Twenty Years After

by Alexander Dumas

  “Be on my way!” said d’Artagnan, who wasn’t about to leave. “I don’t think so. I’m tired, and so is my horse. Unless you’ve got supper and a bed for us, we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Varlet!”

  “Monsieur!” said d’Artagnan. “Watch your language, if you please. Insult me again, and whether you’re a marquis or a duke, a prince or a king, I’ll spill your guts. Do you hear me?”

  “Here now,” said the leader. “That’s a Gascon talking, and no doubt about it. He’s not who we’re after; we’ve missed it for tonight, so let’s go. Master d’Artagnan,” he said, raising his voice, “we’ll meet again.”

  “That’ll be bad luck for you,” scoffed the Gascon, “because it will be daylight and you’ll be alone.”

  “Fine, fine!” said the voice. “Let’s go, Messieurs!” And the troop, muttering and growling, disappeared into the darkness toward Paris.

  D’Artagnan and Planchet stayed on the defensive for a moment, but as the noise died away, they sheathed their swords. “You see, fool?” said d’Artagnan quietly to Planchet. “It wasn’t us they wanted.”

  “But who, then?” asked Planchet.

  “Ma foi! I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want to get to that Jesuit monastery. Mount up, and let’s go knock on their door. What the devil! They won’t eat us.” And d’Artagnan remounted.

  Planchet did the same, but then an unexpected weight fell on his horse’s withers. “Whoa, Monsieur!” Planchet cried. “There’s a man on my crupper!”

  D’Artagnan turned and saw two forms on Planchet’s horse. “The Devil is after us!” he cried, drawing his sword and preparing to impale the newcomer.

  “No, my dear d’Artagnan,” said the latter. “It isn’t the Devil—it’s me, Aramis. To the gallop, Planchet, and when you reach the end of the village, bear left.”

  So Planchet galloped, carrying Aramis behind him, followed by d’Artagnan, who began to think he was trapped in a fantastic and ridiculous dream.

  X

  The Abbé d’Herblay

  At the end of the village Planchet bore left, as Aramis ordered, and then stopped beneath the monastery’s single lighted window. Aramis jumped down and clapped three times. At once the window opened and a rope ladder rolled down.

  “My dear d’Artagnan,” said Aramis, “if you’d care to climb up, I’d be delighted to receive you.”

  “Ah çà,” said d’Artagnan. “So, this is how you get home?”

  “Well, yes, after nine o’clock,” said Aramis. “Pardieu, the monastery rules are quite strict.”

  “Pardon me, old friend,” said d’Artagnan, “but did you swear pardieu?”

  “Did I?” said Aramis, laughing. “It’s possible. You can’t imagine the bad habits one learns in these cursed monasteries. It’s the wicked ways of these churchmen among whom I’m forced to live! Aren’t you going to climb up?”

  “Go ahead. I’m right behind you.”

  “All right, but in the words of the old cardinal to the late king, ‘Only to show you the way, Sire.’” And Aramis went briskly up the ladder, arriving at the window in a moment.

  D’Artagnan followed, but less quickly. Clearly this means of entrance was not as familiar to him as to his friend.

  “I do beg your pardon,” said Aramis, noting his careful climb. “This is good enough for me, but if I’d had the honor of knowing of your visit, I’d have brought out the gardener’s ladder.”

  “Monsieur,” said Planchet, as d’Artagnan neared the top, “that’s fine for Monsieur Aramis, and even for you, and I might manage it as well—but our two horses can’t climb a ladder.”

  “Take them under that shed, mon ami,” said Aramis, pointing Planchet toward a sort of shack that stood on the edge of the fields. “You’ll find straw and oats for them there.”

  “But what about me?”

  “Come back under the window, clap three times, and we’ll send down some food. Rest easy. Morbleu, it’s not as if we’d let you die of hunger!” Then Aramis pulled up the ladder and shut the window.

  D’Artagnan was looking around the room. Never had he seen a chamber so warlike, and yet so elegant. There were trophy stands in each corner displaying swords of all sorts, and four large paintings representing, armed and armored for battle, Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Lorraine, Cardinal La Valette, and the Archbishop of Bordeaux. Nor did the rest of the furnishings bespeak the abode of an abbot: the hangings were damask, the carpets from Alençon, and the bed especially seemed like that of a fine lady, with lace trim and counterpane. It was hardly the home of a man who’d sworn to gain heaven by abstinence and mortification.

