The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  “It is indeed a favor, young man, but perhaps not so far beyond your hopes as you believe or affect to believe. At all events, His Majesty’s Regulations are explicit on that point. I am sorry to have to tell you that no one is admitted to the musketeers unless he has fought in several campaigns or performed certain brilliant feats or served at least two years in some other regiment less favored than ours.”

  D’Artagnan bowed without replying. Disappointed as he was, the difficulties to be surmounted before becoming a musketeer made him all the more eager to achieve this. Monsieur de Tréville fixed a sharp, piercing glance upon his compatriot as though to read his inmost thoughts and continued:

  “However, on account of my old comrade, your father, I want to do something for you, as I said. Our youths from Béarn are usually none too well off nor have I any reason to suspect that things have changed much since I myself left the province. I dare say you haven’t brought any too much money up with you?”

  D’Artagnan drew himself up proudly; his expression indicated clearly that he accepted alms of no man.

  “Very well, young man, I understand,” Monsieur de Tréville observed. “I know those airs; I myself descended upon Paris with four crowns in my purse and I would have fought with anybody who suggested that I could not buy up the Louvre!”

  D’Artagnan drew himself up even more proudly as he realized that thanks to the sale of his nag, he was beginning his career with four crowns more than Monsieur de Tréville had possessed in similar circumstances.

  “You ought, I say, to husband your resources however great they may be, but you ought also to perfect yourself in exercises befitting a gentleman. I shall write a letter today to the Director of the Royal Military Academy and he will admit you tomorrow at no expense to yourself. Do not refuse this small favor; our best-born and wealthiest gentlemen sometimes solicit it in vain. You will learn horsemanship, swordsmanship of all sorts, and dancing. You will make desirable acquaintances there and you can call on me from time to time to tell me how you are getting along and whether I can be of further service to you.”

  D’Artagnan, though a stranger to the manners of the Court, could not help feeling a certain coldness in this reception.

  “Alas, Monsieur!” he mourned. “My father gave me a letter of introduction to present to you. Now I realize how much it would help me.”

  “I am indeed surprised that you should undertake so long a journey without that viaticum, that indispensable passport, which is the sole resource we poor Béarnais possess.”

  “I had one, Monsieur, and by God! the finest I could wish for. But it was treacherously stolen from me.”

  And he proceeded to relate the adventure of Meung, describing the unknown gentleman with the minutest detail and with a warmth and truthfulness that delighted Monsieur de Tréville.

  “This is all very curious,” Monsieur de Tréville declared after a moment’s reflection. “You mentioned my name aloud then?”

  “Yes, Monsieur, I confess I committed that imprudence. But why not? A name like yours must needs serve me as a shield on my journey. You will judge whether I often availed myself of its protection.”

  Flattery was very current in those days and Monsieur de Tréville loved incense as well as any king or cardinal. He could not restrain a smile of obvious satisfaction, but this smile soon disappeared. Returning to the adventure of Meung:

  “Tell me,” he asked, “did this gentleman have a slight scar on his cheek?”

  “Yes, the kind of scar he might have if a bullet had grazed him.…”

  “Wasn’t he a fine-looking man?”

  “Yes, splendid.”

  “Tall?”

  “Ay.”

  “Fair complexion? Brown hair?”

  “Yes, Monsieur, that’s right, that’s the man! How do you know him so well? If ever I find him again—and I will find him, I swear, even in hell—”

  “He was waiting for a lady?”

  “Yes, and he left after talking to her for a few moments.”

  “Do you happen to know what they talked about?”

  “He gave her a box, told her it contained her instructions, and admonished her not to open it until she reached London.”

  “Was this woman English?”

  “He called her Milady.”

  “It is he, it is he!” Tréville murmured. “I thought he was still at Brussels.”

  “Oh, Monsieur, if you know who this man is, pray tell me who he is and where he comes from. This would be the greatest favor you could possibly do me. If you will, then I shall release you from all your promises, even that of helping me eventually to join the musketeers. The only thing I ask of life is to avenge myself!”

