, religious pleasures. Monday, worldly pleasures.

— Ah! ah! said d'Artagnan, how do you understand that, Mousqueton? Let us see the worldly pleasures, come.

— Monsieur, on Monday we go into the world; we receive, we return visits; the lute is played, we dance, we make rhymed verses, in short we burn a little incense in honor of the ladies.

— Pest! that is supreme gallantry, said the musketeer, who needed to call upon all the vigor of his mastoid muscles to repress an enormous desire to laugh.

— Tuesday, learned pleasures.

— Ah! good! said d'Artagnan, what kind? Detail us that a little, my dear Mousqueton.

— Monseigneur has bought a sphere which I shall show you; it fills the whole perimeter of the great tower, less a gallery he had made above the sphere; there are little strings and brass wires to which the sun and moon are attached. It turns; it is very fine. Monseigneur shows me the distant seas and lands; we promise ourselves never to go there. It is full of interest.

— Full of interest, that is the word, repeated d'Artagnan. And Wednesday?

— Rural pleasures, I have already had the honor of telling you, Monsieur the Chevalier: we look at Monseigneur's sheep and goats; we make the shepherdesses dance with pipes and bagpipes, as is written in a book Monseigneur owns in his library and which is called Pastorals. The author died scarce a month ago.

— Monsieur Racan, perhaps? said d'Artagnan.

— That is it, Monsieur Racan. But that is not all. We fish with line in the little canal, after which we dine crowned with flowers. That is for Wednesday.

— Pest! said d'Artagnan, he is not badly off, Wednesday. And Thursday? what can be left for that poor Thursday?

— He is not unhappy, Monsieur, said Mousqueton smiling. Thursday, Olympic pleasures. Ah! Monsieur, it is superb! We have all Monseigneur's young vassals brought and make them throw the discus, wrestle, run. Monseigneur throws the discus like no one else. And when he lands a punch, oh! what a misfortune!

— How, what a misfortune!

— Yes, Monsieur, we had to give up the cestus. He broke heads, smashed jaws, caved in chests. It is a charming game, but no one would play it with him anymore.

— So the wrist...

— Oh! Monsieur, solider than ever. Monseigneur is a little weak in the legs, he admits it himself; but it has taken refuge in the arms, so that...

— So that he fells oxen as of old.

— Better than that, Monsieur, he breaks through walls. Lately, after supping at one of his farmers'—you know how popular and good Monseigneur is—after supper he makes the jest of giving a punch in the wall; the wall collapses, the roof slides, and there are three men smothered and an old woman.

— Good God! Mousqueton, and your master?

— Oh! Monseigneur! he had his head a little scraped. We bathed the flesh with a water the nuns give us. But nothing to the fist.

— Nothing?

— Nothing, Monsieur.

— Away with Olympic pleasures! they must cost too dear, for after all the widows and orphans...

— They are given pensions, Monsieur; a tenth of Monseigneur's income is devoted to that.

— Let us pass to Friday, said d'Artagnan.

— Friday, noble and warlike pleasures. We hunt, we fence, we train falcons, we break horses. Finally, Saturday is the day of spiritual pleasures: we furnish our minds, we look at Monseigneur's paintings and statues, we even write and trace plans; in short, we fire Monseigneur's cannon.

— You trace plans, you fire the cannon...

— Yes, Monsieur.

— My friend, said d'Artagnan, Monsieur du Vallon possesses in truth the most subtle and amiable mind I know; but there is a kind of pleasure you have forgotten, it seems to me.

— Which, Monsieur? asked Mousqueton anxiously.

— Material pleasures.

Mousqueton blushed.

— What do you mean by that, Monsieur? said he, lowering his eyes.

— I mean the table, good wine, the evening occupied with the evolutions of the bottle.

— Ah! Monsieur, those pleasures count for nothing, we practice them every day.

— My brave Mousqueton, resumed d'Artagnan, forgive me, but I have been so absorbed by your charming account that I forgot the main point of our conversation, namely what the Vicar-General of Herblay could have written to your master.

— That is true, Monsieur, said Mousqueton, the pleasures distracted us. Well! Monsieur, here is the whole thing.

— I listen, my dear Mousqueton.

— Wednesday...

— The day of rural pleasures?

— Yes. A letter arrives; he receives it from my hands. I had recognized the writing.

— Well?

— Monseigneur reads it and cries: "Quick, my horses! my arms!"

— Ah! my God! said d'Artagnan, it was some duel again!

— Not at all, Monsieur; there were only these words: "Dear Porthos, be on the road if you would arrive before the equinox. I await you."

— Mordioux! said d'Artagnan thoughtfully, it was urgent, it seems.

— I should think so. So that, continued Mousqueton, Monseigneur left that very day with his secretary to try to arrive in time.

— And will he have arrived in time?

— I hope so. Monseigneur, who is high-handed, as you know, Monsieur, kept repeating: "Thunder of God! what is this equinox again? No matter, the knave must be well mounted, if he arrived before me."

— And you believe Porthos arrived first? asked d'Artagnan.

— I am sure of it. This equinox, rich as he may be, certainly has no horses like Monseigneur's!

D'Artagnan restrained his desire to laugh, because the brevity of Aramis's letter gave him much to think on. He followed Mousqueton, or rather Mousqueton's chariot, to the château; he sat at a sumptuous table, where he was honored like a king, but he could get nothing out of Mousqueton: the faithful servant wept at will, that was all. D'Artagnan, after a night passed on an excellent bed, dreamed much of the meaning of Aramis's letter, worried over the relation of the equinox to Porthos's affairs, then understanding nothing in it, save that it was some love affair of the bishop's for which it was needful that the days be equal to the nights, d'Artagnan left Pierrefonds as he had left Melun, as he had left the Count de La Fère's château. This was not, however, without a melancholy that might rightly pass for one of d'Artagnan's darkest humors. Head lowered, eye fixed, he let his legs hang on either flank of his horse and said to himself, in that vague reverie which sometimes rises to the sublimest eloquence: "No more friends, no more future, nothing! my strength is broken, like the bundle of our past friendship. Oh! old age arrives, cold, inexorable; it wraps in its funeral crepe all that shone, all that perfumed in my youth, then it casts this sweet burden on its shoulder and bears it with the rest into that bottomless gulf of death." A shudder clutched the heart of the Gascon, so brave and so strong against all the misfortunes of life, and for some moments the clouds seemed black to him, the earth slippery and clayey like that of cemeteries.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”