Part 31

And now he, the wanderer upon the earth, the man without fortune, the man without family, the soldier accustomed to inns, taverns, alehouses, and posadas, the gourmet forced for the most part to content himself with chance mouthfuls, he was about to taste home-cooked meals, savor the comforts of domesticity, and indulge in those little attentions which, the harder one is, the more they please, as old campaigners say.

To come as a cousin and sit every day at a good table, to smooth the yellow, wrinkled brow of the old procurator, to fleece the young clerks a little by teaching them basset, passe-dix, and lansquenet in their finest practices, and to win from them, by way of fees for the lesson he would give them in an hour, their month's savings—all this immensely appealed to Porthos.

The musketeer did recall, now and then, the ill reports that even then circulated about procurators and have survived them: stinginess, penny-pinching, fast days, but since, after all, except for some fits of economy that Porthos had always found most untimely, he had seen the procurator's wife liberal enough—for a procurator's wife, of course—he hoped to find a household run on a pleasant scale.

However, at the door, the musketeer had some doubts; the approach was hardly inviting: a dark, stinking alley, a staircase poorly lit by bars through which filtered the gray daylight of a neighboring courtyard; on the first floor, a low door studded with enormous nails like the main gate of the Grand Châtelet.

Porthos knocked with his finger. A tall, pale clerk, buried under a forest of virgin hair, came to open it and bowed with the air of a man forced to respect in another both the tall stature that indicates strength, the military dress that indicates profession, and the ruddy complexion that indicates the habit of good living.

Another clerk, smaller, behind the first; another, taller, behind the second; a twelve-year-old errand boy behind the third.

In all, three and a half clerks; which, for the time, indicated a most thriving practice.

Although the musketeer was not due until one o'clock, the procurator's wife had been on the lookout since noon, counting on the heart and perhaps also on the stomach of her admirer to make him come early.

Mme Coquenard therefore appeared at the apartment door almost at the same moment as her guest appeared at the stair door, and the appearance of the worthy lady saved him from great embarrassment. The clerks had curious eyes, and he, not knowing quite what to say to this ascending and descending scale, remained tongue-tied.

"It is my cousin," cried the procurator's wife. "Come in, come in, Monsieur Porthos."

The name of Porthos had its effect on the clerks, who began to laugh; but Porthos turned around, and all faces resumed their gravity.

They entered the procurator's office after crossing the antechamber where the clerks were, and the study where they should have been: this latter room was a sort of dark chamber furnished with papers. Leaving the study, they passed the kitchen on the right and entered the reception room.

All these adjoining rooms did not inspire Porthos with good ideas. Words could be heard from afar through all these open doors; moreover, as he passed, he had cast a quick, investigative glance into the kitchen, and he admitted to himself—to the shame of the procurator's wife and to his own great regret—that he had not seen there the fire, animation, and bustle that ordinarily reign in this sanctuary of gluttony at the time of a good meal.

The procurator had no doubt been warned of this visit, for he showed no surprise at the sight of Porthos, who advanced toward him with a fairly airy manner and greeted him courteously.

"We are cousins, it seems, Monsieur Porthos?" said the procurator, raising himself on his cane armchair.

The old man, wrapped in a large black doublet in which his thin body was lost, was sallow and dry; his small gray eyes sparkled like carbuncles and seemed, with his grimacing mouth, the only part of his face where life remained. Unfortunately, his legs were beginning to refuse service to this entire bony machine; since this weakness had made itself felt five or six months earlier, the worthy procurator had become pretty much the slave of his wife.

The cousin was accepted with resignation, that was all. Maître Coquenard, if still agile, would have declined any kinship with Monsieur Porthos.

"Yes, monsieur, we are cousins," said Porthos without being disconcerted, for he had never expected to be received by the husband with enthusiasm.

"Through the women, I believe?" said the procurator maliciously.

