The host approached, somewhat uneasily. “Come here, I say, and don’t be afraid,” Athos said. “At the moment I was about to pay you, you may remember, I’d put my purse on the table.”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“That purse contained sixty pistoles. Where is it?”
“In the justice clerk’s office, Monseigneur. They said it was counterfeit money.”
“Very well—retrieve my purse and keep the sixty pistoles. ”
“But Monseigneur knows that justice never lets go of anything it gets its hands on. If it were really counterfeit, we might have some hope, but if it’s genuine money . . .”
“Do the best you can, my worthy. It’s nothing to do with me, especially since I haven’t a livre left.”
“Not so fast,” said d’Artagnan. “Where is Athos’s old horse?” “In the stable.”
“What’s it worth?”
“Fifty pistoles—maybe.”
“It’s worth eighty pistoles. Take it, and call it quits.”
“What do you mean by selling my horse?” said Athos. “My good old Bazajet? How am I going to ride to campaign? On Grimaud?”
“I’ve brought you another,” said d’Artagnan.
“Another?”
“A magnificent steed!” cried the host.
“Fine. If there’s another, stronger and younger, I give you the old. Let’s drink!”
“What will you have?” asked the host, his serenity restored.
“Some of those on the bottom rack. There are still around twenty-five bottles left; all the others were broken by my fall. Bring us six of them.”
“This man is a human barrel!” the host said to himself. “If he stays here a fortnight—and actually pays for what he drinks—my business will be restored twice over.”
“And don’t forget,” said d’Artagnan, “to bring up four bottles of the same for those English nobles.”
“Now,” said Athos, “while we’re waiting on the wine, tell me, d’Artagnan, what’s become of the others.”
D’Artagnan related how he’d found Porthos in bed with a sprain and Aramis in a debate with two theologians. As he finished, the host returned with the requested wine, as well as a ham that, fortunately for him, had been left out of the cellar.
“Excellent,” said Athos, filling his glass and d’Artagnan’s. “Here’s to Porthos and Aramis! But you, my friend, what’s happened to you personally? There’s something sad behind your smile.”
“Alas!” said d’Artagnan. “I’m the unluckiest of us all.”
“You, unlucky, d’Artagnan?” said Athos. “What makes you so unlucky? Tell me about it.”
“Later,” said d’Artagnan.
“Later? Why do you say that? . . . Oh, you think I’m drunk, don’t you, d’Artagnan? Well, understand this: I never think so clearly as when I’ve been drinking. Tell me—I’m all ears.”
D’Artagnan related his adventure with Madame Bonacieux. Athos listened impassively, and then said, when he was finished: “Mere trifles—nothing but trifles.”
“I knew it! You always say ‘trifles,’ Athos. That doesn’t carry much weight from you, who’ve never been in love.”
For a moment, Athos’s eyes flickered, then returned to a wine-dulled vacancy. “Quite so,” he said placidly. “Me, I’ve never been in love.”
“Then admit, stone-heart, that it’s wrong for you to be so hard on those whose hearts are tender,” said d’Artagnan.
“Tender hearts!” spat Athos. “Wounded hearts!”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that love is a lottery in which the winner wins death! Believe me, d’Artagnan, you’re lucky to have lost her. If you take my advice, you’ll lose every time.”
“She seemed so much in love with me!”
“She seemed. ”
“No! She did love me!”
“Child! There’s not a man alive who hasn’t believed, like you, that his mistress loves him, and there’s not a man alive who hasn’t been betrayed by his mistress.”
“Except you, Athos, who’s never had one.”
“That’s true,” said Athos, after a moment of silence. “I’ve never had one. Let’s drink!”
“But since you’re such a philosopher,” said d’Artagnan, “instruct me and support me. I need wisdom and consolation.”
“Consolation? For what?”
“For my misfortune.”
Athos shrugged his shoulders. “Your so-called misfortune is a joke. I wonder what you’d say if you heard a real story of love.”
