Part 3

The courtyard of his hôtel, situated on the rue du Vieux-Colombier, resembled a camp, and that from six o'clock in the morning in summer and from eight in winter. Fifty to sixty musketeers, who seemed to take turns there so as to present an always imposing number, paced about incessantly, armed for war and ready for anything. Along one of its great staircases—on the site of which our civilization would build an entire house—mounted and descended the petitioners of Paris who were after some favor or other, the provincial gentlemen eager to be enrolled, and the lackeys bedizened in every color, who came to bring Monsieur de Tréville the messages of their masters. In the antechamber, upon long circular benches, rested the chosen, that is to say those who had been summoned. A humming lasted there from morning till night, while Monsieur de Tréville, in his cabinet adjoining that antechamber, received visits, listened to complaints, gave his orders, and, like the king at his balcony in the Louvre, had only to place himself at his window to review the men and the arms.

The day d'Artagnan presented himself, the assembly was imposing, especially for a provincial just arrived from his province: it is true that this provincial was a Gascon, and that above all at this epoch the compatriots of d'Artagnan had the reputation of not being easily intimidated. Indeed, once one had crossed the massive door, studded with long nails with quadrangular heads, one fell into the midst of a troop of men of the sword who crossed paths in the courtyard, calling to one another, quarreling, and playing among themselves. To make one's way through all those swirling waves, one would have needed to be an officer, a great lord, or a pretty woman.

It was therefore in the midst of this throng and this disorder that our young man advanced, his heart palpitating, his long rapier laid along his thin legs, and holding one hand to the brim of his hat with the half-smile of the embarrassed provincial who wishes to put on a good face. Once he had passed a group, then he breathed more freely, but he understood that they turned to look at him, and for the first time in his life, d'Artagnan, who until then had had rather a good opinion of himself, found himself ridiculous.

Arrived at the staircase, it was worse still: upon the first steps were four musketeers diverting themselves with the following exercise, while ten or twelve of their comrades waited on the landing for their turn to take part in the game.

One of them, placed on the upper step, sword bare in hand, prevented or at least strove to prevent the other three from coming up.

These three fenced against him with their very agile swords. D'Artagnan at first took these blades for fencing foils; he thought them buttoned: but he soon recognized, by certain scratches, that each weapon, on the contrary, was whetted and sharpened to perfection, and at each of these scratches, not only the spectators but the actors themselves laughed like madmen.

He who occupied the step at that moment held his adversaries marvelously in check. They made a circle around them: the condition was that at each touch the touched should quit the game, losing his turn of audience to the benefit of the toucher. In five minutes three were grazed, one on the wrist, another on the chin, the third on the ear, by the defender of the step, who himself was not reached: an address which earned him, according to the agreed conventions, three turns of favor.

Difficult not to be astonished—or rather, he wished to be astonished—this pastime astonished our young traveler; he had seen in his province, that land where heads are nevertheless so quickly heated, a few more preliminaries to duels, and the bragging of these four players seemed to him the greatest of all those he had heard until then, even in Gascony. He believed himself transported into that famous land of giants where Gulliver since went and was so greatly afraid; and yet he was not at the end: there remained the landing and the antechamber.

On the landing they no longer fought, they told stories of women, and in the antechamber stories of court. On the landing, d'Artagnan blushed; in the antechamber, he shuddered. His awakened and wandering imagination, which in Gascony made him formidable to the young chambermaids and sometimes even to the young mistresses, had never dreamed, even in its moments of delirium, half of those amorous marvels and a quarter of those gallant exploits, embellished with the best-known names and the least veiled details. But if his love of good morals was offended on the landing, his respect for the cardinal was scandalized in the antechamber. There, to his great astonishment, d'Artagnan heard openly criticized the policy that made Europe tremble, and the private life of the cardinal, for having attempted to probe which so many high and powerful lords had been punished: this great man, revered by Monsieur d'Artagnan father, served as mockery to the musketeers of Monsieur de Tréville, who railed at his bandy legs and his hunched back; some sang noëls upon Madame d'Aiguillon, his mistress, and Madame de Combalet, his niece, while others arranged parties against the pages and guards of the cardinal-duke, all things which appeared to d'Artagnan monstrous impossibilities.

