The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - [Full Version] - (ANNOTATED)

by Alexandre Dumas

  “In other words, you refuse my service, Monsieur,” said the cardinal, vexed, but in a tone that nonetheless conveyed a measure of respect. “Keep your liberty, then, and indulge your likes and your dislikes.”

  “Monseigneur . . .”

  “If you please,” said the cardinal. “I wish you no ill, but you must understand, we have quite enough to do to defend and reward our friends. To our enemies we owe nothing. But I’ll give you some free advice: watch yourself, Monsieur d’Artagnan, because from the moment I withdraw my hand from you, your life isn’t worthy a bent copper.”

  “I’ll do my best, Monseigneur,” replied the Gascon, with his unshakable self-assurance.

  “Remember, if something bad should happen to you,” Richelieu said earnestly, “that I was the one who sought you out, and I did everything I could to protect you.”

  “Whatever happens,” d’Artagnan said, placing his hand on his chest and bowing, “I’ll be eternally grateful to Your Eminence for what you’ve said to me today.”

  “Well, then! As you say, Monsieur d’Artagnan, we’ll meet again after the campaign. I’ll have my eye on you, for I’ll be there too”—the cardinal indicated a magnificent suit of armor he was to wear—“and when we return, one way or another, we shall settle our account.”

  “Ah! Monseigneur!” cried d’Artagnan. “Spare me the weight of your displeasure! Stay neutral, Monseigneur, if you see that I behave as a gallant man should.”

  “Young man,” said Richelieu, “if I am able to say again what I said to you today, I promise I shall do so.”

  But these final words from Richelieu came in a tone that expressed nothing but doubt. This alarmed d’Artagnan more than a threat would have, for it was a warning that carried the ring of truth. The cardinal had been trying to protect him from a real menace. He opened his mouth to reply, but with a haughty gesture, the cardinal dismissed him.

  D’Artagnan took his leave, but at the door his courage almost failed him and he nearly returned. Then he thought of the grave and noble face of Athos: if he accepted the cardinal’s proposal, Athos would deny him his hand, would disown him.

  It was this fear that restrained him, so powerful is the influence of a truly great character on everything around it.

  D’Artagnan went down the same stairway he’d gone up and found Athos and his four musketeers waiting outside the door, where they were beginning to get uneasy. D’Artagnan reassured them with a word, and Planchet ran to notify the other posts that it was pointless to stand guard any longer, as his master had come safely out of the Hôtel Cardinal.

  On their return to Athos’s house, Aramis and Porthos bombarded d’Artagnan with questions about the reason for this strange interview, but d’Artagnan told them only that Monsieur de Richelieu had sent for him to offer him a position of ensign in his guards, which he’d refused.

  “And with good reason!” cried Porthos and Aramis, with one voice.

  Athos fell into a profound reverie and would reply to nothing. But when he and d’Artagnan were alone, he said, “You behaved quite properly, d’Artagnan—but you may have done the wrong thing.”

  D’Artagnan sighed deeply, for his inner voice told him the same, and that terrible times were ahead.

  The next day was spent in preparations for departure. D’Artagnan went to pay his respects to Monsieur de Tréville. At that point it was believed that the guards and the musketeers would be only briefly separated, as the king was holding his parlement that evening, and intended to set out the day after. Monsieur de Tréville contented himself with asking d’Artagnan if he needed anything, but d’Artagnan replied proudly that all his needs had been met.

  The Guards of Monsieur des Essarts and the Musketeers of Monsieur de Tréville were friends and companions, and that night they celebrated together. They were parting, and would meet again when it pleased God, and if it pleased God. As may be imagined, they were a rowdy lot, as high anxiety can be warded off only by high spirits.

  The next day, at the first sound of the trumpets, the friends were separated: the musketeers hurried off to the hôtel of Monsieur de Tréville, the guards to that of Monsieur des Essarts. Each captain led his company to the Louvre, where they passed in review before the king.

