"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas, Chapters 6–14

In the evening M. de Tréville attended the king’s gaming table. The king was winning; and as he was very avaricious, he was in an excellent humor.

Do you know that his Eminence has been making fresh complaints against your Musketeers, and that with so much emotion, that this evening his Eminence is indisposed?

“When will your Majesty deign to receive him?”

As usual, this hôtel was full of soldiers of this company, who hastened to the succor of their comrades.

Excitement was at its height among the Musketeers and their allies, and they even began to deliberate whether they should not set fire to the hôtel to punish the insolence of M. de la Trémouille’s domestics in daring to make a sortie upon the king’s Musketeers.

Now, as the debate between these two nobles might last a long time, each becoming, naturally, more firm in his own opinion, M. de Tréville thought of an expedient which might terminate it quietly.

Let us adjure him, in the name of the God before whom he must perhaps appear, to speak the truth.

“Therefore, sire, your Majesty sees that they are come, quite contrite and repentant, to offer you their excuses.”

D’Artagnan, who understood that it was to him this compliment was addressed, approached, assuming a most deprecating air.

This did not prevent the king from being as complacent to him as possible whenever he met him, or from asking in the kindest tone, “Well, Monsieur Cardinal, how fares it with that poor Jussac and that poor Bernajoux of yours?”

When D’Artagnan was out of the Louvre, and consulted his friends upon the use he had best make of his share of the forty pistoles, Athos advised him to order a good repast at the Pomme-de-Pin, Porthos to engage a lackey, and Aramis to provide himself with a suitable mistress.

He preserved this opinion even after the feast, with the remnants of which he repaired his own long abstinence; but when in the evening he made his master’s bed, the chimeras of Planchet faded away.

He was very taciturn, this worthy signor. Be it understood we are speaking of Athos. During the five or six years that he had lived in the strictest intimacy with his companions, Porthos and Aramis, they could remember having often seen him smile, but had never heard him laugh. His words were brief and expressive, conveying all that was meant, and no more; no embellishments, no embroidery, no arabesques.

He spoke upon all subjects except the sciences, alleging in this respect the inveterate hatred he had borne to scholars from his childhood.

My dear friend, do not forget that I wish to belong to the Church, and that I avoid all mundane opportunities.

At other times he would return home to write a treatise, and requested his friends not to disturb him.

Then, as they had been accustomed to do, they had recourse to M. de Tréville, who made some advances on their pay; but these advances could not go far with three Musketeers who were already much in arrears and a Guardsman who as yet had no pay at all.

A man was introduced of simple mien, who had the appearance of a tradesman.

“Oh, certainly; he is a noble of very lofty carriage, black hair, swarthy complexion, piercing eye, white teeth, and has a scar on his temple.”

D’Artagnan had more than once related to his friends his adventure with the stranger, as well as the apparition of the beautiful foreigner, to whom this man had confided some important missive.

As to Athos, faithful to his system of reticence, he contented himself with interrogating D’Artagnan by a look.

“We must use, and not abuse,” said Aramis, sententiously.

Provincial diffidence, that slight varnish, the ephemeral flower, that down of the peach, had evaporated to the winds through the little orthodox counsels which the three Musketeers gave their friend.

Provincial diffidence, that slight varnish, the ephemeral flower, that down of the peach, had evaporated to the winds through the little orthodox counsels which the three Musketeers gave their friend.

There are in affluence a crowd of aristocratic cares and caprices which are highly becoming to beauty.

“Was it with that intention you followed me?” asked the young woman, with a coquettish smile, whose somewhat bantering character resumed its influence, and with whom all fear had disappeared from the moment in which she recognized a friend in one she had taken for an enemy.

“You see very plainly that there is still danger for you, since a single word makes you tremble; and you confess that if that word were heard you would be ruined. Come, come, madame!” cried D’Artagnan, seizing her hands, and surveying her with an ardent glance, “come, be more generous. Confide in me. Have you not read in my eyes that there is nothing but devotion and sympathy in my heart?”

“Monsieur!” said the young woman, supplicating him and clasping her hands together, “monsieur, in the name of heaven, by the honor of a soldier, by the courtesy of a gentleman, depart! There, there midnight sounds! That is the hour when I am expected.”

“Ah! I wish I had never seen you!” cried D’Artagnan, with that ingenuous roughness which women often prefer to the affectations of politeness, because it betrays the depths of the thought and proves that feeling prevails over reason.

He had at first an idea of crossing by the ferry; but on gaining the riverside, he had mechanically put his hand into his pocket, and perceived that he had not wherewithal to pay his passage.

“What do you want, monsieur?” demanded the Musketeer, recoiling a step, and with a foreign accent, which proved to D’Artagnan that he was deceived in one of his conjectures.

One of the salient points of his character was the search for adventures and a love of romance.

The favorite of two kings, immensely rich, all-powerful in a kingdom which he disordered at his fancy and calmed again at his caprice, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, had lived one of those fabulous existences which survive, in the course of centuries, to astonish posterity.

Lastly, her hair, which, from being light in her youth, had become chestnut, and which she wore curled very plainly, and with much powder, admirably set off her face, in which the most rigid critic could only have desired a little less rouge, and the most fastidious sculptor a little more fineness in the nose.

After this second part of his discourse, fixing his hawk’s eye upon poor Bonacieux, he bade him reflect upon the gravity of his situation.

At bottom the character of M. Bonacieux was one of profound selfishness mixed with sordid avarice, the whole seasoned with extreme cowardice.

“Why, I am ready to tell everything,” cried Bonacieux, “at least, all that I know. Interrogate me, I entreat you!”

“I swear to you, Monsieur Commissary, that you are in the profoundest error, that I know nothing in the world about what my wife had to do, that I am entirely a stranger to what she has done; and that if she has committed any follies, I renounce her, I abjure her, I curse her!”

The officer sprang out of the apartment with that alacrity which all the servants of the cardinal displayed in obeying him.

“Yes, my friend, yes,” said the cardinal, with that paternal tone which he sometimes knew how to assume, but which deceived none who knew him; “and as you have been unjustly suspected, well, you must be indemnified. Here, take this purse of a hundred pistoles, and pardon me.”