The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  As for Aramis, we believe we have presented his character clearly enough; besides, we shall be able to follow it and those of his companions in their development. His lackey was named Bazin and he came from the province of Berry. Because his master hoped to take Holy Orders, the servant was always clad in black, as becomes the domestic of a churchman. He was a man of about thirty-five or forty, mild, peaceable and chubby. In his spare time, he would read pious words; when required, he could whip up a dinner for the two of them that boasted few dishes but excellently prepared. In conclusion, he was dumb, blind, deaf and of unimpeachable loyalty.

  Now that we are at least superficially familiar with the masters and lackeys, let us summarily observe the quarters they occupied.

  Athos lived in the Rue Férou, within two steps of the Luxembourg. His apartment consisted of two small rooms, agreeably furnished, in a lodging house maintained by a woman, still young and really handsome, who cast warm, tender glances at him in vain. Here and there the walls of his humble abode shone with vestiges of past splendors. There was, for instance, a richly embossed sword which obviously belonged to the age of François I; its hilt, studded with precious stones, was alone worth two hundred pistoles. Yet in his moments of direst need, Athos had never sought to pawn or sell it. This sword had long been an object of immense envy to Porthos who would have given ten years of his life to possess it.

  One day, having an appointment with a duchess, he tried to borrow it. Athos, without saying a word, emptied his pockets, gathered all his jewels, purses, aglets and gold chains, and offered the lot to Porthos. As for the sword, he told him, it was sealed to the wall and would not come down until its master moved out of these lodgings.

  In addition to this sword, there was a portrait of a nobleman of the time of Henry III, dressed with the greatest elegance and wearing the blue ribbon of the Order of the Holy Ghost. Certain features common to the subject of the portrait and Athos indicated that this great lord, a Knight of the Order of the King, was his ancestor.

  Besides these, a casket of magnificent goldwork, bearing the same crest as sword and portrait and forming a middle ornament to the mantelpiece, displayed a massive elegance utterly out of keeping with the rest of the furniture. Athos always carried the key to this casket on his person. But one day he chanced to open it in the presence of Porthos who was convinced that it contained nothing but letters and papers—love-letters, doubtless, and family papers.…

  Porthos lived in an apartment of vast dimensions and very sumptuous appearance in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier. Whenever he chanced to stroll by with a friend, he would point to his windows, at one of which Mousqueton was certain to be standing, dressed in full livery, and, raising head and hand, exclaim sententiously:

  “That is where I live!”

  Yet as he was never to be found at home and never invited anybody in, the true riches of this palatial residence remained a mystery.…

  As for Aramis, his modest abode consisted of a boudoir, a dining room and a bedroom, all on the ground floor, overlooking a tiny garden, green, fresh, shady and safe from the eyes of prying neighbors.

  D’Artagnan, intellectually curious like most enterprising people, did his best to try to discover the key to the pseudonyms under which Athos, Porthos and Aramis cloaked their identities. He was particularly interested in Athos, whose high nobility could be detected in his merest gesture. But Monsieur de Tréville alone possessed this secret. Vainly D’Artagnan sought to pump Porthos for information about Athos and to draw out Aramis on the subject of Porthos. All he could find out about Athos was the following.

  Porthos knew no more about his taciturn comrade than was self-apparent. Rumor had it that Athos had suffered desperate crosses in love and that a tragic betrayal had poisoned his existence. What this treachery was and who were the principals in this drama, nobody knew.

  The life of Porthos, except for his real name, was an open book; his vanity and indiscretion made him as transparent as crystal. One factor alone—the excellent opinion Porthos entertained of himself—might conceivably have led an investigator astray.

  Aramis, while appearing anything but secretive was a very repository of arcana; he replied meagrely to the questions asked him about others and he eluded those concerning himself. One day D’Artagnan, questioning Aramis at length about Porthos, learned the current rumor about the latter’s success with a princess. His curiosity whetted, he sought to find out something of his interlocutor’s amours.

