Part 26

It was at this moment that Raoul, free at last after his cruel scene with Montalais, arrived at the grocer's shop.

Planchet, on his boy's report, left his work and came running.

“Ah! Monsieur le Comte,” said he, “what joy! and what star brings you here?”

“My dear Planchet,” said Athos, pressing the hands of his son, whose downcast air he noted out of the corner of his eye, “we have come to ask you… But what a plight I find you in! You are white as a miller; where have you been getting into?”

“Ah! the devil! Take care, sir, and do not come near me until I have well shaken myself.”

“Why so? Flour or powder only whiten one.”

“Not at all, not at all! What you see there, on my arms, is arsenic.”

“Arsenic?”

“Yes. I am laying in my stores against the rats.”

“Oh! In an establishment like this, the rats play a great part.”

“It is not of this establishment I am thinking, Monsieur le Comte: the rats have eaten more of me than they will ever eat.”

“What do you mean?”

“But, you could see it, Monsieur le Comte, they are making my inventory.”

“You are giving up trade?”

“Eh! Good God, yes; I am handing over my business to one of my lads.”

“Bah! You are rich enough, then?”

“Sir, I have taken a disgust to the town; I know not if it is because I am growing old, and that, as M. d'Artagnan used to say one day, when one grows old one thinks more often of the things of one's youth; but, for some time past, I feel myself drawn towards the country and gardening: I was a peasant, I, in former days.”

And Planchet punctuated this avowal with a little laugh, somewhat pretentious for a man who had professed humility.

Athos signified his approval by a gesture.

“You are buying land?” said he then.

“I have bought, sir.”

“Ah! So much the better.”

“A small house at Fontainebleau and some twenty acres in the neighbourhood.”

“Very well, Planchet, my compliments.”

“But, sir, we are very badly off here; see, my cursed dust is making you all cough. Zounds! I have no mind to poison the most worthy gentleman in the kingdom.”

Athos did not smile at this jest, which Planchet launched at him to try his hand at worldly witticisms.

“Yes,” said he, “let us talk apart; at your rooms, for instance. You have rooms of your own, have you not?”

“Certainly, Monsieur le Comte.”

“Up there, perhaps?”

And Athos, seeing Planchet embarrassed, wished to relieve him by passing on before.

“It is that…” said Planchet hesitating.

Athos mistook the meaning of this hesitation, and, attributing it to a fear the grocer might have of offering mean hospitality:

“No matter, no matter!” said he, still passing on; “the lodging of a shopkeeper, in this quarter, has a right not to be a palace. Let us go up, anyway.”

Raoul sprang nimbly before him and entered.

Two cries were heard simultaneously; one might say three.

One of these cries dominated the others: it was uttered by a woman.

The other came from Raoul's mouth. It was an exclamation of surprise. He had no sooner uttered it than he quickly shut the door.

The third was one of fright. Planchet had given it vent.

“Pardon,” added he, “it is that Madame is dressing.”

Raoul had evidently seen that Planchet spoke true, for he made a step to go down again.

“Madame?…” said Athos. “Ah! Pardon, my dear fellow, I knew not you had up there…”

“It is Trüchen,” added Planchet, rather red.

“Call her what you please, my good Planchet; pardon our indiscretion.”

“No, no; come up now, gentlemen.”

“We will do nothing of the kind,” said Athos.

“Oh! Madame being warned, she will have had time…”

“No, Planchet. Farewell!”

“Eh! gentlemen, you would not wish to displease me thus by remaining on the stairs, or by leaving my house without having sat down?”

“If we had known you had a lady up there,” replied Athos with his habitual coolness, “we should have asked to pay our respects to her.”

Planchet was so disconcerted by this exquisite impertinence, that he forced a passage and opened the door himself to let the count and his son enter.

Trüchen was quite dressed: costume of a rich and coquettish shopkeeper's wife; the eye of a German woman in conflict with French glances. She yielded the place after two curtsies, and went down to the shop.

But not without having listened at the doors to learn what the gentlemen, her visitors, would say of her to Planchet.

Athos suspected as much, and did not turn the conversation to that subject.

Planchet, for his part, was burning to give explanations before which Athos fled.

So, as certain persistencies are stronger than all others, Athos was forced to hear Planchet relate his idylls of felicity, translated into a language more chaste than that of Longus.

Thus Planchet related that Trüchen had charmed his mature age and brought good luck to his affairs, like Ruth to Boaz.

“You lack nothing now but heirs to your prosperity,” said Athos.

“If I had one, that one would have three hundred thousand livres,” replied Planchet.

“He must be had,” said Athos phlegmatically, “were it only not to let your little fortune be lost.”

This word: little fortune, put Planchet in his place, as formerly the sergeant's voice when Planchet was but a kennel-boy in the Piedmont regiment, where Rochefort had placed him.

