The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [145]
Was a meal being enjoyed, then Athos presided better than any other, seating his or his host’s guests scrupulously according to their rank, whether they were born to it or had achieved it themselves. There was no detail of heraldry or procedure which he did not have at his fingertips: he knew thoroughly all the noble families of the kingdom, their genealogy, their marriages, their arms, their mottoes and the origins of these. Etiquette possessed no smallest detail with which he was not conversant. He was familiar with all the rights the great landowners enjoyed, he was profoundly versed in the arts of venery and falconry and one day, during a discussion of the subject, he had amazed even King Louis XIII, who was a past master in such matters.
Like all the great nobles of that period, he rode, fenced and shot to perfection. What is more, his education had been so little neglected that even with regard to scholastic studies—which were so direly neglected by the gentlemen of his times—he could afford to smile at the scraps of Latin which Aramis served up and which Porthos pretended to understand. Several times indeed, to the vast astonishment of his friends, when Aramis had allowed some error to escape him, it was Athos who replaced a verb in its right tense and a noun in its appropriate case. Best of all in him was his unassailable probity in an age when soldiers compounded so easily with their religion and consciences, lovers with the rigorous delicacy of our own period, and the poor with God’s Seventh Commandment. Truly, this Athos was a very extraordinary man.
And yet, despite his rare nature, his noble fibre and his unique essence, Athos could occasionally be seen sinking insensibly into the welter of material life much as old men sink into physical and moral imbecility. Athos in his hours of privation—and they were not infrequent—would lose all trace of his brilliance and it was as though a star had suddenly been snuffed out. On such occasions the demigod having vanished, Athos was scarcely a human being. His head lowered, his eyes glazed, his speech lumbering and thick, he would gaze dully for hours at a time at his bottle or glass, or at Grimaud, who, accustomed to obey him by signs, read his every wish and promptly fulfilled it. If the four friends happened to assemble at such a time, the sole contribution Athos made to the conversation was a laconic, effortful comment. To make up for his obstinate silence, Athos alone drank to the capacity of four heavy drinkers without betraying his bibacity save by a more accentuated frown and a deeper melancholy.
D’Artagnan, ever curious about any problem, had often sought to account for this phenomenon but to no avail; how and why Athos lapsed into such stagnation he had failed to ascertain, shrewdly though he observed his friend. Athos never received any letters nor indulged in any activity of which all his friends were not fully aware. Wine could not be held primarily responsible for his dejection; on the contrary, he drank only in order to combat it—alas! in vain. Gambling was not responsible for his atrabilious state, for, unlike Porthos who commented on the vagaries of Chance with songs or curses, Athos, gambling, remained impassive, winner or loser. One night