“Did it happen to you?”
“To me, or to a friend of mine. It hardly matters.”
“Tell it, Athos. Tell it.”
“Let’s drink. The tale will go better.”
“Drink up, then, and speak on.”
“Up and on it shall be,” said Athos, emptying his glass and refilling it. “The two things go marvelously well together.”
“I’m all attention,” said d’Artagnan.
Athos collected himself, and as he did so, d’Artagnan saw his skin grow even paler. He was in that phase of intoxication when less mighty drinkers drop off into sleep. But Athos stayed up, and dreamed without sleeping. There was something almost frightful in this drunken somnambulism.
“You’re sure you want it?” he asked.
“Please go on, Athos,” said d’Artagnan.
“As you wish, then. One of my friends—mark me, not myself,” Athos said, interrupting himself with a melancholy smile. “One of the counts of my province of Berry, a man as noble as a Dandolo or a Montmorency,77 fell in love at age twenty-five with a girl of sixteen, as beautiful as love itself. Though she had the naïveté of youth, her passionate mind glowed with the spirit, not of a woman, but of a poet. She was more than just pleasing, she was . . . intoxicating.
“She lived in a small town with her brother, who was a curate. They’d arrived in the country recently, though no one knew from where. But seeing her so lovely, and her brother so pious, nobody was suspicious of their origin. It was said that they were of good extraction.
“My friend, who was lord of the county, might have seduced her if he desired, or even taken her by force. He was the master there— and who would have come to the aid of two unknown strangers? Unfortunately, he was an honorable man—he married the girl. The fool! The ass! The imbecile!”
“Why do you say that, if he loved her?” asked d’Artagnan.
“Just listen,” said Athos. “He took her to his château and made her the first lady of the province. And in all justice, she bore her new rank supremely well.”
“And then?” asked d’Artagnan.
“And then, one day, while riding to the hunt with her husband,” continued Athos, speaking rapidly in a low voice, “she fell from her horse and swooned. The count leaped to her aid. She seemed to be constricted by her tangled clothes, so he ripped them open with his dagger and thus exposed her shoulder. Can you guess, d’Artagnan, what she had on her shoulder?” said Athos, with a burst of hysterical laughter.
“How could I know?” d’Artagnan said.
“She had a fleur-de-lys,” said Athos. “She’d been branded.” And he tilted back the glass in his hand and emptied it in a single swallow.
“That’s horrible!” cried d’Artagnan. “What are you saying?”
“Only the truth. My friend, the angel was a devil. The poor young girl was a branded criminal—a thief, or worse.”
“What did the count do?”
“The count was a Grand, one of the great nobles; on his land, he had the right of the high and the low justice. He tore up the countess’s dress, tied her hands behind her, and hanged her from a tree.”
“Heavens, Athos! A murder!” cried d’Artagnan.
“Yes, a murder: nothing more nor less,” said Athos, pale as death. “But it seems to me they’ve let me run out of wine.” And Athos grabbed the last bottle by the neck, put it to his mouth, and drained it in a single
draught as if it were an ordinary glass. Then he let his head fall into his hands.
D’Artagnan stood before him, paralyzed. Eventually Athos raised his head. “That has cured me of beautiful, poetic, and loving women,” he said, dropping the pretense of the nameless count. “May God do as much for you! Let’s drink!”
“Then she’s dead?” babbled d’Artagnan.
“Parbleu!” said Athos. “Just give me your glass. Some ham, buffoon!” he cried. “And we have nothing to drink!”
“What about . . . her brother?” d’Artagnan added timidly.
“Her brother?” said Athos.
“Yes—the curate.”
“Ah! I inquired after him, so as to hang him in his turn, but he was ahead of me, having left the curacy somewhat abruptly.”
“But at least you must have figured out who this wretch was?”
“No doubt he was the first lover, and accomplice, of the fair lady—a worthy man who’d pretended to be a curate to help get his mistress married into a secure position. He’ll have been hanged and quartered by now, I should hope.”
