The Modern Library Children's Classics

by Kenneth Grahame

  “Pooh, they’ll probably miss me,” D’Artagnan scoffed. “Then we’ll overtake the carriage and exterminate its occupants! A good job and good riddance! So many enemies the fewer!”

  “Right!” Porthos chimed in. “Let us go into action. Here is a splendid chance to try out our battle arms.”

  “I am with you,” Aramis said in his usual silken and nonchalant manner.

  “As you please,” was all Athos said.

  “It is now half-past four, gentlemen,” D’Artagnan announced. “We have scarcely time to be on the road to Chaillot by six.”

  “Besides,” Porthos observed, “if we do not set out immediately, no one will see us. That would be a pity, don’t you think? Come, gentlemen, let us be off.”

  Athos reminded D’Artagnan of the second letter.

  “What about that?” he challenged. “The seal it bears seems to me to warrant some attention. Or am I wrong? For my part, D’Artagnan, I dare say you might find it worthwhile to open it. I fancy that it is more significant than the note you have just slipped so cunningly over your heart.”

  D’Artagnan, blushing, said:

  “Come, lads, let us see what His Eminence wants of me!”

  And he opened the second letter. It read:

  Monsieur d’Artagnan, of the Royal Guards, Des Essarts, Company Commander, is expected at the Palais-Cardinal this evening at eight o’clock.

  La Houdinière

  Captain of Guards

  “By God,” said Athos, “this appointment is far more serious than the other!”

  “I shall attend to these appointments in turn,” D’Artagnan answered, “the first at seven, the second at eight; there is plenty of time for both.”

  “Were I you, I should not go at all,” Aramis admonished. “A gallant knight should never decline a rendezvous with a lady. But a prudent gentleman can excuse himself from waiting upon His Eminence, especially when he has reason to believe that he is not invited merely to pay his compliments.”

  “I agree with Aramis,” Porthos declared.

  “But gentlemen,” D’Artagnan remonstrated. “Once before I received such an invitation, through Monsieur de Cavois, I neglected it and next day I suffered a serious misfortune: Constance disappeared! Whatever may come of it, I shall call on the Cardinal!”

  “If your mind is made up,” Athos advised, “go ahead!”

  “And the Bastille?” Aramis queried.

  “Bah! if they lock me up, you will get me out,” D’Artagnan said confidently.

  “Of course we will,” said Aramis, and “Certainly!” cried Porthos with such admirable assurance that to rescue a captive from the Bastille seemed like child’s play. Naturally they would get him out of prison, but meanwhile, since they were all to set out for the front two days later, D’Artagnan would be wiser not to risk lodgings in a dungeon.

  “I have a better plan,” Athos proposed. “Let us stick close to D’Artagnan throughout the evening. Each of us can wait at a gate of the palace with three musketeers behind him; if anyone sees a suspiciously darkened carriage drive out, we and our nine fellow-musketeers can fall upon it. It is a long time since we musketeers have had a skirmish with the Cardinal’s guards; Monsieur de Tréville must think us dead of inertia.”

  “Bravo, Athos!” Aramis applauded. “You were born to be a General of the Army! What about the plan Athos has outlined, gentlemen?”

  His listeners registered unanimous approval.

  “Good!” Porthos added. “I’m off to the Hôtel de Tréville to warn our friends to stand by at eight o’clock. We will meet at the Place du Palais-Cardinal. Meantime, you can arrange to have our lackeys saddle our horses.”

  “I have no horse,” D’Artagnan observed, “but I shall ask for one at the Hôtel de Tréville.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Aramis, “take one of mine.”

  “One of yours! How many have you then?”

  “Three,” Aramis confessed, smiling.

  “Well, my friend,” said Athos, “you are most certainly the best mounted poet throughout the length and breadth of France—not to mention Navarre. Recently acquired! Three horses!” Athos said wonderingly. “What can you possibly do with them? I cannot understand what induced you to buy three horses!”

  “I only bought two,” Aramis replied.

  “And the third?” Athos insisted.