Porthos did not feel this raillery and took it for a naive remark, at which he laughed into his thick mustache. Mme Coquenard, who knew that a naive procurator was a very rare variety of the species, smiled a little and blushed a great deal.

Maître Coquenard, from the moment of Porthos's arrival, had cast an anxious eye upon a large wardrobe placed opposite his oak desk. Porthos understood that this wardrobe, although it did not correspond in form to the one he had seen in his dreams, must be the blessed chest, and he congratulated himself that reality was six feet taller than the dream.

Maître Coquenard did not pursue his genealogical investigations further, but, bringing his anxious gaze from the wardrobe back to Porthos, he contented himself with saying:

"Our cousin monsieur, before he leaves for the country, will do us the favor of dining with us once, will you not, Madame Coquenard?"

This time Porthos received the blow full in the stomach and felt it. It seemed that Mme Coquenard, on her side, was not insensible to it either, for she added:

"My cousin will not return if he finds we treat him badly; but, should the contrary be the case, he has too little time to spend in Paris, and consequently to see us, for us not to ask him for almost all the moments he can spare until his departure."

"Oh, my legs, my poor legs! Where are you?" murmured Coquenard, and he attempted a smile.

This succor that had arrived to Porthos at the moment when his gastronomic hopes were under attack inspired in the musketeer much gratitude toward his procurator's wife.

Soon the dinner hour arrived. They passed into the dining room, a large dark room situated opposite the kitchen.

The clerks, who apparently had sensed unaccustomed odors in the house, were of military punctuality and held their stools in hand, all ready to sit down. One could see them in advance moving their jaws with frightening eagerness.

"The devil!" thought Porthos, casting a glance at the three famished ones—for the errand boy, as one might suppose, was not admitted to the honors of the master's table. "The devil! In my cousin's place, I would not keep such gluttons. They look like shipwreck survivors who haven't eaten for six weeks."

Maître Coquenard entered, pushed on his wheeled chair by Mme Coquenard, to whom Porthos in turn came to help in rolling her husband to the table.

Hardly had he entered when he moved his nose and jaws in imitation of his clerks.

"Oh, oh!" he said, "here is a soup that is inviting!"

"What the devil do they find so extraordinary in this soup?" said Porthos at the sight of a pale, abundant broth, perfectly clear, on which a few croutons floated as rare as islands in an archipelago.

Mme Coquenard smiled, and at a sign from her, everyone sat down eagerly.

Maître Coquenard was served first, then Porthos; then Mme Coquenard filled her plate and distributed the croutons without broth to the impatient clerks.

At that moment the dining room door opened of its own accord with a creak, and Porthos, through the half-open panels, caught sight of the little clerk, who, unable to take part in the feast, ate his bread double-scented by the kitchen and the dining room.

After the soup, the servant brought a boiled hen, a magnificence that made the eyelids of the guests dilate so much that they seemed ready to split.

"One sees that you love your family, Madame Coquenard," said the procurator with an almost tragic smile. "That is certainly a gallantry you are paying your cousin."

The poor hen was skinny and covered with one of those thick, bristly skins that the bones never pierce despite their efforts; they must have searched for it a long time before finding it on the perch where it had retired to die of old age.

"The devil!" thought Porthos. "This is very sad; I respect old age, but I make little of it boiled or roasted."

And he looked around to see if his opinion was shared; but, quite the contrary, he saw only blazing eyes that already devoured this sublime hen, the object of his contempt.

Mme Coquenard drew the dish toward her, deftly detached the two large black feet, which she placed on her husband's plate; cut off the neck, which she set aside with the head for herself; lifted the wing for Porthos; and returned to the servant, who had just brought it, the animal, which went back almost intact, and which disappeared before the musketeer had time to examine the variations that disappointment brings to faces, according to the characters and temperaments of those who experience it.

Instead of chicken, a dish of beans made its entrance—an enormous dish, in which a few mutton bones, which at first glance might have been thought to have some meat on them, pretended to show themselves.

