Part 27

“Yes, sir, yes, you are right,” said the host. “But look, look, here he is getting angry.”

“No doubt something has disturbed him,” said d’Artagnan.

“But he must be disturbed!” cried the host. “Two English gentlemen have just arrived.”

“Well?”

“Well, the English love good wine, as you know, sir; these asked for the best. My wife then must have begged Monsieur Athos for permission to enter to satisfy these gentlemen; and he refused as usual. Ah! good heavens! there’s the racket redoubling!”

D’Artagnan, in fact, heard a great noise coming from the direction of the cellar; he rose and, preceded by the host who was wringing his hands, and followed by Planchet who held his cocked musketoon, he approached the scene of action.

The two gentlemen were exasperated; they had made a long journey and were dying of hunger and thirst.

“But it’s a tyranny,” they cried in very good French, though with a foreign accent, “that this mad master won’t allow these good people the use of their wine. Come, we’ll break down the door, and if he’s too enraged, well! we’ll kill him.”

“Gently, gentlemen!” said d’Artagnan, drawing his pistols from his belt. “You will kill no one, if you please.”

“Good, good,” said the calm voice of Athos behind the door, “let them come in a little, these child-eaters, and we shall see.”

Brave as they seemed to be, the two English gentlemen looked at each other hesitatingly; one would have said that there was in that cellar one of those famished ogres, gigantic heroes of popular legends, whose cavern no one entered with impunity.

There was a moment of silence; but at last the two Englishmen were ashamed to retreat, and the more aggressive of the two descended the five or six steps of the staircase and gave the door a kick that would have split a wall.

“Planchet,” said d’Artagnan, cocking his pistols, “I will take the one at the top; you take the one at the bottom. Ah! gentlemen! you want a fight! well! you shall have one!”

“My God!” cried the hollow voice of Athos, “I think I hear d’Artagnan.”

“Indeed,” said d’Artagnan, raising his voice in turn, “it is I myself, my friend.”

“Ah! good! then,” said Athos, “we shall work them well, these door-breakers.”

The gentlemen had drawn their swords, but they found themselves caught between two fires; they hesitated another moment; but, as the first time, pride prevailed, and a second kick made the door crack from top to bottom.

“Stand aside, d’Artagnan, stand aside!” cried Athos, “stand aside, I am going to fire.”

“Gentlemen,” said d’Artagnan, who never abandoned reflection, “gentlemen, think of it! Be patient, Athos. You are getting into a bad business, and you will be riddled. Here are my servant and I who will let off three shots at you, as many more will come from the cellar; then we will still have our swords, which, I assure you, my friend and I play passably well. Let me manage your affairs and mine. In a little while you shall have something to drink, I give you my word.”

“If any remains,” growled the mocking voice of Athos.

The host felt a cold sweat run down his spine.

“How, if any remains!” he murmured.

“The devil! there will be some left,” replied d’Artagnan; “make your mind easy; the two of them cannot have drunk up the whole cellar. Gentlemen, put your swords back in their sheaths.”

“Well, then, you put your pistols back in your belt.”

“Willingly.”

And d’Artagnan gave the example. Then, turning to Planchet, he made him a sign to uncock his musketoon.

The Englishmen, convinced, put up their swords, grumbling. They were told the story of Athos’s imprisonment. And as they were good gentlemen, they admitted the host was in the wrong.

“Now, gentlemen,” said d’Artagnan, “go back upstairs, and in ten minutes, I answer for it, you shall have everything you can desire carried to you there.”

The Englishmen bowed and went out.

“Now that I am alone, my dear Athos,” said d’Artagnan, “open the door for me, I beg you.”

“In an instant,” said Athos.

Then a great noise was heard of fagots being knocked together and beams groaning: it was Athos’s counter-scarp and bastions, which the besieged was demolishing himself.

An instant later, the door shook, and the pale head of Athos appeared, which, with a rapid glance, surveyed the surroundings.

D’Artagnan threw himself on his neck and embraced him tenderly; then he wanted to drag him out of that damp abode, but then he perceived that Athos staggered.

“Are you wounded?” he said.

