The three musketeers
On his side Buckingham, in pretending to maintain the honor of England,
was moved by interests exactly like those of the cardinal. Buckingham
also was pursuing a private vengeance. Buckingham could not under any
pretense be admitted into France as an ambassador; he wished to enter
it as a conqueror.
It resulted from this that the real stake in this game, which two most
powerful kingdoms played for the good pleasure of two amorous men, was
simply a kind look from Anne of Austria.
The first advantage had been gained by Buckingham. Arriving
unexpectedly in sight of the Isle of Ré with ninety vessels and nearly
twenty thousand men, he had surprised the Comte de Toiras, who
commanded for the king in the Isle, and he had, after a bloody
conflict, effected his landing.
Allow us to observe in passing that in this fight perished the Baron de
Chantal; that the Baron de Chantal left a little orphan girl eighteen
months old, and that this little girl was afterward Mme. de Sévigné.
The Comte de Toiras retired into the citadel St. Martin with his
garrison, and threw a hundred men into a little fort called the fort of
La Prée.
This event had hastened the resolutions of the cardinal; and till the
king and he could take the command of the siege of La Rochelle, which
was determined, he had sent Monsieur to direct the first operations,
and had ordered all the troops he could dispose of to march toward the
theater of war. It was of this detachment, sent as a vanguard, that our
friend D’Artagnan formed a part.
The king, as we have said, was to follow as soon as his Bed of Justice
had been held; but on rising from his Bed of Justice on the
twenty-eighth of June, he felt himself attacked by fever. He was,
notwithstanding, anxious to set out; but his illness becoming more
serious, he was forced to stop at Villeroy.
Now, whenever the king halted, the Musketeers halted. It followed that
D’Artagnan, who was as yet purely and simply in the Guards, found
himself, for the time at least, separated from his good friends—Athos,
Porthos, and Aramis. This separation, which was no more than an
unpleasant circumstance, would have certainly become a cause of serious
uneasiness if he had been able to guess by what unknown dangers he was
surrounded.
He, however, arrived without accident in the camp established before La
Rochelle, on the tenth of the month of September of the year 1627.
Everything was in the same state. The Duke of Buckingham and his
English, masters of the Isle of Ré, continued to besiege, but without
success, the citadel St. Martin and the fort of La Prée; and
hostilities with La Rochelle had commenced, two or three days before,
about a fort which the Duc d’Angoulême had caused to be constructed
near the city.
The Guards, under the command of M. Dessessart, took up their quarters
at the Minimes; but, as we know, D’Artagnan, possessed with ambition to
enter the Musketeers, had formed but few friendships among his
comrades, and he felt himself isolated and given up to his own
reflections.
His reflections were not very cheerful. From the time of his arrival in
Paris, he had been mixed up with public affairs; but his own private
affairs had made no great progress, either in love or fortune. As to
love, the only woman he could have loved was Mme. Bonacieux; and Mme.
Bonacieux had disappeared, without his being able to discover what had
become of her. As to fortune, he had made—he, humble as he was—an enemy
of the cardinal; that is to say, of a man before whom trembled the
greatest men of the kingdom, beginning with the king.
That man had the power to crush him, and yet he had not done so. For a
mind so perspicuous as that of D’Artagnan, this indulgence was a light
by which he caught a glimpse of a better future.
Then he had made himself another enemy, less to be feared, he thought;
but nevertheless, he instinctively felt, not to be despised. This enemy
was Milady.
In exchange for all this, he had acquired the protection and good will
of the queen; but the favor of the queen was at the present time an
additional cause of persecution, and her protection, as it was known,
protected badly—as witness Chalais and Mme. Bonacieux.
What he had clearly gained in all this was the diamond, worth five or
six thousand livres, which he wore on his finger; and even this
diamond—supposing that D’Artagnan, in his projects of ambition, wished
to keep it, to make it someday a pledge for the gratitude of the
queen—had not in the meanwhile, since he could not part with it, more
value than the gravel he trod under his feet.
We say the gravel he trod under his feet, for D’Artagnan made these
reflections while walking solitarily along a pretty little road which
led from the camp to the village of Angoutin. Now, these reflections
had led him further than he intended, and the day was beginning to
decline when, by the last ray of the setting sun, he thought he saw the
barrel of a musket glitter from behind a hedge.
D’Artagnan had a quick eye and a prompt understanding. He comprehended
that the musket had not come there of itself, and that he who bore it
had not concealed himself behind a hedge with any friendly intentions.
He determined, therefore, to direct his course as clear from it as he
could when, on the opposite side of the road, from behind a rock, he
perceived the extremity of another musket.
This was evidently an ambuscade.
The young man cast a glance at the first musket and saw, with a certain
degree of inquietude, that it was leveled in his direction; but as soon
as he perceived that the orifice of the barrel was motionless, he threw
himself upon the ground. At the same instant the gun was fired, and he
heard the whistling of a ball pass over his head.
No time was to be lost. D’Artagnan sprang up with a bound, and at the
same instant the ball from the other musket tore up the gravel on the
very spot on the road where he had thrown himself with his face to the
ground.