  “Beware of trying any such thing, young man,” Tréville cautioned. “On the contrary, if you ever see him on one side of the street, make sure to cross to the other. Do not throw yourself against such a rock; it would smash you like glass.”

  “That will not prevent me, if ever I meet him, from—”

  Suddenly Tréville eyed D’Artagnan suspiciously. Treachery might well lurk behind the fierce hatred the young traveler professed for the man who had stolen his father’s letter—or so he said! Besides, this theft seemed an improbable thing at best. Might not His Eminence have sent this youth to set a trap for Tréville? Wasn’t this pretended D’Artagnan an emissary whom the Cardinal sought to introduce into Tréville’s household so that he might be close to him, win his confidence and then ruin him? The Cardinal had played this trick in a thousand other instances. Looking at D’Artagnan even more searchingly than before, Monsieur de Tréville was but moderately reassured by his expression, alive with astute intelligence and affected humility.

  “I know he’s a Gascon,” he mused. “But he may be as much of a Gascon for Monseigneur Cardinal as he is for me. I shall test him.”

  His eyes fixed upon D’Artagnan’s, he spoke slowly: “My boy, your father was my old friend and comrade. I believe this story of the lost letter to be perfectly true and I should like to dispel the impression of coldness you may have remarked in my welcome. Perhaps the best way to do so would be to discover to you, a novice as I once was myself, the secrets of our policy today.”

  He then went on to explain to D’Artagnan how the King and the Cardinal were the best of friends; their apparent bickering was only a stratagem intended to deceive fools. Monsieur de Tréville was unwilling that a compatriot, a dashing cavalier and a youth of high mettle, should be duped by such artifices and fall into the snare, as so many others had done before him to their ruin. He assured D’Artagnan of his devotion to both these all-powerful masters; he insisted that his most earnest endeavor was to serve both the King and the Cardinal. His Eminence, he added, was one of the most illustrious geniuses France had ever produced.

  “Now, young man, rule your conduct accordingly. If for family reasons or through your friends or through your own instincts, even, you entertain such enmity for the Cardinal as we are constantly discovering, then let us bid each other adieu. I will help you as much as I can but without attaching you to my person.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I hope my frankness will at least make you my friend,” Monsieur de Tréville said at last, “because you are the only young man to whom I have ever spoken like this.”

  (Tréville was thinking: “The Cardinal knows how bitterly I loathe him. If he has set this young fox upon me, then he cannot have failed to indicate the best means of winning my favor. This spy, therefore, has been primed to rail at Richelieu for my benefit. If my suspicions are well-founded, my hypocritical protestations of loyalty to Richelieu should move this crafty youth to loose a torrent of abuse against His Eminence.” But Monsieur de Tréville’s calculations proved to be wrong.)

  “I came to Paris with just the intentions you advise me to harbor, Monsieur,” he replied candidly. “My father warned me to follow nobody but His Majesty, Monseigneur Cardinal, and yourself—whom he considered the three leading personages
in the realm of France.”

  (Monsieur d’Artagnan the elder had indicated only Louis XIII and Richelieu, but his son thought the addition of Monsieur de Tréville would do no harm.)

  “I have the greatest reverence for the Cardinal and the most profound respect for his actions,” he continued. “So much the better for me, Monsieur, if as you say, you are speaking to me frankly, because, by so doing, you pay me the honor of sharing my opinion. So much the worse for me if you mistrust me, as well you may, because then I am damning myself in your eyes for speaking the truth. Still, I trust you will not esteem me any the less for my frankness since your esteem is the thing I hold dearest in life.”

  Monsieur de Tréville was overwhelmed with surprise. Such penetration and sincerity won his admiration but did not wholly dissipate his suspicions; the more this youth excelled others, the more dangerous he was if Tréville misjudged him. Nevertheless, he pressed D’Artagnan’s hand, saying:

  “You are an honest lad. But at present I can do for you no more than what I just offered. The Hôtel de Tréville will always be open to you. In time, you will have a chance to ask for me at all hours. Consequently you will be able to take advantage of all available opportunities and you will probably achieve what you desire.”

