Part 21

— What! I ask and no one answers me! said Monck. What! I reproach and no one makes amends! This fire still burns, I believe?

Immediately the twenty men rushed off in search of buckets, jars, casks, extinguishing the fire at last with the same zeal they had shown a moment before in spreading it.

But already, before all else and first of all, d’Artagnan had set a ladder against the house, crying:

— Athos! it is I, I, d’Artagnan! Do not kill me, dear friend.

And a few minutes later he was clasping the count in his arms.

Meanwhile, Grimaud, preserving his calm air, dismantled the fortification of the ground floor, and, having opened the door, crossed his arms tranquilly upon the threshold. Only, at the sound of d’Artagnan’s voice, he had uttered an exclamation of surprise. The fire extinguished, the soldiers presented themselves in confusion, Digby at their head.

— General, said the latter, excuse us. What we did was out of love for Your Honor, whom we believed lost.

— You are mad, gentlemen. Lost! Does a man like me get lost? Is it not permitted me, by chance, to absent myself at my pleasure without warning? Do you take me, by chance, for a citizen of the City? Must a gentleman, my friend, my guest, be besieged, hunted down, threatened with death, because he is suspected? What does that word mean, to suspect? God damn me! if I do not have every living soul this brave gentleman left here shot!

— General, said Digby piteously, we were twenty-eight, and here are eight upon the ground.

— I authorize M. the Count de La Fère to send the other twenty to join those eight, said Monck.

And he held out his hand to Athos.

— Let them return to camp, said Monck. Mr. Digby, you shall be under arrest for a month.

— General...

— That will teach you, sir, not to act another time except by my orders.

— I had the lieutenant’s orders, general.

— The lieutenant has no such orders to give you, and it is he who shall take the arrest in your place, if he did indeed command you to burn this gentleman.

— He did not command that, general; he commanded to bring him to camp; but M. the count would not follow us.

— I would not have my house entered and pillaged, said Athos with a significant glance at Monck.

— And you did well. To camp, I say!

The soldiers withdrew with lowered heads.

— Now that we are alone, said Monck to Athos, be so good as to tell me, sir, why you persisted in remaining here, and since you had your felucca...

— I was waiting for you, general, said Athos; had not Your Honor given me a rendezvous in eight days?

A meaningful look from d’Artagnan showed Monck that these two men, so brave and so loyal, were not in collusion regarding his abduction. He already knew as much.

— Sir, he said to d’Artagnan, you were perfectly right. Be so good as to let me speak a moment with M. the Count de La Fère.

D’Artagnan profited by the leave to go and say good day to Grimaud.

Monck begged Athos to conduct him to the chamber he had occupied. This chamber was still full of smoke and debris. More than fifty balls had passed through the window and mutilated the walls. There was found a table, an inkstand, and all that is needed for writing. Monck took a pen and wrote a single line, signed, folded the paper, sealed the letter with the seal of his ring, and handed the missive to Athos, saying:

— Sir, carry, if you please, this letter to King Charles II, and depart this instant if nothing further detains you here.

— And the barrels? said Athos.

— The fishermen who brought me will help you transport them aboard. Be gone, if possible, within an hour.

— Yes, general, said Athos.

— M. d’Artagnan! cried Monck from the window.

D’Artagnan hurried up.

— Embrace your friend and bid him farewell, sir, for he returns to Holland.

— To Holland! cried d’Artagnan, and I?

— You are free to follow him, sir; but I beg you to remain, said Monck. Do you refuse me?

— Oh! no, general, I am at your orders.

D’Artagnan embraced Athos and had only time to bid him farewell.

Monck observed them both. Then he himself supervised the preparations for departure, the transport of the barrels aboard, Athos’s embarkation, and taking d’Artagnan by the arm, quite bewildered, quite moved, he led him toward Newcastle. As he went arm in arm with Monck, d’Artagnan murmured softly:

— Come, come, it seems to me the shares of the house of Planchet & Co. are rising.

Chapter XXXI — Monck Defines Himself

D’Artagnan, although he flattered himself with better success, had nevertheless not very well understood the situation. This voyage of Athos to England was for him a grave subject of meditation; this league of the king with Athos and this strange interweaving of his design with that of the Count de La Fère.

The best was to let things take their course. An imprudence had been committed, and, while having succeeded as he had promised, d’Artagnan found himself with none of the advantages of success. Since all was lost, there was nothing more to risk.

D’Artagnan followed Monck into the midst of his camp. The return of the general had produced a marvelous effect, for he was believed lost. But Monck, with his austere face and glacial bearing, seemed to ask his eager lieutenants and delighted soldiers the cause of this rejoicing.

Thus, to the lieutenant who had come to meet him and who testified to the uneasiness they had felt at his departure:

— Why so? said he. Am I obliged to render you accounts?