D’Artagnan was not one of those foolhardy men who seek a ridiculous
death in order that it may be said of them that they did not retreat a
single step. Besides, courage was out of the question here; D’Artagnan
had fallen into an ambush.
“If there is a third shot,” said he to himself, “I am a lost man.”
He immediately, therefore, took to his heels and ran toward the camp,
with the swiftness of the young men of his country, so renowned for
their agility; but whatever might be his speed, the first who fired,
having had time to reload, fired a second shot, and this time so well
aimed that it struck his hat, and carried it ten paces from him.
As he, however, had no other hat, he picked up this as he ran, and
arrived at his quarters very pale and quite out of breath. He sat down
without saying a word to anybody, and began to reflect.
This event might have three causes:
The first and the most natural was that it might be an ambuscade of the
Rochellais, who might not be sorry to kill one of his Majesty’s Guards,
because it would be an enemy the less, and this enemy might have a
well-furnished purse in his pocket.
D’Artagnan took his hat, examined the hole made by the ball, and shook
his head. The ball was not a musket ball—it was an arquebus ball. The
accuracy of the aim had first given him the idea that a special weapon
had been employed. This could not, then, be a military ambuscade, as
the ball was not of the regular caliber.
This might be a kind remembrance of Monsieur the Cardinal. It may be
observed that at the very moment when, thanks to the ray of the sun, he
perceived the gun barrel, he was thinking with astonishment on the
forbearance of his Eminence with respect to him.
But D’Artagnan again shook his head. For people toward whom he had but
to put forth his hand, his Eminence had rarely recourse to such means.
It might be a vengeance of Milady; that was most probable.
He tried in vain to remember the faces or dress of the assassins; he
had escaped so rapidly that he had not had leisure to notice anything.
“Ah, my poor friends!” murmured D’Artagnan; “where are you? And that
you should fail me!”
D’Artagnan passed a very bad night. Three or four times he started up,
imagining that a man was approaching his bed for the purpose of
stabbing him. Nevertheless, day dawned without darkness having brought
any accident.
But D’Artagnan well suspected that that which was deferred was not
relinquished.
D’Artagnan remained all day in his quarters, assigning as a reason to
himself that the weather was bad.
At nine o’clock the next morning, the drums beat to arms. The Duc
d’Orléans visited the posts. The guards were under arms, and D’Artagnan
took his place in the midst of his comrades.
Monsieur passed along the front of the line; then all the superior
officers approached him to pay their compliments, M. Dessessart,
captain of the Guards, as well as the others.
At the expiration of a minute or two, it appeared to D’Artagnan that M.
Dessessart made him a sign to approach. He waited for a fresh gesture
on the part of his superior, for fear he might be mistaken; but this
gesture being repeated, he left the ranks, and advanced to receive
orders.
“Monsieur is about to ask for some men of good will for a dangerous
mission, but one which will do honor to those who shall accomplish it;
and I made you a sign in order that you might hold yourself in
readiness.”
“Thanks, my captain!” replied D’Artagnan, who wished for nothing better
than an opportunity to distinguish himself under the eye of the
lieutenant general.
In fact the Rochellais had made a _sortie_ during the night, and had
retaken a bastion of which the royal army had gained possession two
days before. The matter was to ascertain, by reconnoitering, how the
enemy guarded this bastion.
At the end of a few minutes Monsieur raised his voice, and said, “I
want for this mission three or four volunteers, led by a man who can be
depended upon.”
“As to the man to be depended upon, I have him under my hand,
monsieur,” said M. Dessessart, pointing to D’Artagnan; “and as to the
four or five volunteers, Monsieur has but to make his intentions known,
and the men will not be wanting.”
“Four men of good will who will risk being killed with me!” said
D’Artagnan, raising his sword.
Two of his comrades of the Guards immediately sprang forward, and two
other soldiers having joined them, the number was deemed sufficient.
D’Artagnan declined all others, being unwilling to take the first
chance from those who had the priority.
It was not known whether, after the taking of the bastion, the
Rochellais had evacuated it or left a garrison in it; the object then
was to examine the place near enough to verify the reports.
D’Artagnan set out with his four companions, and followed the trench;
the two Guards marched abreast with him, and the two soldiers followed
behind.
They arrived thus, screened by the lining of the trench, till they came
within a hundred paces of the bastion. There, on turning round,
D’Artagnan perceived that the two soldiers had disappeared.
He thought that, beginning to be afraid, they had stayed behind, and he
continued to advance.
At the turning of the counterscarp they found themselves within about
sixty paces of the bastion. They saw no one, and the bastion seemed
abandoned.
The three composing our forlorn hope were deliberating whether they
should proceed any further, when all at once a circle of smoke
enveloped the giant of stone, and a dozen balls came whistling around
D’Artagnan and his companions.
They knew all they wished to know; the bastion was guarded. A longer
stay in this dangerous spot would have been useless imprudence.
D’Artagnan and his two companions turned their backs, and commenced a