  The king was melancholy and appeared ill, which moderated his usually haughty manner. In fact, the night before a fever had come over him in the middle of parliament, while he was holding his lit de justice. He had nonetheless decided that he would leave the next day, despite warnings to the contrary. He was determined to have his review of the troops, hoping, by a show of strength, to defeat the illness that was taking hold of him.

  The review over, the guards set off alone on their march. The musketeers had to wait for the king—which gave Porthos, in his splendid outfit and equipment, a chance to take a quick turn in the Rue aux Ours.

  The prosecutor’s wife saw him pass in his new uniform and on his superb horse. She loved Porthos too much to let him depart this way; she made a sign to him to dismount and come to her. Porthos was magnificent: his spurs jingled, his cuirass shone, his sword slapped proudly against his leg. This time the clerks had no urge to laugh, as Porthos looked as if he’d have their ears for souvenirs.

  The musketeer was introduced to Monsieur Coquenard, whose tiny gray eyes glittered with anger at seeing his cousin so resplendent. However, he consoled himself with the thought that everyone said the coming campaign would be brutal, and he hoped, in his secret heart, that Porthos might not survive it.

  Porthos paid his compliments to Master Coquenard; Master Coquenard returned the favor, wishing him every sort of prosperity; and Porthos took his leave. At this, Madame Coquenard couldn’t restrain her tears. No one regarded her grief as the least bit improper, as everyone knew how attached she was to her relatives, as shown by the noisy arguments she always had about them with her husband.

  The real goodbyes were said in Madame Coquenard’s private chamber—and they were heartrending.

  Afterward, the prosecutor’s wife waved her handkerchief after Porthos as long as her eyes could follow him, leaning so far from her window that she threatened to fall out. Porthos received these signs of affection like a man who is used to such things. As he turned the corner, he simply lifted his hat and waved his goodbye.

  Aramis, for his part, wrote a long letter. To whom? No one knew. Kitty, who was waiting in the next room, was to take it with her when she departed that evening for Tours.

  Athos, sip by sip, savored his last bottle of Spanish wine.

  Meanwhile, d’Artagnan was marching with his company. As he left Paris and entered the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, he turned around and waved a cheerful goodbye to the Bastille; but, as he was looking only at the Bastille, he failed to notice Milady, who was mounted nearby on a dun-colored horse. She pointed him out to two toughlooking men, who stepped up to the passing ranks to get a good look at him. When they glanced at her for confirmation, she replied with a sign that said, He’s the one. Then, certain that there could be no slip in the execution of her orders, she pivoted her horse and disappeared.

  The two men followed the company and, on leaving the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, mounted two fully equipped horses, which a groom without livery was holding in readiness for them.

  XLI

  The Siege of La Rochelle

  The Siege of La Rochelle was one of the key political events of the reign of Louis XIII, and one of the greatest military enterprises of the cardinal. It is therefore interesting, and even necessary, to say a few words about it, especially as some of the details of the siege are too important to this story to be passed over in silence.

  The political concerns of the cardinal, as he undertook this siege, were many and varied. We shall consider these first of all, then pass on to his private concerns, which may have had no less influence on His Eminence than the former.

  Of all the cities that Henri IV had awarded to the Huguenots as places of sanctuary, none remained except La Rochelle. This last bu
lwark of Calvinism had to be destroyed, as it was a dangerous leaven in the body politic, constantly fermenting both civil revolt and inviting foreign interference.

  Spanish, English, and Italian malcontents, adventurers of every nation, soldiers of fortune of every sect who answered the call of war, had arrayed themselves under the flag of the Protestants and organized a loose alliance whose branches spread through every part of Europe.