— But, Your Honor, sheep without the shepherd may tremble.

— Tremble! replied Monck with his calm and powerful voice; ah! sir, what a word!... God damn me! if my sheep have not teeth and claws, I renounce being their shepherd. Ah! you trembled, sir!

— General, for you.

— Mind your own business, and if I have not the mind God sent to Oliver Cromwell, I have the one He sent me; I am content with it, small as it may be.

The officer made no reply, and Monck having thus imposed silence on his men, all remained persuaded that he had accomplished an important work or made a trial of them.

It was to know very little of that scrupulous and patient genius.

Monck, if he had the good faith of the puritans, his allies, must have thanked with much fervor the patron saint who had taken him out of M. d’Artagnan’s box.

While these things passed, our musketeer never ceased repeating:

— Good Lord! grant that M. Monck have not as much pride as I myself have; for, I declare, if someone had put me in a chest with that grating over my mouth and carried me thus, conveyed like a calf across the sea, I would keep so bad a memory of my piteous figure in that chest and so ugly a grudge against him who enclosed me; I would so fear to see dawn upon the face of that malicious one a sarcastic smile, or in his attitude a grotesque imitation of my position in the box, that, mortbleu!... I would thrust a good dagger into his throat in compensation for the grating, and nail him in a true bier in memory of the false coffin where I would have mouldered two days.

And d’Artagnan was in good faith speaking thus, for it was a sensitive skin, that of our Gascon.

Monck had other ideas, happily. He opened not his mouth of the past to his timid conqueror, but he admitted him very near to his labors, took him on some reconnaissances, so as to obtain what he no doubt keenly desired, a rehabilitation in the mind of d’Artagnan. The latter conducted himself as a sworn flatterer master: he admired all Monck’s tactics and the ordonnance of his camp; he joked most agreeably at Lambert’s circumvallations, who, he said, had most uselessly taken the trouble to close a camp for twenty thousand men, while an acre of ground would have sufficed for the corporal and the fifty guards who perhaps remained faithful to him.

Monck, immediately upon his arrival, had accepted the proposition of interview made the eve before by Lambert and which Monck’s lieutenants had refused, under pretext that the general was ill. This interview was neither long nor interesting.

Lambert demanded a profession of faith from his rival. The latter declared he had no other opinion than that of the majority.

Lambert asked if it would not be more expedient to end the quarrel by an alliance than by a battle. Monck, thereupon, asked eight days to reflect. Now, Lambert could not refuse them, and Lambert however had come saying he would devour Monck’s army. Thus when, following the interview, which Lambert’s men awaited with impatience, nothing was decided, neither treaty nor battle, the rebel army began, as M. d’Artagnan had foreseen, to prefer the good cause to the bad, and the Parliament, Croupion though it was, to the pompous nothingness of General Lambert’s designs.

One recalled, besides, the good meals of London, the profusion of ale and sherry that the citizen of the City paid to his friends, the soldiers; one looked with terror at the black bread of war, the troubled water of the Tweed, too salt for the glass, too little for the pot, and one said to oneself: “Were we not better on the other side? Do not the roasts heat at London for Monck?” Thereupon, nothing more was heard but of desertion in Lambert’s army. The soldiers let themselves be carried by the force of principles, which are, like discipline, the obligatory link of every body constituted for some end whatsoever. Monck defended the Parliament, Lambert attacked it. Monck had no more wish than Lambert to sustain the Parliament, but he had written it upon his banners, so that all of the contrary party were reduced to writing upon theirs: “Rebellion,” which sounded ill to puritan ears. Thus came they from Lambert to Monck as sinners come from Baal to God.

Monck made his calculation: at a thousand desertions per day, Lambert had twenty days of it; but there is in things that crumble such increase of weight and speed combined, that a hundred departed the first day, five hundred the second, a thousand the third. Monck thought he had reached his average. But from a thousand desertion soon passed to two thousand, then to four thousand, and eight days after, Lambert, feeling well that he no longer had the possibility of accepting battle if it were offered him, took the wise part to decamp during the night to return to London, and to warn Monck by reconstructing himself a power with the debris of the military party.

But Monck, free and without uneasiness, marched upon London as a conqueror, swelling his army with all the floating parties on his passage. He came to camp at Barnet, that is to say at four leagues, cherished of the Parliament, which believed to see in him a protector, and awaited by the people, which wished to see him define himself to judge him. D’Artagnan himself had been able to judge nothing of his tactics. He observed, he admired.

Monck could not enter London with a party taken without meeting there civil war. He temporized some time.

