Part 14

— Oh! my God, in the simplest way: you give me a receipt, that is all.

— Not at all, not at all, said d’Artagnan briskly, there must be order in all things.

— That is also my opinion... but with you, Monsieur d’Artagnan...

— And if I die over there, if I am killed by a musket ball, if I perish from having drunk beer?

— Monsieur, I beg you to believe that in that case I should be so afflicted by your death that I would not think of the money.

— Thank you, Planchet, but that changes nothing. We are going, like two attorney’s clerks, to draw up together a contract, a sort of deed that might be called a deed of partnership.

— Willingly, Monsieur.

— I know it is hard to draft, but we shall try.

Planchet went to fetch a pen, ink, and paper.

D’Artagnan took the pen, dipped it in the ink, and wrote:

“Between messire d’Artagnan, former lieutenant of the king’s musketeers, presently residing in the Rue Tiquetonne, at the Hôtel de la Chevrette,

And the sieur Planchet, grocer, residing in the Rue des Lombards, at the sign of the Pilon-d’Or.

It has been agreed as follows:

A partnership with a capital of forty thousand livres is formed for the purpose of exploiting an idea brought by M. d’Artagnan. The sieur Planchet, who knows this idea and approves it in all respects, shall pay twenty thousand livres into the hands of M. d’Artagnan. He shall demand neither repayment nor interest before the return from a journey that M. d’Artagnan is about to make in England.

For his part, M. d’Artagnan undertakes to pay twenty thousand livres, which he will join to the twenty thousand already paid by the sieur Planchet. He shall use the said sum of forty thousand livres as he sees fit, undertaking nonetheless to a thing which shall be set forth below.

The day when M. d’Artagnan shall have restored by some means whatsoever His Majesty King Charles II to the throne of England, he shall pay into the hands of M. Planchet the sum of...”

— The sum of one hundred fifty thousand livres, said Planchet naively, seeing that d’Artagnan had stopped.

— Ah! the devil! no, said d’Artagnan, the division cannot be made by halves, that would not be fair.

— And yet, Monsieur, we each put in half, objected Planchet timidly.

— Yes, but listen to the clause, my dear Planchet, and if you do not find it equitable in every point once it is written, well! we shall strike it out.

And d’Artagnan wrote:

“However, as M. d’Artagnan brings to the association, besides the capital of twenty thousand livres, his time, his idea, his industry, and his skin, things he values highly, especially the last, M. d’Artagnan shall keep, out of the three hundred thousand livres, two hundred thousand for himself, which shall bring his share to two thirds.”

— Very good, said Planchet.

— Is that fair? asked d’Artagnan.

— Perfectly fair, Monsieur.

— And you will be content with one hundred thousand livres?

— Hang it! I should think so. One hundred thousand livres for twenty thousand!

— And in a month, mind you.

— How, in a month?

— Yes, I ask you for only a month.

— Monsieur, said Planchet generously, I give you six weeks.

— Thank you, replied the musketeer very civilly.

After which, the two partners reread the deed.

— It is perfect, Monsieur, said Planchet, and the late M. Coquenard, the first husband of Madame la Baronne du Vallon, could not have done better.

— You think so? Well then, let us sign.

And both appended their initials.

— In this way, said d’Artagnan, I shall be beholden to no one.

— But I shall be beholden to you, said Planchet.

— No, for tenderly as I hold to it, Planchet, I may leave my skin over there, and you will lose everything. By the way, the devil! that reminds me of the main thing, an indispensable clause, I am writing it: “In the event that M. d’Artagnan should succumb in the undertaking, the liquidation shall be deemed accomplished and the sieur Planchet hereby gives quittance to the shade of messire d’Artagnan for the twenty thousand livres by him paid into the treasury of said association.”