But the clerks were not taken in by this deception, and the mournful expressions became resigned faces.

Mme Coquenard distributed this dish to the young men with the moderation of a good housewife.

The turn of the wine had come. Maître Coquenard poured from a very small stoneware bottle a third of a glass for each of the young men, poured for himself in roughly equal proportions, and the bottle immediately passed to the side of Porthos and Mme Coquenard.

The young men filled this third of wine with water, then, when they had drunk half the glass, they filled it again, and kept doing so; which brought them at the end of the meal to swallow a drink that had gone from the color of ruby to that of burnt topaz.

Porthos ate his chicken wing timidly and shuddered when he felt under the table the procurator's wife's knee come to meet his own. He also drank half a glass of this carefully measured wine, which he recognized as that horrible Montreuil vintage, the terror of practiced palates.

Maître Coquenard watched him swallow this pure wine and sighed.

"Will you have some of these beans, my cousin Porthos?" said Mme Coquenard in that tone which means: believe me, don't eat any.

"The devil if I taste them!" muttered Porthos under his breath.

Then aloud: "Thank you, my cousin," he said, "I am no longer hungry."

There was a silence. Porthos did not know what attitude to take. The procurator repeated several times:

"Ah, Madame Coquenard! I congratulate you; your dinner was a true feast. Good God, how I have eaten!"

Maître Coquenard had eaten his soup, the black hen's feet, and the only mutton bone that had a bit of meat on it.

Porthos thought he was being made a fool of and began to twirl his mustache and frown; but Mme Coquenard's knee gently advised him to be patient.

This silence and this interruption of service, which had remained unintelligible to Porthos, had on the contrary a terrible meaning for the clerks. At a glance from the procurator, accompanied by a smile from Mme Coquenard, they slowly rose from the table, folded their napkins even more slowly, then bowed and left.

"Go, young men, go digest your food while working," said the procurator gravely.

The clerks gone, Mme Coquenard rose and took from a sideboard a piece of cheese, some quince jam, and a cake she had made herself with almonds and honey.

Maître Coquenard frowned, because he saw too many dishes; Porthos pursed his lips, because he saw that there was not enough to dine on.

He looked to see if the bean dish was still there; the bean dish had disappeared.

"A feast, decidedly!" cried Maître Coquenard, stirring on his chair. "A true feast, *epulae epularum*! Lucullus dines at Lucullus's."

Porthos looked at the bottle beside him and hoped that with wine, bread, and cheese he could dine; but the wine was gone, the bottle was empty. M. and Mme Coquenard did not seem to notice.

"That's fine," Porthos said to himself. "I'm warned."

He passed his tongue over a small spoonful of jam and glued his teeth with Mme Coquenard's sticky paste.

"Now," he said to himself, "the sacrifice is complete. Ah! If I did not have the hope of looking with Mme Coquenard into her husband's wardrobe!"

Maître Coquenard, after the delights of such a meal, which he called an excess, felt the need to take his nap. Porthos hoped this would take place then and there, on the spot; but the cursed procurator would hear nothing of it: he had to be taken to his room, and he kept crying out until he was before his wardrobe, on the edge of which, for even greater precaution, he placed his feet.

The procurator's wife led Porthos into a neighboring room, and they began to lay the foundations of the reconciliation.

"You may come to dinner three times a week," said Mme Coquenard.

"Thank you," said Porthos. "I do not like to abuse; besides, I must think about my equipment."

"That is true," said the procurator's wife, groaning. "That unfortunate equipment."

"Alas, yes," said Porthos. "It is that."

"But what does the equipment of your corps consist of, Monsieur Porthos?"

"Oh, many things," said Porthos. "The musketeers, as you know, are elite soldiers, and they need many objects useless to guards or Swiss."

"But still, detail it to me."

"Well, it can amount to—" said Porthos, who preferred to discuss the total rather than the item.

The procurator's wife waited, trembling.

