The three musketeers
His threat completed the intimidation of the host. After the king and
the cardinal, M. de Tréville was the man whose name was perhaps most
frequently repeated by the military, and even by citizens. There was,
to be sure, Father Joseph, but his name was never pronounced but with a
subdued voice, such was the terror inspired by his Gray Eminence, as
the cardinal’s familiar was called.
Throwing down his spit, and ordering his wife to do the same with her
broom handle, and the servants with their sticks, he set the first
example of commencing an earnest search for the lost letter.
“Does the letter contain anything valuable?” demanded the host, after a
few minutes of useless investigation.
“Zounds! I think it does indeed!” cried the Gascon, who reckoned upon
this letter for making his way at court. “It contained my fortune!”
“Bills upon Spain?” asked the disturbed host.
“Bills upon his Majesty’s private treasury,” answered D’Artagnan, who,
reckoning upon entering into the king’s service in consequence of this
recommendation, believed he could make this somewhat hazardous reply
without telling of a falsehood.
“The devil!” cried the host, at his wits’ end.
“But it’s of no importance,” continued D’Artagnan, with natural
assurance; “it’s of no importance. The money is nothing; that letter
was everything. I would rather have lost a thousand pistoles than have
lost it.” He would not have risked more if he had said twenty thousand;
but a certain juvenile modesty restrained him.
A ray of light all at once broke upon the mind of the host as he was
giving himself to the devil upon finding nothing.
“That letter is not lost!” cried he.
“What!” cried D’Artagnan.
“No, it has been stolen from you.”
“Stolen? By whom?”
“By the gentleman who was here yesterday. He came down into the
kitchen, where your doublet was. He remained there some time alone. I
would lay a wager he has stolen it.”
“Do you think so?” answered D’Artagnan, but little convinced, as he
knew better than anyone else how entirely personal the value of this
letter was, and saw nothing in it likely to tempt cupidity. The fact
was that none of his servants, none of the travelers present, could
have gained anything by being possessed of this paper.
“Do you say,” resumed D’Artagnan, “that you suspect that impertinent
gentleman?”
“I tell you I am sure of it,” continued the host. “When I informed him
that your lordship was the _protégé_ of Monsieur de Tréville, and that
you even had a letter for that illustrious gentleman, he appeared to be
very much disturbed, and asked me where that letter was, and
immediately came down into the kitchen, where he knew your doublet
was.”
“Then that’s my thief,” replied D’Artagnan. “I will complain to
Monsieur de Tréville, and Monsieur de Tréville will complain to the
king.” He then drew two crowns majestically from his purse and gave
them to the host, who accompanied him, cap in hand, to the gate, and
remounted his yellow horse, which bore him without any further accident
to the gate of St. Antoine at Paris, where his owner sold him for three
crowns, which was a very good price, considering that D’Artagnan had
ridden him hard during the last stage. Thus the dealer to whom
D’Artagnan sold him for the nine livres did not conceal from the young
man that he only gave that enormous sum for him on the account of the
originality of his color.
Thus D’Artagnan entered Paris on foot, carrying his little packet under
his arm, and walked about till he found an apartment to be let on terms
suited to the scantiness of his means. This chamber was a sort of
garret, situated in the Rue des Fossoyeurs, near the Luxembourg.
As soon as the earnest money was paid, D’Artagnan took possession of
his lodging, and passed the remainder of the day in sewing onto his
doublet and hose some ornamental braiding which his mother had taken
off an almost-new doublet of the elder M. d’Artagnan, and which she had
given her son secretly. Next he went to the Quai de Feraille to have a
new blade put to his sword, and then returned toward the Louvre,
inquiring of the first Musketeer he met for the situation of the hôtel
of M. de Tréville, which proved to be in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier;
that is to say, in the immediate vicinity of the chamber hired by
D’Artagnan—a circumstance which appeared to furnish a happy augury for
the success of his journey.
After this, satisfied with the way in which he had conducted himself at
Meung, without remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full
of hope for the future, he retired to bed and slept the sleep of the
brave.
This sleep, provincial as it was, brought him to nine o’clock in the
morning; at which hour he rose, in order to repair to the residence of
M. de Tréville, the third personage in the kingdom, in the paternal
estimation.
Chapter II.
THE ANTECHAMBER OF M. DE TRÉVILLE
M. de Troisville, as his family was still called in Gascony, or M. de
Tréville, as he has ended by styling himself in Paris, had really
commenced life as D’Artagnan now did; that is to say, without a sou in
his pocket, but with a fund of audacity, shrewdness, and intelligence
which makes the poorest Gascon gentleman often derive more in his hope
from the paternal inheritance than the richest Perigordian or Berrichan
gentleman derives in reality from his. His insolent bravery, his still
more insolent success at a time when blows poured down like hail, had
borne him to the top of that difficult ladder called Court Favor, which
he had climbed four steps at a time.