“I! not in the least; I am dead drunk, that is all, and never did a man do what was needed better. Vive Dieu! host, I must have drunk at least a hundred and fifty bottles on my own account.”

“Mercy!” cried the host, “if the servant has drunk only half as much as the master, I am ruined.”

“Grimaud is a lackey from a good house, who would never have allowed himself the same ordinary as I; he only drank from the cask; look, I believe he forgot to put back the spigot. Do you hear? it is running.”

D’Artagnan burst out laughing, which changed the host’s shiver into a hot fever.

At the same time, Grimaud appeared in his turn behind his master, musketoon on shoulder, his head reeling, like those drunken satyrs in Rubens’s paintings. He was wet front and back with a greasy liquid which the host recognized as his best olive oil.

The procession crossed the great hall and went to install itself in the best room of the inn, which d’Artagnan took possession of by authority.

Meanwhile, the host and his wife rushed with lamps into the cellar, which had been so long forbidden to them, and where a frightful spectacle awaited them.

Beyond the fortifications which Athos had broken through to get out, and which were composed of fagots, planks, and empty casks piled up according to all the rules of strategic art, were seen here and there, floating in pools of oil and wine, the bones of all the hams eaten, while a heap of broken bottles strewed the whole left corner of the cellar, and a cask, whose tap had been left open, was losing through that opening the last drops of its blood. The image of devastation and death, as the ancient poet says, reigned there as on a battlefield.

Of fifty sausages hanging from the joists, scarcely ten remained.

Then the howls of the host and hostess pierced the vault of the cellar; d’Artagnan himself was moved by them. Athos did not even turn his head.

But to grief succeeded rage. The host seized a spit and, in his despair, rushed into the room where the two friends had withdrawn.

“Wine!” said Athos, on seeing the host.

“Wine!” cried the host, stupefied, “wine! but you have drunk more than a hundred pistoles’ worth of me; but I am a ruined, lost, annihilated man!”

“Bah!” said Athos, “we were constantly left thirsty.”

“If you had only been content to drink, still; but you have broken all the bottles.”

“You pushed me on a heap that tumbled down. It’s your fault.”

“All my oil is lost!”

“Oil is a sovereign balm for wounds, and poor Grimaud needed to dress those you gave him.”

“All my sausages are gnawed!”

“There are an enormous number of rats in that cellar.”

“You shall pay me for all this,” cried the exasperated host.

“You rascal!” said Athos, raising himself. But he fell back again immediately; he had just exhausted his strength. D’Artagnan came to his aid by lifting his riding whip.

The host recoiled a step and began to burst into tears.

“This will teach you,” said d’Artagnan, “to treat the guests God sends you more courteously.”

“God… say the devil!”

“My dear friend,” said d’Artagnan, “if you break our ears again, we shall all four shut ourselves up in your cellar, and we shall see whether the damage is really as great as you say.”

“Well, yes, gentlemen,” said the host, “I am wrong, I confess it; but to every sin mercy; you are lords and I am a poor innkeeper; you will have pity on me.”

“Ah! if you talk like that,” said Athos, “you will break my heart, and tears will flow from my eyes as wine flowed from your casks. One is not so diabolical as one looks. Come, come here and let’s talk.”

The host approached anxiously.

“Come, I tell you, and don’t be afraid,” continued Athos. “At the moment I was going to pay you, I had laid my purse on the table.”

“Yes, Monseigneur.”

“That purse contained sixty pistoles; where is it?”

“Deposited at the registry office, Monseigneur; they said it was counterfeit money.”

“Well, get my purse back, and keep the sixty pistoles.”

“But Monseigneur knows well that the registry office does not let go what it holds. If it was counterfeit money, there would still be hope; but unfortunately they are good coins.”

“Arrange it with him, my good man; that is none of my affair, especially since I have not a livre left.”

“Come,” said d’Artagnan, “Athos’s old horse, where is it?”

“In the stable.”

“How much is it worth?”

“Fifty pistoles at most.”

“It is worth eighty; take it, and let that be an end of it.”

“What! you sell my horse,” said Athos, “you sell my Bajazet? And on what shall I make the campaign? On Grimaud?”