However, when the name of the king sometimes intervened suddenly and unforeseen amid all those cardinalesque jests, a kind of gag stopped for a moment all those mocking mouths; they looked around with hesitation, and seemed to fear the indiscretion of the wall of Monsieur de Tréville's cabinet; but soon an allusion brought the conversation back to His Eminence, and then the bursts of laughter resumed more brilliantly than ever, and no light was spared upon any of his actions.

"Surely, here are men who are going to be sent to the Bastille and hanged," thought d'Artagnan with terror, "and I no doubt with them, for from the moment I have listened to them and heard them, I shall be held as their accomplice. What would Monsieur my father, who so strongly recommended to me respect for the cardinal, say if he knew me in the society of such pagans?"

Also, as one guesses without my saying it, d'Artagnan dared not give himself up to the conversation; he only looked with all his eyes, listened with all his ears, avidly straining his five senses to lose nothing, and despite his confidence in his father's recommendations, he felt himself drawn by his tastes and carried away by his instincts to praise rather than blame the unheard-of things that were passing there.

However, as he was absolutely a stranger to the crowd of courtiers of Monsieur de Tréville, and as it was the first time he had been seen in this place, someone came to ask him what he desired. At this question, d'Artagnan named himself most humbly, leaned upon the title of compatriot, and begged the valet de chambre who had come to put this question to him to ask Monsieur de Tréville for a moment of audience for him, a request which the latter promised in a protective tone to transmit in time and place.

D'Artagnan, somewhat recovered from his first surprise, thus had leisure to study a little the costumes and the physiognomies.

At the center of the most animated group was a tall musketeer, of a haughty countenance and a bizarrerie of costume which attracted general attention upon him. He did not wear, for the moment, the uniform cassock, which, moreover, was not absolutely obligatory in this epoch of lesser liberty but greater independence, but a sky-blue doublet, somewhat faded and threadbare, and upon this habit a magnificent baldric, in gold embroidery, which shone like the scales with which water covers itself in the great sun. A long cloak of crimson velvet fell gracefully upon his bare shoulders, disclosing in front only the splendid baldric from which hung a gigantic rapier.

This musketeer had just come down from guard at that very instant, complained of being in a cold and coughed from time to time with affectation. He had therefore taken the cloak, as he said around him, and while he spoke from the top of his head, curling his moustache disdainfully, they admired with enthusiasm the embroidered baldric, and d'Artagnan more than anyone else.

"What would you have," said the musketeer, "the fashion is coming to it; it is a folly, I know well, but it is the fashion. Besides, one must put to some use the money from one's inheritance."

"Ah! Porthos!" cried one of those present, "do not try to make us believe that baldric comes to you from paternal generosity: it must have been given you by the veiled lady with whom I met you last Sunday near the Porte Saint-Honoré."

"No, upon my honor and faith as a gentleman, I bought it myself, and with my own coin," answered he whom they had just designated under the name of Porthos.

"Yes, as I bought, I," said another musketeer, "this new purse, with what my mistress had put in the old one."

"Truly," said Porthos, "and the proof is that I paid twelve pistoles for it."

Admiration redoubled, although doubt continued to exist.

"Is it not so, Aramis?" said Porthos, turning toward another musketeer.

This other musketeer formed a perfect contrast with him who questioned him and who had just designated him under the name of Aramis: he was a young man of scarcely twenty-two to twenty-three years, of a naïve and sweet countenance, with a black and soft eye and pink and velvety cheeks like an autumn peach; his fine moustache traced upon his upper lip a line of perfect rectitude; his hands seemed afraid to lower themselves, for fear their veins should swell, and from time to time he pinched the tips of his ears to keep them of a tender and transparent crimson. Usually he spoke little and slowly, bowed much, laughed without noise in showing his teeth, which were beautiful and of which, as of the rest of his person, he seemed to take the greatest care. He answered by an affirmative nod to his friend's interpellation.

