Part 25

— Listen, Monsieur d’Artagnan, Monck replied, you are a charming gentleman, full of wit and courage; you deserve all the fortunes of this world; come with me to Scotland, and, I swear to you, I shall there make for you, in my vice-royalty, a position that all will envy.

— Oh! my lord, that is impossible at this hour. At this hour, I have a sacred duty to fulfill; I must watch over your glory; I must prevent some ill-mannered jester from tarnishing, in the eyes of contemporaries—who knows?—perhaps in the eyes of posterity itself, the brilliance of your name.

— Posterity, Monsieur d’Artagnan?

— Why, certainly; it is necessary that, for posterity, all the details of this affair remain a mystery; for, after all, admit that this unhappy story of the pine coffin becomes known, and men will say, not that you restored the king loyally, by virtue of your free will, but rather as the result of a compromise made between the two of you at Scheveningen. I might say however the thing came about, I who know it, no one would believe me, and they would say that I received my share of the cake and am eating it.

Monck frowned.

— Glory, honor, probity, said he, are but empty words!

— Mist, replied d’Artagnan, mist through which no one ever sees clearly.

— Well then! go to France, my dear sir, said Monck; go, and, to make England more accessible and agreeable to you, accept a keepsake from me.

“Come now!” thought d’Artagnan.

— On the banks of the Clyde, Monck continued, I have a small house beneath the trees, a cottage, as they call it here. To this house are attached some hundred acres of land; accept it.

— Oh! my lord...

— Why, you will be at home there, and it will be the retreat of which you spoke to me just now.

— I, indebted to you to that degree, my lord! Truly, I am ashamed!

— Not at all, sir, Monck rejoined with a sly smile, not at all; it is I who shall be yours.

And pressing the musketeer’s hand:

— I am going to have the deed of gift drawn up, said he.

And he went out.

D’Artagnan watched him depart and remained thoughtful and even moved.

— After all, said he, there is a brave man for you. It is sad only to feel that it is from fear of me and not from affection that he acts thus. Well! I would have affection come to him.

Then, after a moment of deeper reflection:

— Bah! said he, what is the use? He is an Englishman!

And he went out, in his turn, a little dizzy from this combat.

— So, said he, here I am a property owner. But how the devil am I to share the cottage with Planchet? Unless I give him the lands and take the house, or else he takes the house and I... Fie! Mr. Monck would never suffer that I should share with a grocer a house he had lived in! He is too proud for that! Besides, why speak of it? It is not with the company’s money that I acquired this estate; it is with my own intelligence alone; it is therefore well and truly mine. Let us go find Athos.

And he made his way toward the dwelling of the Comte de La Fère.

Chapter XXXVII — How d’Artagnan settled the liabilities of the company before establishing his assets

“Decidedly,” said d’Artagnan to himself, “I am in luck. That star which shines once in the life of every man, which had for Job and for Irus, the most unhappy of Jews and the poorest of Greeks, has at last shone for me. I shall not do anything foolish; I shall profit by it; it is late enough for me to be reasonable.”

He supped that evening in very good humor with his friend Athos, did not speak to him of the expected gift, but could not refrain, while eating, from questioning his friend about revenues, sowings, and plantings.

Athos answered obligingly, as he always did. His idea was that d’Artagnan wished to become a property owner; only, he caught himself more than once regretting the so lively humor, the so diverting sallies of the merry companion of former days. D’Artagnan, in fact, was profiting from the congealed fat remaining on his plate to trace figures thereon and make additions of a surprising roundness.

The order—or rather the license—to embark reached them that evening. While the paper was being handed to the count, another messenger was extending to d’Artagnan a small bundle of parchments adorned with all the seals with which real property in England decks itself. Athos surprised him leafing through these various acts, which established the transfer of ownership. The prudent Monck—others would have said the generous Monck—had commuted the gift into a sale, and acknowledged having received the sum of fifteen thousand livres as the price of the cession.

Already the messenger had slipped away. D’Artagnan was still reading, Athos was looking at him with a smile. D’Artagnan, catching one of those smiles above his shoulder, folded the whole bundle back into his case.

— Pardon, said Athos.

— Oh! you are not indiscreet, my dear fellow, replied the lieutenant; I should like...

— No, do not tell me anything, I beg of you: orders are such sacred things that to his brother, to his father, the bearer of those orders must not confess a word. Thus, I who speak to you and who love you more tenderly than brother, father, and all the world...

— Save your Raoul?

— I shall love Raoul even more when he is a man and I have seen him take shape through all the phases of his character and his deeds... as I have seen you, my friend.

— You were saying, then, that you had an order too, and that you would not communicate it to me?

— Yes, dear d’Artagnan.

The Gascon sighed.

— There was a time, said he, when that order you would have laid there, all open upon the table, saying: “D’Artagnan, read us that grimoire, Porthos, Aramis, and I.”