“I bring you another,” said d’Artagnan.

“Another?”

“And a magnificent one!” cried the host.

“Then, if there is another handsomer and younger, take the old one, and bring wine!”

“Which?” asked the host, quite reassured.

“That at the bottom, near the laths; there are still twenty-five bottles left, all the others were broken in my fall. Bring up six.”

“But he is a cask of a man!” said the host to himself; “if he stays here only a fortnight, and he pays what he drinks, I shall set my affairs straight.”

“And don’t forget,” continued d’Artagnan, “to bring up four bottles of the same to the two English gentlemen.”

“Now,” said Athos, “while they bring us wine, tell me, d’Artagnan, what has become of the others; come on.”

D’Artagnan told him how he had found Porthos in bed with a sprain, and Aramis at a table between two theologians. As he finished, the host came in with the bottles asked for and a ham which, fortunately for him, had remained outside the cellar.

“That’s well,” said Athos, filling his glass and d’Artagnan’s, “that for Porthos and Aramis; but you, my friend, what have you, and what has happened to you personally? I find you looking sinister.”

“Alas!” said d’Artagnan, “it is that I am the most unfortunate of us all, I!”

“You unfortunate, d’Artagnan!” said Athos. “Come, how are you unfortunate? Tell me that.”

“Later,” said d’Artagnan.

“Later! and why later? because you think I am drunk, d’Artagnan? Mark this: I never have clearer ideas than when in wine. Speak, then; I am all ears.”

D’Artagnan told his adventure with Mme Bonacieux.

Athos listened without wincing; then, when he had finished:

“Trifles, all that,” said Athos, “trifles!”

That was Athos’s word.

“You always say trifles! my dear Athos,” said d’Artagnan; “that sits very ill upon you, who have never loved.”

Athos’s dead eye suddenly inflamed, but it was only a flash; it became dull and vague as before.

“That is true,” he said quietly, “I have never loved, I.”

“You see, then, you heart of stone,” said d’Artagnan, “that you are wrong to be hard on us tender hearts.”

“Tender hearts, pierced hearts,” said Athos.

“What do you say?”

“I say that love is a lottery where he who wins, wins death! You are very lucky to have lost, believe me, my dear d’Artagnan. And if I have one piece of advice to give you, it is always to lose.”

“She seemed to love me so well!”

“She seemed.”

“Oh! she loved me.”

“Child! there is not a man who has not believed, like you, that his mistress loved him, and there is not a man who has not been deceived by his mistress.”

“Except you, Athos, who never had one.”

“That is true,” said Athos, after a moment’s silence, “I never had one, I. Let us drink!”

“But then, philosopher that you are,” said d’Artagnan, “instruct me, support me; I need to know and to be consoled.”

“Consoled for what?”

“For my misfortune.”

“Your misfortune makes me laugh,” said Athos, shrugging his shoulders; “I should be curious to know what you would say if I told you a love story.”

“Happening to you?”

“Or to one of my friends, what matter!”

“Tell it, Athos, tell it.”

“Let us drink; we shall do better.”

“Drink and tell.”

“Indeed, that can be done,” said Athos, emptying and refilling his glass; “the two things go admirably together.”

“I am listening,” said d’Artagnan.

Athos collected himself, and as he collected himself, d’Artagnan saw him grow pale; he was at that stage of drunkenness where vulgar drinkers fall and sleep. He, on the contrary, dreamed aloud without sleeping. This somnambulism of intoxication had something frightening about it.

“You absolutely wish it?” he asked.

“I beg you,” said d’Artagnan.

“Let it be done then as you desire. One of my friends—one of my friends, mind you! not me,” said Athos, interrupting himself with a sombre smile—“one of the counts of my province, that is to say of Berry, as noble as a Dandolo or a Montmorency, fell in love at twenty-five with a young girl of sixteen, beautiful as love itself. Through the naivety of her age pierced an ardent spirit, a spirit not of a woman but of a poet; she did not please, she intoxicated; she lived in a small town, near her brother who was a curate. Both had arrived in the country; they came from no one knew where; but seeing her so beautiful and her brother so pious, no one thought to ask whence they came. Moreover, they were said to be of good extraction. My friend, who was the lord of the country, could have seduced her or taken her by force, at his pleasure; he was the master; who would have come to the aid of two strangers, two unknowns? Unfortunately he was an honest man; he married her. The fool, the ninny, the imbecile!”