  Suavely Aramis told how the third horse had turned up at his lodgings that morning. A groom, out of livery and refusing to divulge his master’s name, delivered the animal as ordered.

  “Ordered by his master,” D’Artagnan insinuated, “or by his mistress?”

  “What matter?” said Aramis, blushing. “At all events, the fellow informed me that his mistress had ordered him to place this horse in my stable without telling me whence it came.”

  “That could happen to none but a poet!” Athos commented sententiously.

  “I have an idea!” D’Artagnan proclaimed. “Tell me, Aramis, which of the two horses will you ride: the one you bought or the one that was given to you?”

  “The one that was given to me, of course. You understand, D’Artagnan, that I cannot offend—”

  “The anonymous donor!” D’Artagnan broke in.

  “And who might the mysterious lady be?” Athos asked casually.

  “Is the horse you bought useless to you now that you have another from an anonymous donor who may be a mysterious lady?”

  “Practically useless,” Aramis replied.

  “And you yourself chose it?”

  “With the greatest care. As you know the safety of a horseman almost always depends upon his horse.”

  “Splendid!” said D’Artagnan. “Can you let me have him for the price he cost you?”

  “My dear D’Artagnan, I was about to suggest you take the horse and settle the bagatelle involved at your convenience.”

  “How much did you pay?”

  “Eight hundred livres.”

  “Here are forty double pistoles, my friend,” said D’Artagnan, producing the requisite sum. “You are paid in coin of the sort for your poems, I trust.”

  “Then you are really affluent?” Aramis asked, incredulous.

  “My dear fellow, I belch gold like Croesus,” D’Artagnan answered, jingling the coins in his pocket.

  “Send your saddle to the Hôtel de Tréville, D’Artagnan, and they will bring your horse here with ours.”

  “Good! But it is almost five o’clock. Let us make haste!”

  Within fifteen minutes, Porthos, superb in his proud joy, loomed at the end of the Rue Ferou mounted upon a most impressive jennet, Mousqueton in his wake, astride a small but handsome horse bred in Auvergne.

  Simultaneously, Aramis appeared at the other end of the street, riding a spanking English charger, Bazin at his heels, on a serviceable roan, with the stout Mecklemburg cob that was to be D’Artagnan’s.

  The two met at the door; from the window Athos and D’Artagnan observed their meeting.

  “A fine mount you have there, Porthos,” said Aramis admiringly.

  “Ay, it is the one they should have sent to me at first. The husband tried to play a feeble joke on me by substituting that other sorry nag you saw. But he has been punished for it and I have obtained complete satisfaction.”

  Planchet and Grimaud appeared in turn, leading their masters’ steeds. D’Artagnan and Athos left the vantage point of the window, went down into the street, and vaulted into their saddles. Side by side the four companions started off, Athos on the horse he owed to his wife, Aramis on the horse he owed to his mistress, Porthos on the horse he owed to the attorney’s lady and D’Artagnan on the horse he owed to his good fortune—the best mistress of all!

  The lackeys drew up the rear.

  As Porthos expected the cavalcade cut quite a swath; indeed, had Madame Coquenard seen Porthos ride by majestically on his imposing Spanish jennet, she would not have regretted the bleeding she had inflicted upon her husband’s strongbox.

&
nbsp; Near the Louvre the four friends met Monsieur de Tréville who was returning from Saint-Germain. He stopped them to compliment them on their equipment, whereupon a crowd of idlers and gapers collected about them in an instant. D’Artagnan profited by the circumstance to tell Monsieur de Tréville about the letter with the great red seal and the Cardinal’s signet. Needless to say he breathed no word about the other letter. Monsieur de Tréville approved of D’Artagnan’s decision, adding that if D’Artagnan failed to appear on the morrow, he himself would undertake to find him, no matter where he might be.

  At this moment the clock of La Samaritaine struck six and the four friends, pleading an engagement, took their leave of the Captain of Musketeers.