“My God! My God!” d’Artagnan repeated, stunned by this horrible tale.
“Have some of this ham, d’Artagnan; it is exquisite,” said Athos, cutting a slice and placing it on the young man’s plate. “Too bad there were only four like it in the cellar! I’d have drunk fifty more bottles.”
D’Artagnan’s head was spinning; he felt he couldn’t handle any more of this insane conversation. He let his head drop onto his hands and pretended to fall asleep.
“None of these youngsters know how to drink nowadays,” said Athos, with a pitying look. “And yet, this is one of the best of them!”
XXVIII
The Return
D’Artagnan was still stunned by Athos’s terrible confession, though many things in that incomplete story were yet unclear. In the first place, it had been made by a man drunk out of his mind, to a listener who was half-drunk out of his mind. However, despite a brain fogged by two or three bottles of burgundy, when d’Artagnan awoke the following morning every one of Athos’s words was graven on his memory, impressed permanently in his mind as if they’d just come from Athos’s lips.
The vagaries in the story raised questions that only made d’Artagnan even more determined to know the answers, and he went to his friend’s room with the firm intention of renewing the conversation of the previous night. But he found Athos restored to his usual composure, in which he was the most impenetrable of men. In any event, the musketeer, after a firm, welcoming handshake, was the first to bring up the matter.
“I was quite drunk last night, my dear d’Artagnan,” he said. “I can tell because this morning my tongue was swollen and my pulse was agitated. I’ll wager I spoke a thousand follies.” As he said this, he examined his friend with a gaze so direct that d’Artagnan was quite embarrassed.
“Not at all,” replied d’Artagnan. “I can’t recall that you said anything out of the ordinary.”
“You surprise me! I thought I’d related a most lamentable story to you.” And he looked at the young man as if trying to read the depths of his heart.
“My faith!” said d’Artagnan. “I must have been even more drunk than you, since I remember nothing of the kind.”
Athos wasn’t persuaded. He said, “You’ve probably noticed, my friend, that everyone has his own style of intoxication, whether sad or merry. My drunkenness is the sad kind, and when I’m far gone I tend to relate all the grim stories my dour old nurse used to fill my head with. That’s my vice—and I’ll admit, it’s a serious one. Otherwise, I’m a good drinker.”
Athos said this so nonchalantly that d’Artagnan was shaken in his conviction. “Oh, so that’s it, is it?” replied the young man. Eager for the truth, he said, “I just remember something as if from a dream. I think we were talking about hanging people.”
“Ah! You see how it is,” Athos said, turning pale, but trying to laugh. “I thought it was that. Hanging is my particular nightmare.”
“Yes, yes,” continued d’Artagnan, “it’s coming back to me now. Yes, it was about . . . wait a moment . . . it was about a woman.”
“Exactly,” replied Athos, face a sickly gray. “That’s my grand story of the fair lady. When I tell that one, I must be nearly dead drunk.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said d’Artagnan. “The story of a fair lady, tall and beautiful, with blue eyes.”
“Yes—who was hanged.”
“By her husband, who was a nobleman of your acquaintance,” continued d’Artagnan, looking intently at Athos.
“Well, that shows how a man can compromise himself when he doesn’t know what he’s saying.” Athos shrugged his shoulders, as if he thought he ought to be pitied. “Decidedly, I must give up getting drunk, d’Artagnan. It’s too vulgar a habit.”
D’Artagnan said nothing.
Athos tried to change the subject. “By the way, thank you for that horse you brought me.”
“Does it suit you?” asked d’Artagnan.
“Yes, but it’s no horse for stamina.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve ridden him ten leagues in less than an hour and a half, at the end of which he was breathing no harder than if I’d just taken him for a turn around the Place Saint-Sulpice.”
“Dear me. I begin to have regrets.”
“Regrets?”
“Yes; I’ve parted with him.”
“How’s that?”
