Three Musketeers (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Alexandre Dumas

  “Certes,” replied Aramis, in a pleased tone, “but the thing is subtle.”

  “The fingers,” resumed the Jesuit, “St. Peter blessed with the fingers. The Pope, therefore, blesses with the fingers. And with how many fingers does he bless? With three fingers, to be sure—one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost.”

  All crossed themselves. D’Artagnan thought it was proper to follow this example.

  “The Pope is the successor of St. Peter, and represents the three divine powers; the rest—ordines inferiores—of the ecclesiastical hierarchy bless in the name of the holy archangels and angels. The most humble clerks such as our deacons and sacristans, bless with holy water sprinklers, which resemble an infinite number of blessing fingers. There is the subject simplified. Argumentum omni denudatum ornamento.w I could make of that subject two volumes of the size of this,” continued the Jesuit; and in his enthusiasm he struck a St. Chrysostom in folio, which made the table bend beneath its weight.

  D’Artagnan trembled.

  “Certes,” said Aramis, “I do justice to the beauties of this thesis; but at the same time I perceive it would be overwhelming for me. I had chosen this text—tell me, dear D‘Artagnan, if it is not to your taste—‘Non inutile est desiderium in oblatione’; that is, ‘A little regret is not unsuitable in an offering to the Lord.’ ”

  “Stop there!” cried the Jesuit, “for that thesis touches closely upon heresy. There is a proposition almost like it in the Augustinus of the heresiarch Jansenius, whose book will sooner or later be burned by the hands of the executioner.21 Take care, my young friend. You are inclining toward false doctrines, my young friend; you will be lost.”

  “You will be lost,” said the curate, shaking his head sorrowfully.

  “You approach that famous point of free will which is a mortal rock. You face the insinuations of the Pelagians and the demi-Pelagians. ”22

  “But, my Reverend—” replied Aramis, a little amazed by the shower of arguments that poured upon his head.

  “How will you prove,” continued the Jesuit, without allowing him time to speak, “that we ought to regret the world when we offer ourselves to God? Listen to this dilemma: God is God, and the world is the devil. To regret the world is to regret the devil; that is my conclusion.”

  “And that is mine also,” said the curate.

  “But, for heaven’s sake—” resumed Aramis.

  “Desideras diabolum, unhappy man!” cried the Jesuit.

  “He regrets the devil! Ah, my young friend,” added the curate, groaning, “do not regret the devil, I implore you!”

  D’Artagnan felt himself bewildered. It seemed to him as though he were in a madhouse, and was becoming as mad as those he saw. He was, however, forced to hold his tongue from not comprehending half the language they employed.

  “But listen to me, then,” resumed Aramis with politeness mingled with a little impatience. “I do not say I regret; no, I will never pronounce that sentence, which would not be orthodox.”

  The Jesuit raised his hands toward heaven, and the curate did the same.

  “No; but pray grant me that it is acting with an ill grace to offer to the Lord only that with which we are perfectly disgusted! Don’t you think so, D’Artagnan?”

  “I think so, indeed,” cried he.

  The Jesuit and the curate quite started from their chairs. “This is the point of departure; it is a syllogism. The world is not wanting in attractions. I quit the world; then I make a sacrifice. Now, the Scripture says positively, ‘Make a sacrifice unto the Lord.’ ”

  “That is true,” said his antagonists.

  “And then,” said Aramis, pinching his ear to make it red, as he rubbed his hands to make them white, “and then I made a certain rondeau upon it last year, which I showed to Monsieur Voiture, and that great man paid me a thousand handsome compliments.”

  “A rondeau!” said the Jesuit, disdainfully.

  “A rondeau!” said the curate, mechanically.

  “Repeat it! repeat it! ”cried D’Artagnan; “it will make a little change.”

  “Not so, for it is religious,” replied Aramis; “it is theology in verse.”

  “The devil!” said D’Artagnan.

  “Here it is,” said Aramis, with a little look of diffidence, which, however, was not exempt from a shade of hypocrisy:

  “Vous qui pleurez un passé plein de charmes,

  Et qui trainez des jours infortunés,

  Tous vos malheurs se verront terminés,

  Quand à Dieu seul vous offrirez vos larmes,

  Vous qui pleurez!”

