The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  “We have a whole fortnight before us,” he told his friends, “and if I have found nothing—or rather if nothing has come to find me in the meantime—God will provide. I am too good a Catholic to blow my brains out. Instead I shall pick a juicy quarrel with four of His Eminence’s Guards or with eight Englishmen, fighting until one of them kills me, which, given the odds, cannot fail to happen. It will thus be reported that I died for the King: and I shall have done my duty without the expense of an outfit.”

  Porthos continued to stroll and saunter about, here and there, his hands behind his back, tossing his head and proclaiming:

  “I shall follow up an idea of mine!”

  Aramis, apprehensive and for once neglectful of his personal appearance, maintained an obdurate silence.

  From these disastrous details it may readily be seen what desolation reigned in the community.

  Like the horses of Hippolytus who shared their master’s fate when Neptune destroyed him, each lackey was as tragically situated as his master. Mousqueton collected a store of breadcrusts for future fare at the table of Porthos … Bazin, inveterately religious, forsook his master Aramis and haunted the churches of the city … Planchet, of no use to D’Artagnan, spent his time contemplating the flight of flies across the room … and Grimaud, whom even the general disaster could not move to break the silence Athos imposed upon him, heaved sigh upon sigh, deep and baleful enough to move stones.…

  Athos never stirred from his apartment. The three others would venture forth early in the morning and return late at night. They spent the livelong hours in wandering through the streets, their eyes glued to the pavement in hopes of finding some purse a passer-by might carelessly have dropped. Indeed they looked like so many bloodhounds following up a trail. When they met they all wore the same desolate look which, being interpreted, meant:

  “Haven’t you found anything?”

  At length Porthos, who had been the first to hit upon an idea, pursued it earnestly and was the first to act. One day D’Artagnan saw him strolling toward the Church of Saint Leu and followed him instinctively. Porthos stopped on the threshold of the holy place to twirl his mustache carefully and to smooth out his goatee, a gesture which invariably prefaced the most triumphant intentions. As D’Artagnan was careful to keep hidden, Porthos believed himself unobserved. Porthos went into the church and took his stand against a pillar; D’Artagnan, following him closely, leaned against the other side of it.

  The church happened to be very crowded because a popular preacher was delivering a sermon. Porthos took advantage of this to ogle the ladies; thanks to Mousqueton’s kind offices, his outward and visible form gave no hint of his inward and stomachic distress. True his hat looked somewhat worn, his plume was somewhat faded, his galloons were somewhat tarnished and his laces somewhat frayed. But in the dim light of the church such trifles were not noticeable: Porthos was still the same handsome Porthos.

  On the bench nearest the pillar Porthos adorned and D’Artagnan used for cover sat a lady, graced with a sort of ripe beauty; she was a whit yellowish, to be sure, and a jot dry, but erect and haughty withal under her black hood. Porthos kept casting furtive glances upon her, then his eyes roved, taking wing like butterflies at large over the nave.

  For her part the lady, blushing from time to time, kept darting mercurial glances toward the inconstant Porthos, whereupon Porthos immediately looked everywhere save in her direction. Obviously his attitude piqued the hooded lady; D’Artagnan noted that she bit her lips fiercely, scratched the tip of her nose, and fidgeted nervously in her seat.

  Porthos, aware of the lady’s every move, answered each sigh of her vexation by twirling his mustache, stroking his goatee and making signs at a lady seated close to the choir—a pulchritudinous lady and doubtless of high station, for she was attended by a young Negro who bore the cushion upon which she knelt, and by a maidservant who held the emblazoned bag which contained her prayer book.

  The lady in the black hood, who followed the glances of Porthos through all their meanderings, realized that they often rested quite fondly on the lady with the velvet cushion, the Negro and the maidservant. Porthos meanwhile was playing a shrewd game. It was with a slight almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyelids, with a finger placed upon his lips, and with trenchant little smiles that he was torturing the disdained beauty. Whereupon, while reciting her mea culpa, she beat her breast and cleared her throat so vigorously that everyone, including the lady with the red cushion, turned to stare at her. Porthos stood his ground, paying no need whatever; he understood well enough, but he turned a deaf ear to this desperate appeal.

