The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  After soup the maid brought a boiled fowl, at which splendor the eyes of the diners bulged dangerously from their sockets.

  “It is easy to see you love your family dearly, Madame,” the attorney observed with a smile almost tragic. “You are certainly treating your cousin to a rare feast.”

  The wretched fowl was thin and covered with the type of coarse bristly skin which, sharp and thin though the bones are, remains impenetrable. Obviously someone had searched for the fowl long and assiduously ere finding it lurking on the perch to which it had retired to die of old age.

  “This is sad indeed,” Porthos mused. “Heavens knows, I respect my elders, but I don’t think much of them served up to me boiled or roasted.”

  Looking about him to see whether anyone shared his opinion, he was astounded to observe nothing but gleaming eyes devouring in anticipation that sublime fowl which was the object of his own contempt.

  Madame Attorney drew the dish toward her … skilfully detached one black drumstick which she placed on her husband’s plate … cut off the neck which with the head she put aside for herself … lopped off a wing for Porthos … and returned the bird to the maid who bore it away virtually intact.… Maid and bird vanished before the musketeer found time to examine the variations which disappointment can mark upon the human countenance, according to the character and temperament of those who experience it.

  A dish of haricot beans was ushered in to replace the fowl—an enormous dish from which peeped a few rare mutton bones that might be supposed at first glance to have some meat on them. But the clerks were not duped by this fraud; their lugubrious glances froze into an expression of resignation. Madame Coquenard distributed this delicacy to the young men with all the moderation of a shrewd housewife.

  It was now time for the wine to appear. From a diminutive stone crock, Maître Coquenard poured a third of a glass for each of the young men and about the same quantity for himself, then passed the vessel along to Porthos and to Madame Coquenard. The clerks filled their glasses, adding two parts of aqua pura to the one part vouchsafed them. Whenever they had drunk half a glassful, they kept adding water. By the end of the meal, what had been a beverage of deep crimson turned to the palest topaz.

  Very timidly, Porthos toyed with his chicken wing and shuddered as he felt Madame Coquenard’s knee seeking his under the table. He also drank half a glass of the sparingly served wine which he recognized as a horrible Montreuil, the horror of all practiced palates. Seeing him guzzle the wine undiluted, the attorney sighed.

  “Wouldn’t you care for some of these beans, Cousin Porthos?” Madame Coquenard inquired in a tone that implied: “Take my word for it, don’t touch them!”

  “Devil take me if I taste a single one!” Porthos muttered; then, aloud: “No, thank you, Cousin, I have eaten my fill.”

  A silence fell upon the company. Porthos was utterly at a loss. The attorney repeated several times:

  “Ah, Madame, I congratulate you. Your dinner was a feast for the gods. Lord, how copiously I have eaten!”

  In point of fact, the lawyer had sipped his bouillon, scraped the black foot of the unsavory fowl, and pared the only mutton bone which bore the semblance of any meat on it. Porthos, suddenly deciding he was the victim of a hoax, twirled his mustache and knit his eyebrows. But no! the knee of Madame pressed gently against his own, counseling patience.

  This silence and the interruption in the service of the meal were unintelligible to Porthos, but it held a terrible meaning for the clerks. At a glance from the attorney, seconded by a smile from Madame Coquenard, they shuffled slowly to their feet, folded their napkins even more slowly, bowed and withdrew, as the attorney said solemnly:

  “Go young men, go promote your digestion of this succulent food by working as hard as you can.”

  The clerks gone, Madame Coquenard rose and took up from the sideboard a piece of cheese, some quince jam, and a cake she herself had made with almonds and honey. Her husband frowned at what he considered her extravagance. Porthos pursed his lips at these starvation rations. He even looked around to see if the dish of beans were still available but it had vanished.

  The attorney was squirming in his chair.

  “A banquet to be remembered forever!” he said. “Epulde epulorum, a real feast. Lucullus dines with Lucullus!”

