The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  The stranger eyed him again, smiled fleetingly as before, and, withdrawing from the window, walked slowly out of the inn. He took his stand two paces from D’Artagnan and stood there, rooted to the spot, staring at the horse. His tranquil manner and bantering air increased the hilarity of his auditors, who were still gathered around the window, watching the scene.

  Seeing him approach, D’Artagnan drew his sword a full foot out of its scabbard.

  “Upon my word, this horse is certainly a buttercup!” observed the stranger, pursuing his investigations. His remarks were addressed to his audience at the window; apparently, he was quite unconscious of D’Artagnan’s exasperation although the youth stood between him and his audience. “This color is quite common in botany but until now it has been very rare among horses.”

  “Laugh all you will at my horse,” said D’Artagnan angrily. He recalled how his hero, Monsieur de Tréville, had ridden a bob-tailed nag from the Midi to Fortune. “I dare you to smile at his master.”

  “As you may judge from my cast of features, Monsieur, I do not laugh frequently,” the stranger replied. “But I intend to preserve the privilege of laughing whenever I please.”

  “As for me,” cried D’Artagnan, “I will brook no man’s laughter when it irks me.”

  “Well, well, Monsieur I dare say you are right,” said the stranger edging away. But D’Artagnan was not the type of youth to suffer anyone to escape him, least of all a man who had ridiculed him so impudently. Drawing his sword at long last and for cause, he ran after the stranger, crying:

  “Turn about, turn about, Master Jester!” he challenged. “Must I strike you in the back?”

  “You strike me?” The stranger surveyed the young man with astonishment and scorn. “Come, lad, you must be crazy!”

  Then, in subdued tones, as though talking to himself:

  “What a bore!” he sighed. “What a find this buck would be for His Majesty. The Royal Musketeers are combing the country to recruit just such hotheads.”

  He had barely finished speaking when D’Artagnan lunged at him so impetuously that this jest might have been his last. The stranger drew his sword, saluted D’Artagnan and took up his guard. But suddenly at a sign his two onlookers, backed up by the innkeeper, fell upon D’Artagnan with sticks, shovels and tongs. While this sudden onslaught held D’Artagnan, the stranger sheathed his sword as readily as he had drawn it.

  “A plague upon these Gascons!” he muttered. “Put him back on his orange nag and away with him!”

  “Not before I kill you!”

  “Another Gascon boast! Really, these Gascons are incorrigible! Keep up the dance since that is what he wants! When he is tired, we will cry quits.”

  But the stranger did not suspect of what stubborn stuff his late adversary was made; D’Artagnan was never one to knuckle under. So the fight went on for a few seconds more, until D’Artagnan, exhausted, dropped his broken sword. Simultaneously, a cudgel struck him squarely on the forehead, bringing him to the ground, bloody and almost unconscious.

  It was at this moment that the citizenry of Meung came flocking from all sides to the scene of action. The host, fearing a scandal, carried the wounded man into the kitchen where some trifling attentions were administered.

  As for the stranger, he had resumed his stand at the window whence he stared somewhat impatiently upon the mob. Obviously put out by all this pother, he seemed to resent the fact that the crowd would not disperse.

  “Well, how is this madman doing?” he inquired as the host poked his head through the door.

  “Your Excellency is safe and sound, I trust?”

  “Safe as a house and sound as a bell, my good host! But I am asking you what has happened to our young firebrand?”

  “He is better now. He fainted quite away and before he fainted, he gathered all his strength to challenge and defy you!”

  “Why, this fellow must be the devil in person!”

  “Oh no, Your Excellency, he is no devil.” The host shrugged his shoulders disparagingly. “We searched him and rummaged through his kit. All we found was one clean shirt and twelve crowns in his purse, which didn’t stop him from cursing you roundly. He said that if this had happened in Paris instead of in Meung, you would have paid dearly for it.”

  “A prince of the blood, no less, incognito and full of threats.”

  “I have told Your Excellency all this so that you might be on your guard.”

  “Did he name any names!”