Athos understood that the grocer would marry Trüchen, and that, willing or unwilling, he would found a stock.

This appeared to him the more evident, in that he learned that the lad to whom Planchet was selling his business was a cousin of Trüchen's.

Athos remembered that this lad was red of complexion like a gillyflower, curly of hair and square of shoulder.

He knew all that one can, all that one should know of a grocer's lot. Trüchen's fine gowns alone did not pay for the boredom she would feel at occupying herself with rural nature and gardening in company with a greying husband.

Athos understood then, as we have said, and, without transition:

“What is M. d'Artagnan doing?” said he. “He was not found at the Louvre.”

“Ah! Monsieur le Comte, M. d'Artagnan has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” said Athos with surprise.

“Oh! sir, we know what that means.”

“But I, I do not know it.”

“When M. d'Artagnan disappears, it is always for some mission or some affair.”

“He would have spoken to you of it?”

“Never.”

“You knew, however, of his departure for England in former times?”

“Because of the speculation,” said Planchet heedlessly.

“The speculation?”

“I mean…” interrupted Planchet, embarrassed.

“Well, well, your affairs, no more than those of our friend, are at stake; the interest he inspires in us alone prompted me to question you. Since the captain of the musketeers is not here, since no information can be obtained from you as to where one might meet M. d'Artagnan, we are going to take our leave of you. Farewell, Planchet! Farewell! Let us go, Raoul.”

“Monsieur le Comte, I should like to be able to tell you…”

“Not at all, not at all; it is not I who reproach a servant for discretion.”

This word: servant, struck roughly the half-millionaire Planchet; but respect and natural good-nature prevailed over pride.

“There is nothing indiscreet to tell you, Monsieur le Comte, save that M. d'Artagnan came here the other day.”

“Ah! ah!”

“And that he remained several hours consulting a geographical map.”

“You are right, my friend, say no more of it.”

“And this map, here it is as proof,” added Planchet, who went to fetch it from the neighbouring wall, where it was suspended by a braid forming a triangle with the crossbar to which was nailed the plan consulted by the captain on his visit to Planchet.

He brought, in fact, to the Comte de La Fère, a map of France, on which the practised eye of the latter discovered an itinerary marked with small pins; where the pin was missing, the hole bore witness and marked the stage.

Athos, following with his gaze the pins and the holes, saw that d'Artagnan must have taken the direction of the South and marched as far as the Mediterranean, on the side of Toulon. It was near Cannes that the marks and the dotted places stopped.

The Comte de La Fère racked his brains for some moments to guess what the musketeer was going to do at Cannes, and what motive he could have for going to observe the banks of the Var.

Athos's reflections suggested nothing to him. His accustomed perspicacity was at fault. Raoul guessed no better than his father.

“No matter!” said the young man to the count, who, silently and with his finger, had made him understand d'Artagnan's march; “one may own that there is a providence ever busy in bringing our destiny near to that of M. d'Artagnan. There he is on the side of Cannes, and you, sir, are leading me at least as far as Toulon. Be sure we shall find him far more easily on our road than on this map.”

Then, taking leave of Planchet, who was scolding his lads, even the cousin of Trüchen, his successor, the gentlemen set out on their way to go pay a visit to Monsieur le Duc de Beaufort.

At the exit of the grocer's shop, they saw a coach, future depositary of the charms of Mlle Trüchen and the bags of crowns of M. Planchet.

“Each wends his way to happiness by the road he chooses,” said Raoul sadly.

“Road to Fontainebleau!” cried Planchet to his coachman.

Chapter CCXXXVI — M. de Beaufort's Inventory

To have spoken of d'Artagnan with Planchet, to have seen Planchet quit Paris to bury himself in retirement, was for Athos and his son like a last farewell to all that noise of the capital, to their life of former days.

What, indeed, did these men leave behind them, one of whom had exhausted all the last century with glory, and the other all the new age with misfortune? Evidently neither of these two men had anything to ask of their contemporaries.

There remained only to pay a visit to M. de Beaufort and to settle the conditions of departure.

The duke was lodged magnificently at Paris. He had the superb train of great fortunes which certain old men remembered having seen flourish in the time of the liberalities of Henri III.

Then, really, certain great lords were richer than the king. They knew it, made use of it, and did not deny themselves the pleasure of humiliating His Royal Majesty a little. It was that selfish aristocracy which Richelieu had constrained to contribute, with its blood, its purse and its reverences, to what was thenceforth called the king's service.

From Louis XI, the terrible reaper of the great, to Richelieu, how many families had raised their heads! How many, from Richelieu to Louis XIV, had bowed them, never to raise them more! But M. de Beaufort was born a prince and of a blood that is not spilt upon scaffolds, save by sentence of the peoples.

