Part 32

— You would be wrong not to believe me, said Raoul; I am blushing, and I am well aware of it; it is in spite of myself. The question you do me the honor of asking is of a nature to stir up many emotions within me; I blush, therefore, because I am moved, not because I lie.

— I know, Raoul, that you never lie.

— No, sir.

— Besides, my friend, you would be wrong, what I meant to tell you...

— I know it well, sir; you mean to ask me if I have not been to Blois.

— Precisely.

— I have not been there; I have not even caught sight of the person you mean to speak to.

Raoul's voice trembled as he uttered these words. Athos, sovereign judge of all delicacy, at once added:

— Raoul, you answer with a painful feeling; you are suffering.

— Greatly, sir; you forbade me to go to Blois and to see Mlle de La Vallière again.

Here the young man stopped. That sweet name, so charming to pronounce, tore his heart while caressing his lips.

— And I was right to do so, Raoul, Athos hastened to say. I am not a barbarous or unjust father; I respect true love; but I think of a future for you... an immense future. A new reign is about to shine like an dawn; war calls the young king, full of chivalrous spirit. What that heroic ardor needs is a battalion of young and free lieutenants, who rush upon the blows with enthusiasm and fall crying: 'Long live the king!' instead of crying: 'Farewell, my wife!...' You understand that, Raoul. Brutal as my reasoning may seem, I therefore implore you to believe me and to turn your eyes away from those first days of youth when you formed the habit of loving, days of soft carelessness that soften the heart and render it incapable of containing those strong bitter liquors called glory and adversity. Thus, Raoul, I repeat to you, see in my counsel only the desire to be of use to you, the only ambition to see you prosper. I believe you capable of becoming a remarkable man; walk alone, you will walk better and faster.

— You commanded, sir, replied Raoul, I obey.

— Commanded! cried Athos. Is that how you answer me! I commanded you! Oh! you distort my words, as you misjudge my intentions! I did not command, I entreated.

— Not so, sir, you commanded, said Raoul with obstinacy... but had you done no more than entreat, your entreaty is even more effective than an order. I have not seen Mlle de La Vallière again.

— But you suffer! you suffer! insisted Athos.

Raoul did not reply.

— I find you pale, I find you saddened... This feeling is then very strong!

— It is a passion, replied Raoul.

— No... a habit.

— Sir, you know that I have traveled much, that I spent two years away from her... Any habit may be broken in two years, I think... Well! upon my return, I loved, not more, that is impossible, but as much. Mlle de La Vallière is for me the companion par excellence; but you are for me God on earth... To you I will sacrifice all.

— You would be wrong, said Athos; I no longer have any right over you. Age has emancipated you; you no longer even need my consent. Besides, I shall not refuse my consent, after all you have just told me. Marry Mlle de La Vallière, if you wish.

Raoul made a movement, then suddenly:

— You are good, sir, he said, and your concession fills me with gratitude; but I shall not accept.

— So now you refuse?

— Yes, sir.

— I shall not reproach you for it, Raoul.

— But you have at the bottom of your heart an idea against this marriage. You did not choose her for me.

— That is true.

— That is enough for me not to persist: I shall wait.

— Take care, Raoul! what you say is serious.

— I know it well, sir; I shall wait, I tell you.

— What! that I should die? said Athos, much moved.

— Oh! sir! cried Raoul, with tears in his voice, is it possible that you thus rend my heart, I who have given you no cause for complaint?

— Dear child, it is true, murmured Athos, violently pressing his lips to repress the emotion he could no longer master. No, I do not wish to afflict you; only, I do not understand what you will wait for... Will you wait until you love no more?

— Ah! for that, no, sir; I shall wait until you change your mind.

— I wish to make a trial, Raoul; I wish to see if Mlle de La Vallière will wait as you do.

— I hope so, sir.

— But take care, Raoul! if she did not wait! Ah! you are so young, so trusting, so loyal... women are fickle.

