Part 37

That night, all the comrades from M. des Essarts' company of guards and M. de Tréville's company of musketeers who had become friends gathered together. They parted to meet again when God willed, and if God willed. The night was therefore as boisterous as one might imagine, for in such circumstances, extreme preoccupation can only be combated by extreme carelessness.

The next day, at the first sound of trumpets, the friends parted: the musketeers hurried to M. de Tréville's residence, the guards to that of M. des Essarts. Each captain immediately led his company to the Louvre, where the king was to review them.

The king was sad and appeared ill, which somewhat diminished his majestic bearing. Indeed, the previous day, a fever had seized him in the middle of the Parliament session while he held his bed of justice. Nonetheless, he was determined to depart that very evening; and despite the objections raised to him, he had insisted on holding the review, hoping that this first act of vigor would overcome the illness that was beginning to take hold of him.

Once the review was over, the guards set off alone, as the musketeers were not to leave until the king did, which allowed Porthos to take a ride in his splendid equipage through the Rue aux Ours.

The procurator's wife saw him pass by in his new uniform and on his fine horse. She loved Porthos too much to let him leave like that; she signaled for him to dismount and come to her. Porthos was magnificent; his spurs jangled, his breastplate gleamed, his sword beat proudly against his legs. This time, the clerks felt no urge to laugh, so much did Porthos look like an ear-cutter.

The musketeer was ushered in to M. Coquenard, whose little gray eyes blazed with anger at seeing his cousin all spick-and-span. Yet one thing inwardly consoled him: it was said everywhere that the campaign would be harsh; he secretly hoped, deep in his heart, that Porthos would be killed there.

Porthos presented his compliments to Master Coquenard and bid him farewell; Master Coquenard wished him every prosperity. As for Madame Coquenard, she could not hold back her tears; but no ill consequences were drawn from her grief, for she was known to be much attached to her relatives, over whom she had often had bitter disputes with her husband.

But the true farewell took place in Madame Coquenard's chamber; it was heart-wrenching.

As long as the procurator's wife could follow her lover with her eyes, she waved a handkerchief, leaning out the window so far that one might think she meant to throw herself out. Porthos received all these marks of tenderness as a man accustomed to such demonstrations. Only, as he turned the corner of the street, he raised his felt hat and waved it in a sign of farewell.

For his part, Aramis was writing a long letter. To whom? No one knew. In the next room, Kitty, who was to leave that very evening for Tours, awaited this mysterious letter.

Athos was sipping the last bottle of his Spanish wine.

Meanwhile, d'Artagnan was marching with his company.

Upon arriving at the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, he turned back to look cheerfully at the Bastille; but since it was only the Bastille he was looking at, he did not see Milady, who, mounted on a dun-colored horse, was pointing him out with her finger to two ill-favored men who immediately approached the ranks to identify him. At a questioning glance from them, Milady answered with a sign that it was indeed he. Then, certain that there could be no mistake in the execution of her orders, she spurred her horse and disappeared.

The two men then followed the company, and at the exit from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, they mounted horses that had been made ready for them, held by a servant in livery.

CHAPTER XLI THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE

The siege of La Rochelle was one of the great political events of the reign of Louis XIII and one of the cardinal's great military enterprises. It is therefore interesting, and even necessary, that we say a few words about it; besides, many details of this siege are linked in too important a manner to the story we have undertaken to tell for us to pass over them in silence.

The cardinal's political views when he undertook this siege were considerable. Let us first set them forth; then we shall turn to the private views which perhaps had no less influence on His Eminence than the former.

Of the important towns given by Henry IV to the Huguenots as strongholds, only La Rochelle remained. The task, then, was to destroy this last bulwark of Calvinism, a dangerous leaven to which were incessantly added ferment of civil revolt and foreign war.

Discontented Spaniards, Englishmen, Italians, adventurers of every nation, soldiers of fortune of every sect flocked at the first call to the banners of the Protestants and organized themselves into a vast association whose branches spread at will over every point of Europe.

La Rochelle, which had gained new importance from the ruin of the other Calvinist towns, was thus the focus of dissensions and ambitions. Moreover, its port was the last door open to the English in the kingdom of France; and by closing it to England, our eternal enemy, the cardinal was completing the work of Joan of Arc and the Duke of Guise.

Thus Bassompierre, who was both Protestant and Catholic—Protestant by conviction and Catholic as a Commander of the Order of the Holy Spirit; Bassompierre, who was German by birth and French at heart; Bassompierre, in short, who held a particular command at the siege of La Rochelle, used to say, while charging at the head of several other Protestant lords like himself:

"You will see, gentlemen, that we shall be stupid enough to take La Rochelle!"