  “And you, my friend, you who are constantly speaking about the baronesses, countesses and princesses of others?”

  “I beg your pardon, I speak of them because Porthos himself did. As you have noticed, he is not averse to parading his good fortune. Believe me, my dear D’Artagnan, if I had them from any other source or if they had been given me in confidence, I can think of no confessor more discreet than I.”

  “I am sure of that, my dear Aramis. Yet it seems to me that you are quite familiar with armorial bearings. I seem to remember a certain embroidered handkerchief to which I owe the honor of your acquaintance.”

  This time Aramis, far from being angry, assumed his most modest air and replied in a friendly tone:

  “Don’t forget, my dear friend, that I intend to become a churchman; I therefore eschew all mundane and fashionable pleasures. The handkerchief you saw was not mine; it had been mislaid at my house by a friend. I had perforce to pick it up in order not to compromise him and the lady he loves. As for myself, I have no mistress and do not desire one. In this, I follow the judicious example of Athos, who is as celibate as I.”

  “Devil take it, you are not an abbé, you are a musketeer!”

  “A musketeer provisionally—ad interim, as the Cardinal says—a musketeer in spite of himself. At heart I am a churchman, believe me. Athos and Porthos dragged me into this rôle to occupy my mind, because, at the moment I was being ordained, I had a little difficulty with … Oh well, never mind! This must be boring you and I am wasting your valuable time.”

  “Not at all, I am much interested and I have nothing to do for the moment.”

  “That may be. But I have my breviary to read, then I must compose some verses which Madame d’Aiguillon begged of me, then I must go to the Rue Saint-Honoré to buy some rouge for Madame de Chevreuse. So you see, my dear friend, that if you are not in a hurry, I most certainly am.”

  With which he held out his hand most cordially and took his leave of his companion.

  Since despite repeated efforts, this was all D’Artagnan could learn about his new friends, he determined to believe for the present all that was said of their past and to look to the future for more extensive and authoritative revelations. Meanwhile, the life of the four young men was pleasant enough. Athos gambled and as a rule, unluckily; yet he never borrowed a sou from his companions though his own purse was ever at their service, and when he played on credit, he invariably awakened his creditor by six o’clock next morning to pay his debts.

  Porthos was erratic. When he won, he was insolent and splendiferous; when he lost, he disappeared completely for several days to reappear subsequently with pallid face and drawn features but money in his purse.

  As for Aramis, he never placed a wager; he was the unconventional musketeer and the most unconvivial comrade imaginable. Sometimes at dinner when, amid the flush of wine and geniality of conversation, everybody expected to stay on for two or three hours, Aramis would glance at his watch, rise, and, with a gracious smile, take leave of the company. He was off, he said, to consult some casuist with whom he had an appointment, or he must go home to write a treatise and therefore begged his friends not to disturb him. At which Athos would smile in that charming, melancholy way that illumined his noble countenance, and Porthos, draining his glass, vowed that Aramis would never be anything but a village priest.

  Planchet, D’Artagnan’s lackey, endured his master’s prosperity with noble zeal, and, his daily wage of thirty sous in his pocket, returned to his lodgings blithe as a
chaffinch and a model of affability. But when the winds of adversity began to sweep across the dwelling in the Rue des Fossoyeurs—in other words when the forty pistoles of Louis XIII were more or less gone—he launched into a series of complaints which Athos considered nauseous, Porthos unbecoming, and Aramis ridiculous. Athos advised him to dismiss the fellow; Porthos agreed but insisted that Planchet be roundly thrashed before being dismissed; Aramis contended that a good master should heed only the compliments paid him.

  “Easy enough to say,” D’Artagnan objected. “You, Athos, live with Grimaud, you forbid him to talk, your life is a complete silence, and so you never have words with him … you, Porthos, live like a magnifico and therefore are a god to your valet Mousqueton … and you, Aramis, forever intent upon your theological studies, inspire your valet Bazin, a mild religious sort of man, with the most profound respect.… But what about me? I have no settled means and no resources, I am neither a musketeer nor even a guardsman. How on earth can I inspire Planchet with affection, terror or respect?”