— True... Oh! it was youth, confidence, the generous season when the blood commands when heated by passion!

— Well! Athos, will you that I tell you something?

— Speak, friend.

— That adorable time, that generous season, that domination of heated blood, all things most beautiful no doubt, I do not regret them at all. It is exactly like the time of studies... I have always met somewhere a fool to vaunt to me that time of tasks, of ferules, of crusts of dry bread... It is strange, I never liked that, myself; and however active, however sober I may have been (you know if I was, Athos), however simple I may have appeared in my clothes, I have nonetheless preferred the embroideries of Porthos to my little porous jacket, which let through the north wind in winter, the sun in summer. You see, my friend, I shall always distrust him who pretends to prefer evil to good. Now, of the time past, all was evil for me, that time when each month saw one more hole in my skin and in my jacket, one less gold crown in my poor purse; of that execrable time of seesaws and swings, I regret absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing, save our friendship; for in me there is a heart; and, it is a miracle, that heart was not dried by the wind of misery which passed through the holes of my cloak, nor pierced by the swords of every make which passed through the holes of my poor flesh.

— Regret not our friendship, said Athos; it will die only with us. Friendship is composed above all of memories and habits, and if just now you made a little satire of mine because I hesitate to reveal my mission in France...

— I?... O heaven! if you knew, dear and good friend, how henceforth all the missions in the world are going to become indifferent to me!

And he pressed his parchments into his vast pocket. Athos rose from table and called the host to pay the reckoning.

— Since I have been your friend, said d’Artagnan, I have never paid a score. Porthos often, Aramis sometimes, and you, almost always, drew your purse at dessert. Now, I am rich, and I am going to try if it be heroic to pay.

— Do so, said Athos, replacing his purse in his pocket.

The two friends then directed their steps toward the port, not without d’Artagnan having looked behind to supervise the transport of his dear crowns. Night had just spread its thick veil over the yellow water of the Thames; one heard those noises of casks and pulleys, precursors of weighing anchor, which so many times had made the hearts of the musketeers beat, when the danger of the sea was the least of those they were going to brave. This time, they were to embark upon a great vessel which awaited them at Gravesend, and Charles II, always delicate in small matters, had sent one of his yachts with twelve men of his Scottish guard, to do honor to the ambassador he was deputing to France. At midnight the yacht had set down its passengers aboard the vessel, and at eight in the morning the vessel landed the ambassador and his friend before the jetty of Boulogne.

While the count, with Grimaud, occupied himself with the horses to go straight to Paris, d’Artagnan ran to the inn where, according to his orders, his little army was to await him. These gentlemen were breakfasting on oysters, fish, and aromatic brandy, when d’Artagnan appeared. They were very merry, but none had yet crossed the bounds of reason. A hurrah of joy greeted the general.

— Here I am, said d’Artagnan; the campaign is ended. I come to bring to each the supplement of pay that was promised.

Eyes shone.

— I wager there are not a hundred livres left in the purse of the richest of you?

— True! they cried in chorus.

— Gentlemen, said d’Artagnan then, here is the last order. The commercial treaty has been concluded, thanks to that stroke of hand which rendered us masters of the most skillful financier in England; for now, I must confess it to you, the man it was a question of carrying off, was the treasurer of General Monck.

That word “treasurer” produced a certain effect in his army. D’Artagnan remarked that the eyes of Menneville alone did not testify to a perfect faith.

— That treasurer, d’Artagnan continued, I led off to neutral ground, Holland; I made him sign the treaty, I myself conducted him back to Newcastle, and, as he was bound to be satisfied with our treatment of him, as the pine coffin had been carried always without jolts and cushioned softly, I asked for a gratuity for you. Here it is.

He threw a rather respectable bag upon the cloth. All involuntarily stretched out the hand.

— One moment, my lambs, said d’Artagnan; if there are profits, there are also charges.

— Oh! oh! murmured the assembly.

— We are going to find ourselves, my friends, in a position that would not be tenable for feather-brained folk; I speak plainly: we are between the gallows and the Bastille.

— Oh! oh! said the chorus.

— It is easy to understand. It was necessary to explain to General Monck the disappearance of his treasurer; I waited for that purpose the most unhoped-for moment of the restoration of King Charles II, who is a friend of mine...

The army exchanged a look of satisfaction against the rather proud glance of d’Artagnan.

— The king restored, I returned to Mr. Monck his man of business, a little plucked, it is true, but at last I returned him. Now, General Monck, in pardoning me—for he has pardoned me—could not refrain from saying these words which I enjoin each of you to engrave deeply there, between the eyes, beneath the vault of the skull: “Sir, the jest is a good one, but I naturally do not like jests; if ever a word of what you have done (you understand, Monsieur Menneville) were to escape your lips or the lips of your companions, I have in my government of Scotland and Ireland seven hundred forty-one gallows of oak wood, pinned with iron and greased anew every week. I would make a present of one of those gallows to each of you, and, mark it well, dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, he added (mark it also, dear Monsieur Menneville), there would still remain to me seven hundred thirty for my small pleasures. Furthermore...”