  A lively canter brought them to the Route de Chaillot by twilight. The traffic moved by, to and fro, as D’Artagnan, his friends watching over him from some distance, peered into every carriage as it passed him. But he failed to recognize a single face. At length, after they had waited a quarter of an hour, just as night was falling, a carriage appeared, speeding down the Sévres road. A presentiment told D’Artagnan instantly that this carriage bore the person who had arranged the rendezvous; he himself was astonished to feel his heart beating so violently against his ribs. Suddenly a woman’s face appeared at the window, two fingers on her mouth as though to enjoin silence or to blow him a kiss. D’Artagnan uttered a cry of joy. The carriage had passed by, swift as a vision, but the apparition was a woman and the woman was Madame Bonacieux.

  Involuntarily and despite the warning given, D’Artagnan spurred his horse into a gallop, overtaking the carriage in a few strides. But he found the window hermetically closed and the vision had vanished.

  Then he recalled the injunction: “If you value your life and the lives of those who love you do not utter a word or make the slightest gesture.…”

  He stopped therefore trembling not on his own account but for the poor woman who had obviously exposed herself to danger by arranging for this rendezvous.

  The carriage pursued its way at the same swift pace, entered Paris and disappeared. D’Artagnan, dumbfounded, stood rooted to the spot. What was he to think? If it was Madame Bonacieux and if she was returning to Paris, why this fugitive meeting, why this simple exchange of glances, why this lost kiss? If, on the other hand, it was not Madame Bonacieux—a perfectly plausible conjecture, since his eyes might well have mistaken him in the near-darkness—was this not a plot in which his enemies were using for decoy the woman he was known to love?

  His three friends joined him. All had clearly distinguished a woman’s face at the carriage window, but only Athos knew Madame Bonacieux. According to him, it was certainly she; but as Athos was less intent upon that pretty face, he had, he fancied, seen a man beside her in the carriage.

  “In that case,” D’Artagnan said, “they are undoubtedly transferring her from one prison to another. But what can they intend to do to the poor girl? And how shall I ever meet her again?”

  “My friend,” Athos told him gravely, “remember this: it is only the dead whom we are not likely to meet again on earth. You know something about this just as I myself. Well, if your mistress is not dead and if it is she we have just seen, you will meet her again one of these days. And perhaps,” he added in a characteristically misanthropic tone, “perhaps sooner than you wish.”

  They heard the half-hour strike from a belfry nearby; it was seven thirty. His friends reminded D’Artagnan that he had a visit to pay, adding significantly that he still had time to change his mind. But at once headstrong and curious, D’Artagnan was determined to go to the Cardinal’s palace. He must at all cost find out what His Eminence had to say to him. Nothing could possibly dissuade him from following his plans.

  Soon they were in the Rue Saint-Honoré and presently in the Place du Palais-Cardinal. They found the nine comrades they had summoned to support them. These gentlemen had reported punctually to a man without knowing what was expected of them.

  Apprised of the situation, they were delighted to stand by, for D’Artagnan was popular among the Honorable Company of Royal Musketeers. Most of them, knowing he would one day take his place among them, already looked upon him as a comrade. Accordingly the nine supporters assumed their duties, the more cheerfully because they foresaw the probability of doing the Cardinal and his henchmen an ill turn. Expeditions of that sort were always highly welcome.

  Athos divided them into three groups, took command of one and assigned the other two respectively to Porthos and Aramis. Each group took its stand in the darkness close to one of the side entrances to the palace. D’Artagnan, for his part, boldly entered through the main gate.

  Though he felt himself ably supported, the young Gascon was not wholly at ease as he ascended the great staircase, step by step. His behavior toward Milady had been pretty close to treachery and he strongly suspected the political relations which existed between her and His Eminence. Worse still, de Vardes, whom he had treated so ill, was a henchman of the Cardinal’s, and D’Artagnan knew that Richelieu was as passionately attached to his friends as he was implacable toward his enemies.

  “If de Vardes has told the Cardinal about our differences, which seems certain, and if he recognized me, which is probable, then I must consider myself practically doomed,” D’Artagnan thought. He shook his head ruefully. “But why has he waited till now?” he wondered. Then: “It is all crystal clear, Milady must have complained about me with all the hypocritical grief that makes her so interesting, and this, my latest crime, has made the pot boil over!”