  His three friends acknowledged that the matter was serious. It was, they added, a family affair. Valets were like wives, they must be placed at outset upon the footing they were subsequently to remain. They advised D’Artagnan to think it all over with great care.

  D’Artagnan did exactly that. First, he gave Planchet a cautionary but healthy drubbing; then, Planchet drubbed, he forbade him ever to leave his service, and, for good measure, he told him:

  “The future cannot fail to prosper me, I am but waiting for the better times that must inevitably come. If you stay with me, your fortune is made. I am much too good a master to allow you to forfeit it by granting you the dismissal you request.”

  D’Artagnan’s firmness won the approval of his three friends, and, equally important, that of Planchet, who said no more about quitting his service. And so their comradely, happy-go-lucky life went on. D’Artagnan, fresh from his province in a world that was bafflingly novel, fell in easily with their habits.

  In winter they would rise at eight o’clock, in summer at six, and report immediately at Monsieur de Tréville’s to receive orders and to see how the land lay. Though not a musketeer, D’Artagnan performed this duty with touching punctuality; he mounted guard whenever one or another of his friends was on duty. People at the Hôtel de Tréville knew him and considered him a good comrade. Monsieur de Tréville, who had liked him from the first and who bore him a real affection, never ceased to commend him to the King.

  The three musketeers thought the world of him. They would all meet, three or four times daily, whether for dueling, business or pleasure. Each was the other’s shadow and from the Luxembourg to the Place Saint-Sulpice or from the Rue du Vieux-Colombier to the Luxembourg they were soon known as The Inseparables.

  Meanwhile Monsieur de Tréville was working on D’Artagnan’s behalf as keenly as he had promised. One fine morning the King ordered Monsieur le Chevalier des Essarts to admit D’Artagnan as a cadet in his company of guards. As he donned the guardsman’s uniform, D’Artagnan sighed, for he would have given ten years of his life to exchange it for that of a musketeer. But Monsieur de Tréville assured him he could do so only after his trial period of two years in another regiment, unless, in the meantime, he found an opportunity to render His Majesty some signal service or to distinguish himself by some brilliant action.

  D’Artagnan a guardsman, what could Athos, Porthos and Aramis do but reciprocally mount guard with him when he was on duty? Thus Monsieur le Chevalier des Essart’s company, by admitting one D’Artagnan, found itself four men the stronger.

  VIII

  CONCERNING A COURT INTRIGUE

  Like all good things in this world, the forty pistoles of Louis XIII, having had a beginning, came to their appointed end, which placed the four comrades in an awkward situation. At first, Athos supported the group for a while out of his own pocket … next Porthos succeeded him, and, thanks to one of his customary disappearances, kept them going a fortnight … next Aramis came to the rescue with good grace and a few pistoles he had obtained, so he said, by selling some theological books … next as they had done so often, they appealed to Monsieur de Tréville who advanced them some money on their pay, but these advances did not go very far with three musketeers who were heavily in arrears and a guardsman who as yet had had no pay at all.…

  Finally, realizing they were about to fall into dire want, they managed by a last desperate effort to raise eight or ten pistoles with which Porthos was despatched to the gaming-table. Unfortunately he was not in luck; he lost every sou plus twenty-five pistoles for which he pledged his word. Then their want became actual distress as the four hungry friends, followed by their four hungry lackeys, haunted the quays and guardrooms of the city to prove that Aramis was right in saying:

  “It is wise to sow meals right and left in prosperity in order to reap a few in time of need.”

  Athos was invited four times and each time brought his friends and their lackeys along; Porthos was invited six times which provided them all with six more meals; Aramis was invited eight times (as we have seen he was a very quiet man but much sought after) and eight times his friends shared his good fortune. D’Artagnan, who as yet knew no one in the capital, unearthed a priest from his own province who supplied a light breakfast with chocolate, and a cornet of the guards who furnished a dinner at his home. The Gascon took his troop to the priest’s, where they devoured a stock of food that would have lasted the cleric two months, and to the home of the cornet, who did wonders. But as Planchet remarked:

  “People do not eat once for all time even when they eat a great deal.”