— Ah! ah! said the auxiliaries, there is a furthermore?

— A mere trifle more: “Monsieur d’Artagnan, I am dispatching to the King of France the treaty in question, with a request to have thrown provisionally into the Bastille, then to send me there, all those who took part in the expedition; and it is a request to which the king will certainly accede.”

A cry of fright burst from all corners of the table.

— There! there! said d’Artagnan; that good Mr. Monck forgot one thing, which is that he knows the name of none of you; I alone know you, and it is not I, you well believe, who will betray you. To what end? As for you, I do not suppose you will ever be foolish enough to denounce yourselves, for then the king, to spare himself the cost of food and lodging, would dispatch you to Scotland, where are the seven hundred forty-one gallows. That is all, gentlemen. And now I have not another word to add to what I have had the honor to tell you. I am sure I have been perfectly understood, is that not so, Monsieur de Menneville?

— Perfectly, he replied.

— Now, the crowns! said d’Artagnan. Shut the doors.

He said and opened a bag upon the table from which fell several fine gold crowns. Each made a movement toward the floor.

— Gently! cried d’Artagnan; let no one stoop and I shall find my count.

He found it indeed, gave fifty of those fine crowns to each, and received as many blessings as he had given pieces.

— Now, said he, if it were possible for you to conduct yourselves a little, if you became good and honest bourgeois...

— That is very difficult, said one of those present.

— But why, captain? said another.

— It is because I would have found you again, and, who knows? refreshed from time to time by some windfall...

He signed to Menneville, who was listening to all this with a composed air.

— Menneville, said he, come with me. Farewell my brave fellows; I do not commend you to be discreet.

Menneville followed him, while the salutations of the auxiliaries mingled with the sweet sound of gold ringing in their pockets.

— Menneville, said d’Artagnan once in the street, you are not a dupe, take care not to become one; you do not seem to me to fear the gallows of Monck nor the Bastille of His Majesty King Louis XIV, but you will do me the grace to fear me. Well! listen: At the least word to escape you, I would kill you like a chicken. I already have in my pocket the absolution of our Holy Father the pope.

— I assure you I know absolutely nothing, my dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, and that all your words are articles of faith to me.

— I was quite sure you were a lad of sense, said the musketeer; it is five-and-twenty years since I judged you. These fifty gold crowns that I give you besides will prove the account I make of you. Take them.

— Thank you, Monsieur d’Artagnan, said Menneville.

— With that you can really become an honest man, replied d’Artagnan in the most serious tone. It would be shameful that a mind like yours and a name you no longer dare bear should be forever effaced beneath the rust of a bad life. Become a gentleman, Menneville, and live a year with those hundred gold crowns, it is a fine sum: twice the pay of a high officer. In a year, come see me, and, blood and thunder! I shall make something of you.

Menneville swore, as his comrades had done, that he would be mute as the tomb. And yet, it must be that someone has spoken, and as certainly it is not our nine companions, as certainly it is not Menneville, it must be d’Artagnan, who, in his quality of Gascon, had his tongue very near his lips. For, after all, if it is not he, who would it be? And how explain the secret of the pine coffin pierced with holes having come to our knowledge, and in so complete a fashion, that we have, as may have been seen, related the story in its most intimate details? details which, moreover, illuminate with a light as new as unexpected that whole portion of the history of England, left until today in shadow by the historians our colleagues.

Chapter XXXVIII — Wherein it is seen that the French grocer had already rehabilitated himself in the seventeenth century

Once his accounts settled and his recommendations made, d’Artagnan thought only of regaining Paris as promptly as possible. Athos, for his part, was eager to regain his house and rest there a little. However entire may have remained the character and the man, after the fatigues of the voyage, the traveler perceives with pleasure, at the end of the day, even when the day has been fine, that night is going to bring a little sleep. Thus, from Boulogne to Paris, riding side by side, the two friends, somewhat absorbed in their individual thoughts, did not converse of things interesting enough for us to acquaint the reader with them: each, given over to his personal reflections, and building the future in his own fashion, occupied himself above all with abbreviating the distance by speed. Athos and d’Artagnan arrived on the evening of the fourth day after their departure from Boulogne, at the barriers of Paris.

— Where are you going, my dear friend? asked Athos. As for me, I am making straight for my hotel.

— And I straight to my associate’s.

— To Planchet’s?

— Why, yes: to the Pilon-d’Or.

— Is it not well understood that we shall see each other again?

— If you remain in Paris, yes; for I remain here, myself.