  The lady with the red cushion—she was indeed very beautiful—made a deep impression on the lady with the black hood, who saw in her a rival very much to be feared; she made a deep impression on Porthos who found her much prettier than the lady in the black hood; and she made a deep impression on D’Artagnan as he recognized in her the lady of Meung, of Calais and of Dover, whom his persecutor, the man with the scar, had addressed as Milady.

  Without losing sight of the lady with the red cushion, D’Artagnan kept his eye on Porthos, deriving much amusement from the musketeer’s manoeuvres. Obviously he thought the lady in the black hood must be the attorney’s wife from the Rue aux Ours; the proximity of the Church of Saint-Leu to her residence corroborated D’Artagnan’s conjecture. Further he deduced that Porthos was attempting to take his revenge for his defeat at Chantilly when Madame Attorney had shown herself so recalcitrant with her cash.

  But amid all this D’Artagnan noticed that no lady responded to the gallantries Porthos was lavishing. These were but chimeras and delusions. And yet in true love and authentic jealousy, are not chimeras and delusions the great realities?

  The sermon over, Madame Attorney advanced toward the holy font; Porthos, preceding her, dipped not one finger in the holy water but his entire hand. The lady in the black hood smiled, believing that Porthos was making this gesture for her sake. But she was speedily and cruelly disillusioned. When she stood just three paces behind him he turned his head and stared earnestly at the lady with the red cushion who, having risen from her knees, was now drawing near, followed by her little Negro and her maidservant. Just as the beauty came up to Porthos, he withdrew his dripping hand from the basin, the fair worshipper laid her delicate hand lightly upon his great paw, smiled, made the sign of the cross, and left the church.

  This was all too much for the attorney’s wife; she was now convinced that there must be some intrigue between this lady and Porthos. Had Madame Attorney been a great lady she would have fainted, but being only a lawyer’s wife she was content to address the musketeer with a concentrated fury:

  “So, Monsieur Porthos,” she raged. “You offer no holy water to me!”

  At the sound of her voice, Porthos started like a man who has been rudely awakened from a hundred years of slumber.

  “M-m-ma-madame!” he cried, “is it really you? How is your husband, our dear Monsieur Coquenard? Still as stingy as ever? Where can my eyes have been not to have spied you during the two hours this sermon lasted?”

  “I kneeled but two paces away from you, Monsieur, but you failed to see me because you had eyes for none but the lovely lady to whom you just gave holy water.”

  Porthos feigned embarrassment.

  “Oh!” he mumbled. “You noticed—?”

  “Anyone but a blind man could notice—”

  “Ah yes,” Porthos volunteered nonchalantly, “the lady is a duchess of my acquaintance and I have considerable difficulty in meeting her because of her husband’s jealousy. But today she sent me word that she was coming to this sorry church, buried in this vile quarter, just for the sake of seeing me a moment.”

  “Monsieur Porthos, would you be so kind as to offer me your arm for five minutes? I would be happy to talk to you for a while.”

  “With the greatest of pleasure, Madame!” Porthos said affably, winking joyously to himself, much as a gambler does as he mocks
the dupe he is about to pluck. D’Artagnan, passing by in pursuit of Milady, beheld the triumphant gleam in the musketeer’s eye and hurried on.

  “Well, well, well!” he mused, reasoning after the strangely facile morality of that gallant period, “there goes one musketeer who will probably raise his campaign equipment in short order!”

  Yielding to the pressure of Madame Attorney’s arm as a skiff yields to the rudder, Porthos and his lady reached the cloister of Saint-Magloire, a little-frequented spot with a turnstile at each end. By day beggars sat there devouring their crusts or a few children played their simple games.

  “Oh, Monsieur Porthos!” the lawyer’s wife gasped. Then she looked carefully about her to make certain that only the usual people were in the cloisters: “Oh, Monsieur Porthos, you certainly seem to be a great conqueror!”

  “I, Madame?” Porthos swelled like a frog. “Why so?”

  “What of the signs you made just now in church? What of the holy water? That lady must be a princess at least, what with her little Negro and her maidservant!”