  La Rochelle, which had been elevated to new importance upon the ruin of the other Calvinist cities, became the focus of dissension and a center of ambition. Moreover, it was the last port in the realm of France still open to the English, and by closing it against England, France’s eternal enemy, the cardinal would complete the work begun by Joan of Arc and the Duc de Guise.92

  Thus Bassompierre, who was at the same time Protestant and Catholic—Protestant by conviction, but Catholic as a Commander of the Order of the Holy Ghost—Bassompierrre, German by birth, though a Frenchman at heart—Bassompierre, in short, who was one of the three main French commanders at the siege of La Rochelle, said, while leading several other Protestant nobles to the attack, “You will see, Messieurs, that we shall yet be fools enough to take La Rochelle!”

  And Bassompierre was right. The cannonades of the Isle of Ré foretold the dragonnades of the Cévennes, the later forced conversion of the Huguenots; the fall of La Rochelle was the harbinger of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which Henri IV had decreed to safeguard the Huguenots’ rights.

  But in addition to the political goals of the great minister, whose leveling and centralizing of all power in France is a matter of history, the chronicler must recognize the petty purposes of the lover and the jealous rival.

  Richelieu, as everyone knows, had been in love with the queen; was this love a simple matter of the politics of flattery, or was it genuinely one of those profound passions that Anne of Austria inspired in those around her? No one can say; but in any case, as shown by the earlier events in this history, the Duke of Buckingham had gotten the better of him. Two or three times the cardinal had been completely confounded, particularly in the affair of the diamond studs, thanks in that event to the devotion of the three musketeers and the courage of d’Artagnan.

  So Richelieu’s goal was not only to dispose of an enemy of France, but also to take revenge on a rival. Furthermore, he desired his vengeance to be breathtaking and colossal, worthy in every way of a man who held in his hand, like a sword, the forces of a mighty kingdom.

  Richelieu knew that in battling England, he was battling Buckingham, that by triumphing over England, he triumphed over Buckingham—that, in fact, if he humiliated England in the eyes of Europe, he humiliated Buckingham in the eyes of the queen.

  For his part, Buckingham, while pretending to uphold the honor of England, was driven by motives that mirrored those of the cardinal. Buckingham also was pursuing a private vengeance. He couldn’t, under any pretext, return to France as an ambassador, so he’d resolved to return as a conqueror.

  Thus, the true stake of this game, which two powerful realms played at the whim of two men in love, was nothing more than a look from the eyes of Anne of Austria.

  The first advantage had been gained by the Duke of Buckingham. Arriving unforeseen off the coast of the Isle of Ré, with ninety vessels bearing nearly twenty thousand men, he had surprised the Comte de Toiras, who commanded the island for the king. After a bloody battle, Buckingham’s initial landing had been successful. He had troops on French soil, albeit an island, within a few miles of La Rochelle.

  (It should be mentioned, in passing, that one of the fallen in this battle was the Baron de Chantal. The baron left behind an orphan, a little girl aged eighteen months, who was later to be known as Madame de Sévigné.)93

  On Ré, the Comte de Toiras retreated into the Citadel Saint-Martin with his garrison, throwing a hundred men into a little outwork called the Fort de La Prée.

  This event forced the cardinal to rush his preparations. It was determined that he and the king would take personal command of the siege of La Rochelle, but until they could get there they sent “Monsieur” (the king’s younger brother, Prince Gaston) to direct the initial operations. And they sent all the troops they could muster marching toward the theater of war. It was this vanguard detachment of which d’Artagnan was a part.

  As has been noted, the king was to follow as soon as his lit de justice had been held. But on rising from his court of justice, on June 28th, he was taken with a fever. He was willing to set out nonetheless, but his health deteriorated and he was forced to halt at Villeroy.

  Now, wherever the king stopped, the musketeers stopped too. As a result d’Artagnan, in the guards, found himself separated, at least for a while, from his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. This separation, which he regarded as a mere nuisance, would have been the cause of serious anxiety if he’d known what dangers really surrounded him. However, on the tenth day of September, in the year 1627, he arrived without incident at the army’s camp before the walls of La Rochelle.

  The situation was static: the Duke of Buckingham and his English troops, who held the Isle of Ré, continued to besiege the Citadel Saint-Martin and the Fort de La Prée without success. Hostilities between La Rochelle and the king’s forces had begun that very morning, La Rochelle opening fire on a fort near the city walls that the Duc d’Angoulême94 had had constructed.