This last clause made Planchet frown; but when he saw the eye so bright, the hand so muscular, the back so supple and robust of his partner, he took heart again, and without regret, with a high hand, he added a flourish to his initials. D’Artagnan did the same. Thus was drawn up the first known deed of partnership; perhaps since then both the form and the substance have been somewhat abused.

— Now, said Planchet, pouring a last glass of Anjou wine for d’Artagnan, now, go to sleep, my dear master.

— Not so, replied d’Artagnan, for the hardest part remains to be done now, and I am going to dream upon that hardest part.

— Bah! said Planchet, I have such great confidence in you, Monsieur d’Artagnan, that I would not give my hundred thousand livres for ninety thousand.

— And the devil take me! said d’Artagnan, I believe you would be right.

Whereupon d’Artagnan took a candle, went up to his room, and went to bed.

Chapter XXI — Where d’Artagnan prepares to travel for the firm of Planchet and Company

D’Artagnan dreamed so well all night that his plan was settled the very next morning.

— There! said he, sitting up in his bed and resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, there! I shall seek out forty men, well sure and solid, recruited among people somewhat compromised, but having habits of discipline. I shall promise them five hundred livres for a month, if they return; nothing, if they do not return, or half for their next of kin. As for food and lodging, that is the concern of the English, who have cattle in the pasture, bacon in the brine, hens in the coop, and grain in the barn. I shall present myself to General Monck with this body of troops. He will accept me. I shall have his confidence, and I shall abuse it as quickly as possible.

But, without going further, d’Artagnan shook his head and broke off.

— No, said he, I should not dare tell that to Athos; the means is therefore not honorable. Violence must be used, he continued, it must certainly be, without having in any way engaged my loyalty. With forty men I shall scour the country as a partisan. Yes, but if I meet, not forty thousand English, as Planchet said, but purely and simply four hundred? I shall be beaten, seeing that, of my forty warriors, there will be at least ten rotten ones, ten who will get themselves killed at once out of stupidity.

“No, indeed, impossible to have forty sure men; that does not exist. One must be content with thirty. With ten men fewer I shall have the right to avoid armed encounter, because of the small number of my men, and if the encounter takes place, my choice is far surer among thirty men than among forty. Besides, I save five thousand francs, that is to say an eighth of my capital, it is worth the trouble. So be it, I shall have thirty men then. I shall divide them into three bands, we shall scatter through the country with orders to reunite at a given moment; in this way, ten by ten, we give not the least suspicion, we pass unnoticed. Yes, yes, thirty, it is a marvelous number. There are three tens; three, that divine number. And then, truly, a company of thirty men, when reunited, will still have something imposing about it. Ah! unhappy me, continued d’Artagnan, thirty horses are needed; that is ruinous. Where the devil was my head to forget the horses? One cannot think of doing such a stroke without horses, however. Well! so be it! that sacrifice we shall make, even if we must take the horses in the country; they are not bad there, besides.

“But I forgot, the devil! three bands require three commanders, there is the difficulty: of the three commanders, I already have one, it is me; yes, but the two others alone will cost almost as much money as all the rest of the troop. No, decidedly, there should be but a single lieutenant.

“In that case, then, I shall reduce my troop to twenty men. I know well it is few, twenty men; but since with thirty I was resolved not to seek out blows, I shall be even more so with twenty. Twenty is a round number; that besides reduces by ten the number of horses, which is a consideration; and then, with a good lieutenant...

“God’s death! what patience and calculation can do! Was I not about to embark with forty men, and here I am now reducing myself to twenty for an equal success. Ten thousand livres saved at a single stroke and more safety, that is it exactly. Let us see now: it is no longer a question but of finding this lieutenant; let us find him then, and after... It is not easy, I need him brave and good, a second self.

“Yes, but a lieutenant will have my secret, and as that secret is worth a million and I shall pay my man only a thousand livres, fifteen hundred at most, my man will sell the secret to Monck. No lieutenant, by God! Besides, were this man mute as a disciple of Pythagoras, this man will surely have in the troop a favored soldier whom he will make his sergeant; the sergeant will penetrate the lieutenant’s secret, in case the latter is honest and will not sell it.