This prince had therefore kept a great habit of living. How did he pay his horses, his people and his table? None knew, he less than the others. Only, there was then the privilege for the sons of kings, that none refused to become their creditor, whether through respect, through devotion, or through the persuasion that one would be paid some day.

Athos and Raoul found then the prince's house encumbered after the fashion of Planchet's.

The duke, too, was making his inventory, that is to say, he was distributing to his friends, all his creditors, every considerable value of his house.

Faced with some two millions, which was enormous then, M. de Beaufort had calculated that he could not depart for Africa without a handsome sum, and, to find this sum, he distributed to past creditors plate, arms, jewels and furniture, which was more magnificent than to sell, and brought him in double.

Indeed, how can a man to whom one owes ten thousand livres refuse to carry off a present of six thousand, enhanced by the merit of having belonged to the descendant of Henri IV, and how, after carrying off this present, would he refuse ten thousand more livres to that generous lord?

This, then, is what had happened. The prince no longer had a house, which becomes useless to an admiral whose apartment is his ship. He no longer had superfluous arms, since he placed himself amid his cannon; no more jewels than the sea might have devoured; but he had three or four hundred thousand crowns in his coffers.

And everywhere, in the house, there was a joyful movement of folks who thought they were pillaging Monseigneur.

The prince possessed in the supreme degree the art of making happy the most to-be-pitied creditors. Every pressed man, every empty purse met with him patience and understanding of his position.

To some he said:

“I should like well to have what you have; I would give it you.”

And to others:

“I have only this silver ewer, it is still worth a good five hundred livres; take it.”

Which is how, so much is a good countenance a current payment, the prince found ever anew creditors to renew his own.

This time, he put no more ceremony into it, and it was like a pillage; he gave all.

The oriental fable of that poor Arab who carries off from the pillage of a palace a kettle in the bottom of which he has hidden a bag of gold, and whom everyone lets pass freely and without envy, that fable had become at the prince's a truth. A good number of suppliers paid themselves on the duke's offices.

Thus the kitchen department, which pillaged the wardrobes and the harness-rooms, found little price in those nothings which the saddlers or the tailors prized so highly.

Jealous to carry home to their wives preserves given by Monseigneur, one saw them leap for joy under the weight of tureens and bottles gloriously stamped with the prince's arms.

M. de Beaufort ended by giving his horses and the hay from the granaries. He made more than thirty happy with his kitchen batteries, and three hundred with his cellar.

Moreover, all these people went off with the conviction that M. de Beaufort acted thus only in prospect of a new fortune hidden under the Arab tents.

It was repeated, while devastating his hotel, that he was sent to Djidjelli by the king to reconstitute his lost wealth; that the treasures of Africa would be shared by half between the admiral and the King of France; that these treasures consisted of mines of diamonds or other fabulous stones; the mines of silver or gold of the Atlas did not even obtain the honour of a mention.

Besides the mines to exploit, which would not happen until after the campaign, there would be the booty taken by the army.

M. de Beaufort would lay his hand on all that the rich sea-robbers had stolen from Christendom since the battle of Lepanto. The number of millions was no longer counted.

Now, why would he have spared the poor utensils of his past life, he who was going in quest of the rarest treasures? And, reciprocally, how would one have spared the goods of him who spared himself so little?

Such was the situation. Athos, with his investigating glance, took it in at the first look.

He found the Admiral of France a little bewildered, for he came from table, a table of fifty covers, where they had drunk long to the prosperity of the expedition; where, at dessert, they had abandoned the remains to the valets and the empty dishes to the curious.

The prince had intoxicated himself with his ruin and his popularity together. He had drunk his old wine to the health of his future wine.

When he saw Athos with Raoul.

“There,” cried he, “is my aide-de-camp they bring me. Come here, count; come here, Vicomte.”

Athos sought a passage amid the strewing of linen and crockery.

“Ah! yes, step over,” said the duke.

And he offered a full glass to Athos.

The latter accepted; Raoul but barely moistened his lips.

“Here is your commission,” said the prince to Raoul. “I had prepared it, counting on you. You are to run ahead of me to Antibes.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Here is the order.”

And M. de Beaufort gave the order to Bragelonne.

“Do you know the sea?” said he.

“Yes, my lord, I have travelled with Monsieur le Prince.”

“Good. All these shallops, all these light boats will await me to escort me and carry my provisions. The army must be able to embark within fifteen days at the latest.”

“It shall be done, my lord.”

“The present order gives you the right of visit and search in all the islands that line the coast; you will make there the enlistments and impressments you wish for me.”

“Yes, Monsieur le Duc.”

“And, as you are an active man, as you will work much, you will spend much money.”

“I hope not, my lord.”

“I hope so. My intendant has prepared bonds of a thousand livres payable on the towns of the South. You will be given a hundred. Go, dear vicomte.”n

Athos interrupted the prince:

“Keep your money, my lord; war is made among the Arabs with gold as much as with lead.”