— No. After having embraced Raoul, to whom I have given rendezvous at my house, in the hotel, I depart immediately for La Fère.

— Well! farewell then, dear and perfect friend.

— Rather au revoir, for after all I do not know why you should not come live with me at Blois. Here you are free, here you are rich; I shall buy you, if you wish, a fine estate in the environs of Cheverny or those of Bracieux. On one side you will have the finest woods in the world, which join those of Chambord; on the other, admirable marshes. You who love the hunt, and who, willing or not, are a poet, dear friend, you will find pheasants, rails, and teal, not to mention sunsets and boat rides to make Nemrod and Apollo themselves dream. Pending the purchase, you will inhabit La Fère, and we shall go steal the magpie in the vines, as King Louis XIII used to do. It is a sage pleasure for old fellows like us.

D’Artagnan took Athos’s hands.

— Dear count, said he, I say neither yes nor no to you. Let me pass in Paris the time indispensable to settle all my affairs and gradually accustom myself to the very heavy and very resplendent idea which beats in my brain and dazzles me. I am rich, you see, and from now until I have taken the habit of riches, I know myself, I shall be an insupportable animal. Now, I am not yet foolish enough to lack wit before a friend such as you, Athos. The coat is fine, the coat is richly gilded, but it is new, and pinches me at the armholes.

Athos smiled.

— So be it, said he. But as to this coat, dear d’Artagnan, will you that I give you a counsel?

— Oh! very willingly.

— You will not be angry?

— Come now!

— When riches come to someone, late and all at once, that someone, in order not to change, must make himself avaricious, that is to say not spend much more money than he had before, or make himself prodigal, and have so many debts that he becomes poor again.

— Oh! but what you tell me there much resembles a sophism, my dear philosopher.

— I do not think so. Will you become avaricious?

— No, zounds! I already was, having nothing. Let us change.

— Then, be prodigal.

— Still less, blood and thunder! debts terrify me. Creditors represent to me by anticipation those devils who turn the damned upon the gridiron, and as patience is not my dominant virtue, I am always tempted to thrash the devils.

— You are the wisest man I know, and have need of counsel from no one. Fools those who should believe they had something to teach you! But are we not in the Rue Saint-Honoré?

— Yes, dear Athos.

— See, yonder, to the left, that long white little house, it is the hotel where I have my lodging. You will remark it has but two stories. I occupy the first; the other is let to an officer whose service keeps him away eight or nine months of the year, so that I am in that house as I should be in my own, without the expense.

— Oh! how well you arrange things, Athos! What order and what spaciousness! That is what I should like to combine. But what would you have, it is a matter of birth, and is not acquired.

— Flatterer! Come, farewell, dear friend. By the way, recall me to the memory of Monsieur Planchet; he is still a lad of sense, is he not?

— And of heart, Athos. Farewell!

They parted. During all this conversation, d’Artagnan had not for a second lost sight of a certain baggage horse in whose panniers, beneath some hay, the saddlebags with the portmanteau were unfolding themselves: Nine o’clock in the evening was striking at Saint-Merri; Planchet’s lads were shutting up the shop. D’Artagnan stopped the postilion who was conducting the baggage horse at the corner of the Rue des Lombards, beneath an awning, and, calling a lad of Planchet’s, he gave him to guard not only the two horses, but the postilion as well; after which, he entered the grocer’s, whose supper had just finished, and who, in his entresol, was consulting with a certain anxiety the calendar upon which he struck through each evening the day just ended. At the moment when, according to his daily habit, Planchet, with the back of his pen, was blotting out the elapsed day with a sigh, d’Artagnan struck his foot against the threshold of the door, and the shock made his iron spur ring.

— Ah! my God! cried Planchet.

The worthy grocer could say no more; he had just caught sight of his associate. D’Artagnan entered with bowed back, morose eye. The Gascon had his idea regarding Planchet.

“Good Lord!” thought the grocer, looking at the traveler, “he is sad!”

The musketeer sat down.

— Dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, said Planchet with a horrible beating of the heart, here you are! and your health?

— Tolerably good, Planchet, tolerably good, said d’Artagnan, uttering a sigh.

— You have not been wounded, I hope?

— Pshaw!

— Ah! I see, continued Planchet, more and more alarmed, the expedition was rough?

— Yes, said d’Artagnan.

A shiver ran through all Planchet’s body.

— I should like a drink, said the musketeer, lifting his head piteously.

Planchet ran himself to the cupboard and served d’Artagnan wine in a large glass. D’Artagnan looked at the bottle.

— What wine is this? he asked.

— Alas! that which you prefer, sir, said Planchet; it is that good old wine of Anjou which one day nearly cost us all so dear.

— Ah! replied d’Artagnan with a melancholy smile; ah! my poor Planchet, must I still drink good wine?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”