Suddenly, without anyone expecting it, Monck had the military party driven from London, installed himself in the City amid the burghers by order of Parliament, then, at the moment when the burghers cried out against Monck, at the moment when the soldiers themselves accused their chief, Monck, seeing himself quite sure of the majority, declared to the Croupion Parliament that it must abdicate, raise the siege, and yield its place to a government that should not be a jest. Monck pronounced this declaration, leaning on fifty thousand swords, to which, that very evening, joined themselves, with hurrahs of delirious joy, five hundred thousand inhabitants of the good city of London.

Finally, at the moment when the people, after its triumph and its orgiastic meals in the open street, sought with its eyes the master it might well give itself, it was learned that a vessel had just departed from The Hague, bearing Charles II and his fortune.

— Gentlemen, said Monck to his officers, I depart to meet the legitimate king. Who loves me, follow me!

An immense acclamation greeted these words, which d’Artagnan heard not without a shiver of pleasure.

— Mortbleu! said he to Monck, that is bold, sir.

— You accompany me, do you not? said Monck.

— Pardieu, general! But, tell me, I pray you, what you had written with Athos, that is to say with M. the Count de La Fère... you know... the day of our arrival?

— I have no secrets for you, replied Monck: I had written these words: “Sire, I expect Your Majesty in six weeks at Dover.”

— Ah! said d’Artagnan, I say no longer that it is bold; I say that it is well played. That is a fine stroke.

— You know about such things, replied Monck.

It was the only allusion the general had ever made to his voyage in Holland.

Chapter XXXII — How Athos and d’Artagnan Find Each Other Once More at the Hostelry of the Hart’s Horn

The King of England made his entry in great pomp at Dover, then at London. He had summoned his brothers; he had brought his mother and his sister. England had been so long delivered to herself, that is to say to tyranny, mediocrity, and unreason, that this return of King Charles II, whom the English knew however only as the son of a man whose head they had cut off, was a festival for the three kingdoms. Thus, all those vows, all those acclamations which accompanied his return, struck the young king so forcibly, that he leaned to the ear of Jack of York, his young brother, to say:

— In truth, Jack, it seems to me it is very much our fault if we have been so long absent from a country where we are so loved.

The procession was magnificent. An admirable weather favored the solemnity.

Charles had recovered all his youth, all his good humor; he seemed transfigured; hearts laughed to him as the sun. In this noisy crowd of courtiers and adorers, who seemed not to recall that they had conducted to the scaffold of White Hall the father of the new king, a man, in the costume of lieutenant of musketeers, looked, a smile upon his thin and witty lips, now at the people which vociferated its blessings, now at the prince who played at emotion and who saluted above all the women whose bouquets came to fall beneath the feet of his horse.

— What a fine trade that of king! said this man, carried away in his contemplation, and so well absorbed that he stopped in the middle of the way, letting the procession defile.

Here truly is a prince sewn with gold and diamonds like a Solomon, enamelled with flowers like a spring meadow; he goes to draw with both hands from the immense coffer where his subjects very faithful today, lately very faithless, have amassed for him a cartload or two of ingots of gold. They throw him bouquets to bury him under, and two months ago, had he presented himself, they would have sent him as many balls and bullets as today they send him flowers.

Decidedly, it is something to be born in a certain fashion, despite the churls who pretend that it matters little to them to be born churls.

The procession still defiled, and, with the king, the acclamations began to withdraw in the direction of the palace, which did not prevent our officer from being much jostled.

— Mortbleu! continued the reasoner, here are many people who tread on my feet and who regard me as very little, or rather as nothing at all, seeing that they are English and I am French. If one asked all these people: “What is M. d’Artagnan?” they would answer: “Nescio vos.” But let one say to them: “There is the king who passes, there is M. Monck who passes,” they will shout: “Long live the king! Long live M. Monck!” until their lungs refuse them service. “Yet, continued he, looking, with that glance so fine and sometimes so proud, the crowd flow by, yet, reflect a little, good people, upon what your king Charles has done, upon what M. Monck has done, then think upon what this poor unknown called M. d’Artagnan has done. It is true you do not know it since he is unknown, which perhaps prevents you from reflecting. But, bah! what matter! that does not prevent Charles II from being a great king, though he was exiled twelve years, and M. Monck from being a great captain, though he made the voyage of France in a box. Therefore, since it is recognized that the one is a great king and the other a great captain: Hurrah for the king Charles II! Hurrah for the captain Monck!”

And his voice mingled with the voices of thousands of spectators, which it dominated a moment; and, to better play the devoted man, he raised his hat in the air. Someone arrested his arm in the midst of his expansive loyalism. (They called thus in 1660 what they call today royalism.)

— Athos! cried d’Artagnan. You here?

And the two friends embraced.

— You here! and being here, continued the musketeer, you are not in the midst of all the courtiers, my dear count? What! you the hero of the feast, you do not ride at the left side of His Restored Majesty, as M. Monck rides at his right side! In truth, I understand nothing of your character nor of that of the prince who owes you so much.