  “You mean, Monsieur, when I have proved myself worthy?” said D’Artagnan. And, with all the familiarity of Gascon to Gascon: “Well, you may rest assured, you will not have to wait long!”

  Whereupon he bowed, to take his leave, as if he considered the future so much putty in his hands to shape as he willed.

  “Wait, wait!” Monsieur de Tréville laid a hand on his arm. “I promised you a letter to the Director of the Royal Academy. Are you too proud to accept it, my lad?”

  “No, Monsieur, and I guarantee this letter will not fare like my father’s; I will guard it so carefully that I swear it will be delivered. If anyone attempts to take it from me, may God have mercy on his soul!”

  Smiling at this extravagance, Monsieur de Tréville left D’Artagnan in the embrasure of the window, where they had been chatting, and moved to his desk to write the promised letter. While he was doing this, D’Artagnan, with nothing to occupy him, drummed a tattoo on the window pane, and amused himself by watching the musketeers as they left the building, one by one, until turning the corner, they vanished.

  The letter finished, Monsieur de Tréville sealed it, rose and advanced toward D’Artagnan, who stretched out his hand to receive it. Suddenly, to Monsieur de Tréville’s amazement, his protégé turned crimson with fury.

  “God’s blood.…”

  “What’s the matter?”

  D’Artagnan leaped across the room, crying:

  “God’s blood, he’ll not slip through my fingers this time!”

  “Who?”

  “My thief!” D’Artagnan shouted as he rushed from the room. “Ah, coward! traitor! at last!”

  “Devil take that madman!” Monsieur de Tréville grumbled. “Unless, failing in his mission, he is making a highly strategic escape.”

  IV

  OF ATHOS AND HIS SHOULDER, OF PORTHOS AND HIS BALDRIC, AND OF ARAMIS AND HIS HANDKERCHIEF

  Mad with anger, D’Artagnan crossed the office in the three leaps and was darting toward the stairs, expecting to clear them four at a time, when, in his furious rush, he collided head foremost with a musketeer who was coming out of one of Monsieur de Tréville’s private rooms. As D’Artagnan butted the man’s shoulder violently, the other uttered a cry or rather a howl.

  “Excuse me,” said D’Artagnan, trying to start off again. “Excuse me but I am in a hurry.”

  He had scarcely gone down the first step when a hand of iron seized him by the belt.

  “Oh! you’re in a hurry, eh?” said the musketeer, blanching. “You’re in a hurry so you run right into me and you say ‘Excuse me’ and you expect me to take it? Not at all, my lad. You heard Monsieur de Tréville speak somewhat cavalierly to us today and you think we can take that sort of thing from anybody. Let me set you right, comrade, you are not Monsieur de Tréville.”

  D’Artagnan recognized Athos who, having had his wounds dressed by the doctor, was on his way home.

  “I assure you I did not do it on purpose,” D’Artagnan apologized. “As it was an accident, I said ‘Excuse me’. I should think that was sufficient apology. Once more, I say I am in a very great hurry—on my honor!—and I’ll not say it again. Let me go, please, let me go about my business.”

  “Monsieur, you are far from courteous,” Athos replied, loosing his hold of him. “It is obvious that you are newly come from some remote province.”

  D’Artagnan had already gone down several steps but at this remark he stopped short:

  “Morbleu, Monsieur,” he growled, “I may come from a distance but I warn you, you are not the man to give me lessons in deportment.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If I were not in such a hurry and if I were not chasing somebody—”

  “Monsieur-the-gentleman-in-a-great-hurry, you can find me again without running after me, if you see what I mean.”

  “And where, if you please?”

  “Near the Carmes-Deschaux, you know, the Carmelite convent.”

  “At what time?”

  “About noon.”

  “About noon. Very well. I shall be there.”

  “Try to be punctual because if you make me wait till a quarter past, I shall cut your ears off as you run.”

  “Good, I shall be there at ten to twelve.”