“I wish to try the contrary,” replied the duke, “and then you know my ideas on my expedition: much noise, much fire, and I shall disappear, if need be, in the smoke.”

Having thus spoken, M. de Beaufort wished to fall to laughing again; but he had fallen ill with Athos and Raoul. He perceived it at once.

“Ah!” said he, with the courteous selfishness of his rank and age, “you are folk one must not see after dinner, cold, stiff and dry, when I am all fire, all suppleness and all wine. No, the devil take me! I shall always see you fasting, vicomte; and you, count, if you continue, I shall see you no more.”

He said that pressing Athos's hand, who answered him smiling:

“My lord, make not this outcry, because you have much money. I predict to you that, within a month, you will be dry, stiff and cold, in presence of your coffer, and that then, having Raoul at your side, you will be surprised to see him gay, boiling and generous, because he will have new crowns to offer you.”

“God hear you!” cried the duke, delighted. “I keep you, count.”

“No, I depart with Raoul; the mission with which you charge him is painful, difficult. Alone, he would have too much trouble to fulfil it. You do not notice, my lord, that you have just given him a first-rate command.”

“Bah!”

“And in the navy!”

“That is true. But does one not do all one wishes, when one resembles him?”

“My lord, you will find nowhere so much zeal and intelligence, so much real bravery as in Raoul; but, if your embarkation were to fail you, you would have but what you deserve.”

“There he is scolding me!”

“My lord, to provision a fleet, to rally a flotilla, to enlist your naval service, an admiral would need a year. Raoul is a cavalry captain, and you give him fifteen days.”

“I tell you he will get out of it.”

“I well believe it; but I will help him therein.”

“I counted well on you, and I count well even that, once at Toulon, you will not let him go alone.”

“Oh!” said Athos, shaking his head.

“Patience! patience!”

“My lord, let us take our leave.”

“Go then, and may my fortune aid you!”

“Farewell, my lord, and may your fortune aid you also!”

“There is an expedition well begun,” said Athos to his son. “No victuals, no reserves, no transport flotilla; what will be done thus?”

“Bah!” murmured Raoul, “if all go thither to do what I shall do there, victuals will not be lacking.”

“Sir,” replied Athos severely, “be not unjust and foolish in your selfishness or in your grief, as it pleases you. As soon as you depart for this war with the intention of dying there, you need no one, and it was not worth having yourself recommended to M. de Beaufort. As soon as you approach the commanding prince, as soon as you accept the responsibility of a charge in the army, it is no longer of you, it is of all those poor soldiers who, like you, have a heart and a body, who will weep for the fatherland and suffer all the necessities of the human condition. Know, Raoul, that the officer is a minister as useful as a priest, and that he must have more charity than a priest.”

“Sir, I knew it and have practised it, I would have done it again… but…”

“You forget also that you are of a country proud of its military glory; go die if you will, but die not without honour and without profit for France. Come, Raoul, be not saddened by my words; I love you and could wish you perfect.”

“I love your reproaches, sir,” said the young man softly; “they cure me, they prove to me that someone still loves me.”

“And now, let us depart, Raoul; the weather is so fair, the sky so pure, that sky which we shall always find above our heads, which you will see yet purer at Djidjelli, and which will speak to you of me there as here it speaks to me of God.”

The two gentlemen, having thus agreed on this point, spoke of the mad ways of the duke, agreed that France would be served in an incomplete manner in the spirit and the practice of the expedition, and, having summed up this policy in the word vanity, they set out on their march to obey their will even more than destiny.

The sacrifice was accomplished.

Chapter CCXXXVII — The Silver Dish

The journey was gentle. Athos and his son crossed all France, making some fifteen leagues a day, sometimes more, according as Raoul's sorrow redoubled in intensity.

They took fifteen days to arrive at Toulon, and quite lost the traces of d'Artagnan at Antibes.

It must be believed that the captain of the musketeers had wished to keep incognito in those parts; for Athos gathered from his inquiries the assurance that the cavalier he described had been seen to exchange his horses for a well-closed carriage from Avignon onward.

Raoul despaired of not meeting d'Artagnan; there was lacking to that tender heart the farewell and the consolation of that heart of steel.

Athos knew by experience that d'Artagnan became impenetrable when he occupied himself with a serious affair, whether for his own account or for the king's service.

He even feared to offend his friend or to harm him by taking too many inquiries. However, when Raoul began his work of classification for the flotilla, and he assembled the shallops and light boats to send them to Toulon, one of the fishermen informed the count that his boat had been in dock since a voyage he had made for the account of a gentleman very pressed to embark.

Athos, believing that this man lied to remain free and earn more money fishing when all his companions should be gone, insisted on having details.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”