“Then the sergeant, less upright and less ambitious, will give the whole for fifty thousand livres. Come, come! it is impossible! Decidedly the lieutenant is impossible. But then no more fractions, I cannot divide my troop in two and act on two points at once without another self who... But what is the use of acting on two points, since we have but one man to take? What is the use of weakening a body by putting the right here, the left there? A single body, by God! a single one, commanded by d’Artagnan; very well! But twenty men marching in a band are suspect to everyone; one must not let twenty horsemen be seen marching together, otherwise a company is detached against them which demands the password, and which, at the embarrassment one feels in giving it, shoots M. d’Artagnan and his men like rabbits. I reduce myself therefore to ten men; in this way; I act simply and with unity; I shall be forced to prudence, which is half of success in an affair of the sort I am undertaking: the great number would have led me perhaps to some folly. Ten horses are nothing more to buy or to take. Oh! excellent idea and what perfect tranquillity it sends flowing in my veins! No more suspicions, no more passwords, no more danger. Ten men are valets or clerks. Ten men leading ten horses loaded with some sort of merchandise are tolerated, well received everywhere.

“Ten men travel on account of the firm Planchet and Co., of France. There is nothing to be said. These ten men, dressed like laborers, have a good hunting knife, a good musketoon at the horse’s croup, a good pistol in the saddle holster. They never let themselves be troubled, because they have no evil designs. They are perhaps at bottom a bit smuggler, but what of it? smuggling is not like polygamy, a hanging matter. The worst that can happen to us is that our goods are confiscated.

“The goods confiscated, a fine affair! Come, come, it is a superb plan. Ten men only, ten men whom I shall engage for my service, ten men who will be as resolute as forty, who will cost me like four, and to whom, for greater safety, I shall not open my mouth about my design, and to whom I shall say only: ‘My friends, there is a stroke to be made.’ In this way, Satan will be clever indeed if he plays one of his tricks on me. Fifteen thousand livres saved! it is superb out of twenty.

Thus comforted by his industrious calculation, d’Artagnan stopped at this plan and resolved to change nothing more in it. He already had, on a list furnished by his inexhaustible memory, ten men illustrious among seekers of adventure, ill-used by fortune or worried by justice. Thereupon d’Artagnan rose and set out in search at that very instant, inviting Planchet not to wait for him at breakfast, and perhaps even at dinner. A day and a half spent in haunting certain dens of Paris sufficed him for his harvest, and without letting his adventurers communicate with one another, he had, in less than thirty hours, colligated, collected, reunited a charming collection of ugly faces speaking a French less pure than the English they were about to make use of. They were for the most part guards whose merit d’Artagnan had been able to appreciate in various encounters, and whom drunkenness, unlucky sword thrusts, unexpected winnings at play, or the economical reforms of M. de Mazarin had forced to seek the shade and solitude, those two great consolers of misunderstood and bruised souls. They bore on their countenances and in their garments the traces of the heartaches they had undergone. Some had their faces torn; all had ragged clothes.

D’Artagnan relieved the most pressing of these fraternal miseries with a wise distribution of the partnership’s crowns; then, having seen to it that these crowns were employed in the physical embellishment of the troop, he assigned his recruits a rendezvous in the north of France, between Berghes and Saint-Omer. Six days had been given as the whole term, and d’Artagnan knew well enough the good will, the fine humor, and the relative honesty of these illustrious enlistees, to be certain that not one of them would fail the roll call. These orders given, this rendezvous set, he went to take his leave of Planchet, who asked him for news of his army. D’Artagnan did not judge it proper to acquaint him with the reduction he had made in his personnel; he feared to impair by this confession the confidence of his partner. Planchet rejoiced greatly to learn that the army was all raised, and that he, Planchet, found himself a sort of king of the ledger at half share who, from his counter-throne, paid a body of troops destined to war against perfidious Albion, that enemy of all truly French hearts. Planchet therefore counted out in fine double louis twenty thousand livres to d’Artagnan, for his own, Planchet’s, share, and twenty thousand more livres, still in fine double louis, for d’Artagnan’s share. D’Artagnan put each of the twenty thousand francs in a bag and, weighing each bag in each hand:

— This money is quite cumbersome, my dear Planchet, said he; do you know it weighs more than thirty pounds?