  Monsieur des Essarts’s Guards took up lodging on the south side of the siege, at the abbey of the Minimes. However, d’Artagnan, preoccupied by his ambition to become a musketeer, had made few friends among his comrades. He felt rather isolated, and spent a lot of time with his own thoughts.

  His thoughts were not very cheerful. Ever since his arrival in Paris he’d been mixed up in public affairs, but his private affairs hadn’t progressed very far, neither in love nor fortune.

  In amour, the only woman he could have loved was Madame Bonacieux—but she had disappeared, and he’d been unable to discover what had become of her. As for fortune: insignificant though he was, he’d nonetheless managed to make himself an enemy of the cardinal, before whom trembled the mightiest Grands of the realm, starting with the king.

  That man had the power to crush him, and yet he hadn’t done so. To a mind as sharp as d’Artagnan’s, the cardinal’s forbearance was a lamp that lit the way to a brighter future.

  Then again, he’d made one other enemy: perhaps less to be feared, but still, not to be underestimated.

  Milady.

  On the positive side, he’d acquired the protection and esteem of the queen—but the esteem of the queen, at this point, was just another cause for persecution. And her protection, as everyone knew, wasn’t worth much: witness Chalais and Madame Bonacieux.

  What he had clearly gained was the diamond, worth five or six thousand livres, that he wore on his finger. Yet this diamond, assuming that d’Artagnan had ambitions to use it someday as a sign of the queen’s gratitude, had no more value in the meantime than the pebbles he trod under his feet.

  He compared the gem to pebbles, for d’Artagnan made these reflections while taking a solitary walk along a pretty little road that led from the camp to the village of Angoulins. His reflections had carried him farther than he’d intended and the day was darkening, when by the last ray of the setting sun he thought he saw the barrel of a musket glisten from behind a hedge.

  D’Artagnan had a quick eye and a quick mind. He knew that musket hadn’t come there on its own, and that whoever held it wasn’t hidden behind a hedge with friendly intentions. He decided to give it a wide berth—then saw, on the other side of the road, the end of another musket barrel peeking from behind a rock.

  This, evidently, was an ambush.

  The young man glanced at the first musket and saw, with a certain dismay, that it was swiveling in his direction. As soon as it stopped moving, he threw himself to the ground. At the same moment the gun fired and he heard the whistle of a ball passing over his head.

  There wa
s no time to lose. D’Artagnan sprang up with a bound, just as a shot from the second musket scattered the stones from the spot where he’d been lying.

  D’Artagnan was not one of those reckless heroes determined to court a pointless death just so it could be said that he never retreated a single step. Besides, there was no question of courage here: this was an ambush.

  If there’s a third shot, he thought, I’m a dead man!

  He took to his heels, fleeing toward camp, with the swiftness of the men of his region, so renowned for their agility. But despite his speed, the first shooter had had time to reload and fired again—so accurately, this time, that the ball tore d’Artagnan’s hat from his head and carried it ten paces ahead of him. But since d’Artagnan had no other hat, he scooped it up as he ran.

  He arrived at camp pale and panting for breath. He sat down without saying a word to anyone and began to think.

  This event could have had three possible causes.

  The first, and most likely, was that it had been an ambush of the Rochelois, who wouldn’t be sorry to kill one of His Majesty’s Guards, as it would mean one less enemy—and moreover, an enemy who might have a full purse in his pocket.

  D’Artagnan took up his hat, examined the bullet hole, and shook his head. The hole hadn’t been made by a musket-ball, but by the ball of a hunter’s arquebus. The accuracy of the shot had made him suspect the use of such a weapon. So this hadn’t been a military ambuscade, as the ball was the wrong caliber.

  It might be a present from the cardinal. He recalled that just before he’d noticed that gleaming gun-barrel, he’d been wondering at His Eminence’s indulgence toward him.