"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas, Chapters 1–5

Many citizens, seeing the women flying toward the High Street, leaving their children crying at the open doors, hastened to don the cuirass, and supporting their somewhat uncertain courage with a musket or a partisan, directed their steps toward the hostelry of the Jolly Miller, before which was gathered, increasing every minute, a compact group, vociferous and full of curiosity.

Then, in addition to these concealed or public, secret or open wars, there were robbers, mendicants, Huguenots, wolves, and scoundrels, who made war upon everybody.

It resulted, then, from this habit that on the said first Monday of April, 1625, the citizens, on hearing the clamor, and seeing neither the red-and-yellow standard nor the livery of the Duc de Richelieu, rushed toward the hostel of the Jolly Miller.

Imagine to yourself a Don Quixote of eighteen; a Don Quixote without his corselet, without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don Quixote clothed in a woolen doublet, the blue color of which had faded into a nameless shade between lees of wine and a heavenly azure; face long and brown; high cheek bones, a sign of sagacity...

So that in spite of edicts, ordinances, and decrees, there he is, captain of the Musketeers; that is to say, chief of a legion of Cæsars, whom the king holds in great esteem and whom the cardinal dreads—he who dreads nothing, as it is said.

It was not that the sight of the wretched pony did not excite numerous smiles on the countenances of passers-by; but as against the side of this pony rattled a sword of respectable length, and as over this sword gleamed an eye rather ferocious than haughty, these passers-by repressed their hilarity, or if hilarity prevailed over prudence, they endeavored to laugh only on one side, like the masks of the ancients.

But there, as he was alighting from his horse at the gate of the Jolly Miller, without anyone—host, waiter, or hostler—coming to hold his stirrup or take his horse, D’Artagnan spied, though an open window on the ground floor, a gentleman, well-made and of good carriage, although of rather a stern countenance, talking with two persons who appeared to listen to him with respect.

The gentleman appeared to be enumerating all his qualities to his auditors; and, as I have said, the auditors seeming to have great deference for the narrator, they every moment burst into fits of laughter.

Now, as a half-smile was sufficient to awaken the irascibility of the young man, the effect produced upon him by this vociferous mirth may be easily imagined.

Nevertheless, D’Artagnan was desirous of examining the appearance of this impertinent personage who ridiculed him.

His quiet manner and the ironical expression of his countenance redoubled the mirth of the persons with whom he had been talking, and who still remained at the window.

The stranger, then perceiving that the matter went beyond raillery, drew his sword, saluted his adversary, and seriously placed himself on guard.

“Not before I have killed you, poltroon!” cried D’Artagnan, making the best face possible, and never retreating one step before his three assailants, who continued to shower blows upon him.

“Yes; he struck his pocket and said, ‘We shall see what Monsieur de Tréville will think of this insult offered to his protégé.’”

The host, who was not endowed with great perspicacity, did not observe the expression which his words had given to the physiognomy of the stranger.

“Can Tréville have set this Gascon upon me? He is very young; but a sword thrust is a sword thrust, whatever be the age of him who gives it, and a youth is less to be suspected than an older man,” and the stranger fell into a reverie which lasted some minutes.

His interlocutor, whose head appeared through the carriage window, was a woman of from twenty to two-and-twenty years.

“Do you think so?” answered D’Artagnan, but little convinced, as he knew better than anyone else how entirely personal the value of this letter was, and saw nothing in it likely to tempt cupidity.

Next he went to the Quai de Feraille to have a new blade put to his sword, and then returned toward the Louvre, inquiring of the first Musketeer he met for the situation of the hôtel of M. de Tréville, which proved to be in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier; that is to say, in the immediate vicinity of the chamber hired by D’Artagnan—a circumstance which appeared to furnish a happy augury for the success of his journey.

Many might take for their device the epithet strong, which formed the second part of his motto, but very few gentlemen could lay claim to the faithful, which constituted the first.

Each boasted the bearing and the courage of his own people.

Still further, in spite of sword thrusts which weaken, and painful exercises which fatigue, he had become one of the most gallant frequenters of revels, one of the most insinuating lady’s men, one of the softest whisperers of interesting nothings of his day; the bonnes fortunes of de Tréville were talked of as those of M. de Bassompierre had been talked of twenty years before, and that was not saying a little.

In the antechamber, upon long circular benches, reposed the elect; that is to say, those who were called.

That great man who was so revered by D’Artagnan the elder served as an object of ridicule to the Musketeers of Tréville, who cracked their jokes upon his bandy legs and his crooked back.

We have no need, therefore, to say that D’Artagnan dared not join in the conversation, only he looked with all his eyes and listened with all his ears, stretching his five senses so as to lose nothing; and despite his confidence on the paternal admonitions, he felt himself carried by his tastes and led by his instincts to praise rather than to blame the unheard-of things which were taking place.

D’Artagnan, a little recovered from his first surprise, had now leisure to study costumes and physiognomy.

He was a stout man, of about two- or three-and-twenty, with an open, ingenuous countenance, a black, mild eye, and cheeks rosy and downy as an autumn peach.

The cardinal sets a spy upon a gentleman, has his letters stolen from him by means of a traitor, a brigand, a rascal—has, with the help of this spy and thanks to this correspondence, Chalais’s throat cut, under the stupid pretext that he wanted to kill the king and marry Monsieur to the queen!

Don’t trouble yourself to reveal your good luck; no one asks for your secret—all the world knows your discretion.

“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.”

Everyone spoke, harangued, and vociferated, swearing, cursing, and consigning the cardinal and his Guards to all the devils.

“I had one, sir, and, thank God, such as I could wish,” cried D’Artagnan; “but it was perfidiously stolen from me.”

This great hatred which the young traveler manifested so loudly for this man, who—a rather improbable thing—had stolen his father’s letter from him—was there not some perfidy concealed under this hatred?

Tréville said to himself: “If the cardinal has set this young fox upon me, he will certainly not have failed—he, who knows how bitterly I execrate him—to tell his spy that the best means of making his court to me is to rail at him. Therefore, in spite of all my protestations, if it be as I suspect, my cunning gossip will assure me that he holds his Eminence in horror.”

“And do you always forget your eyes when you run?” asked Porthos.
“No,” replied D’Artagnan, piqued, “and thanks to my eyes, I can see what other people cannot see.”

He began to reflect upon the events that had passed; they were numerous and inauspicious.

It was scarcely eleven o’clock in the morning, and yet this morning had already brought him into disgrace with M. de Tréville, who could not fail to think the manner in which D’Artagnan had left him a little cavalier.

He hoped, by means of loyal excuses, to make a friend of Athos, whose lordly air and austere bearing pleased him much.

The heart of the young Gascon beat as if it would burst through his side—not from fear, God be thanked, he had not the shade of it, but with emulation; he fought like a furious tiger, turning ten times round his adversary, and changing his ground and his guard twenty times.

The glance was of sublime eloquence. Athos would have died rather than appeal for help; but he could look, and with that look ask assistance.