— Always railing, my dear d’Artagnan, said Athos. Will you then never correct yourself of that ugly failing?

— But finally, you are not part of the procession?

— I am not part of the procession, because I would not have it so.

— And why would you not have it so?

— Because I am neither envoy, nor ambassador, nor representative of the King of France, and it befits me not to show myself thus near another king than the one God has not given me for master.

— Mortbleu! you showed yourself quite near the king his father.

— That is another thing, friend: that one was going to die.

— And yet what you have done for this one...

— I did it because I ought to do it. But, you know, I deplore all ostentation. That King Charles II, who has no more need of me, let me then remain in my rest and in my shade, that is all I ask of him.

D’Artagnan sighed.

— What ails you? said Athos to him; one would say that this happy return of the king to London saddens you, my friend, you who however have done at least as much as I for His Majesty.

— Is it not, answered d’Artagnan with his Gascon laugh, that I too have done much for His Majesty, without anyone suspecting it?

— Oh! yes, cried Athos; and the king knows it well, my friend.

— He knows it, said the musketeer bitterly; by my faith! I did not suspect it, and I was even trying at this moment to forget it.

— But he, my friend, will not forget, I warrant you.

— You tell me that to console me a little, Athos.

— And for what?

— Mortbleu! for all the expenses I have incurred. I have ruined myself, my friend, ruined for the restoration of this young prince who has just passed prancing upon his Isabella horse.

— The king does not know that you have ruined yourself, my friend, but he knows he owes you much.

— Does that advance me aught, Athos? say! for finally, I do you justice, you have worked nobly. But, I who, in appearance, made your combination fail, it is I who in reality made it succeed. Follow well my reckoning: you would perhaps not, by persuasion and gentleness, have convinced General Monck, whereas I handled that dear general so roughly, that I furnished your prince the occasion to show himself generous; this generosity was inspired in him by the fact of my blessed blunder, Charles sees himself pay for it by the restoration that Monck made him.

— All that, dear friend, is of striking truth, replied Athos.

— And well! striking though this truth be, it is none the less true, dear friend, that I shall return, much cherished by M. Monck, who calls me my dear captain all day long, though I am neither his dear nor a captain, and much appreciated by the king, who has already forgotten my name; it is none the less true, I say, that I shall return to my fair country, cursed by the soldiers I had levied in hope of a fat pay, cursed by the brave Planchet, from whom I borrowed part of his fortune.

— How so? and what the devil has Planchet to do in all this?

— Eh! yes, my dear: this king so spruce, so smiling, so adored, M. Monck fancies he recalled him, you fancy you sustained him, I fancy I brought him back, the people fancies it reconquered him, he himself fancies he negotiated so as to be restored, and none of all that is true, however: Charles II, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, was put back upon his throne by a grocer of France who dwells in the rue des Lombards and who is called Planchet. Such is greatness! “Vanity! says Scripture; vanity! all is vanity!”

Athos could not refrain from laughing at his friend’s sally.

— Dear d’Artagnan, said he, pressing his hand affectionately, would you no longer be a philosopher? Is it no longer a satisfaction to you to have saved my life as you did in arriving so happily with Monck, when those damned parliamentarians wished to burn me alive?

— Come, come, said d’Artagnan, you had a little deserved that burning, my dear count.

— How! for having saved King Charles’s million?

— What million?

— Ah! it is true, you never knew that, you, my friend; but you must not blame me, it was not my secret. That word Remember! which King Charles pronounced upon the scaffold...

— And which means Remember?

— Perfectly. That word signified: Remember that there is a million buried in the cellars of Newcastle, and that this million belongs to my son.

— Ah! very well, I understand. But what I also understand, and what is frightful, is that, each time His Majesty Charles II thinks of me, he will say to himself: “There is a man who nevertheless nearly made me lose my crown. Happily I was generous, great, full of presence of mind.” That is what this young gentleman in the very threadbare black doublet will say of me and of himself, he who came to the château of Blois, his hat in his hand, to ask me if I would do him the favor of entry to the King of France.

— D’Artagnan! d’Artagnan! said Athos, laying his hand upon the musketeer’s shoulder, you are not just.

— I have the right.

— No, for you ignore the future.

D’Artagnan looked his friend between the eyes and began to laugh.

— In truth, my dear Athos, said he, you have superb words that I have known only in you and in M. the Cardinal Mazarin.

Athos made a movement.

— Pardon, continued d’Artagnan laughing, pardon if I offend you. The future! hou! pretty words, the words that promise, and how well they fill the mouth for want of aught else! Mortbleu! after having found so many that promise, when shall I find one that gives? But let us leave that, continued d’Artagnan. What are you doing here, my dear Athos? are you treasurer to the king?

— How! treasurer to the king?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”