  “You who weep for pleasures fled,

  While dragging on a life of care,

  All your woes will melt in air,

  If to God your tears are shed,

  You who weep!”

  D‘Artagnan and the curate appeared pleased. The Jesuit persisted in his opinion. “Beware of a profane taste in your theological style. What says Augustine on this subject: “ ‘Severus sit clericorum verbo.’ ”

  “Yes, let the sermon be clear,” said the curate.

  “Now,” hastily interrupted the Jesuit, on seeing that his acolyte was going astray, “now your thesis would please the ladies; it would have the success of one of Monsieur Patru’s pleadings. ”

  “Please God!” cried Aramis, transported.

  “There it is,” cried the Jesuit; “the world still speaks within you in a loud voice, altissimâ voce. You follow the world, my young friend, and I tremble lest grace prove not efficacious.”

  “Be satisfied, my reverend father, I can answer for myself.”

  “Mundane presumption!”

  “I know myself, Father; my resolution is irrevocable.”

  “Then you persist in continuing that thesis?”

  “I feel myself called upon to treat that, and no other. I will see about the continuation of it, and tomorrow I hope you will be satisfied with the corrections I shall have made in consequence of your advice.”

  “Work slowly,” said the curate; “we leave you in an excellent tone of mind.”

  “Yes, the ground is all sown,” said the Jesuit, “and we have not to fear that one portion of the seed may have fallen upon stone, another upon the highway, or that the birds of heaven have eaten the rest, aves cœli comederunt illam.”

  “Plague stifle you and your Latin!” said D’Artagnan, who began to feel all his patience exhausted.

  “Farewell, my son,” said the curate, “till tomorrow.”

  “Till tomorrow, rash youth,” said the Jesuit “You promise to become one of the lights of the Church. Heaven grant that this light prove not a devouring fire!”

  D’Artagnan, who for an hour past had been gnawing his nails with impatience, was beginning to attack the quick.

  The two men in black rose, bowed to Aramis and D’Artagnan, and advanced toward the door. Bazin, who had been standing listening to all this controversy with a pious jubilation, sprang toward them, took the breviary of the curate and the missal of the Jesuit, and walked respectfully before them to clear their way.

  Aramis conducted them to the foot of the stairs, and then immediately came up again to D’Artagnan, whose senses were still in a state of confusion.

  When left alone, the two friends at first kept an embarrassed silence. It however became necessary for one of them to break it first, and as D’Artagnan appeared determined to leave that honor to his companion, Aramis said, “You see that I am returned to my fundamental ideas.”

  “Yes, efficacious grace has touched you, as that gentleman said just now.”

  “Oh, these plans of retreat have been formed for a long time. You have often heard me speak of them, have you not, my friend?”

  “Yes; but I confess I always thought you jested.”

  “With such things! Oh, D’Artagnan!”

  “The devil! Why, people jest with death.”

  “And people are wrong, D’Artagnan; for death is the door which leads
to perdition or to salvation.”

  “Granted; but if you please, let us not theologize, Aramis. You must have had enough for today. As for me, I have almost forgotten the little Latin I have ever known. Then I confess to you that I have eaten nothing since ten o’clock this morning, and I am devilishly hungry.”

  “We will dine directly, my friend; only you must please to remember that this is Friday. Now, on such a day I can neither eat flesh nor see it eaten. If you can be satisfied with my dinner—it consists of cooked tetragones and fruits.”

  “What do you mean by tetragones?” asked D’Artagnan, uneasily.

  “I mean spinach,” replied Aramis; “but on your account I will add some eggs, and that is a serious infraction of the rule—for eggs are meat, since they engender chickens.”

  “This feast is not very succulent; but never mind, I will put up with it for the sake of remaining with you.”

  “I am grateful to you for the sacrifice,” said Aramis; “but if your body be not greatly benefited by it, be assured your soul will. ”

  “And so, Aramis, you are decidedly going into the Church? What will our two friends say? What will Monsieur de Tréville say? They will treat you as a deserter, I warn you.”