  Porthos glanced obliquely at the crock by his side; perhaps with wine, bread and cheese, he might be able to eke out what had not yet amounted to a snack. But the crock was empty, a fact which neither the lawyer nor his lady seemed aware of.

  “Well, I know where I stand!” he thought resentfully.

  He passed his tongue over a small spoonful of quince and found his teeth caught in the glutinous substance of Madame Attorney’s cake.

  “Now,” he said to himself, “the sacrifice is consummated. Cheer up, Porthos, you still have hopes of peeping with Madame Coquenard into her husband’s strong box.”

  After the luxuries of so luxurious a meal—excessive, he termed it—Maître Coquenard felt the need of a siesta. Porthos devoutly hoped the old fool would take his snooze then and there, but no! refusing to listen to reason, he insisted on being taken back to the drawing room, fussing and grumbling until he had been wheeled up to his chest over which, for greater safety, he hoisted his legs. He then relapsed into a sonorous slumber.

  His wife led Porthos to an adjoining room and began to lay the groundwork for a reconciliation.

  “You can come and dine three times a week,” Madame Coquenard said archly.

  “Thank you, Madame, but I should hate to take advantage of your kindness. I must look to my equipment.”

  “True,” she admitted, groaning. “That unfortunate equipment.”

  “Ay, Madame.”

  “What does your equipment consist of, Monsieur Porthos?”

  “Well, it is rather elaborate, Madame. As you know the musketeers are a crack corps. We require many things which would be useless to the Royal Guards or to the Swiss Guards.”

  “Tell me more, Monsieur, give me details.”

  “Well—” Porthos hedged. He much preferred naming a lump sum to offering a bill of particulars.

  She looked at him encouragingly.

  “Well,” Porthos said, “all this may amount to—”

  She waited, tremulous.

  “To how much?” she asked. “I hope not more than—,” she stopped, at a loss for words.

  “Well, it will certainly not exceed twenty-five hundred livres. As a matter of fact, if I am careful I can probably manage with two thousand livres.”

  “Two thousand livres! Why, that’s a fortune!”

  Porthos made a significantly deprecatory grimace which Madame Coquenard understood perfectly.

  “I asked you to tell me some of the items,” she explained, “because I have many relatives and connections in business. I am sure I could obtain things for you at one hundred percent less than you could get them for yourself.”

  “Ah well, if that is what you meant—”

  “Yes, dear Monsieur Porthos, that is all I meant. For example, to begin with, you do need a horse, don’t you.”

  “Yes, I do indeed.”

  “Well, I have just the thing for you.”

  “Ah, so much for the horse!” Porthos beamed. “Of course I need a complete equipment for him too. It consists of a variety of things that only a musketeer can buy. That shouldn’t amount to more than three hundred livres.”

  “Three hundred livres!” Madame Attorney sighed. “Very well then, three hundred livres!”

  (Porthos smiled angelically. On one hand there was the saddle, a gift from My Lord of Buckingham; on the other, three hundred livres which he could quickly pocket!)

  “Then there is a horse for my lackey. And my valise. And—no! as for my weapons, I need not trouble you, I already have them.”

  “A horse for your lackey?” Madame Coquenard faltered. “Surely you are doing things on a very lordly scale, my friend.”

  �
��Do you take me for a beggar, Madame?”

  “No, I only meant to say that a pretty mule often looks quite as well as a horse. It seems to me that if you get Mousqueton a pretty mule—”

  “So be it, Madame, a pretty mule for Mousqueton. I have seen the greatest Spanish grandees whose whole suites were mounted on mules. But of course you understand, Madame, a mule with plumes and bells—”

  “That is quite easy.”

  “There remains my valise, Madame—”

  “Do not fret, dear Monsieur Porthos, my husband has five or six valises. You shall choose the best. There is one in particular which he always preferred to travel with; it is huge; it could hold all the world.”

  “So your valise is empty, Madame?” Porthos inquired, naïvely.

  “Certainly,” Madame Attorney replied, matching his candor.

  “But the valise I need is a well-fitted one, my dear.”

  Again Madame sighed profusely.