— You have never spoken ill of women to me, sir; never have you had cause to complain of them; why complain to me, concerning Mlle de La Vallière?

— That is true, said Athos, lowering his eyes... never have I spoken ill of women to you; never have I had cause to complain of them; never has Mlle de La Vallière given rise to a suspicion; but when one foresees, one must go as far as exceptions, as far as improbabilities! If, I say, Mlle de La Vallière did not wait for you?

— How so, sir?

— If she turned her views elsewhere?

— Her eyes upon another man, do you mean? said Raoul, pale with anguish.

— That is it.

— Well! sir, I would kill that man, said Raoul simply, and all the men Mlle de La Vallière might choose, until one of them had killed me or until Mlle de La Vallière had given me back her heart.

Athos shuddered.

— I thought, he resumed in a hollow voice, that you called me but now your god, your law in this world?

— Oh! said Raoul, trembling, you would forbid me the duel?

— If I forbade it, Raoul?

— You would forbid me to hope, sir, and consequently you would not forbid me to die.

Athos raised his eyes upon the viscount. He had pronounced these words with a gloomy inflection, accompanied by the darkest gaze.

— Enough, said Athos after a long silence, enough of this sad subject, wherein we both exaggerate. Live from day to day, Raoul; do your service, love Mlle de La Vallière, in a word, act as a man, since you have a man's age; only, forget not that I love you tenderly and that you profess to love me.

— Ah! Count, cried Raoul, pressing Athos's hand to his heart.

— Well, dear child; leave me, I need rest. By the way, M. d'Artagnan has returned from England with me; you owe him a visit.

— I shall pay it him, sir, with very great joy; I love M. d'Artagnan so much!

— You are right: he is an honest man and a brave cavalier.

— Who loves you! said Raoul.

— I am sure of it... Do you know his address?

— Why, at the Louvre, at the Palais-Royal, wherever the king is. Does he not command the musketeers?

— No, for the moment, M. d'Artagnan is on leave; he is resting...

— Then do not seek him at his posts of duty. You will hear news of him at a certain M. Planchet's.

— His former lackey?

— Precisely, become a grocer.

— I know; rue des Lombards?

— Something like that... or rue des Arcis.

— I shall find him, sir, I shall find him.

— You will give him a thousand tender messages from me and bring him to dine with me before my departure for La Fère.

— Yes, sir.

— Good night, Raoul!

— Sir, I see upon you an order I did not know you had; receive my compliments.

— The Fleece?... it is true... A toy, my son... that no longer amuses even an old child like me... Good night, Raoul!

Chapter LII — M. d'Artagnan's Lesson

Raoul did not find M. d'Artagnan the next day, as he had hoped. He met only Planchet, whose joy was lively at seeing the young man again, and who knew how to pay him two or three warlike compliments that smelled not at all of grocery. But as Raoul was returning from Vincennes the following day, bringing back fifty dragoons entrusted to him by the Prince, he noticed, in the Place Baudoyer, a man who, nose in the air, was looking at a house as one looks at a horse one means to buy. This man, clad in a bourgeois costume buttoned like a soldier's doublet, capped with a very small hat, and wearing at his side a long sword mounted with shagreen, turned his head as soon as he heard the tread of horses, and ceased looking at the house to look at the dragoons. It was simply M. d'Artagnan; M. d'Artagnan on foot; d'Artagnan with his hands behind his back, passing a small review of the dragoons after having passed a review of the buildings. Not a man, not a shoulder-knot, not a horse's shoe escaped his inspection. Raoul marched on the flank of his troop; d'Artagnan saw him last.

— Eh! said he, eh! morbleu!

— Do I not mistake? said Raoul, urging his horse.

— No, you do not mistake; good day! replied the former musketeer.

And Raoul came to press with emotion the hand of his old friend.

— Take care, Raoul, said d'Artagnan, the second horse of the fifth rank will be unshod before the Pont Marie; he has but two nails left in his forefoot outside the shoe.