  “I do not enter the Church; I re-enter it. I deserted the Church for the world, for you know that I forced myself when I became a Musketeer.”

  “I? I know nothing about it.”

  “You don’t know I quit the seminary?”

  “Not at all.”

  “This is my story, then. Besides, the Scriptures say, ‘Confess yourselves one to another,’ and I confess to you, D’Artagnan.”

  “And I give you absolution beforehand. You see I am a good sort of a man.”

  “Do not jest about holy things, my friend.”

  “Go on, then, I listen.”

  “I had been at the seminary from nine years old; in three days I should have been twenty. I was about to become an abbé, and all was arranged. One evening I went, according to custom, to a house which I frequented with much pleasure: when one is young, what can be expected?—one is weak. An officer who saw me, with a jealous eye, reading the Lives of the Saints to the mistress of the house, entered suddenly and without being announced. That evening I had translated an episode of Judith, and had just communicated my verses to the lady, who gave me all sorts of compliments, and leaning on my shoulder, was reading them a second time with me. Her pose, which I must admit was rather free, wounded this officer. He said nothing; but when I went out he followed, and quickly came up with me. ‘Monsieur the Abbé,’ said he, ‘do you like blows with a cane?’ ‘I cannot say, monsieur,’ answered I; ‘no one has ever dared to give me any.’ ‘Well, listen to me, then, Monsieur the Abbé! If you venture again into the house in which I have met you this evening, I will dare it myself.’ I really think I must have been frightened. I became very pale; I felt my legs fail me; I sought for a reply, but could find none—I was silent. The officer waited for his reply, and seeing it so long coming, he burst into a laugh, turned upon his heel, and re-entered the house. I returned to my seminary.

  “I am a gentleman born, and my blood is warm, as you may have remarked, my dear D‘Artagnan. The insult was terrible, and although unknown to the rest of the world, I felt it live and fester at the bottom of my heart. I informed my superiors that I did not feel myself sufficiently prepared for ordination, and at my request the ceremony was postponed for a year. I sought out the best fencing master in Paris, I made an agreement with him to take a lesson every day, and every day for a year I took that lesson. Then, on the anniversary of the day on which I had been insulted, I hung my cassock on a peg, assumed the costume of a cavalier, and went to a ball given by a lady friend of mine and to which I knew my man was invited. It was in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, close to La Force. As I expected, my officer was there. I went up to him as he was singing a love ditty and looking tenderly at a lady, and interrupted him exactly in the middle of the second couplet. ‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘does it still displease you that I should frequent a certain house of La Rue Payenne? And would you still cane me if I took it into my head to disobey you?’ The officer looked at me with astonishment, and then said, ‘What is your business with me, monsieur? I do not know you.’ ‘I am,’ said I, ‘the little abbé who reads the Lives of the Saints, and translates Judith into verse.’ ‘Ah, ah! I recollect now,’ said the officer, in a jeering tone;

  ‘well, what do you want with me?’ ‘I want you to spare time to take a walk with me.’ ‘Tomorrow morning, if you like, with the greatest pleasure.’ ‘No, not tomorrow morning, if you please, but immediately.’ ‘If you absolutely insist.’ ‘I do insist upon it.’ ‘Come, then. Ladies,’ said the officer, ‘do not disturb yourselves; allow me time just to kill this gentleman, and I will return and finish the last couplet.’

  “We went out. I took him to the Rue Payenne, to exactly the same spot where, a year before, at the very same hour, he had paid me the compliment I have related to you. It was a superb moonlight night. We immediately drew, and at the first pass I laid him stark dead.”

  “The devil!” cried D’Artagnan.

  “Now,” continued Aramis, “as the ladies did not see the singer come back, and as he was found in the Rue Payenne with a great sword wound through his body, it was supposed that I had accommodated him thus; and the matter created some scandal which obliged me to renounce the cassock for a time. Athos, whose acquaintance I made about that period, and Porthos, who had in addition to my lessons taught me some effective tricks of fence, prevailed upon me to solicit the uniform of a Musketeer. The king entertained great regard for my father, who had fallen at the siege of Arras, and the uniform was granted. You may understand that the moment has come for me to re-enter the bosom of the Church.”