  Yet there was some consolation. “Luckily my loyal friends are down yonder,” he mused. “They would never allow me to be taken away without a battle royal!” But his confidence was short-lived as he reflected that Monsieur de Tréville’s musketeers could not wage a private war against the Cardinal who commanded the armed forces of all France, reduced the Queen to impotence, and crippled the King’s will.

  “D’Artagnan, my friend, you are brave and you have excellent qualities,” he soliloquized, “but women will ruin you in the end!”

  Having reached this melancholy conclusion, he entered the antechamber, presented his letter to the usher on duty, was shown into a vestibule and then passed into the interior of the palace. In the vestibule he saw five or six of the Cardinal’s guardsmen who recognized him as the man who had wounded Jussac. It seemed to D’Artagnan that they smiled significantly as he went by.

  This augured poorly, he thought. But he was not one to be easily intimidated. Or rather, with the colossal pride of a native Gascon, he refused to betray his thoughts when those thoughts were close akin to fear. Smiling, too, he stood smartly up to the Cardinal’s guardsmen, his hand on his hip, every inch a gentleman, a soldier and a man.

  Returning, the usher motioned to D’Artagnan to follow him. As D’Artagnan did so he thought he heard the Cardinal’s guardsmen whispering among themselves. The usher led him down a corridor, across a vast salon and into a library where he found a man seated at a desk, writing. He heard the usher announce him, then bow his way out silently. D’Artagnan stood on the threshold, waiting.

  At first he thought he was up against some magistrate who was looking over the record, prior to questioning him. On closer examination, he saw that the man seated at the desk was writing or rather correcting a text with lines of unequal length and counting syllables on his fingers. Here then was a poet!

  Suddenly the poet snapped his manuscript within a portfolio whose covers bore the legend:

  MIRAME

  A Tragedy in Five Acts

  It was the Cardinal.

  XL

  WHEREIN D’ARTAGNAN MEETS HIS EMINENCE AND MILADY SPEEDS HIM OFF TO WAR

  The Cardinal’s elbow rested on his manuscript, his chin rested in the palm of his hand. He looked very intently at the young man. D’Artagnan, marveling at the intensity of this scrutiny, was hard put to it to hide his nervousness. His Eminence’s glance was piercing as a drill.

  But the Gascon kept a go
od countenance and stood, hat in hand, awaiting the Cardinal’s pleasure without too much assurance or too much humility.

  “You are a certain D’Artagnan from Béarn,” the Cardinal observed.

  “Ay, Monseigneur.”

  “There are several branches of that family at Tarbes and thereabouts. To which branch do you belong?”

  “Monseigneur, I am the son of the D’Artagnan who served in the Wars of Religion under our great King Henry IV of blessed memory.”

  “Good!” said the Cardinal. “Good!”

  There was a silence. Then Richelieu continued:

  “You set out from Gascony some seven or eight months ago to try your fortune in the capital?”

  “Ay, Monseigneur.”

  “You passed through Meung where something untoward occurred. I do not know what but there was some sort of trouble—”

  “Monseigneur, this is what happened. I—”

  “Never mind, young man.” The Cardinal smiled as though to show that he could tell the whole story quite as accurately as D’Artagnan if not more accurately. “You were recommended to Monsieur de Tréville, were you not?”

  “Yes, Monseigneur, but in the trouble at Meung—”

  “Yes, yes, I know, you lost your letter of recommendation. However Monsieur de Tréville being a skilled physiognomist judged you at a glance and arranged for you to join the Royal Guards—”

  “Ay, Monseigneur.”

  “—your commanding officer being Monsieur des Essarts, brother-in-law of Monsieur de Tréville—”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were led to hope that some day or other you might join the Royal Musketeers.”

  “Monseigneur is perfectly informed,” said D’Artagnan, bowing.

  “Since then your life has, I believe, been eventful. One day you happened to stroll by the Convent of the Carmes-Deschaux when it would have been healthier for you to be elsewhere. Another day you and your friends journeyed to Forges, doubtless to take the waters; but they stopped en route, whereas you continued. It is all quite simple: you had business in England.”