  (At the time, Molière had not written his play L’Avare; the avarice of the attorney’s lady was not yet outdone by the celebrated Harpagon.)

  Item by item, the rest of the equipment was successively broached, taken under advisement, discussed and settled. In the end, Madame Attorney pledged herself to give eight hundred livres in money and to furnish the horse and the mule which were to have the honor of carrying Porthos and Mousqueton to glory. There terms agreed upon, Porthos took his leave of his inamorata. Madame sought to detain him by gazing tenderly at him from under lowered lashes. But Porthos pleaded the exigencies of duty and the lawyer’s wife had perforce to yield in prerogative to His Majesty the King.

  The musketeer returned home hungry as a hunter and angry as a bear.

  XXXIII

  THE SOUBRETTE AND HER MISTRESS

  Meanwhile as we have said, despite the cries of his conscience and the wise counsels of Athos, D’Artagnan became more infatuated with Milady hour by hour. Convinced that she must inevitably respond sooner or later, our adventurous Gascon never once failed to pay her his daily court.

  One evening when he arrived, his head in the air and as light of heart as a man who awaits a shower of gold, he found Milady’s chambermaid under the gateway of the mansion. This time pretty Kitty was not content merely to touch him as he passed, she took him gently by the hand.

  “Good!” thought D’Artagnan, “her mistress has charged her with some message for me; the soubrette is about to appoint some rendezvous which Milady dared not make orally.”

  And he looked at the pretty girl with the most triumphant air imaginable.

  “May I have two words with you, Monsieur le Chevalier?” the maid stammered.

  “Speak, my child, speak, I am listening.”

  “Here? Impossible. What I have to say is too complicated and above all too secret.”

  “Well, what shall we do?”

  “If Monsieur le Chevalier will follow me?” Kitty suggested shyly.

  “Where you please, my dear child!”

  “Then come!”

  So Kitty, who had not released his hand, led him up a little dark winding staircase and, after ascending about fifteen steps, opened a door.

  “Come in here, Monsieur le Chevalier; we shall be alone here and we can talk at our ease.”

  “And whose room is this, my dear child?”

  “This is my room, Monsieur le Chevalier; it communicates with my mistress’s by that door. But you need not fear. She will not hear what we are saying; she never goes to bed before midnight.”

  D’Artagnan gazed around him. The little room was charming in its neatness and taste; but in spite of himself he stared at the door which Kitty said led to Milady’s chamber. Reading his secret thoughts, Kitty heaved a deep sigh.

  “So you do love my mistress very dearly, Monsieur le Chevalier?” she asked.

  “Ay, more than I can say, Kitty. I am mad about her!”

  Kitty breathed another sigh.

  “Alas, Monsieur,” she said, “that is a great pity!”

  “Why in the devil’s name is that a pity?”

  “Because my mistress does not love Monsieur at all.”

  “What!” D’Artagnan gasped. Then “Did she charge you to tell me so?” he asked.

  “Oh, no, Monsieur! Out of my regard for you, I resolved to tell you myself.”

  “I am much obliged to you, my dear Kitty—for your intention only, because you must confess that your information is scarcely agreeable.”

  “In other words you think I am wrong?”

  “It is always difficult to believe such things, my dear child, if only because of pride.”

  “Then you don’t believe me?”

  “I confess that until you deign to give me some proof of what you advance, I—”

  “What do you think of this?” Kitty demanded, drawing a little note from her bosom.

  “Is it for me?” D’Artagnan asked, snatching the letter.

  “No, it is for someone else.”

  “For someone else?”

  “Yes.”

  “His name, tell me his name!” cried D’Artagnan.

  “Read the address.”

  D’Artagnan, obeying, read: For Monsieur le Comte de Vardes.

  The memory of the scene at Saint-Germain flashed across the mind of the presumptuous Gascon. In a move as quick as thought he tore open the letter, in spite of Kitty’s warning cry as she realized too late what he had done.