— Wait for me, said Raoul, I shall return.

— You leave your detachment?

— The cornet is there to replace me.

— You come to dine with me?

— Very willingly, M. d'Artagnan.

— Then make haste, leave your horse or have one given me.

— I would rather return on foot with you.

Raoul hastened to go notify the cornet, who took his place in rank; then he dismounted, gave his horse to one of the dragoons, and, all joyful, took M. d'Artagnan's arm, who had been considering him through all these maneuvers with the satisfaction of a connoisseur.

— And you come from Vincennes? he said first.

— Yes, Chevalier.

— The Cardinal?...

— Is very ill; they even say he is dead.

— Are you well with M. Fouquet? asked d'Artagnan, showing by a disdainful shrug of the shoulders that this death of Mazarin did not affect him overmuch.

— With M. Fouquet? said Raoul. I do not know him.

— So much the worse, so much the worse, for a new king always seeks to make creatures for himself.

— Oh! the king means me no harm, answered the young man.

— I do not speak of the crown, said d'Artagnan, but of the king... The king is M. Fouquet, now that the Cardinal is dead. It is a matter of being very well with M. Fouquet, if you do not wish to molder all your life as I have molded... It is true you have other protectors, fortunately.

— M. le Prince, first.

— Worn out, worn out, my friend.

— M. le Comte de La Fère.

— Athos? oh! that is different; yes, Athos... and if you wish to make a good way in England, you could not do better than address yourself to him. I shall even tell you, without too much vanity, that I myself have some credit at the court of Charles II. There is a king, indeed!

— Ah! said Raoul with the naive curiosity of well-born young men who hear experience and valor speak.

— Yes, a king who amuses himself, it is true, but who knew how to put sword in hand and appreciate useful men. Athos is well with Charles II. Take service there, and leave a little the boors of tax-farmers who steal as well with French hands as with Italian fingers; leave the little sniveling king, who is going to give us a reign of Francis II. Do you know history, Raoul?

— Yes, Chevalier.

— You know that Francis II always had sore ears, then?

— No, I did not know that.

— That Charles IX always had a headache?

— Ah!

— And Henri III always the bellyache?

Raoul began to laugh.

— Well! my dear friend, Louis XIV always has the heartache; it is deplorable to see a king sigh from evening to morning, and not say once in the day: 'God's belly!' or 'Ox horn!' something that wakes one, in short.

— Is that why, Chevalier, you left the service? asked Raoul.

— Yes.

— But you yourself, dear M. d'Artagnan, throw the handle after the hatchet; you will not make your fortune.

— Oh! I, replied d'Artagnan in a light tone, am settled. I had some family property.

Raoul looked at him. D'Artagnan's poverty was proverbial. Gascon, he outdid, by ill luck, all the gasconades of France and Navarre; Raoul, a hundred times, had heard Job and d'Artagnan named as one names the twins Romulus and Remus. D'Artagnan caught this look of astonishment.

— And then your father will have told you I had been to England?

— Yes, Chevalier.

— And that I had made there a lucky find?

— No, sir, I was ignorant of that.

— Yes, one of my good friends, a very great lord, the viceroy of Scotland and Ireland, had me recover an inheritance.

— An inheritance?

— Round enough.

— So that you are rich?

— Pshaw!

— Receive my most sincere compliments.

— Thanks... See, here is my house.

— Place de Grève?

— Yes; you do not like this quarter?

— On the contrary: the water is fair to see... Oh! the pretty ancient house!

— The Image-of-Our-Lady, it is an old cabaret that I transformed into a house two days ago.

— But the cabaret is still open?

— Pardieu!

— And you, where do you lodge?

— I, I lodge with Planchet.

— You told me just now: 'Here is my house!'

— I said it because it is my house indeed... I bought this house.

— Ah! said Raoul.

— At ten per cent, my dear Raoul; a superb bargain!... I bought the house for thirty thousand livres: it has a garden on the rue de la Mortellerie; the cabaret lets for a thousand livres with the first floor; the garret, or second floor, five hundred livres.

