The three musketeers
departure from the capital, and an excellent dinner had made one of
them forget his thesis and the other his fatigue.
“Do you think, then, that any harm can have happened to him?” asked
Aramis. “Athos is so cool, so brave, and handles his sword so
skillfully.”
“No doubt. Nobody has a higher opinion of the courage and skill of
Athos than I have; but I like better to hear my sword clang against
lances than against staves. I fear lest Athos should have been beaten
down by serving men. Those fellows strike hard, and don’t leave off in
a hurry. This is why I wish to set out again as soon as possible.”
“I will try to accompany you,” said Aramis, “though I scarcely feel in
a condition to mount on horseback. Yesterday I undertook to employ that
cord which you see hanging against the wall, but pain prevented my
continuing the pious exercise.”
“That’s the first time I ever heard of anybody trying to cure gunshot
wounds with cat-o’-nine-tails; but you were ill, and illness renders
the head weak, therefore you may be excused.”
“When do you mean to set out?”
“Tomorrow at daybreak. Sleep as soundly as you can tonight, and
tomorrow, if you can, we will take our departure together.”
“Till tomorrow, then,” said Aramis; “for iron-nerved as you are, you
must need repose.”
The next morning, when D’Artagnan entered Aramis’s chamber, he found
him at the window.
“What are you looking at?” asked D’Artagnan.
“My faith! I am admiring three magnificent horses which the stable boys
are leading about. It would be a pleasure worthy of a prince to travel
upon such horses.”
“Well, my dear Aramis, you may enjoy that pleasure, for one of those
three horses is yours.”
“Ah, bah! Which?”
“Whichever of the three you like, I have no preference.”
“And the rich caparison, is that mine, too?”
“Without doubt.”
“You laugh, D’Artagnan.”
“No, I have left off laughing, now that you speak French.”
“What, those rich holsters, that velvet housing, that saddle studded
with silver—are they all for me?”
“For you and nobody else, as the horse which paws the ground is mine,
and the other horse, which is caracoling, belongs to Athos.”
“_Peste!_ They are three superb animals!”
“I am glad they please you.”
“Why, it must have been the king who made you such a present.”
“Certainly it was not the cardinal; but don’t trouble yourself whence
they come, think only that one of the three is your property.”
“I choose that which the red-headed boy is leading.”
“It is yours!”
“Good heaven! That is enough to drive away all my pains; I could mount
him with thirty balls in my body. On my soul, handsome stirrups!
_Holà_, Bazin, come here this minute.”
Bazin appeared on the threshold, dull and spiritless.
“That last order is useless,” interrupted D’Artagnan; “there are loaded
pistols in your holsters.”
Bazin sighed.
“Come, Monsieur Bazin, make yourself easy,” said D’Artagnan; “people of
all conditions gain the kingdom of heaven.”
“Monsieur was already such a good theologian,” said Bazin, almost
weeping; “he might have become a bishop, and perhaps a cardinal.”
“Well, but my poor Bazin, reflect a little. Of what use is it to be a
churchman, pray? You do not avoid going to war by that means; you see,
the cardinal is about to make the next campaign, helm on head and
partisan in hand. And Monsieur de Nogaret de la Valette, what do you
say of him? He is a cardinal likewise. Ask his lackey how often he has
had to prepare lint of him.”
“Alas!” sighed Bazin. “I know it, monsieur; everything is turned
topsy-turvy in the world nowadays.”
While this dialogue was going on, the two young men and the poor lackey
descended.
“Hold my stirrup, Bazin,” cried Aramis; and Aramis sprang into the
saddle with his usual grace and agility, but after a few vaults and
curvets of the noble animal his rider felt his pains come on so
insupportably that he turned pale and became unsteady in his seat.
D’Artagnan, who, foreseeing such an event, had kept his eye on him,
sprang toward him, caught him in his arms, and assisted him to his
chamber.
“That’s all right, my dear Aramis, take care of yourself,” said he; “I
will go alone in search of Athos.”
“You are a man of brass,” replied Aramis.
“No, I have good luck, that is all. But how do you mean to pass your
time till I come back? No more theses, no more glosses upon the fingers
or upon benedictions, hey?”
Aramis smiled. “I will make verses,” said he.
“Yes, I dare say; verses perfumed with the odor of the billet from the
attendant of Madame de Chevreuse. Teach Bazin prosody; that will
console him. As to the horse, ride him a little every day, and that
will accustom you to his maneuvers.”
“Oh, make yourself easy on that head,” replied Aramis. “You will find
me ready to follow you.”
They took leave of each other, and in ten minutes, after having
commended his friend to the cares of the hostess and Bazin, D’Artagnan
was trotting along in the direction of Amiens.
How was he going to find Athos? Should he find him at all? The position
in which he had left him was critical. He probably had succumbed. This
idea, while darkening his brow, drew several sighs from him, and caused
him to formulate to himself a few vows of vengeance. Of all his
friends, Athos was the eldest, and the least resembling him in
appearance, in his tastes and sympathies.