  “Good Lord, Monsieur le Chevalier, what are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” said D’Artagnan. “Why, nothing, nothing at all.” And he read:

  You have not answered my first note. Are you indisposed or have you forgotten the glances you favored me with at the ball of Madame de Guise? Monsieur le Comte, I offer you an opportunity now; do not let it slip through your fingers.

  D’Artagnan turned pale, as he felt all the pangs of what he believed to be his wounded love but what of course was merely self-love.

  “Poor dear Monsieur D’Artagnan!” Kitty whispered in a voice full of compassion, pressing the young man’s hand anew.

  “Do you pity me, little one?”

  “Ay, truly, with all my heart, for I know what it is to be in love.”

  “You know what it is to be in love?” D’Artagnan echoed, looking at her attentively for the first time.

  “Alas, yes!”

  “Well then, instead of pitying me, you would do much better to help me to avenge myself on your mistress.”

  “And what sort of vengeance would you take?”

  “I want to triumph over her and supplant my rival.”

  “I shall never help you to do that, Monsieur le Chevalier.”

  “Why not?”

  “For two reasons.”

  “What reasons?”

  “First, my mistress will never love you.”

  “How do you know that.”

  “You have cut her to the heart!”

  “I? How on earth can I have offended her, I who ever since I met her have groveled at her feet like a slave! Speak, I beg you!”

  “I will never confess that to any man save him who can read into the very depths of my soul.”

  Once again D’Artagnan examined Kitty curiously, noting her youthful freshness and beauty for which many a duchess would have given away her coronet.

  “Kitty,” he told her, “I am the man to read to the depths of your soul, whenever you like. Don’t make any mistake about that.” And he gave her a kiss at which the poor girl turned red as a cherry.

  “No, no!” Kitty objected. “You do not love me, you love my mistress. You just said so a moment ago.”

  “Does that prevent you from telling me your second reason?”

  “My second reason?” the soubrette replied, emboldened first by D’Artagnan’s kiss and further by the expression in the young man’s eyes. “My second reason is: In love, each for himself!”

  Then only D’Artagnan recalled Kitty’s languishing glances … their frequent meetings in
the antechamber, in the corridor or on the stairs … the way her hand managed to brush against his every time she passed him … and the deep sighs she could not quite stifle.… Absorbed by his desire to please the great lady, he had disdained the soubrette; he who hunts the eagle has no eye for the sparrow.

  But this time our Gascon saw at a glance all the advantages to be derived from the love Kitty had just confessed so innocently or so boldly: he could intercept the letters addressed to the Comte de Vardes, he had a faithful intelligencer on the spot, and he could enter Kitty’s room adjacent to Milady’s whenever he cared to. Manifestly the perfidious deceiver was already scheming to sacrifice the poor girl in order to obtain Milady willy-nilly.

  “Tell me, Kitty dear, would you like me to give you proof of this love you appear to doubt?”

  “What love?” asked the young girl. “The love I am ready to offer you.”

  “What proof will you give?”

  “Tonight … the hours I usually spend with your mistress … shall I spend them with you instead …?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Kitty clapping her hands. “Please, please do!”

  D’Artagnan settled himself in an easy chair, then turned to the soubrette again.

  “Very well then, come here, my dear,” he urged, “and I shall tell you that you are the prettiest soubrette I have ever laid eyes on.”

  Which he proceeded to do so profusely and so eloquently that the poor child, who asked for nothing better than to believe him, did believe him. Yet to D’Artagnan’s vast astonishment, the comely Kitty resisted his advances resolutely.

  Time passes quickly, especially when it is devoted to offensive and defensive operations. Suddenly midnight sounded and almost at the same time Milady’s bell rang in the adjoining apartment.

  “Heavens!” Kitty cried in alarm. “My mistress is calling me! Go, my lover, please go at once!”

  D’Artagnan rose and took his hat as if he intended to obey; but instead of opening the door leading to the staircase, he whisked open the door of a great closet and buried himself among Milady’s robes and dressing-gowns.

  “What are you doing?” Kitty gasped.