  “You’re looking over my den,” said Aramis. “Ah, mon cher, my apologies, but what would you have? They gave me a cell fit for a monk. What is it you’re looking for?”

  “I’m looking for whoever unrolled the ladder. I don’t see anybody, but ladders don’t unroll themselves.”

  “No, it was Bazin.”

  “Ah ha!” said d’Artagnan.

  “But Monsieur Bazin,” continued Aramis, “is well trained. When he saw I wasn’t returning alone, he discreetly retired. Have a seat, mon cher, and let’s talk.” Aramis pushed a chair toward d’Artagnan, who dropped gratefully into it.

  “You’ll dine with me, I hope?” asked Aramis.

  “Yes, of course,” said d’Artagnan, “and with pleasure. I must admit, the ride has given me the devil of an appetite.”

  “Alas, my poor friend,” said Aramis, “we can offer only meager fare, as we didn’t expect you.”

  “Are you threatening me, as you did at Crèvecœur, with an omelet and tetragons, as I think you called the spinach?”

  “Oh, no,” said Aramis, “by the grace of God and Bazin, I hope we can find something better than that in the pantry of our worthy Jesuit fathers. Bazin, mon ami! Come here.”

  The door opened and Bazin appeared, but when he saw d’Artagnan he gave a gasp that sounded much like a cry of despair.

  “My dear Bazin,” said d’Artagnan, “I was delighted to see you tell a lie with such aplomb, especially in church.”

  “Monsieur,” Bazin said, “I’ve learned from our worthy Jesuit fathers that it’s permissible to state a falsehood when one’s intentions are good.”

  “Fine, fine, Bazin, but d’Artagnan is dying of hunger,” Aramis said. “Give us the best dinner you can find, and above all, the best wine.”

  Bazin bowed obediently, gave a great sigh, and left.

  D’Artagnan turned his eyes from the bedchamber to its owner, from the fine furnishings to their owner’s fine apparel, and said, “Now that we’re alone, my dear Aramis, tell me: where the devil did you drop from when you landed behind Planchet?”

  “Eh, corbleu,” said Aramis, “from heaven, of course!”

  “From heaven?” said d’Artagnan, shaking his head. “You don’t look like someone who came from there any more than you look like someone who’s on his way there.”

  “Mon cher,” said Aramis, with an air of self-satisfaction d’Artagnan had never seen when he was a musketeer, “if I didn’t come from Heaven, I came at least from Paradise, which is close enough.”

  “At last the great debate is settled,” said d’Artagnan. “Up till now the sages had never been able to agree on the location of Paradise. Some said it was on Mount Ararat; others said somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates; but it seems it wasn’t nearly so remote. Paradise is in Noisy-le-Sec, on the site of the château of the Archbishop of Paris, and one enters not by the door, but by the window. From it one descends not the marble steps of a peristyle, but the boughs of a lime tree, and the angel who guards it with a flaming sword isn’t called Gabriel, but the far more earthly Prince de Marcillac.”

  Aramis laughed. “You were always such a jolly companion, mon cher,” he said, “and your witty Gascon humor hasn’t left you. Yes, there’s something in what you say—so long as you don’t think that means Madame de Longueville and I are lovers.�
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  “Plague take me if I do!” said d’Artagnan. “After having been in love so long with Madame de Chevreuse, you’d hardly take up with her mortal enemy.”

  “Yes, quite so,” said Aramis, with a casual air. “Alas, my poor duchess, I loved her well. To be fair, she did well by us, but what would you have? She was exiled from France. He was a hard man to dice against, that damned cardinal!” He glared at the portrait of the former minister. “He’d ordered her confined to the Château de Loches—though I swear he’d rather have had her head, as he did with Chalais, Montmorency, and Cinq-Mars. She escaped that place, fled disguised as a man, along with her maid, that poor Kitty. I even heard a story that, in some village or other, she asked a curate for hospitality, and he, taking her for a cavalier, offered to share the only bed he had with her. She had an amazing way of wearing men’s garb and carrying it off, that dear Marie—I know only one other woman who wears it so well. They even wrote a verse about it: Laboissière, please do tell . . . do you know it?”

