The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [150]
In single file, Athos, D’Artagnan, Grimaud, the innkeeper and his wife proceeded across the public room and went upstairs to the best apartment in the inn, commandeered by D’Artagnan. Mine host and his wife hurried to the cellar, armed with lamps, to take a rapid inventory of their stock. Finding their own property accessible at long last, they faced a hideous spectacle.
Beyond the barricade which Athos had shattered in order to emerge—fagots, planks, kindling wood, logs, beams and empty barrels massed according to the most elaborate arts of obsidional strategy—there were great puddles of olive oil here and deep pools of wine there, over which swam a flotsam and jetsam which, on closer scrutiny, turned out to be the bones of hams consumed. The entire left corner of the cellar revealed a pyramid of empty bottles. A little further along, a barrel, minus its spigot, was spilling the last drops of its crimson blood. Here, as over a battlefield, to quote the bard of antiquity, were destruction and death. Out of fifty long saveloy sausages which once hung from the rafters, only ten remained.
Mine host groaned, mine hostess gasped, then host and hostess screamed to high heaven. So loud were their plaints that, piercing the cellar vault, they actually reached D’Artagnan’s ears. He was much moved but Athos did not even turn his head to listen.
In the cellar a species of fury followed upon amazement and rage. The host, seizing a spit, rushed to the room our friends occupied.
“Wine ho, landlord!” Athos ordered as the innkeeper made his appearance.
“Wine!” the landlord bawled unable to believe his ears. “Why, you have already drunk more than one hundred pistoles’ worth of it. God have mercy upon my soul, I am lost, ruined, destroyed, bankrupt and undone.”
“What will you, we were thirsty!” said Athos.
“Ah, God, Monsieur, if only you had been content to drink! Why did you have to smash my bottles?”
“You yourself edged me into a heap of bottles which collapsed when I leaned against them. You have only yourself to blame.”
“But I have lost all the oil in my cellar.”
“Oil is a sovereign balm for wounds, landlord. My poor lackey Grimaud had to treat the wounds you inflicted upon him.”
“My sausages are all eaten up.”
“I dare say there are plenty of rats in your cellar.”
“You shall pay for all this,” the innkeeper cried in exasperation.
“Oh, you simple fool, you double ass and you triple knave—” Athos rose to his feet, swayed and then subsided, for he had taxed his strength to the utmost. D’Artagnan, riding crop in hand, came to his friend’s rescue.
The host, drawing back, burst into tears.
“Perhaps this will teach you to act more courteously toward the guests God sends your way,” D’Artagnan said sternly.
“God?” the innkeeper sighed. “You mean the Devil, Monsieur.”
“Look here, landlord, if you persist in annoying us I vow the three of us will barricade ourselves in your cellar merely to see whether the damages are as great as you claim.”
“Ay, gentlemen, begging your pardon, I am in the wrong, I admit. But every error finds its forgiveness in the bosom of God! You are noblemen and I but a poor innkeeper. Surely you will have pity on me.”
“If you go on in that strain,” Athos said, “you will break my heart. Already tears are about to flow from my eyes as the wine flowed from the casks in your cellar. We are not the devils we seem, my good man; come, stand up closer and let us talk all this over quietly.”
The landlord approached gingerly.
“Come, my good host, you have nothing to fear.”
“Thank you, Monsieur.”
“Listen, my good man,” Athos continued, “while I recall what happened. As I was about to settle my score, I laid down my purse on the table.”
“Ay, Monsieur.”
“There were sixty pistoles in that purse.”
“Ay, Monsieur.”
“Where is the money?”
“I deposited it at the City Registrar’s; it was supposedly counterfeit money, was it not?”