  “And why today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow? What has happened to you today, to raise all these melancholy ideas?”

  “This wound, my dear D’Artagnan, has been a warning to me from heaven.”

  “This wound? Bah, it is now nearly healed, and I am sure it is not that which gives you the most pain.”

  “What, then?” said Aramis, blushing.

  “You have one at heart, Aramis, one deeper and more painful—a wound made by a woman.”

  The eye of Aramis kindled in spite of himself.

  “Ah,” said he, dissembling his emotion under a feigned carelessness, “do not talk of such things. I think of such things, and suffer love pains? Vanitas vanitatum!x According to your idea, then, my brain is turned. And for whom—for some grisette,y some chambermaid with whom I have trifled in some garrison? Fie!”

  “Pardon, my dear Aramis, but I thought you carried your eyes higher.”

  “Higher? And who am I, to nourish such ambition? A poor Musketeer, a beggar, an unknown—who hates slavery, and finds himself ill-placed in the world.”

  “Aramis, Aramis!” cried D’Artagnan, looking at his friend with an air of doubt.

  “Dust I am, and to dust I return. Life is full of humiliations and sorrows,” continued he, becoming still more melancholy; “all the ties which attach him to life break in the hand of man, particularly the golden ties. Oh, my dear D’Artagnan,” resumed Aramis, giving to his voice a slight tone of bitterness, “trust me! Conceal your wounds when you have any; silence is the last joy of the unhappy. Beware of giving anyone the clue to your griefs; the curious suck our tears as flies suck the blood of a wounded hart.”

  “Alas, my dear Aramis,” said D’Artagnan, in his turn heaving a profound sigh, “that is my story you are relating!”

  “How?”

  “Yes; a woman whom I love, whom I adore, has just been torn from me by force. I do not know where she is or whither they have conducted her. She is perhaps a prisoner; she is perhaps dead!”

  “Yes, but you have at least this consolation, that you can say to yourself she has not quit you voluntarily, that if you learn no news of her, it is because all communication with you is interdicted; whi
le I—”

  “Well?”

  “Nothing,” replied Aramis, “nothing.”

  “So you renounce the world, then, forever; that is a settled thing—a resolution registered!”

  “Forever! You are my friend today; tomorrow you will be no more to me than a shadow, or rather, even, you will no longer exist. As for the world, it is a sepulcher and nothing else.”

  “The devil! All this is very sad which you tell me.”

  “What will you? My vocation commands me; it carries me away.”

  D’Artagnan smiled, but made no answer.

  Aramis continued, “And yet, while I do belong to the earth, I wish to speak of you—of our friends.”

  “And on my part,” said D‘Artagnan, “I wished to speak of you, but I find you so completely detached from everything! To love you cry, ‘Fie! Friends are shadows! The world is a sepulcher!’ ”

  “Alas, you will find it so yourself,” said Aramis, with a sigh.

  “Well, then, let us say no more about it,” said D’Artagnan; “and let us burn this letter, which, no doubt, announces to you some fresh infidelity of your grisette or your chambermaid.”

  “What letter?” cried Aramis, eagerly.

  “A letter which was sent to your abode in your absence, and which was given to me for you.”

  “But from whom is that letter?”

  “Oh, from some heartbroken waiting woman, some desponding grisette; from Madame de Chevreuse’s chambermaid, perhaps, who was obliged to return to Tours with her mistress, and who, in order to appear smart and attractive, stole some perfumed paper, and sealed her letter with a duchess’s coronet.”

  “What do you say?”

  “Hold! I must have lost it,” said the young man, maliciously, pretending to search for it. “But fortunately the world is a sepulcher; the men, and consequently the women, are but shadows, and love is a sentiment to which you cry, ‘Fie, fie!’ ”

  “D‘Artagnan, D’Artagnan,” cried Aramis, “you are killing me!”

  “Well, here it is at last!” said D’Artagnan, as he drew the letter from his pocket.