And Bassompierre was right: the cannonade of the Île de Ré foreshadowed the dragonnades of the Cévennes; the capture of La Rochelle was the prelude to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

But, as we have said, alongside these views of the leveling and simplifying minister, which belong to history, the chronicler is forced to recognize the petty aims of the amorous man and the jealous rival.

Richelieu, as everyone knows, had been in love with the queen; whether this love in him had a purely political goal or was quite naturally one of those profound passions such as Anne of Austria inspired in those around her, we cannot say; but in any case, as the earlier developments of this story have shown, Buckingham had prevailed over him, and in two or three circumstances, particularly that of the diamond studs, he had, thanks to the devotion of the three musketeers and the courage of d'Artagnan, cruelly mystified him.

For Richelieu, therefore, it was a matter not only of ridding France of an enemy, but of avenging himself on a rival; moreover, the vengeance had to be great and resounding, and in every way worthy of a man who holds in his hand, as his sword of combat, the forces of an entire kingdom.

Richelieu knew that in fighting England he was fighting Buckingham; that in triumphing over England he was triumphing over Buckingham; and finally, that in humiliating England in the eyes of Europe, he was humiliating Buckingham in the eyes of the queen.

For his part, Buckingham, while putting forward the honor of England, was moved by interests absolutely similar to those of the cardinal; Buckingham, too, was pursuing a private vengeance: on no pretext could Buckingham re-enter France as an ambassador; he wanted to re-enter as a conqueror.

It follows that the true stake of this game, which the two most powerful kingdoms were playing for the pleasure of two amorous men, was a mere glance from Anne of Austria.

The first advantage had gone to the Duke of Buckingham: having unexpectedly arrived in sight of the Île de Ré with ninety ships and some twenty thousand men, he had taken the Comte de Toiras, who commanded for the king on the island, by surprise; after a bloody battle, he had effected his landing.

Let us mention in passing that in this battle the Baron de Chantal had perished; the Baron de Chantal left an orphaned little girl of eighteen months.

That little girl was later Madame de Sévigné.

The Comte de Toiras withdrew into the citadel of Saint-Martin with the garrison, and threw about a hundred men into a small fort called Fort de La Prée.

This event had hastened the cardinal's resolutions; and while waiting for the king and himself to go and take command of the siege of La Rochelle, which had been decided upon, he had sent Monsieur to direct the initial operations and had had all the troops he could muster sent toward the theater of war.

It was from this detachment sent as an advance guard that our friend d'Artagnan formed a part.

The king, as we have said, was to follow as soon as his bed of justice was held, but upon rising from that bed of justice on June 28, he had felt seized by fever; he nevertheless wished to depart, but, as his condition worsened, he was forced to stop at Villeroi.

Now, where the king stopped, the musketeers stopped; as a result, d'Artagnan, who was purely and simply in the guards, found himself separated, at least temporarily, from his good friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis; this separation, which was for him only an annoyance, would certainly have become a serious worry if he could have guessed what unknown dangers surrounded him.

Nevertheless, he arrived without mishap at the camp set up before La Rochelle, around the 10th of September in the year 1627.

Everything was in the same state: the Duke of Buckingham and his Englishmen, masters of the Île de Ré, continued to besiege, unsuccessfully, the citadel of Saint-Martin and Fort de La Prée, and hostilities with La Rochelle had begun two or three days earlier over a fort that the Duc d'Angoulême had just had built near the town.

The guards, under the command of M. des Essarts, were quartered at the Minimes.

But we know that d'Artagnan, preoccupied with his ambition to join the musketeers, had rarely cultivated friendship with his comrades; he therefore found himself isolated and left to his own reflections.

His reflections were not cheerful: in the year since he had arrived in Paris, he had become involved in public affairs; his private affairs had not made much progress in love or fortune.

In love, the only woman he had loved was Madame Bonacieux, and Madame Bonacieux had disappeared without his being able to discover what had become of her.

In fortune, he, a mere nobody, had made an enemy of the cardinal—that is, of a man before whom the greatest in the kingdom trembled, beginning with the king.

This man could crush him, and yet he had not done so: for a mind as perspicacious as d'Artagnan's, this indulgence was a ray of light through which he glimpsed a better future.

Then, he had made another enemy, less formidable, he thought, but one he instinctively felt was not to be despised: that enemy was Milady.

In exchange for all this he had acquired the protection and goodwill of the queen, but the queen's goodwill, in those times, was an additional cause of persecution; and her protection, as we know, protected very poorly—witness Chalais and Madame Bonacieux.

What he had gained most clearly from all this was the diamond worth five or six thousand livres that he wore on his finger; and even this diamond, supposing d'Artagnan, in his ambitious projects, wanted to keep it as a token of recognition from the queen one day, had for the moment, since he could not part with it, no more value than the pebbles he trod underfoot.