He was the friend of the king, who honored highly, as everyone knows,
the memory of his father, Henry IV. The father of M. de Tréville had
served him so faithfully in his wars against the league that in default
of money—a thing to which the Béarnais was accustomed all his life, and
who constantly paid his debts with that of which he never stood in need
of borrowing, that is to say, with ready wit—in default of money, we
repeat, he authorized him, after the reduction of Paris, to assume for
his arms a golden lion passant upon gules, with the motto _Fidelis et
fortis_. This was a great matter in the way of honor, but very little
in the way of wealth; so that when the illustrious companion of the
great Henry died, the only inheritance he was able to leave his son was
his sword and his motto. Thanks to this double gift and the spotless
name that accompanied it, M. de Tréville was admitted into the
household of the young prince where he made such good use of his sword,
and was so faithful to his motto, that Louis XIII., one of the good
blades of his kingdom, was accustomed to say that if he had a friend
who was about to fight, he would advise him to choose as a second,
himself first, and Tréville next—or even, perhaps, before himself.
Thus Louis XIII. had a real liking for Tréville—a royal liking, a
self-interested liking, it is true, but still a liking. At that unhappy
period it was an important consideration to be surrounded by such men
as Tréville. Many might take for their device the epithet _strong_,
which formed the second part of his motto, but very few gentlemen could
lay claim to the _faithful_, which constituted the first. Tréville was
one of these latter. His was one of those rare organizations, endowed
with an obedient intelligence like that of the dog; with a blind valor,
a quick eye, and a prompt hand; to whom sight appeared only to be given
to see if the king were dissatisfied with anyone, and the hand to
strike this displeasing personage, whether a Besme, a Maurevers, a
Poltiot de Méré, or a Vitry. In short, up to this period nothing had
been wanting to Tréville but opportunity; but he was ever on the watch
for it, and he faithfully promised himself that he would not fail to
seize it by its three hairs whenever it came within reach of his hand.
At last Louis XIII. made Tréville the captain of his Musketeers, who
were to Louis XIII. in devotedness, or rather in fanaticism, what his
Ordinaries had been to Henry III., and his Scotch Guard to Louis XI.
On his part, the cardinal was not behind the king in this respect. When
he saw the formidable and chosen body with which Louis XIII. had
surrounded himself, this second, or rather this first king of France,
became desirous that he, too, should have his guard. He had his
Musketeers therefore, as Louis XIII. had his, and these two powerful
rivals vied with each other in procuring, not only from all the
provinces of France, but even from all foreign states, the most
celebrated swordsmen. It was not uncommon for Richelieu and Louis XIII.
to dispute over their evening game of chess upon the merits of their
servants. Each boasted the bearing and the courage of his own people.
While exclaiming loudly against duels and brawls, they excited them
secretly to quarrel, deriving an immoderate satisfaction or genuine
regret from the success or defeat of their own combatants. We learn
this from the memoirs of a man who was concerned in some few of these
defeats and in many of these victories.
Tréville had grasped the weak side of his master; and it was to this
address that he owed the long and constant favor of a king who has not
left the reputation behind him of being very faithful in his
friendships. He paraded his Musketeers before the Cardinal Armand
Duplessis with an insolent air which made the gray moustache of his
Eminence curl with ire. Tréville understood admirably the war method of
that period, in which he who could not live at the expense of the enemy
must live at the expense of his compatriots. His soldiers formed a
legion of devil-may-care fellows, perfectly undisciplined toward all
but himself.
Loose, half-drunk, imposing, the king’s Musketeers, or rather M. de
Tréville’s, spread themselves about in the cabarets, in the public
walks, and the public sports, shouting, twisting their mustaches,
clanking their swords, and taking great pleasure in annoying the Guards
of the cardinal whenever they could fall in with them; then drawing in
the open streets, as if it were the best of all possible sports;
sometimes killed, but sure in that case to be both wept and avenged;
often killing others, but then certain of not rotting in prison, M. de
Tréville being there to claim them. Thus M. de Tréville was praised to
the highest note by these men, who adored him, and who, ruffians as
they were, trembled before him like scholars before their master,
obedient to his least word, and ready to sacrifice themselves to wash
out the smallest insult.
M. de Tréville employed this powerful weapon for the king, in the first
place, and the friends of the king—and then for himself and his own
friends. For the rest, in the memoirs of this period, which has left so
many memoirs, one does not find this worthy gentleman blamed even by
his enemies; and he had many such among men of the pen as well as among
men of the sword. In no instance, let us say, was this worthy gentleman
accused of deriving personal advantage from the cooperation of his
minions. Endowed with a rare genius for intrigue which rendered him the
equal of the ablest intriguers, he remained an honest man. Still
further, in spite of sword thrusts which weaken, and painful exercises
which fatigue, he had become one of the most gallant frequenters of
revels, one of the most insinuating lady’s men, one of the softest
whisperers of interesting nothings of his day; the _bonnes fortunes_ of
de Tréville were talked of as those of M. de Bassompierre had been
talked of twenty years before, and that was not saying a little. The
captain of the Musketeers was therefore admired, feared, and loved; and
this constitutes the zenith of human fortune.
Louis XIV. absorbed all the smaller stars of his court in his own vast