The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [215]
“God bless us,” cried D’Artagnan, “you fellows could not have arrived more opportunely. The food on the table must still be piping hot—” he turned to appeal to the guardsmen, “don’t you think so, gentlemen?” Then he presented them to his friends.
“So we are banqueting, eh?” Porthos asked.
“I hope there are no women at your dinner,” Aramis observed.
“Is there any drinkable wine in your shanty?” Athos inquired.
“Of course, my dear friends, there is your wine.”
“Our wine?” Athos asked in astonishment.
“Yes, the wine you sent me.”
“We sent you wine?”
“Yes . . . you know . . . that little wine from the slopes of Anjou. . . .”
“I know the wine you mean,” Athos conceded.
“It is the wine you prefer,” D’Artagnan insisted.
“Ay, if there is no Champagne or no Chambertin.”
“Well, for want of Champagne or Chambertin you will have to put up with it.”
“So you sent for Anjou wine!” Porthos approved. “Hats off to the connoisseur!”
“No, this is the wine you sent me.”
“What!” exclaimed Athos. “I sent you no wine. Did you, Aramis—”
“No, Athos!”
“Or you, Porthos?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, anyhow, gentlemen, your steward sent me some wine.”
“Our steward?”
“Yes, your steward, Godeau, purveyor to the musketeers.”
“Never mind where it comes from,” Porthos urged. “Let us taste it; if it is any good, let us drink it.”
“No,” Athos warned. “Let us drink no wine that comes to us from an unknown source.”
“Right, Athos!” D’Artagnan agreed. “But did none of you instruct Godeau to send me wine?”
“Certainly not. Yet you say he sent you some as a present from us?”
“Here is the letter,” said D’Artagnan.
“That’s not Godeau’s handwriting!” Athos declared. “I know his writing because I settled regimental mess accounts before we left.”
“An obvious forgery!” Porthos scoffed. “We were never confined to quarters.”
Aramis eyed D’Artagnan reproachfully.
“How could you think we created a disturbance?”
D’Artagnan grew pale and shivered.
“Tu m’effrayes,” said Athos, using the familiar tu of which he was ever sparing. “You frighten me! What on earth is all this about?”
A horrible suspicion crossed D’Artagnan’s mind.
“Come, friends,” he begged. “Let us go back to the canteen at once and find out whether this is another vengeance on the part of that woman?”
It was now Athos who turned pale as the six comrades made for the canteen. There, the first thing D’Artagnan sighted was Brisemont stretched out on the floor, writhing in horrible convulsions. Planchet and Fourreau, completely at a loss, were ministering to him. But it was quite plain that Brisemont was beyond mortal aid. His features contorted in agony:
“Ha!” he cried, “shame upon you! You pretend to pardon me and now you poison me!”
“What? What’s that, you wretch? I poison you?”
“You gave me the wine . . . you told me to drink it . . . you are revenged upon me and I say it is a dastardly act. . . .”
“No, no, Brisemont, do not believe it! I vow, I swear . . .”
“God is above, Monsieur, and He will punish you! May God make you suffer some day just what I am now suffering.”
“I swear by the Bible that I had nothing to do with this!” D’Artagnan kneeled over the dying man. “I never suspected the wine was poisoned; I was about to drink it myself, just as you did.”
“I don’t believe you,” the soldier gasped as he expired, writhing.
Athos shook his head ruefully. Porthos busied himself breaking the bottles and spilling the wine, while Aramis gave somewhat belated orders to fetch a confessor.
“Once again you have saved my life, friends—not only my life but the lives of these two gentlemen!” D’Artagnan motioned toward the guardsmen.