The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [161]
Athos steadfastly refused to leave his room; he was determined not to lift a finger to secure his campaign outfit.
“We have a whole fortnight before us,” he told his friends, “and if I have found nothing—or rather if nothing has come to find me in the meantime—God will provide. I am too good a Catholic to blow my brains out. Instead I shall pick a juicy quarrel with four of His Eminence’s Guards or with eight Englishmen, fighting until one of them kills me, which, given the odds, cannot fail to happen. It will thus be reported that I died for the King: and I shall have done my duty without the expense of an outfit.”
Porthos continued to stroll and saunter about, here and there, his hands behind his back, tossing his head and proclaiming:
“I shall follow up an idea of mine!”
Aramis, apprehensive and for once neglectful of his personal appearance, maintained an obdurate silence.
From these disastrous details it may readily be seen what desolation reigned in the community.
Like the horses of Hippolytus who shared their master’s fate when Neptune destroyed him, each lackey was as tragically situated as his master. Mousqueton collected a store of breadcrusts for future fare at the table of Porthos . . . Bazin, inveterately religious, forsook his master Aramis and haunted the churches of the city . . . Planchet, of no use to D’Artagnan, spent his time contemplating the flight of flies across the room . . . and Grimaud, whom even the general disaster could not move to break the silence Athos imposed upon him, heaved sigh upon sigh, deep and baleful enough to move stones. . . .
Athos never stirred from his apartment. The three others would venture forth early in the morning and return late at night. They spent the livelong hours in wandering through the streets, their eyes glued to the pavement in hopes of finding some purse a passer-by might carelessly have dropped. Indeed they looked like so many bloodhounds following up a trail. When they met they all wore the same desolate look which, being interpreted, meant:
“Haven’t you found anything?”
At length Porthos, who had been the first to hit upon an idea, pursued it earnestly and was the first to act. One day D’Artagnan saw him strolling toward the Church of Saint Leu and followed him instinctively. Porthos stopped on the threshold of the holy place to twirl his mustache carefully and to smooth out his goatee, a gesture which invariably prefaced the most triumphant intentions. As D’Artagnan was careful to keep hidden, Porthos believed himself unobserved. Porthos went into the church and took his stand against a pillar; D’Artagnan, following him closely, leaned against the other side of it.
The church happened to be very crowded because a popular preacher was delivering a sermon. Porthos took advantage of this to ogle the ladies; thanks to Mousqueton’s kind offices, his outward and visible form gave no hint of his inward and stomachic distress. True his hat looked somewhat worn, his plume was somewhat faded, his galloons were somewhat tarnished and his laces somewhat frayed. But in the dim light of the church such trifles were not noticeable: Porthos was still the same handsome Porthos.
On the bench nearest the pillar Porthos adorned and D’Artagnan used for cover sat a lady, graced with a sort of ripe beauty; she was a whit yellowish, to be sure, and a jot dry, but erect and haughty withal under her black hood. Porthos kept casting furtive glances upon her, then his eyes roved, taking wing like butterflies at large over the nave.
For her part the lady, blushing from time to time, kept darting mercurial glances toward the inconstant Porthos, whereupon Porthos immediately looked everywhere save in her direction. Obviously his attitude piqued the hooded lady; D’Artagnan noted that