The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [20]
During his long censure, Porthos and Aramis were shaking with rage; they would cheerfully have strangled Monsieur de Tréville had they not felt that it was the great love he bore them made him speak thus. Occasionally, one or the other would stamp on the carpet or bite his lips to the quick or grasp the hilt of his sword so firmly that his hand paled. Their ordeal was the worse because they knew that Monsieur de Tréville’s voice carried over into the antechamber. There, of course, the assembled musketeers had heard Monsieur de Tréville call for Athos, Porthos and Aramis, and they judged from his tone of voice that he was exceeding wroth. Dozens of eavesdroppers glued their ears to the tapestry covering the partition, shuddering at what they heard. Several glued their ears as near the keyhole as they could, and, by a relay system, repeated their leader’s insults word for word for the benefit of the entire audience. In a trice, from the door of the Captain’s office to the gate on the street, the whole mansion was seething.
“So His Majesty’s Musketeers are arrested by the Cardinal’s Guards, eh?” At heart Monsieur de Tréville was as furious as any of his soldiers. Yet he clipped his words, whetting and sharpening them until they were so many stilettos plunged into the breasts of the culprits.
“Yes, six of the Cardinal’s Guards arrest six Royal Musketeers! God’s death, I know what to do now. I shall go straight to the Louvre, submit my resignation as Captain of the Royal Musketeers and apply for a Lieutenant’s commission in the Cardinal’s Guards. And morbleu! if he refuses, I will turn abbé!”
At these last words, the murmur outside, which had been steadily rising, crescendo, burst into a veritable explosion. Jeers, oaths, curses and blasphemy rent the air; it was morbleu here, sangdieu there, morts de tous les diables, upstairs and down, all over the mansion, with God and Satan serving with their bodily parts as pegs upon which to hang the most violent imprecations. D’Artagnan looked vainly about him for some curtain behind which to hide; failing to find any, he was seized with a wild desire to crawl under the table.
“I beg your pardon, Captain,” said Porthos, flaring up, “but the truth is that we were evenly matched, six to six. They set upon us treacherously and unawares; before we could even draw our swords, two of our men were dead and Athos was grievously wounded. You know Athos, Monsieur! Well, Athos tried to get up on his feet twice and twice he fell down again. Meanwhile, we did not surrender, we were dragged forcibly away. Anyhow, before they got us in jail, we escaped.”
“And Athos?”
“Well, Monsieur, they thought Athos dead and left him lying comfortably on the field of battle. What point was there in carrying off a corpse? There’s the whole story for you. Devil take it, Captain, nobody ever won all the battles he fought in. Pompey the Great lost the Battle of Pharsala, I think, and King Francis the first, who so far as I have heard, was as good as the next man, suffered ignominious defeat at the Battle of Pavia.”
“I have the honor to assure you, Monsieur, that I killed one guardsman with his own sword,” Aramis put in. “Mine was broken at the first parry. I killed him or stabbed him, Monsieur; it is for you to choose which terminology you prefer.”
Monsieur de Tréville appeared to be somewhat mollified:
“I did not know all this,” he admitted. “From what I now hear, I suppose His Eminence was exaggerating.”
Profiting by the fact that his Commanding Officer seemed to have calmed down, Aramis hazarded:
“I beg you Monsieur not to say that Athos is wounded. He would be desperately unhappy if the King should hear of it. The wound is a very serious one; the blade passed through his shoulder and penetrated into his chest. So it is to be feared that—”
Suddenly the door opened, the tapestry curtain was raised and a man stood on the threshold.