"To how much?" she said. "I hope it does not exceed—" She stopped, words failing her.

"Oh, no," said Porthos. "It does not exceed two thousand five hundred livres; I even believe that with economy, I can manage with two thousand livres."

"Good God! Two thousand livres!" she cried. "But that is a fortune."

Porthos made a most significant grimace. Mme Coquenard understood it.

"I asked for the detail," she said, "because, having many relatives and customers in trade, I was almost sure of getting things at a hundred percent below the price you would pay yourself."

"Ah, ah!" said Porthos. "So that is what you meant!"

"Yes, dear Monsieur Porthos. So, first, do you not need a horse?"

"Yes, a horse."

"Well, I have just the thing for you."

"Ah!" said Porthos, beaming. "So that goes well for my horse. Next, I need the complete harness, which consists of items that only a musketeer can buy, and which will amount, moreover, to no more than three hundred livres."

"Three hundred livres? Then let us say three hundred livres," said the procurator's wife with a sigh.

Porthos smiled. It will be remembered that he had the saddle that came from Buckingham; so it was three hundred livres that he intended to slip slyly into his pocket.

"Then," he continued, "there is my lackey's horse and my valise. As for arms, you need not worry about them, I have them."

"A horse for your lackey?" resumed the procurator's wife hesitantly. "But that is very grand, my friend."

"Eh, madame!" said Porthos proudly. "Am I a peasant by any chance?"

"No; I was only saying that a fine mule sometimes has as good an air as a horse, and it seems to me that by procuring a fine mule for Mousqueton—"

"Agreed for a fine mule," said Porthos. "You are right; I have seen very great Spanish lords whose entire retinue rode mules. But then, you understand, Madame Coquenard, a mule with plumes and bells?"

"Be at ease," said the procurator's wife.

"Remains the valise," resumed Porthos.

"Oh, do not worry about that!" cried Mme Coquenard. "My husband has five or six valises; you shall choose the best. There is one especially that he favored in his travels, and it is large enough to hold a world."

"Is it then empty, your valise?" asked Porthos naively.

"Certainly it is empty," replied the procurator's wife naively on her side.

"Ah, but the valise I need is a well-filled one, my dear."

Mme Coquenard heaved new sighs. Molière had not yet written his scene in *The Miser*. Mme Coquenard therefore precedes Harpagon.

Finally, the rest of the equipment was successively debated in the same manner; and the result of the scene was that the procurator's wife would ask her husband for a loan of eight hundred livres in cash, and would provide the horse and the mule that would have the honor of carrying Porthos and Mousqueton to glory.

These conditions settled, and the interest stipulated as well as the time of repayment, Porthos took his leave of Mme Coquenard. She would gladly have kept him with tender glances; but Porthos pleaded the demands of service, and the procurator's wife had to yield precedence to the king.

The musketeer returned home hungry and in a very bad humor.

CHAPTER 33. MAID AND MISTRESS

Meanwhile, as we have said, despite the cries of his conscience and the wise counsels of Athos, d'Artagnan became more in love with Milady hour by hour; nor did he fail every day to pay court to her, convinced that the adventurous Gascon would sooner or later meet with a response.

One evening, when he arrived with his nose in the air, as light as a man expecting a shower of gold, he met the maid under the carriage gate; but this time the pretty Ketty was not content with smiling at him in passing; she gently took his hand.

"Good!" thought d'Artagnan. "She is charged with some message for me from her mistress; she is going to assign me some rendezvous that no one dared give me in person."

And he looked at the lovely girl with the most conquering air he could muster.

"I should like to speak two words with you, Monsieur le Chevalier," stammered the maid.

"Speak, my child, speak," said d'Artagnan. "I am listening."

"Here, impossible. What I have to say to you is too long and especially too secret."

"Well, then how shall we manage?"

"If monsieur le chevalier would follow me," said Ketty timidly.

"Wherever you wish, my pretty child."

"Then come."