  “I don’t. Sing it, old friend.”

  Aramis began again, in his most cavalier tone:

  Laboissière, please do tell

  Don’t I seem like a man?

  My faith, you ride well

  Better even than we can

  Among the shining halberds

  Head held up, she rides out

  Past a regiment of guards

  Just like a cadet, no doubt.

  “Bravo!” said d’Artagnan. “You always did sing beautifully, my dear Aramis. I see that preaching the mass hasn’t spoiled your voice.”

  “Mon cher,” said Aramis, “when I was a musketeer, I stood guard as little as possible—and now that I’m an abbot, I say as few masses as I can. But back to my poor duchess.”

  “Which one? The Duchesse de Chevreuse, or the Duchesse de Longueville?”

  “Mon cher, I already told you there’s nothing between me and the Duchesse de Longueville—a little flirtation, perhaps, but no more. No, I was speaking of the Duchesse de Chevreuse. Have you seen her since her return from Brussels, after the death of the old king?”

  “Indeed I did, and she was still very beautiful.”

  “Yes,” said Aramis. “I saw her then as well. I gave her excellent advice, to which she paid absolutely no attention. I did my best to persuade her that Mazarin was now the queen’s lover, but she refused to believe it, saying she knew Anne of Austria, and the queen was too proud to fall for such a fop. She joined the Duc de Beaufort’s cabal, and then the fop arrested Beaufort and exiled Madame de Chevreuse all over again.”

  “But you know she’s since gotten permission to return,” said d’Artagnan.

  “Yes, she’s back, and is bound to do something else foolish.”

  “But maybe this time she’ll follow your advice.”

  “Oh, this time I haven’t seen her,” said Aramis. “She is much changed.”

  “Not like you, Aramis, for you never change. You still have your handsome black hair, that elegant figure, and those beautiful hands, like a lady’s, really—hands well suited to a prelate.”

  “Yes,” said Aramis, “I do what I can to take care of myself. But it’s hard, mon cher, as I’m getting old—I’m nearly thirty-seven.”

  “Listen, ‘mon cher,’” said d’Artagnan with a smile, “since we’re back together, let’s agree on one thing: what age we shall be for the future.”

  “What do you mean?” said Aramis.

  “I mean that I used to be younger than you by two or three years,” d’Artagnan replied, “but unless I miscalculate, I’m now forty years old.”

  “Really!” said Aramis. “Then I must be the one who’s miscalculated, mon cher, because you’ve always been an admirable mathematician. So, by your reckoning, I must be . . . forty-three! Double devils! Don’t tell them at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, it would ruin me.”

  “Don’t worry,” said d’Artagnan, “I never go there.”

  “But damn me,” cried Aramis, “where is that animal Bazin? Hey, Bazin, you clown! We’re dying of hunger and thirst here.”

  Bazin entered at just that moment, both hands raised to heaven, each holding a bottle. “Finally!” said Aramis. “What took you so long?”

  “I’m here, Monsieur,” said Bazin. “It took me a while to climb all those stairs . . .”

  “This is what comes of being a beadle,” Aramis interrupted, “and wasting valuable time reading your breviary. I warn you that if you spend so much time polishing the relics in the chapel that you forget to polish my sword, I’ll make a bonfire of all your breviaries and pictures of saints and roast you over it.”

  Bazin, shocked, made the sign of the cross with the bottle he held in his right hand. As for d’Artagnan, he was so surprised by the manner and tone of the Abbé d’Herblay compared to that of Aramis the Musketeer, he just stared.

  Bazin quickly covered the table with a damask tablecloth, and then brought out such an array of sweetmeats, tasty morsels, and perfumed dainties that d’Artagnan was astonished. “So, this is what you have when you’re not expecting anyone?”

  “Oh,” said Aramis, “we can always scare up a snack. But I’d heard you were looking for me.”

  “From who?”

  “From Master Bazin, of course, who took you for the Devil, mon cher, and rushed to warn me of the peril to my soul if I risked the society of an officer of musketeers.”