  D’Artagnan felt humiliated at having procured only one meal and a half for his companions—breakfast at the priest’s could only be counted as a half-meal—in return for the banquets Athos, Porthos and Aramis had procured him. He fancied himself a burden to the group, forgetting in his wholly youthful good faith that he had entertained them for a whole month. His plight gave him considerable food—for thought! He came to the conclusion that this coalition of four young, brave, enterprising and active men ought to have some other object than swaggering about the city, taking fencing lessons and playing practical jokes that were more or less witty.

  In fact, four men devoted to one another whether their purses or lives were involved … four men always supporting one another, never yielding, and executing singly or together the resolutions they had made in common … four arms threatening the four cardinal points or concentrated upon a single point … in brief, four such men as they, must inevitably, by open or underground means, by minework or in a trench, by cunning or by force, open up a way toward their goal, however fiercely defended or distant it might seem.… The only thing that surprised D’Artagnan was that his friends had not thought of this.

  He, for his part, was thinking seriously of it, racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied. And the longer he meditated, the surer he became that, as with the lever Archimedes sought, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan would succeed in moving the world. Suddenly there was a light knock at the door; D’Artagnan awakened Planchet and ordered him to open it.

  (The phrase “D’Artagnan awakened Planchet” must not lead the reader to believe that it was night or that day had not yet broken. No, it was afternoon; it had just struck four. Two hours before, Planchet had asked his master for some dinner, to which D’Artagnan replied by quoting the proverb “Qui dort, dîne; he who sleeps, dines.” And Planchet dined by sleeping.)

  A stranger entered, a man of unassuming appearance, obviously a simple bourgeois. Planchet would have relished, by way of dessert, to overhear the conversation, but the man told D’Artagnan that what he had to say was both important and confidential, and solicited a private interview. D’Artagnan therefore dismissed his valet and requested his visitor to be seated. During the short silence that ensued, the two men looked at each other appraisingly. Then D’Artagnan bowed, to signify that he w
as ready to listen. The stranger began:

  “I have heard Monsieur spoken of as a very courageous young man. This well-deserved reputation emboldens me to confide a secret to him.”

  “Speak, Monsieur, speak,” D’Artagnan replied, instinctively sensing that the matter might prove profitable.

  The stranger paused again, then went on:

  “I have a wife who is seamstress to Her Majesty the Queen. My wife is not lacking in either virtue or beauty. Though she brought but a small dowry, I was induced to marry her about three years ago because Monsieur de La Porte, the Queen’s cloakbearer, is her godfather and befriends her.”

  “Well, Monsieur?”

  “Well, Monsieur,” the stranger repeated, “well, Monsieur, my wife was abducted yesterday morning as she was leaving her workroom.”

  “By whom was your wife abducted?”

  “I know nothing for certain, Monsieur, but I have my suspicions.”

  “And whom do you suspect?”

  “A man who has been pursuing her for a long time.”

  “The devil you say—”

  “Let me add this, Monsieur: I am convinced that there is more politics than love in this business.”

  “More politics than love?” D’Artagnan murmured with a thoughtful air. “And what do you suspect?”

  “I hardly know whether I should tell you what I suspect—”

  “I beg you to observe, Monsieur, that I am asking absolutely nothing of you; it was you who came to me to tell me that you had a secret to confide in me. Do just as you please; it is not too late to withdraw.”

  “No, Monsieur, you seem to be an honest young man and I have confidence in you. Frankly, I do not believe my wife has been arrested because of any love affair of her own but rather because of the conduct of a lady far mightier than herself.”

  “Ah ha! I see!” D’Artagnan commented knowingly and, pretending to be familiar with Court affairs, he added: