The three musketeers
“The devil! Why, people jest with death.”
“And people are wrong, D’Artagnan; for death is the door which leads to
perdition or to salvation.”
“Granted; but if you please, let us not theologize, Aramis. You must
have had enough for today. As for me, I have almost forgotten the
little Latin I have ever known. Then I confess to you that I have eaten
nothing since ten o’clock this morning, and I am devilish hungry.”
“We will dine directly, my friend; only you must please to remember
that this is Friday. Now, on such a day I can neither eat flesh nor see
it eaten. If you can be satisfied with my dinner—it consists of cooked
tetragones and fruits.”
“What do you mean by tetragones?” asked D’Artagnan, uneasily.
“I mean spinach,” replied Aramis; “but on your account I will add some
eggs, and that is a serious infraction of the rule—for eggs are meat,
since they engender chickens.”
“This feast is not very succulent; but never mind, I will put up with
it for the sake of remaining with you.”
“I am grateful to you for the sacrifice,” said Aramis; “but if your
body be not greatly benefited by it, be assured your soul will.”
“And so, Aramis, you are decidedly going into the Church? What will our
two friends say? What will Monsieur de Tréville say? They will treat
you as a deserter, I warn you.”
“I do not enter the Church; I re-enter it. I deserted the Church for
the world, for you know that I forced myself when I became a
Musketeer.”
“I? I know nothing about it.”
“You don’t know I quit the seminary?”
“Not at all.”
“This is my story, then. Besides, the Scriptures say, ‘Confess
yourselves to one another,’ and I confess to you, D’Artagnan.”
“And I give you absolution beforehand. You see I am a good sort of a
man.”
“Do not jest about holy things, my friend.”
“Go on, then, I listen.”
“I had been at the seminary from nine years old; in three days I should
have been twenty. I was about to become an abbé, and all was arranged.
One evening I went, according to custom, to a house which I frequented
with much pleasure: when one is young, what can be expected?—one is
weak. An officer who saw me, with a jealous eye, reading the _Lives of
the Saints_ to the mistress of the house, entered suddenly and without
being announced. That evening I had translated an episode of Judith,
and had just communicated my verses to the lady, who gave me all sorts
of compliments, and leaning on my shoulder, was reading them a second
time with me. Her pose, which I must admit was rather free, wounded
this officer. He said nothing; but when I went out he followed, and
quickly came up with me. ‘Monsieur the Abbé,’ said he, ‘do you like
blows with a cane?’ ‘I cannot say, monsieur,’ answered I; ‘no one has
ever dared to give me any.’ ‘Well, listen to me, then, Monsieur the
Abbé! If you venture again into the house in which I have met you this
evening, I will dare it myself.’ I really think I must have been
frightened. I became very pale; I felt my legs fail me; I sought for a
reply, but could find none—I was silent. The officer waited for his
reply, and seeing it so long coming, he burst into a laugh, turned upon
his heel, and re-entered the house. I returned to the seminary.
“I am a gentleman born, and my blood is warm, as you may have remarked,
my dear D’Artagnan. The insult was terrible, and although unknown to
the rest of the world, I felt it live and fester at the bottom of my
heart. I informed my superiors that I did not feel myself sufficiently
prepared for ordination, and at my request the ceremony was postponed
for a year. I sought out the best fencing master in Paris, I made an
agreement with him to take a lesson every day, and every day for a year
I took that lesson. Then, on the anniversary of the day on which I had
been insulted, I hung my cassock on a peg, assumed the costume of a
cavalier, and went to a ball given by a lady friend of mine and to
which I knew my man was invited. It was in the Rue des
France-Bourgeois, close to La Force. As I expected, my officer was
there. I went up to him as he was singing a love ditty and looking
tenderly at a lady, and interrupted him exactly in the middle of the
second couplet. ‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘does it still displease you that I
should frequent a certain house of La Rue Payenne? And would you still
cane me if I took it into my head to disobey you? The officer looked at
me with astonishment, and then said, ‘What is your business with me,
monsieur? I do not know you.’ ‘I am,’ said I, ‘the little abbé who
reads _Lives of the Saints_, and translates Judith into verse.’ ‘Ah,
ah! I recollect now,’ said the officer, in a jeering tone; ‘well, what
do you want with me?’ ‘I want you to spare time to take a walk with
me.’ ‘Tomorrow morning, if you like, with the greatest pleasure.’ ‘No,
not tomorrow morning, if you please, but immediately.’ ‘If you
absolutely insist.’ ‘I do insist upon it.’ ‘Come, then. Ladies,’ said
the officer, ‘do not disturb yourselves; allow me time just to kill
this gentleman, and I will return and finish the last couplet.’
“We went out. I took him to the Rue Payenne, to exactly the same spot
where, a year before, at the very same hour, he had paid me the
compliment I have related to you. It was a superb moonlight night. We
immediately drew, and at the first pass I laid him stark dead.”
“The devil!” cried D’Artagnan.
“Now,” continued Aramis, “as the ladies did not see the singer come
back, and as he was found in the Rue Payenne with a great sword wound
through his body, it was supposed that I had accommodated him thus; and
the matter created some scandal which obliged me to renounce the
cassock for a time. Athos, whose acquaintance I made about that period,
and Porthos, who had in addition to my lessons taught me some effective
tricks of fence, prevailed upon me to solicit the uniform of a
Musketeer. The king entertained great regard for my father, who had
fallen at the siege of Arras, and the uniform was granted. You may
understand that the moment has come for me to re-enter the bosom of the
Church.”
“And why today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow? What has happened to
you today, to raise all these melancholy ideas?”
“This wound, my dear D’Artagnan, has been a warning to me from heaven.”
“This wound? Bah, it is now nearly healed, and I am sure it is not that
which gives you the most pain.”
“What, then?” said Aramis, blushing.
“You have one at heart, Aramis, one deeper and more painful—a wound
made by a woman.”
The eye of Aramis kindled in spite of himself.
“Ah,” said he, dissembling his emotion under a feigned carelessness,
“do not talk of such things, and suffer love pains? _Vanitas
vanitatum!_ According to your idea, then, my brain is turned. And for
whom—for some _grisette_, some chambermaid with whom I have trifled in
some garrison? Fie!”
“Pardon, my dear Aramis, but I thought you carried your eyes higher.”
“Higher? And who am I, to nourish such ambition? A poor Musketeer, a
beggar, an unknown—who hates slavery, and finds himself ill-placed in
the world.”
“Aramis, Aramis!” cried D’Artagnan, looking at his friend with an air
of doubt.
“Dust I am, and to dust I return. Life is full of humiliations and
sorrows,” continued he, becoming still more melancholy; “all the ties
which attach him to life break in the hand of man, particularly the
golden ties. Oh, my dear D’Artagnan,” resumed Aramis, giving to his
voice a slight tone of bitterness, “trust me! Conceal your wounds when
you have any; silence is the last joy of the unhappy. Beware of giving
anyone the clue to your griefs; the curious suck our tears as flies
suck the blood of a wounded hart.”
“Alas, my dear Aramis,” said D’Artagnan, in his turn heaving a profound
sigh, “that is my story you are relating!”
“How?”
“Yes; a woman whom I love, whom I adore, has just been torn from me by
force. I do not know where she is or whither they have conducted her.
She is perhaps a prisoner; she is perhaps dead!”
“Yes, but you have at least this consolation, that you can say to
yourself she has not quit you voluntarily, that if you learn no news of
her, it is because all communication with you is interdicted; while I—”
“Well?”
“Nothing,” replied Aramis, “nothing.”
“So you renounce the world, then, forever; that is a settled thing—a
resolution registered!”
“Forever! You are my friend today; tomorrow you will be no more to me
than a shadow, or rather, even, you will no longer exist. As for the
world, it is a sepulcher and nothing else.”
“The devil! All this is very sad which you tell me.”
“What will you? My vocation commands me; it carries me away.”
D’Artagnan smiled, but made no answer.
Aramis continued, “And yet, while I do belong to the earth, I wish to
speak of you—of our friends.”
“And on my part,” said D’Artagnan, “I wished to speak of you, but I
find you so completely detached from everything! To love you cry, ‘Fie!
Friends are shadows! The world is a sepulcher!’”
“Alas, you will find it so yourself,” said Aramis, with a sigh.
“Well, then, let us say no more about it,” said D’Artagnan; “and let us
burn this letter, which, no doubt, announces to you some fresh
infidelity of your _grisette_ or your chambermaid.”
“What letter?” cried Aramis, eagerly.
“A letter which was sent to your abode in your absence, and which was
given to me for you.”
“But from whom is that letter?”
“Oh, from some heartbroken waiting woman, some desponding _grisette;_
from Madame de Chevreuse’s chambermaid, perhaps, who was obliged to
return to Tours with her mistress, and who, in order to appear smart
and attractive, stole some perfumed paper, and sealed her letter with a
duchess’s coronet.”
“What do you say?”
“Hold! I must have lost it,” said the young man maliciously, pretending
to search for it. “But fortunately the world is a sepulcher; the men,
and consequently the women, are but shadows, and love is a sentiment to
which you cry, ‘Fie! Fie!’”
“D’Artagnan, D’Artagnan,” cried Aramis, “you are killing me!”
“Well, here it is at last!” said D’Artagnan, as he drew the letter from
his pocket.
Aramis made a bound, seized the letter, read it, or rather devoured it,
his countenance radiant.
“This same waiting maid seems to have an agreeable style,” said the
messenger, carelessly.
“Thanks, D’Artagnan, thanks!” cried Aramis, almost in a state of
delirium. “She was forced to return to Tours; she is not faithless; she
still loves me! Come, my friend, come, let me embrace you. Happiness
almost stifles me!”
The two friends began to dance around the venerable St. Chrysostom,
kicking about famously the sheets of the thesis, which had fallen on
the floor.
At that moment Bazin entered with the spinach and the omelet.
“Be off, you wretch!” cried Aramis, throwing his skullcap in his face.
“Return whence you came; take back those horrible vegetables, and that
poor kickshaw! Order a larded hare, a fat capon, mutton leg dressed
with garlic, and four bottles of old Burgundy.”
Bazin, who looked at his master, without comprehending the cause of
this change, in a melancholy manner, allowed the omelet to slip into
the spinach, and the spinach onto the floor.
“Now this is the moment to consecrate your existence to the King of
kings,” said D’Artagnan, “if you persist in offering him a civility.
_Non inutile desiderium oblatione_.”
“Go to the devil with your Latin. Let us drink, my dear D’Artagnan,
_morbleu!_ Let us drink while the wine is fresh! Let us drink heartily,
and while we do so, tell me a little of what is going on in the world
yonder.”
Chapter XXVII.
THE WIFE OF ATHOS
We have now to search for Athos,” said D’Artagnan to the vivacious
Aramis, when he had informed him of all that had passed since their