We say "the pebbles he trod underfoot," for d'Artagnan was making these reflections while walking alone on a pretty little path that led from the camp to the village of Angoutin; and these reflections had carried him farther than he thought, and the day was beginning to decline, when, in the last rays of the setting sun, he thought he saw the barrel of a musket gleaming behind a hedge.

D'Artagnan had a keen eye and a quick mind; he understood that the musket had not come there by itself and that whoever carried it had not hidden behind a hedge with friendly intentions. He therefore resolved to make himself scarce, when on the other side of the road, behind a rock, he glimpsed the end of a second musket.

It was evidently an ambush.

The young man glanced at the first musket and saw with some unease that it was lowering in his direction, but as soon as he saw the muzzle become still, he threw himself flat on the ground. At the same moment, the shot went off; he heard the whistle of a bullet passing over his head.

There was no time to lose; d'Artagnan sprang to his feet, and at the same moment the bullet from the other musket sent pebbles flying from the very spot on the path where he had thrown himself face down.

D'Artagnan was not one of those uselessly brave men who seek a ridiculous death so that it might be said of them that they did not retreat a step; besides, it was no longer a question of courage here—d'Artagnan had fallen into an ambush.

"If there's a third shot," he said to himself, "I'm a dead man!"

And immediately taking to his heels, he fled toward the camp with the speed of men from his part of the country, renowned for their agility; but whatever the speed of his flight, the first man who had fired, having had time to reload his weapon, shot a second time at him, so well aimed this time that the bullet pierced his felt hat and sent it flying ten paces from him.

However, since d'Artagnan had no other hat, he picked up his as he ran, arrived very breathless and very pale at his lodging, sat down without saying anything to anyone, and began to reflect.

This event could have three causes:

The first and most natural could be an ambush by the Rochelais, who would not have been sorry to kill one of His Majesty's guards, first because it was one enemy less, and because that enemy might have a well-lined purse in his pocket.

D'Artagnan took his hat, examined the bullet hole, and shook his head. The bullet was not a musket ball; it was an arquebus ball; the accuracy of the shot had already given him the idea that it had been fired from a special weapon; so it was not a military ambush, since the bullet was not of the right caliber.

It could be a fond remembrance from M. le Cardinal. One recalls that at the very moment when, thanks to that blessed ray of sunlight, he had spied the gun barrel, he had been wondering at His Eminence's long-suffering toward him.

But d'Artagnan shook his head. For people on whom she had only to stretch out her hand, His Eminence rarely resorted to such means.

It could be a vengeance of Milady.

This was more likely.

He tried in vain to recall either the features or the clothing of the assassins; he had fled from them so quickly that he had had no time to notice anything.

"Ah! my poor friends," murmured d'Artagnan, "where are you? And how I miss you!"

D'Artagnan spent a very bad night. Three or four times he woke with a start, imagining that a man was approaching his bed to stab him. However, day dawned without the darkness having brought any incident.

But d'Artagnan suspected that what was deferred was not lost.

D'Artagnan stayed in his lodging all day; he excused himself by saying that the weather was bad.

The day after next, at nine o'clock, the call to arms was sounded. The Duc d'Orléans was inspecting the posts. The guards rushed to arms; d'Artagnan took his place among his comrades.

Monsieur passed along the front of the battle line; then all the senior officers approached him to pay their court, M. des Essarts, the captain of the guards, like the others.

After a moment, it seemed to d'Artagnan that M. des Essarts was signaling to him to approach; he waited for another gesture from his superior, afraid of being mistaken, but when the gesture was repeated, he left the ranks and stepped forward to receive the order.

"Monsieur is going to ask for volunteers for a dangerous mission, but one that will bring honor to those who accomplish it, and I signaled to you so that you would hold yourself ready."

"Thank you, my captain!" replied d'Artagnan, who asked nothing better than to distinguish himself under the eyes of the lieutenant general.

Indeed, the Rochelais had made a sortie during the night and had retaken a bastion that the royalist army had captured two days earlier; the task was to push forward a reconnaissance to see how the enemy was holding that bastion.

Presently, after a few moments, Monsieur raised his voice and said:

"For this mission, I would need three or four volunteers led by a reliable man."

"As for the reliable man, I have him at hand, Monseigneur," said M. des Essarts, pointing to d'Artagnan; "and as for the four or five volunteers, Monseigneur has only to make his wishes known, and men will not be lacking."

"Four men of good will to come and get themselves killed with me!" said d'Artagnan, raising his sword.

Two of his fellow guards immediately sprang forward, and two soldiers having joined them, the required number was sufficient; d'Artagnan therefore refused all the others, not wanting to slight those who had priority.