“But why that, since he loved her?” asked d’Artagnan.

“Wait, then,” said Athos. “He took her to his château and made her the first lady of his province; and justice must be done her, she upheld her rank perfectly.”

“Well?” asked d’Artagnan.

“Well, one day when she was hunting with her husband,” continued Athos in a low voice and speaking very fast, “she fell from her horse and fainted; the count rushed to her aid, and as she was suffocating in her clothes, he cut them open with his dagger and bared her shoulder. Guess what she had on her shoulder, d’Artagnan?” said Athos with a great burst of laughter.

“How can I know?” asked d’Artagnan.

“A fleur-de-lis,” said Athos. “She was branded!”

And Athos emptied at a single draught the glass he held in his hand.

“Horror!” cried d’Artagnan. “What are you telling me?”

“The truth. My dear, the angel was a demon. The poor girl had stolen.”

“And what did the count do?”

“The count was a great lord; he had on his lands high and low justice; he finished tearing the countess’s clothes, tied her hands behind her back, and hanged her to a tree.”

“Heavens! Athos! a murder!” cried d’Artagnan.

“Yes, a murder, nothing more,” said Athos, pale as death. “But they are letting me run short of wine, it seems to me.”

And Athos seized by the neck the last bottle that remained, brought it to his mouth, and emptied it at a single draught, as he would have done with an ordinary glass.

Then he let his head fall on his two hands; d’Artagnan remained before him, struck with terror.

“That has cured me of beautiful, poetic, and loving women,” said Athos, raising himself and without thinking to continue the allegory of the count. “God grant you as much! Let us drink!”

“So she is dead?” stammered d’Artagnan.

“Pardieu!” said Athos. “But hold out your glass. Some ham, rascal!” cried Athos; “we can drink no more!”

“And her brother?” added d’Artagnan timidly.

“Her brother?” repeated Athos.

“Yes, the priest?”

“Ah! I made inquiries to hang him in his turn; but he had taken the lead; he had left his cure the day before.”

“Did you at least find out what that wretch was?”

“He was no doubt the first lover and accomplice of the fair one; a worthy man who had perhaps pretended to be a curate to marry his mistress and secure a position for her. He will have been quartered, I hope.”

“Oh, my God! my God!” said d’Artagnan, quite stunned by this horrible story.

“Eat some of this ham, d’Artagnan; it is exquisite,” said Athos, cutting a slice which he put on the young man’s plate. “What a pity there weren’t only four like that one in the cellar! I would have drunk fifty bottles more.”

D’Artagnan could no longer bear this conversation, which would have driven him mad; he let his head fall on his two hands and pretended to fall asleep.

“Young men no longer know how to drink,” said Athos, looking at him with pity, “and yet this one is one of the best!…”

CHAPTER XXVIII. RETURN

D’Artagnan remained stunned by Athos’s terrible confidence; yet many things still seemed obscure to him in this half-revelation; first, it had been made by a man quite drunk to a man who was half so; and yet, despite that vagueness which the fumes of two or three bottles of Burgundy send to the brain, d’Artagnan, on waking the next morning, had each word of Athos as present to his mind as if, as they fell from his mouth, they had been imprinted on his memory. All this doubt only gave him a more lively desire to arrive at certainty, and he went to his friend’s room with the firm intention of renewing the conversation of the previous evening; but he found Athos perfectly sober, that is to say, the most acute and impenetrable of men.

Moreover, the musketeer, after exchanging a handshake with him, anticipated his thought.

“I was very drunk yesterday, my dear d’Artagnan,” said he; “I felt it this morning by my tongue, which was still very thick, and by my pulse, which was still very agitated; I bet I said a thousand extravagances.”

And in saying these words, he looked at his friend with a fixedness that embarrassed him.