— Come now!

— Doubtless.

— A garret five hundred livres? But it is not habitable.

— Nor is it inhabited; only, you see this garret has two windows on the square.

— Yes, sir.

— Well! each time they wheel, hang, quarter or burn, the two windows let for up to twenty pistoles.

— Oh! said Raoul with horror.

— It is disgusting, is it not? said d'Artagnan.

— Oh! repeated Raoul.

— It is disgusting, but it is so... These Parisian idlers are sometimes veritable anthropophagi. I cannot conceive that men, Christians, could make such speculations.

— That is true.

— As for me, continued d'Artagnan, if I lived in this house, I would close, on execution days, even the keyholes; but I do not live in it.

— And you let this garret for five hundred livres?

— To the ferocious cabaret-keeper who sublets it himself... I said then fifteen hundred livres.

— The natural interest of money, said Raoul, at five per cent.

— Exactly. There remains the back building: shops, lodgings and cellars flooded each winter, two hundred livres, and the garden, which is very fine, very well planted, very buried under the walls and under the shadow of the portal of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Protais, thirteen hundred livres.

— Thirteen hundred livres! but that is royal.

— Here is the story. I strongly suspect some canon or other of the parish (these canons are Croesuses), I suspect then some canon of having rented this garden to take his pleasures there. The tenant gave the name M. Godard... It is a false name or a true name; if true, it is a canon; if false, it is some unknown; why should I know him? He always pays in advance. Also I had this idea just now, when I met you, of buying, in the Place Baudoyer, a house whose back would join my garden, and make a magnificent property. Your dragoons distracted me from my idea. Come, let us take the rue de la Vannerie: we go straight to master Planchet's.

D'Artagnan quickened his pace and indeed brought Raoul to Planchet's, into a room the grocer had given up to his former master. Planchet was out, but dinner was served. There was in this grocer's house a remnant of the regularity, of the military punctuality.

D'Artagnan returned Raoul to the subject of his future.

— Your father keeps you strictly? he said.

— Precisely, Chevalier.

— Oh! I know Athos is just, but close, perhaps?

— A royal hand, M. d'Artagnan.

— Do not constrain yourself, lad, if ever you need a few pistoles, the old musketeer is there.

— Dear M. d'Artagnan...

— You game a little, perhaps?

— Never.

— Lucky in women, then?... You blush... Oh! little Aramis, go! My dear, that costs even more than gaming. It is true one fights when one has lost, that is a compensation. Bah! the little sniveling king makes those who draw blade pay the fine. What a reign, my poor Raoul, what a reign! When one thinks that in my time they besieged the musketeers in the houses, like Hector and Priam in the city of Troy; and then the women wept, and then the walls laughed, and then five hundred knaves clapped their hands and cried: 'Kill! Kill!' when it was not a musketeer! Morbleu! you others will not see that.

— You bear the king a grudge, dear M. d'Artagnan, and you scarce know him.

— I? Listen, Raoul: day by day, hour by hour, take good note of my words, I predict to you what he will do. The Cardinal dead, he will weep; well: that is the least foolish thing he will do, above all if he does not shed a single tear in his heart.

— Then?

— Then, he will have M. Fouquet grant him a pension and go compose verses at Fontainebleau for some Mancini or other whose eyes the queen will scratch out. She is Spanish, you see, the queen, and she has for mother-in-law Mme Anne of Austria. I know those Austrians, the Spanish ones.

— Then?

— Then, after having the silver lace torn from his Swiss guards because embroidery costs too dear, he will put the musketeers on foot, because the oats and hay for the horse cost five sous a day.

— Oh! do not say that.

— What matter to me! I am no longer a musketeer, am I not? Whether one is on horse, on foot, whether one carries a spit, a broach, a sword or nothing, what matter to me?

— Dear M. d'Artagnan, I beg you, speak ill of the king no more... I am almost in his service, and my father would be much displeased that I had heard, even from your mouth, words offensive to His Majesty.

— Your father?... Eh! he is a knight of every shady cause. Pardieu! yes, your father is a brave, a Caesar, it is true; but a man without insight.

— Come, good! Chevalier, said Raoul laughing, now you are going to speak ill of my father, of him you called the great Athos; you are in an ill-natured vein today, and wealth makes you sour, as poverty makes others.

— You are, pardieu, right; I am a blackguard, and I dotard; I am a wretched old man, a frayed forage-cord, a pierced cuirass, a soleless boot, a spur without rowel; but do me a pleasure, say me but one thing.

— What thing, dear M. d'Artagnan?

— Say me this: 'Mazarin was a clown.'

— He is perhaps dead.

— All the more reason; I say was; if I did not hope he were dead, I would beg you to say: 'Mazarin is a clown.' Say, come, say, for love of me.

— Well, I will.

— Say!

— Mazarin was a clown, said Raoul, smiling at the musketeer, who expanded as in his fine days.

— A moment, said the latter. You have said the first proposition; here is the conclusion. Repeat, Raoul, repeat: 'But I should regret Mazarin.'

— Chevalier!

— You will not say it, I shall say it twice for you... But you would regret Mazarin.

They were still laughing and discussing this drafting of a profession of principles, when one of the grocer's boys came in.

— A letter, sir, said he, for M. d'Artagnan.

— Thanks... See!... cried the musketeer.

— The writing of the Count, said Raoul.

— Yes, yes.

And d'Artagnan broke the seal.

'Dear friend,' wrote Athos, 'I have just been begged on the king's part to have you sought out...'

— Me? said d'Artagnan, letting the paper fall under the table.

Raoul picked it up and continued to read aloud: 'Make haste... His Majesty has great need to speak with you, and awaits you at the Louvre.'

— Me? repeated the musketeer again.

— He! he! said Raoul.

— Oh! oh! answered d'Artagnan. What can that mean?

Chapter LIII — The King

His first movement of surprise past, d'Artagnan read Athos's note again.

— It is strange, said he, that the king should have me called.

— Why, said Raoul, do you not believe, sir, that the king should regret a servant such as you?

— Oh! oh! cried the officer, laughing through his teeth, you give me a fine one, Master Raoul. Had the king regretted me, he would not have let me go. No, no, I see here something better, or worse, if you will.

— Worse! What, Chevalier?

— You are young, you are trusting, you are admirable... How I should wish to be still where you are! To be four-and-twenty, the brow smooth or the brain empty of all save women, love or good intentions... Oh! Raoul! as long as you shall not have received the smiles of kings and the confidences of queens; as long as you shall not have had two cardinals killed beneath you, one tiger, the other fox; as long as you shall not have... But what use all these fooleries? We must part, Raoul!

— How you say that! What a grave air!

— Eh! but the thing is worth it... Listen to me: I have a fine recommendation to make you.

— I listen, dear M. d'Artagnan.

— You will warn your father of my departure.

— You are leaving?

— Pardieu!... You will tell him I passed into England and that I dwell in my little pleasure-house.

— In England, you!... And the king's orders?

— I find you more and more naive: you fancy I am going thus to render myself at the Louvre and put myself at the disposition of that little crowned wolf-cub?

— Wolf-cub! the king? But, Chevalier, you are mad.

— I was never wiser, on the contrary. You do not know then what he wants with me, that worthy son of Louis the Just?... But, morbleu! it is politics... He wants to have me bastilled purely and simply, you see.

— On what pretext? cried Raoul, bewildered at what he heard.

— On the pretext of what I said to him one day at Blois... I was sharp; he remembers it.

— You said to him?

— That he was a niggard, a blackguard, a fool.

— Ah! my God!... said Raoul; is it possible such words issued from your mouth?

— Perhaps I do not give you the very letter of my speech, but at least I give you its sense.

— But the king would have had you arrested at once!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”