Yet he entertained a marked preference for this gentleman. The noble
and distinguished air of Athos, those flashes of greatness which from
time to time broke out from the shade in which he voluntarily kept
himself, that unalterable equality of temper which made him the most
pleasant companion in the world, that forced and cynical gaiety, that
bravery which might have been termed blind if it had not been the
result of the rarest coolness—such qualities attracted more than the
esteem, more than the friendship of D’Artagnan; they attracted his
admiration.
Indeed, when placed beside M. de Tréville, the elegant and noble
courtier, Athos in his most cheerful days might advantageously sustain
a comparison. He was of middle height; but his person was so admirably
shaped and so well proportioned that more than once in his struggles
with Porthos he had overcome the giant whose physical strength was
proverbial among the Musketeers. His head, with piercing eyes, a
straight nose, a chin cut like that of Brutus, had altogether an
indefinable character of grandeur and grace. His hands, of which he
took little care, were the despair of Aramis, who cultivated his with
almond paste and perfumed oil. The sound of his voice was at once
penetrating and melodious; and then, that which was inconceivable in
Athos, who was always retiring, was that delicate knowledge of the
world and of the usages of the most brilliant society—those manners of
a high degree which appeared, as if unconsciously to himself, in his
least actions.
If a repast were on foot, Athos presided over it better than any other,
placing every guest exactly in the rank which his ancestors had earned
for him or that he had made for himself. If a question in heraldry were
started, Athos knew all the noble families of the kingdom, their
genealogy, their alliances, their coats of arms, and the origin of
them. Etiquette had no minutiæ unknown to him. He knew what were the
rights of the great land owners. He was profoundly versed in hunting
and falconry, and had one day when conversing on this great art
astonished even Louis XIII. himself, who took a pride in being
considered a past master therein.
Like all the great nobles of that period, Athos rode and fenced to
perfection. But still further, his education had been so little
neglected, even with respect to scholastic studies, so rare at this
time among gentlemen, that he smiled at the scraps of Latin which
Aramis sported and which Porthos pretended to understand. Two or three
times, even, to the great astonishment of his friends, he had, when
Aramis allowed some rudimental error to escape him, replaced a verb in
its right tense and a noun in its case. Besides, his probity was
irreproachable, in an age in which soldiers compromised so easily with
their religion and their consciences, lovers with the rigorous delicacy
of our era, and the poor with God’s Seventh Commandment. This Athos,
then, was a very extraordinary man.
And yet this nature so distinguished, this creature so beautiful, this
essence so fine, was seen to turn insensibly toward material life, as
old men turn toward physical and moral imbecility. Athos, in his hours
of gloom—and these hours were frequent—was extinguished as to the whole
of the luminous portion of him, and his brilliant side disappeared as
into profound darkness.
Then the demigod vanished; he remained scarcely a man. His head hanging
down, his eye dull, his speech slow and painful, Athos would look for
hours together at his bottle, his glass, or at Grimaud, who, accustomed
to obey him by signs, read in the faint glance of his master his least
desire, and satisfied it immediately. If the four friends were
assembled at one of these moments, a word, thrown forth occasionally
with a violent effort, was the share Athos furnished to the
conversation. In exchange for his silence Athos drank enough for four,
and without appearing to be otherwise affected by wine than by a more
marked constriction of the brow and by a deeper sadness.
D’Artagnan, whose inquiring disposition we are acquainted with, had
not—whatever interest he had in satisfying his curiosity on this
subject—been able to assign any cause for these fits, or for the
periods of their recurrence. Athos never received any letters; Athos
never had concerns which all his friends did not know.
It could not be said that it was wine which produced this sadness; for
in truth he only drank to combat this sadness, which wine however, as
we have said, rendered still darker. This excess of bilious humor could
not be attributed to play; for unlike Porthos, who accompanied the
variations of chance with songs or oaths, Athos when he won remained as
unmoved as when he lost. He had been known, in the circle of the
Musketeers, to win in one night three thousand pistoles; to lose them
even to the gold-embroidered belt for gala days, win all this again
with the addition of a hundred louis, without his beautiful eyebrow
being heightened or lowered half a line, without his hands losing their
pearly hue, without his conversation, which was cheerful that evening,
ceasing to be calm and agreeable.
Neither was it, as with our neighbors, the English, an atmospheric
influence which darkened his countenance; for the sadness generally
became more intense toward the fine season of the year. June and July
were the terrible months with Athos.
For the present he had no anxiety. He shrugged his shoulders when
people spoke of the future. His secret, then, was in the past, as had
often been vaguely said to D’Artagnan.
This mysterious shade, spread over his whole person, rendered still
more interesting the man whose eyes or mouth, even in the most complete
intoxication, had never revealed anything, however skillfully questions
had been put to him.
“Well,” thought D’Artagnan, “poor Athos is perhaps at this moment dead,
and dead by my fault—for it was I who dragged him into this affair, of
which he did not know the origin, of which he is ignorant of the
result, and from which he can derive no advantage.”
“Without reckoning, monsieur,” added Planchet to his master’s audibly
expressed reflections, “that we perhaps owe our lives to him. Do you
remember how he cried, ‘On, D’Artagnan, on, I am taken’? And when he
had discharged his two pistols, what a terrible noise he made with his
sword! One might have said that twenty men, or rather twenty mad
devils, were fighting.”