  “No, no, Madame, you exaggerate. She is merely a duchess.”

  “What about that footman waiting at the door and the carriage with that coachman in full livery?”

  Porthos had seen neither footman nor carriage but his lady, with all the curiosity of a jealous woman, had missed nothing. Porthos regretted that he had not immediately made the lady of the red cushion a princess.

  “Ah, you are the pet of the most beautiful ladies of fashion, Monsieur Porthos!” she sighed.

  “To be sure, with the physique Nature has conferred upon me, you may well imagine that I have a certain success in society.”

  “Dear God, how quickly men forget!” Madame Attorney cried, raising her eyes to Heaven.

  “No more quickly than women, I dare say,” Porthos countered. “Take my case, Madame: was I not your victim? There I lay, wounded, dying … the surgeon had given me up … there I suffered, I the scion of an illustrious family … I who had trusted in your friendship … almost dead of my wounds—and of hunger!… I in a mean inn at Chantilly … while you did not once deign to reply to the burning letters I addressed to you.…”

  “But Monsieur Porthos—” The lawyer’s wife wrung her hands helplessly as she felt herself judged by the behavior of the greatest ladies of the period and irrevocably condemned. “But Monsieur Porthos—”

  “For your sake I broke with the Baronne de—”

  “I know—”

  “For your sake I gave up the Comtesse de—”

  “Monsieur Porthos, do not crush me.”

  “The Duchess de—”

  “Monsieur Porthos, pray be generous!”

  “You are right, Madame. I will not finish.”

  “You see, it is my husband who refuses to hear of my lending—”

  “Madame Coquenard, kindly remember the first letter you wrote to me. For my part it remains graven upon my memory.”

  The attorney’s wife groaned.

  “Besides, the sum you wished to borrow was rather large—”

  “Madame Coquenard, I gave you the preference! I need only have written to the Duchesse de—but no, I must not mention her name, for I am utterly incapable of compromising a woman! But this I do know: I had but to write one line to her and she would have sent me fifteen hundred.”

  The lawyer’s wife began to weep softly.

  “Monsieur Porthos, I assure you that you have punished me severely enough. I swear that if ever you are in such straits again, you have but to turn to me in all confidence.”

  “Fie, Madame, fie!” Porthos said, as if disgusted. “Let us not talk of money, if you please, it is humiliating.”

  “Then you no longer love me!” Madame Attorney asked in a slow, tragic voice.

  Porthos maintained a majestic silence.

  “And that is your only answer! Alas! I understand.”

  “Think of how deeply you have offended me, Madame!” Porthos spread his hand over his heart. “That hurt rankles here!” he added thumping his chest.

  “I will make amends, my dear Porthos, honestly I will.”

  “Besides, what did I ask of you?” Porthos continued with a good-natured shrug of the shoulders. “A loan, nothing else. After all, I am not an unreasonable man. I know you are not rich, Madame Coquenard; I know your husband is forced to bleed his poor clients to squeeze a few paltry crowns from them. Oh, if you were a countess, a marchioness or a duchess, it would be something else again and you would be unpardonable.”

  Madame Attorney was plainly piqued.

  “Let me tell you, my dear Monsieur Porthos, that my safe—though it be the safe of an attorney’s lady—is probably better stocked than those of all your aristocratic minxes who are so long on affectation and so short on cash!”

  “Then you have doubly offended me, Madame,” Porthos answered, releasing her arm from his own, “for if you are wealthy, Madame Coquenard, there is no excuse for your refusal.”

  “When I implied I was wealthy,” the lawyer’s wife said cautiously, aware she had gone too far, “you must not take the word literally. I am not exactly wealthy, but I am comfortably well off.”

  “Come, Madame, let us say no more about it, I beg you. You have misunderstood me and all sympathy and fellow-feeling we entertained is forever dead.”

  “How ungrateful you are, Monsieur Porthos!”

  “Those words come ill from you, Madame Coquenard.”

  “Begone then to your beautiful duchess, I shall not detain you.”

  “She is a comely woman as I recall.”

  “Come, Monsieur Porthos, once and for all: tell me, do you still love me?”