It was not known whether, after capturing the bastion, the Rochelais had evacuated it or had left a garrison in it; so it was necessary to examine the indicated spot closely enough to verify the matter.

D'Artagnan set out with his four companions and followed the trench; the two guards marched in the same rank as he, and the soldiers came behind.

They thus arrived, keeping under cover of the revetments, within a hundred paces of the bastion! There, d'Artagnan, turning around, noticed that the two soldiers had disappeared.

He thought that, having been afraid, they had stayed behind, and he continued forward.

At the turn of the counterscarp, they found themselves about sixty paces from the bastion.

No one was to be seen, and the bastion seemed abandoned.

The three forlorn souls were deliberating whether to go further, when suddenly a belt of smoke encircled the stone giant, and a dozen bullets came whistling around d'Artagnan and his two companions.

They knew what they wanted to know: the bastion was guarded. A longer stay in that dangerous place would therefore be useless imprudence; d'Artagnan and the two guards turned their backs and began a retreat that resembled a flight.

Upon reaching the angle of the trench that was to serve as their rampart, one of the guards fell: a bullet had pierced his chest. The other, who was unhurt, continued his race toward the camp.

D'Artagnan did not want to abandon his comrade like that, and he bent over him to lift him and help him rejoin the lines; but at that moment two gunshots rang out: one bullet shattered the head of the already wounded guard, and the other flattened itself against the rock after passing within two inches of d'Artagnan.

The young man turned quickly, for this attack could not come from the bastion, which was hidden by the angle of the trench. The thought of the two soldiers who had abandoned him came back to his mind and reminded him of his assassins of two days before; he therefore resolved this time to know the truth, and fell upon the body of his comrade as if he were dead.

He immediately saw two heads rising above an abandoned earthwork thirty paces away: they were those of his two soldiers. D'Artagnan had not been mistaken: these two men had followed him only to assassinate him, hoping that the young man's death would be attributed to the enemy.

Only, since he might be merely wounded and denounce their crime, they approached to finish him off; fortunately, deceived by d'Artagnan's ruse, they neglected to reload their guns.

When they were ten paces from him, d'Artagnan, who on falling had taken great care not to let go of his sword, suddenly rose and in one bound was upon them.

The assassins understood that if they fled toward the camp without having killed their man, they would be accused by him; so their first thought was to go over to the enemy. One of them took his gun by the barrel and used it as a club; he dealt a terrible blow at d'Artagnan, who avoided it by throwing himself aside, but by this movement he gave passage to the bandit, who immediately dashed toward the bastion. Since the Rochelais guarding it did not know with what intention this man was coming to them, they fired on him and he fell, struck by a bullet that shattered his shoulder.

Meanwhile, d'Artagnan had thrown himself upon the second soldier, attacking him with his sword; the struggle was not long, for the wretch had only his unloaded arquebus to defend himself; the guard's sword slid along the barrel of the useless weapon and went through the assassin's thigh, who fell. D'Artagnan immediately set the point of his blade to his throat.

"Oh! don't kill me!" cried the bandit; "mercy, mercy, my officer! and I will tell you everything."

"Is your secret worth my sparing your life at least?" asked the young man, holding back his arm.

"Yes; if you consider that life is something when you are twenty-two years old like you, and that you can get anywhere, being as handsome and brave as you are."

"Miserable wretch!" said d'Artagnan; "come on, speak quickly. Who charged you with assassinating me?"

"A woman I don't know, but who is called Milady."

"But if you don't know this woman, how do you know her name?"

"My comrade knew her and called her that; it was with him she dealt, not with me; he even has in his pocket a letter from this person which must be of great importance to you, from what I heard him say."

"But how did you come to be part of this ambush?"

"He proposed that we do the deed together, and I agreed."

"And how much did she give you for this fine expedition?"

"A hundred louis."

"Well, that's fine," said the young man, laughing; "she thinks I'm worth something; a hundred louis! That's a sum for two wretches like you; so I understand that you accepted, and I grant you mercy, but on one condition!"

"What is it?" asked the soldier, anxious, seeing that all was not over.

"That you go and fetch me the letter your comrade has in his pocket."

"But," cried the bandit, "that's another way of killing me; how do you expect me to go fetch that letter under the fire of the bastion?"

"Nevertheless, you must decide to go fetch it, or I swear you will die by my hand."

"Mercy, monsieur, pity! in the name of that young lady you love, whom you believe dead perhaps, and who is not!" cried the bandit, falling to his knees and leaning on his hand, for he was beginning to lose strength with his blood.

"And how do you know that there is a young woman I love, and that I believed that woman dead?" asked d'Artagnan.

"By that letter which my comrade has in his pocket."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”