“No, not at all,” replied d’Artagnan; “and, if I remember rightly, you said nothing but what was quite ordinary.”

“Ah! you surprise me! I thought I had told you one of the most lamentable stories.”

And he looked at the young man as if he would read to the very bottom of his heart.

“My faith!” said d’Artagnan, “it seems I was still drunker than you, since I remember nothing.”

Athos was not satisfied with this answer, and resumed:

“You cannot have failed to notice, my dear friend, that each has his own kind of drunkenness, sad or gay; mine is sad, and, when I am once tipsy, my way is to tell all the lugubrious stories my stupid nurse instilled into my brain. That is my defect; a capital defect, I confess; but, except for that, I am a good drinker.”

Athos said this so naturally that d’Artagnan was shaken in his conviction.

“Oh! it was that, then, indeed,” resumed the young man, trying to recapture the truth, “it was that I remember, as, moreover, one remembers a dream, that we talked about hanged people.”

“Ah! you see,” said Athos, growing pale, and yet trying to laugh, “I was sure of it; hanged people are my nightmare.”

“Yes, yes,” resumed d’Artagnan, “and there is the memory returning; yes, it was about… wait then… it was about a woman.”

“Look,” replied Athos, becoming almost livid, “that is my great story of the blonde woman, and when I tell that one, it’s because I am dead drunk.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said d’Artagnan, “the story of the blonde woman, tall and beautiful, with blue eyes.”

“Yes, and hanged.”

“By her husband, who was a lord of your acquaintance,” continued d’Artagnan, looking fixedly at Athos.

“Well, see, however, how one might compromise a man when one no longer knows what one is saying,” replied Athos, shrugging his shoulders, as if he pitied himself. “Decidedly, I will no longer get drunk, d’Artagnan; it is too bad a habit.”

D’Artagnan remained silent.

Then Athos, suddenly changing the conversation:

“By the way,” said he, “I thank you for the horse you brought me.”

“Is it to your taste?” asked d’Artagnan.

“Yes, but it was not a horse for hard work.”

“You are mistaken; I did ten leagues with it in less than an hour and a half, and it seemed no more than if it had gone around the Place Saint-Sulpice.”

“Ah! then you will make me regret it.”

“Regret it?”

“Yes, I have parted with it.”

“How so?”

“This is how it happened: this morning I woke at six o’clock; you were sleeping like a log, and I did not know what to do; I was still quite dazed from our debauch of yesterday; I went down to the great hall, and I noticed one of our Englishmen who was bargaining with a horse dealer for a horse, his own having died yesterday of a stroke. I approached him, and seeing he offered a hundred pistoles for a burnt sorrel, ‘By God,’ said I, ‘my gentleman, I too have a horse to sell.’ ‘And a very fine one, too,’ said he, ‘I saw it yesterday, your friend’s servant was holding it by the bridle.’ ‘Do you think it is worth a hundred pistoles?’ ‘Yes, and will you give it to me for that price?’ ‘No, but I will play you for it.’ ‘You will play me for it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘At what?’ ‘At dice.’ What was said was done; and I lost the horse. Ah! but, for instance,” continued Athos, “I won back the caparison.”

D’Artagnan looked rather sulky.

“Does that vex you?” said Athos.

“Well, yes, I confess,” replied d’Artagnan; “that horse was to serve to make us recognized on a day of battle; it was a pledge, a remembrance. Athos, you were wrong.”

“Eh! my dear friend, put yourself in my place,” resumed the musketeer; “I was bored to death, and then, upon my honor, I do not like English horses. Come, if it is only a question of being recognized by someone, well, the saddle will suffice; it is remarkable enough. As for the horse, we shall find some excuse to explain its disappearance. What the devil! a horse is mortal; suppose mine had the glanders or the farcy.”

D’Artagnan did not brighten up.

“That vexes me,” continued Athos, “that you seem to care so much for these animals, for I am not at the end of my story.”

“What have you done now?”

“After losing my horse, nine to ten against, see the stroke, the idea came to me to play yours.”

“Yes, but you stopped at the idea, I hope?”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”