— Bah! your horse will carry that like a feather.

D’Artagnan shook his head.

— Do not tell me such things, Planchet; a horse overloaded with thirty pounds, after the portmanteau and the rider, no longer crosses a river so easily, no longer clears a wall or a ditch so lightly, and no horse, no rider. It is true you do not know that, you, Planchet, who served all your life in the infantry.

— Then, Monsieur, how to manage? said Planchet, truly embarrassed.

— Listen, said d’Artagnan, I shall pay my army on its return to its homes. Keep my half of twenty thousand livres for me, which you will put to good use in the meantime.

— And my half? said Planchet.

— I take it with me.

— Your confidence honors me, said Planchet; but if you do not return?

— That is possible, though the thing is little likely. Then, Planchet, in case I should not return, give me a pen so that I may make my will.

D’Artagnan took a pen, paper, and wrote on a single sheet:

“I, d’Artagnan, possess twenty thousand livres saved sou by sou for the thirty-three years that I have been in the service of His Majesty the King of France. I give five thousand to Athos, five thousand to Porthos, five thousand to Aramis, that they may give them, in my name and theirs, to my little friend Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne. I give the last five thousand to Planchet, that he may distribute with less regret the other fifteen thousand to my friends.

“In witness whereof I have signed the present.

“D’Artagnan.”

Planchet seemed most curious to know what d’Artagnan had written.

— Here, said the musketeer to Planchet, read.

At the last lines, tears came to Planchet’s eyes.

— You believe I would not have given the money without that? Then, I will not have your five thousand livres.

D’Artagnan smiled.

— Accept, Planchet, accept, and in this way you will lose only fifteen thousand francs instead of twenty, and you will not be tempted to do affront to the signature of your master and friend, by seeking to lose nothing at all.

How well he knew the hearts of men and of grocers, that dear M. d’Artagnan! Those who called Don Quixote mad, because he marched to the conquest of an empire with only Sancho, his squire, and those who called Sancho mad, because he marched with his master to the conquest of said empire, those certainly would have passed no other judgment on d’Artagnan and Planchet.

Yet the first passed for a subtle spirit among the keenest spirits of the court of France. As for the second, he had rightly acquired the reputation of one of the strongest heads among the grocer-merchants of the Rue des Lombards, consequently of Paris, consequently of France.

Now, considering these two men only from the point of view of all men, and the means by which they counted on replacing a king on his throne compared to other means, the slightest brain of the country where brains are slightest would have revolted against the presumptuousness of the lieutenant and the stupidity of his partner. Fortunately d’Artagnan was not a man to listen to the nonsense spoken around him, nor the comments made upon him. He had adopted the motto: “Let us do well and let them talk.” Planchet, for his part, had adopted this one: “Let us let them do and say nothing.” It resulted that, according to the habit of all superior geniuses, these two men flattered themselves intra pectus to be right against all those who gave them wrong.

