THE THREE MUSKETEERS - Complete Series: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise da la Valliere & The Man in the Iron Mask. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.
World has to do with the bottles which are on the commode and the wardrobe. Now, will you taste our wine, and without prejudice say what you think of it?”
“Thank you, my friend, thank you; unfortunately, I have just breakfasted.”
“Well,” said Porthos, “arrange the table, Mousqueton, and while we breakfast, d’Artagnan will relate to us what has happened to him during the ten days since he left us.”
“Willingly,” said d’Artagnan.
While Porthos and Mousqueton were breakfasting, with the appetites of convalescents and with that brotherly cordiality which unites men in misfortune, d’Artagnan related how Aramis, being wounded, was obliged to stop at Crevecoeur, how he had left Athos fighting at Amiens with four men who accused him of being a coiner, and how he, d’Artagnan, had been forced to run the Comtes de Wardes through the body in order to reach England.
But there the confidence of d’Artagnan stopped. He only added that on his return from Great Britain he had brought back four magnificent horses—one for himself, and one for each of his companions; then he informed Porthos that the one intended for him was already installed in the stable of the tavern.
At this moment Planchet entered, to inform his master that the horses were sufficiently refreshed and that it would be possible to sleep at Clermont.
As d’Artagnan was tolerably reassured with regard to Porthos, and as he was anxious to obtain news of his two other friends, he held out his hand to the wounded man, and told him he was about to resume his route in order to continue his researches. For the rest, as he reckoned upon returning by the same route in seven or eight days, if Porthos were still at the Great St. Martin, he would call for him on his way.
Porthos replied that in all probability his sprain would not permit him to depart yet awhile. Besides, it was necessary he should stay at Chantilly to wait for the answer from his duchess.
D’Artagnan wished that answer might be prompt and favorable; and having again recommended Porthos to the care of Mousqueton, and paid his bill to the host, he resumed his route with Planchet, already relieved of one of his led horses.
Chapter 26
Aramis and His Thesis
D’Artagnan had said nothing to Porthos of his wound or of his procurator’s wife. Our Bearnais was a prudent lad, however young he might be. Consequently he had appeared to believe all that the vainglorious Musketeer had told him, convinced that no friendship will hold out against a surprised secret. Besides, we feel always a sort of mental superiority over those whose lives we know better than they suppose. In his projects of intrigue for the future, and determined as he was to make his three friends the instruments of his fortune, d’Artagnan was not sorry at getting into his grasp beforehand the invisible strings by which he reckoned upon moving them.
And yet, as he journeyed along, a profound sadness weighed upon his heart. He thought of that young and pretty Mme. Bonacieux who was to have paid him the price of his devotedness; but let us hasten to say that this sadness possessed the young man less from the regret of the happiness he had missed, than from the fear he entertained that some serious misfortune had befallen the poor woman. For himself, he had no doubt she was a victim of the cardinal’s vengeance; and, and as was well known, the vengeance of his Eminence was terrible. How he had found grace in the eyes of the minister, he did not know; but without doubt M. de Cavois would have revealed this to him if the captain of the Guards had found him at home.
Nothing makes time pass more quickly or more shortens a journey than a thought which absorbs in itself all the faculties of the organization of him who thinks. External existence then resembles a sleep of which this thought is the dream. By its influence, time has no longer measure, space has no longer distance. We depart from one place, and arrive at another, that is all. Of the interval passed, nothing remains in the memory but a vague mist in which a thousand confused images of trees, mountains, and landscapes are lost. It was as a prey to this hallucination that d’Artagnan traveled, at whatever pace his horse pleased, the six or eight leagues that separated Chantilly from Crevecoeur, without his being able to remember on his arrival in the village any of the things he had passed or met with on the road.
There only his memory returned to him. He shook his head, perceived the cabaret at which he had left Aramis, and putting his horse to the trot, he shortly pulled up at the door.
This time it was not a host but a hostess who received him. d’Artagnan was a physiognomist. His eye took in at a glance the plump, cheerful countenance of the mistress of the place, and he at once perceived there was no occasion for dissembling with her, or of fearing anything from one blessed with such a joyous physiognomy.
“My good dame,” asked d’Artagnan, “can you tell me what has become of one of my friends, whom we were obliged to leave here about a dozen days ago?”
“A handsome young man, three-or four-and-twenty years old, mild, amiable, and well made?”
“That is he—wounded in the shoulder.”
“Just so. Well, monsieur, he is still here.”
“Ah, PARDIEU! My dear dame,” said d’Artagnan, springing from his horse, and throwing the bridle to Planchet, “you restore me to life; where is this dear Aramis? Let me embrace him, I am in a hurry to see him again.”
“Pardon, monsieur, but I doubt whether he can see you at this moment.”
“Why so? Has he a lady with him?”
“Jesus! What do you mean by that? Poor lad! No, monsieur, he has not a lady with him.”
“With whom is he, then?”
“With the curate of Montdidier and the superior of the Jesuits of Amiens.”
“Good heavens!” cried d’Artagnan, “is the poor fellow worse, then?”
“No, monsieur, quite the contrary; but after his illness grace touched him, and he determined to take orders.”
“That’s it!” said d’Artagnan, “I had forgotten that he was only a Musketeer for a time.”
“Monsieur still insists upon seeing him?”
“More than ever.”
“Well, monsieur has only to take the right-hand staircase in the courtyard, and knock at Number Five on the second floor.”
D’Artagnan walked quickly in the direction indicated, and found one of those exterior staircases that are still to be seen in the yards of our old-fashioned taverns. But there was no getting at the place of sojourn of the future abbe; the defiles of the chamber of Aramis were as well guarded as the gardens of Armida. Bazin was stationed in the corridor, and barred his passage with the more intrepidity that, after many years of trial, Bazin found himself near a result of which he had ever been ambitious.
In fact, the dream of poor Bazin had always been to serve a churchman; and he awaited with impatience the moment, always in the future, when Aramis would throw aside the uniform and assume the cassock. The daily-renewed promise of the young man that the moment would not long be delayed, had alone kept him in the service of a Musketeer—a service in which, he said, his soul was in constant jeopardy.
Bazin was then at the height of joy. In all probability, this time his master would not retract. The union of physical pain with moral uneasiness had produced the effect so long desired. Aramis, suffering at once in body and mind, had at length fixed his eyes and his thoughts upon religion, and he had considered as a warning from heaven the double accident which had happened to him; that is to say, the sudden disappearance of his mistress and the wound in his shoulder.
It may be easily understood that in the present disposition of his master nothing could be more disagreeable to Bazin than the arrival of d’Artagnan, which might cast his master back