The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [141]
“I promptly sought out the best fencing master in Paris, arranged to take lessons from him every day for a whole year and I never missed a single one. Then on the first anniversary of the day I was insulted, I hung my cassock on a peg, assumed the costume of a cavalier and attended a ball given by a lady of my acquaintance which I knew my man was to attend. It was in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, quite close to La Force.
“My officer was there as I had expected; I went up to him as he was singing a love song and ogling a lady. I interrupted him in the middle of the second verse.
“‘Monsieur,’ I asked, ‘do you still object to my returning to a certain house in the Rue Payenne? And do you still intend to cane me if I choose to disobey you?’
“He looked at me with considerable astonishment and said:
“‘Monsieur, what is your business with me? I am sure we have never met.’
“‘I am the little abbé who reads the Lives of the Saints and translates Judith into verse,’ I informed him.
“‘Ah, yes, yes, yes, I remember now,’ the officer replied in a jeering tone, ‘well, what do you want of me?’
“‘I would like you to take a little turn with me outside.’
“‘Tomorrow morning, if you wish, and with the greatest pleasure.’
“‘No, not tomorrow morning but immediately, if you please!’
“‘If you absolutely insist—’
“‘I do.’”
“‘Come along then,’ the officer said. ‘As for you, ladies, pray do not disturb yourselves. Just allow me enough time to kill this gentleman and I will return to finish the last verse of our song.’
“We went out. I took him to the Rue Payenne, to exactly the same spot where a year before, hour for hour, he had paid me the compliment I mentioned. It was a magnificent moonlit night. We drew our swords and at the first pass I killed him outright.”
“The devil!” D’Artagnan exclaimed.
“Now as the ladies did not see their singer return,” Aramis continued, “and as he was found in the Rue Payenne with a great sword wound through his body, it was supposed that I had done him this favor. The matter obviously created some scandal and I had perforce to renounce the cassock, temporarily at least. Athos, whose acquaintance I made at that period, and Porthos, who had shown me several effective tricks of fencing beyond those my master taught me, both prevailed upon me to solicit the uniform of a musketeer. The King had been very fond of my father who fell at the siege of Arras; my request was granted and here I am now. But you can readily understand how the time has come for me to return to the bosom of the Holy Church.”
“But why today rather than yesterday or tomorrow, Aramis? What has happened to you today to give you such sorry ideas?”
“This wound, my dear D’Artagnan, has come to me as a warning from Heaven.”
“Your wound! Nonsense! Your wound is just about healed and I swear it is not your wound that gives you the greatest pain at this moment!”
“What should it be then?” asked Aramis, blushing.
“Another wound, Aramis, the wound in your heart, a deeper and bloodier wound inflicted by a woman.”
In spite of himself a flame sparkled in the eyes of Aramis.
“Come, do not speak of such things,” he declared, masking his emotion under a feigned indifference. “What? I, Aramis, to think of such things and suffer the pangs of love! Vanitas vanitatum, O Vanity of Vanities! So you think I have lost my head—let alone my heart—eh? And for whom? For some gay chambermaid or inviting doxy I may have met in a garrison town? Faugh, you disgust me!”
“Forgive me, Aramis, but I thought you aspired to something nobler than chambermaids and doxies?”
“I, aspire to something higher? I, a poor musketeer, a beggar, a mere anonymous cipher who abominates slavery and finds himself very much of a misfit in a sorry makeshift world?”
D’Artagnan wagged his head dubiously.
“Dust am I and to dust I return,” Aramis went on with increasing melancholy. “Life is replete with humiliations and sorrows; all the threads that bind it to happiness break one by one in the hollow of a man’s hand. And that is truest of the golden threads!” Aramis passed from dejection