  “Oh, Monsieur!” moaned Bazin, wringing his hands.

  “Enough hypocrisy! You know I don’t like it. You’d be better off opening the window and lowering down a loaf, a chicken, and a bottle to your friend Planchet, who’s been clapping his hands down below for nearly an hour.”

  Planchet, having fed and watered the horses, was in fact waiting under the window, where he’d repeated the specified signal two or three times.

  Bazin obeyed, tying the three designated items to a rope and lowering them to Planchet, who, quite satisfied, immediately retired to the shed.

  “And now, let us eat,” said Aramis.

  The two friends sat down at the table, and Aramis began to slice up chicken, partridges, and ham with skill and dash. “Peste,” said d’Artagnan, “you eat well here!”

  “Yes, tolerably well. I have an exemption from Rome for fast-days that the coadjutor got me on account of my health, and I have Lafollone’s former chef as cook. Remember Lafollone?45 He was that crony of the old cardinal who was a famous gourmand, and always prayed after dinner, ‘My God, grant me the grace to properly digest that which I’ve eaten so well.’”

  “That didn’t keep him from dying of indigestion,” d’Artagnan laughed.

  “What would you have?” Aramis shrugged. “No one can escape his destiny!”

  D’Artagnan said, “I hope you won’t mind the indelicate question I’m about to ask.”

  “Ask away—you know that between us, nothing is too delicate.”

  “So, are you rich, now?”

  “Oh, mon Dieu, no! I make about twelve thousand livres a year, plus a small annuity of a thousand crowns granted me by the Prince de Condé.”

  “And how do you earn these twelve thousand livres?” said d’Artagnan. “From your poetry?”

  “No, I gave up poetry, except for the occasional epigram, love sonnet, or drinking song. No, mon cher, I write sermons.”

  “You make money from sermons?”

  “Ah, but they’re excellent sermons, you see! Or so they tell me.”

  “And do you preach them?”

  “No, I sell them.”

  “To whom?”

  “To those of my fellow churchmen who wish to be known as great orators!”

  “Really? And you haven’t been tempted to find such glory for yourself?”

  “I tried it, mon cher, but it’s just not my forte. If I’m in the pulpit, and a pretty woman happens to look at me, I look back; and if she smiles, I smile too. And there goes the sermon! Instead of warning about the torments of hell, I speak of the joys of paradise.
That exact thing happened to me one day in the Church of Saint-Louis in the Marais. A cavalier laughed and mocked me, and I interrupted my sermon to call him a fool. Some of the congregation went outside to gather rocks to stone me, but I spoke so persuasively to the rest that when the others returned, they ended up stoning the cavalier instead of me. Of course, he showed up at my house the next day with a challenge, thinking I was an abbot like other abbots.”

  “And what came of this challenge?” said d’Artagnan, holding his sides from laughing.

  “What came of it was a rendezvous the following night in the Place Royale. Pardieu! I think you know something about that.”

  “Would that by any chance be the ‘insolent dog’ I helped you as second against?” d’Artagnan asked.

  “Exactly. You saw how that turned out.”

  “Was he killed?”

  “I don’t know. But in any case, I gave him absolution in articulo mortis. It is sufficient to kill the body with slaying the soul.”

  Bazin made a gesture of despair that indicated that, while he might approve the theory, he deplored the tone of its expression.

  “Bazin, mon ami, you overlook the fact that I can see you in the mirror, and that I forbade all such signs of approval or disapproval. So, you will do us the favor of serving us some Spanish wine, and then retire. Besides, my friend d’Artagnan has a secret he wishes to share with me. Isn’t that so, d’Artagnan?”

  D’Artagnan nodded, and Bazin withdrew, after placing some Spanish wine on the table.

  The two friends, left alone, remained silent in each other’s presence. Each of them, when he thought he wasn’t observed, risked a glance at the other. Aramis pretended to savor his wine, while d’Artagnan considered how to begin.

  It was Aramis who was first to break the silence.

  XI

  Pas de Deux46

  “What are you thinking about, d’Artagnan,” asked Aramis, “and why does that thought make you smile?”

  “I was thinking that when you were a musketeer you were always acting the abbot, and now that you’re an abbot, you behave like a musketeer.”