The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas [robert munsch read aloud .txt] 📗

M. de Tréville was at the moment in rather ill-humor, nevertheless he saluted the young man politely, who bowed to the very ground; and he smiled on receiving d’Artagnan’s response, the Béarnese accent of which recalled to him at the same time his youth and his country—a double remembrance which makes a man smile at all ages; but stepping toward the antechamber and making a sign to d’Artagnan with his hand, as if to ask his permission to finish with others before he began with him, he called three times, with a louder voice at each time, so that he ran through the intervening tones between the imperative accent and the angry accent.

“Athos! Porthos! Aramis!”

The two Musketeers with whom we have already made acquaintance, and who answered to the last of these three names, immediately quitted the group of which they had formed a part, and advanced toward the cabinet, the door of which closed after them as soon as they had entered. Their appearance, although it was not quite at ease, excited by its carelessness, at once full of dignity and submission, the admiration of d’Artagnan, who beheld in these two men demigods, and in their leader an Olympian Jupiter, armed with all his thunders.

When the two Musketeers had entered; when the door was closed behind them; when the buzzing murmur of the antechamber, to which the summons which had been made had doubtless furnished fresh food, had recommenced; when M. de Tréville had three or four times paced in silence, and with a frowning brow, the whole length of his cabinet, passing each time before Porthos and Aramis, who were as upright and silent as if on parade—he stopped all at once full in front of them, and covering them from head to foot with an angry look, “Do you know what the king said to me,” cried he, “and that no longer ago than yesterday evening—do you know, gentlemen?”

“No,” replied the two Musketeers, after a moment’s silence, “no, sir, we do not.”

“But I hope that you will do us the honor to tell us,” added Aramis, in his politest tone and with his most graceful bow.

“He told me that he should henceforth recruit his Musketeers from among the Guards of Monsieur the Cardinal.”

“The Guards of the cardinal! And why so?” asked Porthos, warmly.

“Because he plainly perceives that his piquette* stands in need of being enlivened by a mixture of good wine.”

* A watered liquor, made from the second pressing of the grape.

The two Musketeers reddened to the whites of their eyes. D’Artagnan did not know where he was, and wished himself a hundred feet underground.

“Yes, yes,” continued M. de Tréville, growing warmer as he spoke, “and his majesty was right; for, upon my honor, it is true that the Musketeers make but a miserable figure at court. The cardinal related yesterday while playing with the king, with an air of condolence very displeasing to me, that the day before yesterday those damned Musketeers, those daredevils—he dwelt upon those words with an ironical tone still more displeasing to me—those braggarts, added he, glancing at me with his tiger-cat’s eye, had made a riot in the Rue Férou in a cabaret, and that a party of his Guards (I thought he was going to laugh in my face) had been forced to arrest the rioters! Morbleu! You must know something about it. Arrest Musketeers! You were among them—you were! Don’t deny it; you were recognized, and the cardinal named you. But it’s all my fault; yes, it’s all my fault, because it is myself who selects my men. You, Aramis, why the devil did you ask me for a uniform when you would have been so much better in a cassock? And you, Porthos, do you only wear such a fine golden baldric to suspend a sword of straw from it? And Athos—I don’t see Athos. Where is he?”

“Ill—”

“Very ill, say you? And of what malady?”

“It is feared that it may be the smallpox, sir,” replied Porthos, desirous of taking his turn in the conversation; “and what is serious is that it will certainly spoil his face.”

“The smallpox! That’s a great story to tell me, Porthos! Sick of the smallpox at his age! No, no; but wounded without doubt, killed, perhaps. Ah, if I knew! S’blood! Messieurs Musketeers, I will not have this haunting of bad places, this quarreling in the streets, this swordplay at the crossways; and above all, I will not have occasion given for the cardinal’s Guards, who are brave, quiet, skillful men who never put themselves in a position to be arrested, and who, besides, never allow themselves to be arrested, to laugh at you! I am sure of it—they would prefer dying on the spot to being arrested or taking back a step. To save yourselves, to scamper away, to flee—that is good for the king’s Musketeers!”

Porthos and Aramis trembled with rage. They could willingly have strangled M. de Tréville, if, at the bottom of all this, they had not felt it was the great love he bore them which made him speak thus. They stamped upon the carpet with their feet; they bit their lips till the blood came, and grasped the hilts of their swords with all their might. All without had heard, as we have said, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis called, and had guessed, from M. de Tréville’s tone of voice, that he was very angry about something. Ten curious heads were glued to the tapestry and became pale with fury; for their ears, closely applied to the door, did not lose a syllable of what he said, while their mouths repeated as he went on, the insulting expressions of the captain to all the people in the antechamber. In an instant, from the door of the cabinet to the street gate, the whole hôtel was boiling.

“Ah! The king’s Musketeers are arrested by the Guards of the cardinal, are they?” continued M. de Tréville, as furious at heart as his soldiers, but emphasizing his words and plunging them, one by one, so to say, like so many blows of a stiletto, into the bosoms of his auditors. “What! Six of his Eminence’s Guards arrest six of his Majesty’s Musketeers! Morbleu! My part is taken! I will go straight to the Louvre; I will give in my resignation as captain of the king’s Musketeers to take a lieutenancy in the cardinal’s Guards, and if he refuses me, morbleu! I will turn abbé.”