To begin, d’Artagnan set out upon his way in the finest weather in the world, with no clouds in the sky, no clouds in his mind, joyful and strong, calm and decided, big with his resolution, and consequently carrying with him a tenfold dose of that powerful fluid which the shocks of the soul make spring from the nerves and which procure for the human machine a force and an influence of which the centuries to come will, in all probability, render a more arithmetical account than we can do today. He remounted, as in times past, that road fertile in adventures which had led him to Boulogne and which he was traveling for the fourth time. He could almost, by the way, recognize the trace of his step on the pavement and that of his fist on the doors of the hostelries; his memory, ever active and present, then resurrected that youth which thirty years later neither his great heart nor his steel wrist would have belied. What a rich nature was that of this man! He had all the passions, all the faults, all the weaknesses, and the spirit of contradiction familiar to his intelligence changed all these imperfections into corresponding qualities. D’Artagnan, thanks to his ever-wandering imagination, was afraid of a shadow, and ashamed of having been afraid, he marched upon that shadow, and became then extravagant with bravery if the danger was real; thus, all in him was emotion and thence enjoyment. He loved greatly the society of others, but never grew bored in his own, and more than once, could one have studied him when he was alone, one would have seen him laugh at the jibes he told himself or at the buffoonish fancies he created precisely five minutes before the moment when boredom was to come.

D’Artagnan was perhaps not as gay this time as he would have been with the prospect of finding some good friends at Calais instead of that of meeting there his ten rascals; but nonetheless melancholy visited him no more than once a day, and it was some five visits that this dark deity paid him before he caught sight of the sea at Boulogne, and even those visits were short.

But, once there, d’Artagnan felt himself near action, and every other sentiment than that of confidence disappeared, to return no more. From Boulogne he followed the coast as far as Calais. Calais was the general rendezvous, and in Calais he had designated to each of his enlisted men the hostelry of the Grand-Monarque, where life was not dear, where the sailors made the pot boil, where men of the sword, with leather scabbards, to be sure, found lodging, board, food, and all the sweetness of life finally, at thirty sous a day. D’Artagnan proposed to surprise them in the flagrant act of wandering life, and to judge by the first appearance whether he might count on them as on good companions.

He arrived in the evening, at half past four, at Calais.

Chapter XXII — D’Artagnan travels for the firm of Planchet and Company

The hostelry of the Grand-Monarque was situated in a small street parallel to the port, without opening onto the port itself; some alleys cut, as the rungs cut the two parallels of a ladder, the two great straight lines of the port and the street. By the alleys one debouched unexpectedly from the port into the street and from the street into the port.

D’Artagnan arrived on the port, took one of these streets, and fell unexpectedly before the hostelry of the Grand-Monarque. The moment was well chosen and could recall to d’Artagnan his debut at the hostelry of the Franc-Meunier, at Meung. Sailors who had just been playing at dice had fallen into a quarrel and were threatening each other furiously. The host, the hostess, and two boys watched with anxiety the circle of these bad players, from the midst of whom war seemed ready to leap forth all bristling with knives and axes.

The game, however, continued.

A stone bench was occupied by two men who seemed thus to keep watch at the door; four tables placed at the back of the common room were occupied by eight other individuals. Neither the men of the bench nor the men of the tables took part either in the quarrel or in the game. D’Artagnan recognized his ten men in these spectators so cold and so indifferent. The quarrel was growing. Every passion has, like the sea, its tide which rises and falls. Arrived at the paroxysm of his passion, a sailor overturned the table and the money that was on it. The table fell, the money rolled. At that very instant the whole personnel of the hostelry threw itself upon the stakes, and a good number of white pieces were gathered up by folk who slipped away, while the sailors tore at each other.

Alone, the two men of the bench and the eight men of the interior, though they seemed perfectly strangers to one another, alone, we say, these ten men seemed to have given each other the word to remain impassive amid these cries of fury and this noise of money. Only two contented themselves with thrusting back with the foot the combatants who came even under their table.

Two others, finally, rather than take part in all this uproar, drew their hands from their pockets; two others, finally, mounted upon the table they occupied, as do, to avoid being submerged, folk surprised by a rise of water.

“Come, come, said d’Artagnan, who had lost none of these details we have just related, here is a pretty collection: circumspect, calm, used to noise, inured to blows; the devil! I had a lucky hand.”

Suddenly his attention was called to a point in the room.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”