This affirmation appeared to have fixed all doubts regarding the baldric; they therefore continued to admire it, but spoke of it no more; and by one of those rapid turnings of thought, the conversation passed suddenly to another subject.

"What do you think of what the equerry of Chalais relates?" asked another musketeer, without directly addressing anyone, but addressing himself on the contrary to everyone.

"And what does he relate?" asked Porthos in a self-important tone.

"He relates that he found at Brussels Rochefort, the damned soul of the cardinal, disguised as a capuchin; this accursed Rochefort, thanks to that disguise, had played Monsieur de Laigues like a fool that he is."

"Like a true fool," said Porthos; "but is the thing certain?"

"I have it from Aramis," answered the musketeer.

"Really?"

"Eh! you know it well, Porthos," said Aramis; "I told it to you yourself yesterday, let us therefore speak of it no more."

"Let us speak of it no more, that is your opinion," resumed Porthos. "Let us speak of it no more! pest! how quickly you conclude. How! the cardinal has a gentleman spied upon, has his correspondence stolen by a traitor, a brigand, a hangdog; has, with the help of this spy and thanks to this correspondence, the head cut off of Chalais, under the stupid pretext that he wished to kill the king and marry Monsieur to the queen! No one knew a word of this enigma, you tell us of it yesterday, to the great satisfaction of all, and when we are still all astounded at this news, you come today to tell us: Let us speak of it no more!"

"Let us speak of it then, come, since you desire it," resumed Aramis with patience.

"This Rochefort," cried Porthos, "if I were the equerry of poor Chalais, would pass with me a nasty moment."

"And you, you would pass a sorry quarter of an hour with the Red Duke," resumed Aramis.

"Ah! the Red Duke! bravo, bravo, the Red Duke!" answered Porthos, clapping his hands and nodding approval. "The 'Red Duke' is charming. I shall spread the word, my dear, be easy. Has he wit, this Aramis! What a pity you could not follow your vocation, my dear! what a delicious abbé you would have made!"

"Oh! it is only a momentary delay," resumed Aramis; "one day, I shall be one. You know well, Porthos, that I continue to study theology for that."

"He will do it as he says," resumed Porthos; "he will do it sooner or later."

"Soon," said Aramis.

"He awaits but one thing to decide him altogether and to resume his cassock, which is hung behind his uniform," resumed a musketeer.

"And what does he await?" asked another.

"He awaits that the queen shall have given an heir to the crown of France."

"Let us not jest upon that, gentlemen," said Porthos; "thanks to God, the queen is still of an age to give one."

"They say Monsieur de Buckingham is in France," resumed Aramis with a sneering laugh which gave to this phrase, so simple in appearance, a passably scandalous meaning.

"Aramis, my friend, this time you are wrong," interrupted Porthos; "and your mania for wit always carries you beyond the bounds; if Monsieur de Tréville heard you, you would be ill received for speaking thus."

"Will you give me a lesson, Porthos?" cried Aramis, in whose soft eye one saw pass like a flash of lightning.

"My dear, be musketeer or abbé. Be one or the other, but not both," resumed Porthos. "Come, Athos told you so again the other day: you eat at all the racks. Ah! let us not quarrel, I pray you, it would be useless, you know well what is agreed between you, Athos and me. You go to Madame d'Aiguillon's, and pay court to her; you go to Madame de Bois-Tracy's, the cousin of Madame de Chevreuse, and you pass for being far advanced in the good graces of the lady. Oh! my God, do not confess your happiness, no one asks you your secret, your discretion is known. But since you possess that virtue, the devil! make use of it toward Her Majesty. Let him occupy himself who will and as he will with the king and the cardinal; but the queen is sacred, and if one speaks of her, let it be in good."