  “He slapped his pocket and said—”

  “What?”

  “He said: ‘We shall see what Monsieur de Tréville thinks of this insult.’ ”

  “Monsieur de Tréville?” The stranger started. “He struck his pocket and mentioned Monsieur de Tréville? Come, come, my dear host, while your young man was unconscious, I’m sure you did not fail to look into this pocket. What did you find?”

  “A letter addressed to Monsieur de Tréville, Captain of the Musketeers.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Exactly as I have the honor to tell Your Excellency.”

  The innkeeper, who was not gifted with great perspicacity, failed to observe the other’s expression as he received this news. The stranger moved away from the window, and frowning:

  “The devil!” he muttered. “Can Tréville have set this Gascon on my trail? He is very young. Still, a sword thrust is a sword thrust, whatever the fencer’s age. Besides, a youth arouses less suspicion than an older man.”

  Then he fell into a deep silence. After several minutes:

  “Come, come, my good host, do please rid me of this crazy lad. I can’t kill him and yet—” his expression was cold and threatening, “yet he is a great nuisance! Where is the fellow?”

  “Upstairs in my wife’s room. They are dressing his wounds.”

  “Did you take his rags and kit up? Did he remove his doublet?”

  “All his stuff is downstairs in the kitchen. But if this young fool annoys you—”

  “He annoys me very much. He has caused an uproar in your hostelry, a thing which respectable people cannot abide. Go upstairs, man, make out my bill, and summon my lackey.”

  “What! Is Monsieur leaving us already?”

  “Of course. I told you to have my horse saddled. Have you done so?”

  “Yes, indeed, Your Excellency. Your horse is ready—saddled for you to ride off.”

  “Good! Now do as I told you.”

  “Lord save us!” the host said. Examining the stranger: “Can he be afraid of this stripling?” he wondered.

  An imperious look from the stranger sent him about his business and, bowing humbly, he withdrew.

  “Milady must on no account be seen,” the stranger mused. “She will be passing through here soon, in fact she’s late already. I daresay I had better ride out to meet her. If only I knew what was in this letter to Tréville.” Mumbling to himself, he made off for the kitchen.

  Meanwhile the host, certain that the youth’s presence had driven the stranger from his hostelry, ran upstairs to his wife’s room. There he found D’Artagnan who had at last come to. Suggesting that the police would handle the youth pretty roughly for having picked a quarrel with a great lord—for he had no doubt that the stranger could be nothing less—the host persuaded D’Artagnan, weak though he was, to get up and to be off.

  D’Artagnan rose. He was still only half-conscious, he had lost his doublet, and his head was swathed in a linen cloth. Propelled by the innkeeper, he worked his way downstairs. But as he reached the kitchen, the first thing he saw was the stranger, standing at the step of a heavy carriage with two large Norman horses in harness.

  He was chatting urbanely with a lady who leaned out of the window of the coach to listen. She must have been about twenty years of age. D’Artagnan was no fool; at a glance, he perceived that this woman was young and beautiful, her beauty the more striking because it differed so radically from that of the Midi, where he had always lived. She was pale and fair, with long
curls falling in profusion over her shoulders; she had large blue, languishing eyes, rosy lips and hands of alabaster. She was talking vivaciously to the stranger.

  “So His Eminence orders me—?”

  “To return to England at once. Should the Duke leave London you are to report directly to His Eminence.”

  “Any other instructions?” the fair traveler asked.

  “They are in this box here. You are not to open it until you have crossed the Channel.”

  “Very well! And you? What will you do?”

  “I go back to Paris.”

  “Without chastising this insolent youth?” the lady objected.

  The stranger was about to reply. But before he could open his mouth, D’Artagnan, who had heard all, bounded across the doorsill.

  “This insolent youth does his own chastising,” he cried, “and this time, I trust, chastisement will not escape him!”

  “Will not escape him?” the stranger echoed, frowning.

  “With a woman present, I dare hope you will not run away again.”