Athos shrugged. “I woke up this morning at six o’clock; you were sleeping like the dead, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was still rather dazed from last night’s debauch. I went downstairs to the public room, where I saw one of our English friends bargaining with a horse-trader for a new mount, his old one having died of a hemorrhage. As I approached, I overheard him offering a hundred pistoles for a worn-out chestnut nag. ‘By God, Monsieur,’ I said, ‘I have a horse to sell too.’
“‘And a very handsome one,’ he said. ‘I saw him yesterday, when your friend’s lackey was leading him.’
“‘Do you think he’s worth a hundred pistoles?’
“‘Yes! Would you sell him to me for that price?’
“‘No, but I’ll game with you for him.’
“‘What game?’
“‘Dice.’
“No sooner said than done—and I lost the horse. But wait! Listen!” continued Athos. “I won back the caparison.”
D’Artagnan made a face.
“This displeases you?” said Athos.
“Yes, I confess it does,” replied d’Artagnan. “That horse was intended to help us win glory on the day of battle. It was a pledge, a keepsake. Athos, you’ve done wrong.”
“My dear friend, put yourself in my place,” said the musketeer. “I was dying of boredom—and besides, I’ve never liked English horses. If all we want to do is look glorious, the saddle will suffice for that—it’s remarkable enough on its own. As to the horse, we can always find some reason for its disappearance. What the devil! A horse is mortal; suppose mine came down with glanders, or even farcy?”
D’Artagnan wasn’t amused.
“It grieves me that you appear so attached to these animals,” continued Athos, “as my story isn’t over.”
“What else have you done?”
“After having lost my own horse, rolling nine against ten—you see how close it was!—the idea came to me of staking yours.”
“But it was just an idea . . . wasn’t it?”
“No, I put it into action on the instant.”
“Ow! And the result?” asked d’Artagnan uneasily.
“I threw, and lost.”
“My horse?”
“Your horse. Seven against eight, just a pip shy—but you know the proverb.”
“Athos, I swear, you must be out of your mind!”
“My friend, you should have told me that last night, when I was telling you foolish stories, and not this morning. Anyway, I lost him, with all his equipag
e.”
“But this is awful!”
“Listen a moment, we’re not at the end yet. I’d make an excellent gambler if I weren’t so impulsive. But there it is; I was impulsive, and . . .”
“But what else could you stake, if you had nothing left?”
“Ah, but I did, I did, my friend! There was still that diamond that glitters on your finger, and which I’d noticed yesterday.”
“This diamond!” cried d’Artagnan, clapping his hand over his ring.
“And as I’m a connoisseur of such things, having once had a few of my own, I estimated its value at a thousand pistoles.”
“Please tell me,” said d’Artagnan, scared half to death, “that you didn’t mention my diamond.”
“On the contrary, dear friend. You must understand, this diamond had become our sole resource; with it, I could regain our horses and their equipment, and maybe some extra money for the road.”
“Athos, you’re making me really nervous,” said d’Artagnan.
“I described your diamond to my opponent, who’d also noticed it. What the devil! You strut around with a star from heaven on your finger and you think nobody pays any attention? Impossible!”
“Please get to the point!” said d’Artagnan. “Upon my honor, you’re killing me with your nonchalance!”
“So, we divided the diamond into ten parts, of a hundred pistoles each.”
“You’re making this all up, aren’t you?” said d’Artagnan. Anger was beginning to take him by the hair, as Minerva takes Achilles in The Iliad. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I certainly am not. Joking? Mordieu! I’d like to see what you would have done in my place! Especially if you hadn’t seen a human face for a fortnight and had no one but bottles for company.”
“That’s no reason for staking my diamond!” said d’Artagnan, clenching his hand nervously.
“Hear me out. Ten parts, at a hundred pistoles each, so therefore ten throws, with no revenge allowed. After thirteen throws, I’d lost it all. Thirteen! That’s always been my unlucky number. It was on the thirteenth of July that I . . .”