"Porthos, you are conceited like Narcissus, I warn you," answered Aramis; "you know that I hate morality, except when it is made by Athos. As for you, my dear, you have too magnificent a baldric to be very strong upon that. I shall be abbé if it suits me; in the meantime, I am a musketeer: in this quality, I say what pleases me, and at this moment it pleases me to tell you that you weary me."

"Aramis!"

"Porthos!"

"Eh! gentlemen! gentlemen!" cried those around them.

"Monsieur de Tréville awaits Monsieur d'Artagnan," interrupted the lackey, opening the door of the cabinet.

At this announcement, during which the door remained open, each was silent, and amid the general silence the young Gascon crossed the antechamber along part of its length and entered the captain of the musketeers' room, congratulating himself with all his heart at escaping thus opportunely the end of this bizarre quarrel.

CHAPTER III. THE AUDIENCE

Monsieur de Tréville was at the moment in a very bad humor; nevertheless he saluted the young man politely, who bowed to the ground, and he smiled in receiving his compliment, whose Béarn accent recalled to him at once his youth and his country, a double remembrance which makes a man smile at all ages. But, drawing near almost immediately to the antechamber and making a sign to d'Artagnan with his hand, as if to ask his permission to finish with the others before beginning with him, he called three times, swelling his voice each time, so that he traversed all the interval tones between the imperative accent and the irritated accent:

"Athos! Porthos! Aramis!"

The two musketeers with whom we have already made acquaintance, and who answered to the last two of these three names, immediately left the groups of which they formed part and advanced toward the cabinet, whose door closed behind them as soon as they had crossed the threshold. Their bearing, although it was not quite tranquil, nevertheless excited by its carelessness at once full of dignity and submission the admiration of d'Artagnan, who saw in these men demigods, and in their chief an Olympian Jupiter armed with all his thunder.

When the two musketeers had entered, when the door was closed behind them, when the humming murmur of the antechamber, to which the call that had just been made had no doubt given new food, had recommenced; when finally Monsieur de Tréville had three or four times paced, silent and frowning, the whole length of his cabinet, passing each time before Porthos and Aramis, stiff and mute as at parade, he stopped suddenly before them, and covering them from head to foot with an irritated glance:

"Do you know what the king said to me," he cried, "and that no later than last evening? do you know, gentlemen?"

"No," answered the two musketeers after an instant of silence; "no, monsieur, we are ignorant of it."

"But I hope that you will do us the honor of telling us," added Aramis in his most polite tone and with the most gracious reverence.

"He told me that he would henceforth recruit his musketeers from among the guards of Monsieur the cardinal!"

"From among the guards of Monsieur the cardinal! and why that?" asked Porthos vivaciously.

"Because he saw well that his small beer needed to be revived by a mixture of good wine."

The two musketeers blushed to the whites of their eyes. D'Artagnan knew not where he was and would have wished to be a hundred feet under ground.

"Yes, yes," continued Monsieur de Tréville, warming; "yes, and His Majesty was right, for, upon my honor, it is true that the musketeers cut a sorry figure at court. Monsieur the cardinal was relating yesterday at the king's gaming table, with an air of condolence which displeased me greatly, that the day before yesterday those damned musketeers, those very devils—he laid stress on these words with an ironic accent which displeased me still more—those slayers, added he, looking at me with his tiger-cat eye, had lingered in the rue Férou, in a cabaret, and that a patrol of his guards—I thought he was going to laugh in my face—had been forced to arrest the disturbers. 'Sblood! you must know something of it! To arrest musketeers! You were of them, you others, do not deny it, you have been recognized, and the cardinal named you. There is my fault, yes, my fault, since it is I who choose my men. Come, you, Aramis, why the devil did you ask me for the cassock when you were going to be so well under the cassock? Come, you, Porthos, have you not so fine a gold baldric but to hang a straw sword from it? And Athos! I do not see Athos. Where is he?"