  The stranger grasped the hilt of his sword. Milady, seeing this, cautioned:

  “Remember that the least delay may ruin everything.”

  “You are right, Milady. Let us go our several ways!”

  Bowing to the lady, he sprang into his saddle. The coachman whipped up his horses and galloped off in one direction; the stranger was ready to gallop off in the other when suddenly the host appeared. Seeing his great lord about to disappear without settling his score, mine host’s affection yielded to the most profound contempt.

  “What about my bill?” he shouted.

  “Pay him, dolt!” said the stranger to his lackey, tossing a purse to him as they cantered off. The lackey checked his mount, flung three or four silver coins at the host’s feet, and sped after his master.

  “Oh, you coward! you wretch! you bogus gentleman!” cried D’Artagnan, springing forward in turn after the lackey. But his wounds had left him too weak to bear the strain of such exertion. He had not taken ten steps before he felt his ears ringing. A giddiness swept over him, a cloud of blood rolled over his eyes, and he fell in the middle of the street, crying:

  “Coward! Coward! Coward!”

  “A coward he is!” mine host agreed as he went to D’Artagnan’s aid, flattering him as the hero of the fable flattered the snail he had scorned the evening before.

  “Ay, he’s a coward, a base coward!” D’Artagnan murmured. “But the lady! How beautiful she was!”

  “Who?”

  “Milady!” D’Artagnan faltered, as he fainted once again.

  “Well!” thought the host. “I’ve lost two clients but I still have this one. I’m certain to keep him for a few days. That means eleven crowns to the good!”

  (Eleven crowns represented the exact sum that remained in D’Artagnan’s purse.)

  The innkeeper had reckoned D’Artagnan’s convalescence at one crown per day for eleven days, but mine host had reckoned without his guest. D’Artagnan rose next day at five o’clock, went down to the kitchen unaided and requested several things. First, he asked for certain ingredients, the nature of which have not been transmitted to us. Then he asked for wine, oil and rosemary, and, his mother’s recipe in hand, he concocted a balsam with which he anointed his numerous wounds. He himself laid compress after compress upon them, steadfastly refusing the assistance of any physician. Doubtless, thanks to the efficacy of the gipsy salve—and perhaps to the absence of any medico—D’Artagnan felt much restored that evening and practically cured on the morrow.

  D’Artagnan prepared to settle his score. His only extras were for the rosemary, oil and wine. The master had fasted while the yellow nag according to the innkeeper had eaten three times as much as a nag of such proportions could possibly assimilate. In his pocket D’Artagnan found only his worn velvet purse and the eleven livres which it contained. As for the letter to Monsieur de Tréville, it had vanished.

  He began to search for it with utmost patience … to turn his pockets and gussets inside out over and over … to rummage time after time in his bag … to ransack his purse, opening it, closing it, and opening it again and again.… Then, convinced at last that the letter was not to be found, he flew for the third time into such a fit of fury that he might easily have required a fresh supply of wine and aromatic oils. Mine host saw this young firebrand on the rampage and heard him vow to tear down the establishment if his letter were not forthcoming. Immediately he seized a spit, his wife a broom, and his servants the very cudgels they had used two days before.

  “Give me my letter!” D’Artagnan kept shouting. “Give me my letter or by the Holy Blood, I’ll spit you through like ortolans!”

  Unfortunately there was one circumstance which prevented him from carrying out his threat. His sword had been broken in two during his first conflict, a fact which we have chronicled but which he had completely forgotten. Accordingly when D’Artagnan sought to draw his blade, he found himself armed with no more than a stump eight or ten inches long, which the innkeeper carefully replaced in his scabbard. As for the rest of the blade, the host had pawkily set it aside in order to make of it a larding-pin.

  Great as his disappointment was, it would probably not have deterred our young hothead if the innkeeper had not realized that the objection was perfectly justified.

  “Yes, that’s true!” said mine host, lowering his spit. “Where is that letter?”

  “Ay, where is that letter?” D’Artagnan repeated. “Let me tell you that letter was addressed to Monsieur de Tréville. It must be found and if it isn’t, Monsieur de Tréville will know the reason why!”