And Ketty, who had not let go of d'Artagnan's hand, led him up a little dark, winding staircase, and after making him ascend some fifteen steps, opened a door.

"Enter, monsieur le chevalier," she said. "Here we shall be alone and can talk."

"And what room is this, my pretty child?" asked d'Artagnan.

"It is mine, monsieur le chevalier. It communicates with my mistress's room through that door. But be easy; she cannot hear what we shall say; she never goes to bed before midnight."

D'Artagnan cast a glance around him. The little room was charming in taste and cleanliness; but, despite himself, his eyes fixed on the door that Ketty had told him led to Milady's chamber.

Ketty guessed what was passing in the young man's mind and sighed.

"You love my mistress very much, then, monsieur le chevalier?" she said.

"Oh, more than I can say! I am mad about her!"

Ketty heaved a second sigh.

"Alas, monsieur," she said, "that is a great pity!"

"And the devil! What do you see so unfortunate in that?" asked d'Artagnan.

"It is that, monsieur," resumed Ketty, "my mistress does not love you at all."

"Hein!" said d'Artagnan. "Did she charge you to tell me that?"

"Oh no, monsieur! But it is I who, out of interest for you, took the resolution to warn you."

"Thank you, my good Ketty, but for the intention only, for the confidence, you will admit, is not pleasant."

"That is to say you do not believe what I have told you, do you?"

"One always has difficulty believing such things, my pretty child, if only out of self-love."

"So you do not believe me?"

"I confess, until you deign to give me some proof of what you assert—"

"What do you say to this?"

And Ketty drew from her bosom a little note.

"For me?" said d'Artagnan, snatching the letter eagerly.

"No; for another."

"For another?"

"Yes."

"His name, his name!" cried d'Artagnan.

"Look at the address."

"Monsieur le Comte de Wardes."

The memory of the scene at Saint-Germain immediately came to the presumptuous Gascon's mind; with a movement swift as thought, he tore the envelope despite the cry Ketty uttered when she saw what he was about to do, or rather what he was doing.

"Oh, my God! monsieur le chevalier," she said, "what are you doing?"

"I? Nothing!" said d'Artagnan, and he read:

"You have not answered my first note. Are you ill, or have you forgotten what eyes you made at Mme de Guise's ball? Here is the opportunity, count! Do not let it slip."

D'Artagnan turned pale. His self-love was wounded; he felt his love was wounded.

"Poor dear Monsieur d'Artagnan!" said Ketty, in a voice full of compassion, again pressing the young man's hand.

"You pity me, good little one!" said d'Artagnan.

"Oh yes, with all my heart! For I know what love is, I do."

"You know what love is?" said d'Artagnan, looking at her for the first time with a certain attention.

"Alas, yes."

"Well, then, instead of pitying me, you would do much better to help me take revenge on your mistress."

"And what sort of revenge would you take?"

"I would triumph over her, supplant my rival."

"I will never help you in that, monsieur le chevalier!" said Ketty quickly.

"And why?" asked d'Artagnan.

"For two reasons."

"Which?"

"The first is that my mistress has never loved you."

"How do you know?"

"You have wounded her to the heart."

"I? In what could I have wounded her, I who, since I have known her, have lived at her feet like a slave? Speak, I beg you."

"I would never admit that except to the man who would read to the bottom of my soul!"

D'Artagnan looked at Ketty for the second time. The young girl was of a freshness and beauty that many duchesses would have bought with their crowns.

"Ketty," he said, "I will read to the bottom of your soul whenever you wish; do not worry about that, my dear child."

And he gave her a kiss under which the poor girl became as red as a cherry.

"Oh, no!" cried Ketty. "You do not love me! It is my mistress you love; you told me so just now."

"And does that prevent you from making known to me the second reason?"

"The second reason, monsieur le chevalier," resumed Ketty, emboldened first by the kiss and then by the expression of the young man's eyes, "is that in love, every man for himself."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”