  “Alas, Madame,” Porthos sighed affecting the deepest melancholy, “we are about to go to the front in a campaign which I feel will cost me my life—”

  “Oh, don’t even think of such things!” said the lawyer’s wife bursting into tears.

  “Something tells me that in this lottery of life, my number is up,” Porthos continued even more melancholy.

  “Be honest and confess that you have found a new love.”

  “No, Madame, I am giving you the plain, unvarnished truth. No new-found lady stirs me; on the contrary, deep in my heart something speaks to me of you. But within a fortnight, whether you know it or not, this fatal campaign opens. I shall be frightfully busy acquiring my equipment; then I must visit my family in far away Brittany to obtain the sum necessary for my departure.” Porthos, watching Madame Attorney’s face, saw it as the final battleground upon which the forces of love and avarice struggled. “And,” he concluded sumptuously, “since the duchess you just saw in church has estates near ours, we purpose to travel together. Journeys, as you know, pass more quickly and more merrily in company than alone.”

  “Have you no friends in Paris then, Monsieur Porthos?”

  “I thought I had, but apparently I was mistaken.”

  “Oh, but you have friends here, Monsieur Porthos, I vow you have.” She herself seemed considerably surprised at her vehemence. “Come to our house tomorrow. You will figure as the son of my aunt, therefore my cousin … you hail from Noyon in Picardy … you have several lawsuits to settle in Paris … and you seek an attorney to press them.… Can you remember all of that?”

  “Perfectly, Madame.”

  “Pray come at dinner time.”

  “Very well.”

  “Be sure, too, dear Monsieur Porthos, to stand upon your guard. Be wary. My husband is seventy-six years old but a shrewd man—”

  “Seventy-six, God help us, there’s a noble age, Madame.”

  “You mean an old age, Monsieur Porthos! And so you understand,” Madame Attorney cast a significant glance at Porthos, “fortunately my marriage contract makes me the inheritor of my husband’s fortune.”

  “His whole fortune?”

  “His whole fortune, Monsieur Porthos.”

  “My dear Madame Coquenard, I clearly perceive that you are an eminently provident woman.
” Porthos squeezed her hand.

  “So we are reconciled, dear Monsieur Porthos?” she simpered.

  “For life!” Porthos simpered in return.

  “Farewell, sweet traitor!”

  “Farewell, forgetful charmer.”

  “Tomorrow, angel!”

  “Tomorrow, love of my life.”

  XXX

  MILADY

  D’Artagnan followed Milady out of the church, saw her step into her carriage and heard her order the coachman to drive to Saint-Germain. He knew it was useless to try to keep up with a vehicle drawn by two powerful horses. He therefore made his way to the Rue Férou to call upon Athos. In the Rue de Seine he met Planchet, who had paused to look into the show window of a pastrycook’s and was lost in ecstasy as he surveyed a brioche of the most luscious and toothsome appearance.

  “Well, Planchet, a fine sight, eh?”

  “What does Monsieur wish me to do?”

  “Take your eyes off that cake and go to the stables of Monsieur de Tréville! Saddle a horse for myself and you—” D’Artagnan blessed the moment when the Captain of Musketeers had given him carte blanche—“and take them to the Rue Férou where I shall be waiting with Monsieur Athos.”

  “Very good, Monsieur.”

  D’Artagnan found Athos at home, draining a bottle of the Spanish wine he had brought back from the expedition into Picardy. Athos signaled to Grimaud for a glass which Grimaud, wordless as usual, produced silently. Then the Gascon told Athos of what he had seen in the Church of Saint-Leu and how Porthos stood an excellent chance of outfitting himself in the very near future.

  “For my part I am not worrying,” Athos observed coolly. “No woman will pay for my equipment.”

  “Come now, Athos, what woman would be indifferent to you, handsome, well-bred and a nobleman to your fingertips? What queen or princess could be safe from your solicitations if but you deigned to solicit?”

  “My poor D’Artagnan!” Athos shrugged his shoulders and motioned to Grimaud to fetch up another bottle of wine. “I swear you are the veriest babe in arms!”

  Suddenly Planchet poked his head meekly through the door to announce to his master that the horses were ready.