At these words, the murmur without became an explosion; nothing was to be heard but oaths and blasphemies. The morbleus, the sang Dieus, the morts touts les diables, crossed one another in the air. D’Artagnan looked for some tapestry behind which he might hide himself, and felt an immense inclination to crawl under the table.

“Well, my Captain,” said Porthos, quite beside himself, “the truth is that we were six against six. But we were not captured by fair means; and before we had time to draw our swords, two of our party were dead, and Athos, grievously wounded, was very little better. For you know Athos. Well, Captain, he endeavored twice to get up, and fell again twice. And we did not surrender—no! They dragged us away by force. On the way we escaped. As for Athos, they believed him to be dead, and left him very quiet on the field of battle, not thinking it worth the trouble to carry him away. That’s the whole story. What the devil, Captain, one cannot win all one’s battles! The great Pompey lost that of Pharsalia; and Francis the First, who was, as I have heard say, as good as other folks, nevertheless lost the Battle of Pavia.”

“And I have the honor of assuring you that I killed one of them with his own sword,” said Aramis; “for mine was broken at the first parry. Killed him, or poniarded him, sir, as is most agreeable to you.”

“I did not know that,” replied M. de Tréville, in a somewhat softened tone. “The cardinal exaggerated, as I perceive.”

“But pray, sir,” continued Aramis, who, seeing his captain become appeased, ventured to risk a prayer, “do not say that Athos is wounded. He would be in despair if that should come to the ears of the king; and as the wound is very serious, seeing that after crossing the shoulder it penetrates into the chest, it is to be feared—”

At this instant the tapestry was raised and a noble and handsome head, but frightfully pale, appeared under the fringe.

“Athos!” cried the two Musketeers.

“Athos!” repeated M. de Tréville himself.

“You have sent for me, sir,” said Athos to M. de Tréville, in a feeble yet perfectly calm voice, “you have sent for me, as my comrades inform me, and I have hastened to receive your orders. I am here; what do you want with me?”

And at these words, the Musketeer, in irreproachable costume, belted as usual, with a tolerably firm step, entered the cabinet. M. de Tréville, moved to the bottom of his heart by this proof of courage, sprang toward him.

“I was about to say to these gentlemen,” added he, “that I forbid my Musketeers to expose their lives needlessly; for brave men are very dear to the king, and the king knows that his Musketeers are the bravest on the earth. Your hand, Athos!”

And without waiting for the answer of the newcomer to this proof of affection, M. de Tréville seized his right hand and pressed it with all his might, without perceiving that Athos, whatever might be his self-command, allowed a slight murmur of pain to escape him, and if possible, grew paler than he was before.

The door had remained open, so strong was the excitement produced by the arrival of Athos, whose wound, though kept as a secret, was known to all. A burst of satisfaction hailed the last words of the captain; and two or three heads, carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, appeared through the openings of the tapestry. M. de Tréville was about to reprehend this breach of the rules of etiquette, when he felt the hand of Athos, who had rallied all his energies to contend against pain, at length overcome by it, fell upon the floor as if he were dead.

“A surgeon!” cried M. de Tréville, “mine! The king’s! The best! A surgeon! Or, s’blood, my brave Athos will die!”

At the cries of M. de Tréville, the whole assemblage rushed into the cabinet, he not thinking to shut the door against anyone, and all crowded round the wounded man. But all this eager attention might have been useless if the doctor so loudly called for had not chanced to be in the hôtel. He pushed through the crowd, approached Athos, still insensible, and as all this noise and commotion inconvenienced him greatly, he required, as the first and most urgent thing, that the Musketeer should be carried into an adjoining chamber. Immediately M. de Tréville opened and pointed the way to Porthos and Aramis, who bore their comrade in their arms. Behind this group walked the surgeon; and behind the surgeon the door closed.

The cabinet of M. de Tréville, generally held so sacred, became in an instant the annex of the antechamber. Everyone spoke, harangued, and vociferated, swearing, cursing, and consigning the cardinal and his Guards to all the devils.

An instant after, Porthos and Aramis re-entered, the surgeon and M. de Tréville alone remaining with the wounded.

At length, M. de Tréville himself returned. The injured man had recovered his senses. The surgeon declared that the situation of the Musketeer had nothing in it to render his friends uneasy, his weakness having been purely and simply caused by loss of blood.

Then M. de Tréville made a sign with his hand, and all retired except d’Artagnan, who did not forget that he had an audience, and with the tenacity of a Gascon remained in his place.

When all had gone out and the door was closed, M. de Tréville, on turning round, found himself alone with the young man. The event which had occurred had in some degree broken the thread of his ideas. He inquired what was the will of his persevering visitor. D’Artagnan then repeated his name, and in an instant recovering all his remembrances of the present and the past, M. de Tréville grasped the situation.

“Pardon me,” said he, smiling, “pardon me my dear compatriot, but I had wholly forgotten you. But what help is there for it! A captain is nothing but a father of a family, charged with even a greater responsibility than the father of an ordinary family. Soldiers are big children; but as I maintain that the orders of the