"Monsieur," answered Aramis sadly, "he is sick, very sick."

"Sick, very sick, do you say? and of what sickness?"

"There is fear it is the smallpox, monsieur," answered Porthos, wishing to mix a word in his turn into the conversation, "and that would be unfortunate in that it would very certainly spoil his face."

"The smallpox! there is another glorious story you tell me there, Porthos!… Sick of the smallpox, at his age?… Not so!… but wounded no doubt, perhaps killed. Ah! if I knew!… 'Sblood! gentlemen musketeers, I do not intend that one should haunt thus the bad places, that one should pick quarrels in the street and play the sword in the crossroads. I will not, finally, that one should give cause to laugh to the guards of Monsieur the cardinal, who are brave fellows, tranquil, adroit, who never put themselves in the case of being arrested, and who besides would not let themselves be arrested, they!—I am sure of it… They would rather die on the spot than take a step backward. To flee, to scurry, to run—that is good for the king's musketeers, that!"

Porthos and Aramis trembled with rage. They would willingly have strangled Monsieur de Tréville, if at the bottom of all that they had not felt that it was the great love he bore them which made him speak thus to them. They struck the carpet with their foot, bit their lips to the blood, and gripped with all their strength the guard of their sword. Outside they had heard call, as we have said, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and they had guessed, by the accent of Monsieur de Tréville's voice, that he was perfectly angry. Ten curious heads were leaned against the tapestry and grew pale with fury, for their ears glued to the door lost not a syllable of what was said, while their mouths repeated in succession the insulting words of the captain to the whole population of the antechamber. In an instant from the door of the cabinet to the door of the street, the whole hôtel was in ebullition.

"Ah! the king's musketeers let themselves be arrested by the guards of Monsieur the cardinal," continued Monsieur de Tréville, as furious within as his soldiers, but jerking out his words and plunging them one by one, so to speak, and like so many stiletto thrusts, into the breast of his listeners. "Ah! six guards of His Eminence arrest six musketeers of His Majesty! 'Sblood! I have taken my part. I go this instant to the Louvre; I give my resignation as captain of the king's musketeers to ask a lieutenancy in the guards of the cardinal, and if he refuses me, 'sblood! I shall make myself abbé."

At these words, the murmur from without became an explosion: everywhere were heard only oaths and blasphemies. The 'sbloods! the 'sdeaths! the deaths of all the devils! crossed in the air. D'Artagnan sought a tapestry behind which to hide, and felt a measureless desire to thrust himself under the table.

"Well, my captain," said Porthos, beside himself, "the truth is that we were six against six, but we were taken by treachery, and before we had had time to draw our swords, two of us had fallen dead, and Athos, grievously wounded, was little better. For you know him, Athos; well, captain, he tried to rise twice, and fell back twice. However, we did not surrender, no! they dragged us off by force. On the way, we escaped. As for Athos, they had thought him dead, and left him quite tranquilly on the field of battle, not thinking him worth the trouble of being carried off. There is the story. The devil! captain, one does not win all battles. The great Pompey lost that of Pharsalia, and King Francis the First, who, as I have heard tell, was worth another, nevertheless lost that of Pavia."

"And I have the honor to assure you that I killed one with his own sword," said Aramis, "for mine broke at the first parry… Killed or stabbed, monsieur, as shall please you."

"I did not know that," resumed Monsieur de Tréville in a somewhat softened tone. "Monsieur the cardinal had exaggerated, as I see."

"But, I pray you, monsieur," continued Aramis, who, seeing his captain appeased, dared hazard a prayer, "I pray you, monsieur, do not say that Athos himself is wounded; he would be in despair that it came to the ears of the king, and as the wound is among the gravest, seeing that after traversing the shoulder it penetrates into the chest, there would be cause to fear…"

At the same instant the portière lifted, and a noble and beautiful head, but frightfully pale, appeared beneath the fringe.

"Athos!" cried the two musketeers.

"Athos!" repeated Monsieur de Tréville himself.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”