  This threat completed the intimidation of the innkeeper. After the King and the Cardinal, Monsieur de Tréville was probably the most important figure in the realm, a constant subject of discussion among soldiers and even citizens. To be sure there was also the famous Father Joseph, but his name was never breathed above a whisper, so great was the terror inspired by the Gray Eminence, to give the Cardinal’s familiar his popular nickname.

  Throwing down his spit and ordering his wife and servants to cast away their respective weapons, the innkeeper himself inaugurated the search for the missing document.

  “Was there anything valuable in your letter?” he asked after a few moments of futile endeavor.

  “God’s blood I should say so!” cried the Gascon. Had he not been counting on this letter to speed his advancement at court? “It contained my whole fortune!”

  “Drafts on the Spanish Treasury?” mine host asked with a worried air.

  “No,” D’Artagnan answered. “Drafts on the Privy Treasury of His Majesty of France.” Having expected to enter the King’s service on the strength of this recommendation, he believed himself justified in hazarding this somewhat misleading reply without incurring the stigma of lying.

  “God help us all!” wailed the host.

  “It is of no moment!” D’Artagnan said with true Gascon phlegm. “It is of no moment! Money means nothing to me!” He paused. “But that letter meant everything! I would rather have lost one thousand pistoles than that letter!”

  He might as readily have risked twenty thousand but a certain youthful modesty restrained him.

  Just as the innkeeper, finding no trace of the letter, was about to commit himself to the Devil, a ray of light pierced his skull.

  “That letter is not lost!” he said.

  “What!”

  “That letter is not lost! It was stolen from you!”

  “Stolen? Who stole it?”

  “The gentleman who was here yesterday. He came down here to the kitchen where you left your doublet. He was alone here for quite a while. I’ll wager he stole your letter.”

  “You think so?” D’Artagnan asked. He was somewhat skeptical for he knew the letter better than anybody else. It was purely personal; how then could it have become valuable enough to steal? No servant, no traveler could have gained anything by possessing it.

  �
��You say you suspect that impertinent gentleman?”

  “Sure as I stand here! I told him you, Monsieur, were the protégé of Monsieur de Tréville; I said you even had a letter for this illustrious gentleman. Well, the stranger looked very much disturbed. He asked me where the letter was and went straightway down to the kitchen. He knew your doublet was there.”

  “He’s the thief, then!” D’Artagnan scowled. “I shall complain to Monsieur de Tréville, and Monsieur de Tréville will complain to the King.”

  Majestically, he drew two crowns from his purse, handed them to the innkeeper, and made for the gate, mine host close on his heels, hat in hand. The yellow nag awaited him; he leaped into the saddle and rode off. His steed bore him without further misadventure to the Porte Saint-Antoine, the northern gate of Paris, where its owner sold it for three crowns—an excellent price, considering that D’Artagnan had pressed it hard during the last stage of his journey. The dealer to whom D’Artagnan sold it for the aforesaid nine livres did not fail to make it clear that he was disbursing this exorbitant sum solely because of the originality of the beast’s color.

  So D’Artagnan entered Paris on foot, carrying his kit under his arm, roaming the city until he found a room suited to his scanty means. It was a sort of garret situated in the Rue des Fossoyeurs—Gravediggers’ Row—near the Luxembourg Palace.

  Having paid a deposit, D’Artagnan took possession of his lodging and spent the rest of the day sewing. His specific task was to stitch on to his doublet and hose some ornamental braiding which his mother had ripped off an almost new doublet of her husband’s and given to her son secretly. Next he repaired to the Quai de la Ferraille to have a new blade put to his sword. Then he walked back toward the Louvre, to ask the first musketeer he met where Monsieur de Tréville’s mansion was. It proved to be in the Rue du Vieux Colombier, quite close to where D’Artagnan had taken a room. The circumstance appeared to him to augur well for the success of his journey.

  After this, gratified with the way in which he had behaved at Meung, clear of all 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 valiant.