  And D’Artagnan set off as though borne by the Devil, confident that he would overtake the man of Meung whom he had seen sauntering down the street. But at the main gate, he saw Porthos talking to the soldier on guard. Between the two of them, there was just room for a man to pass; D’Artagnan, thinking he could whisk through, shot forward like an arrow between them. Unfortunately he had not reckoned with the wind. As he was about to pass, a gust blew out the portly musketeer’s long cloak and D’Artagnan landed right in the middle of it. Porthos doubtless had his own reasons for not wishing to abandon this essential part of his costume, for instead of releasing the flap he held in his hand, he pulled it toward him. D’Artagnan was thus rolled up inside the velvet by a rotatory movement attributable to the persistency of Porthos.

  Hearing the musketeer swear, he tried to emerge from under the cloak which was blinding him and sought to find his way from under its folds. Above all he must avoid marring the virgin freshness of the baldric Porthos set such store by. Opening his eyes timidly, he found his nose glued between the musketeer’s shoulders flat against the baldric.

  Alas, like most things in this world which have but appearance in their favor, the baldric was aglitter with gold in front, but behind it was of ordinary buff. Vainglorious as he was, if Porthos could not afford a baldric wholly of gold, he would have at least one-half of it. This explained the necessity of the cold he had complained of and the urgency of the cloak he sported.

  “Vertubleu, you must be crazy to crash into people this way,” Porthos grumbled as D’Artagnan kept wriggling behind him.

  “Excuse me,” said D’Artagnan, reappearing from under the giant’s shoulder, “but I am in a great hurry. I was running after somebody and—”

  “And you always go blind when you run, I suppose.”

  “No,” D’Artagnan answered, somewhat nettled. “In fact, thanks to my eyes I can see a good many things other people don’t.”

  He did not care whether Porthos understood the allusion or not. At all events, the musketeer gave free rein to his anger:

  “Monsieur, I warn you, you stand an excellent chance of being disemboweled if you try pushing a musketeer about.”

  “Disemboweled? That’s strong language, Monsieur.”

  “It befits a man accustomed to looking his enemies in the face!”

  “Ha, that’s no lie!” D’Artagnan laughed. “Certainly you wouldn’t show them your back.”

  And enchanted with his wit, he went off, s
till chuckling over the semi-golden baldric. Porthos, foaming with rage, was about to fall upon him.

  “Later, later!” D’Artagnan admonished. “When you haven’t your cloak on.”

  “At one o’clock, then, behind the Luxembourg.”

  “Very well, then, at one o’clock.”

  D’Artagnan turned the corner of the street, looking carefully ahead and up and down the cross street. Slowly though the stranger had walked, he must still have outdistanced D’Artagnan while the Gascon was being detained by Athos and Porthos or he must have entered some house nearby. D’Artagnan inquired of passers-by if they had seen a person answering his enemy’s description. He walked down as far as the ferry, came up again along the Rue de Seine and across the Croix-Rouse, but he found nothing, absolutely nothing. Yet this wild-goose chase helped him in a sense, for, fast as the beads of sweat ran down his forehead, his heart began to cool.

  He retraced all the events that had occurred; they were numerous and ill-omened. It was scarcely eleven o’clock in the morning and yet in two short hours he had made three capital blunders. In the first place, he had disgraced himself in the eyes of Monsieur de Tréville, who could not but consider his withdrawal somewhat cavalier; in the second and third, he had invited dangerous duels with two men, each capable of slaying three D’Artagnans—with two musketeers, in short, with two of those heroes he admired so passionately that they throned it in his mind and heart over all others.

  A sad plight! Certain of being killed by Athos, he was naturally unperturbed about Porthos. But as hope is the last thing a man will relinquish, D’Artagnan hoped against hope that he might survive both these duels, even though grievously wounded. Should this happen, he would profit by the following homily delivered by himself to himself.

  “What a lunatic I was and what a clod I am! Poor brave Athos was wounded in the shoulder and I was fated to butt against it! Why he did not kill me then and there, God knows! He had ample cause to, I must have caused him fearful pain. As for Porthos—dear old Porthos!—my run-in with him was the drollest thing that ever happened to me!”