The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [46]
Porthos was erratic. When he won, he was insolent and splendiferous; when he lost, he disappeared completely for several days to reappear subsequently with pallid face and drawn features but money in his purse.
As for Aramis, he never placed a wager; he was the unconventional musketeer and the most unconvivial comrade imaginable. Sometimes at dinner when, amid the flush of wine and geniality of conversation, everybody expected to stay on for two or three hours, Aramis would glance at his watch, rise, and, with a gracious smile, take leave of the company. He was off, he said, to consult some casuist with whom he had an appointment, or he must go home to write a treatise and therefore begged his friends not to disturb him. At which Athos would smile in that charming, melancholy way that illumined his noble countenance, and Porthos, draining his glass, vowed that Aramis would never be anything but a village priest.
Planchet, D’Artagnan’s lackey, endured his master’s prosperity with noble zeal, and, his daily wage of thirty sous in his pocket, returned to his lodgings blithe as a chaffinch and a model of affability. But when the winds of adversity began to sweep across the dwelling in the Rue des Fossoyeurs—in other words when the forty pistoles of Louis XIII were more or less gone—he launched into a series of complaints which Athos considered nauseous, Porthos unbecoming, and Aramis ridiculous. Athos advised him to dismiss the fellow; Porthos agreed but insisted that Planchet be roundly thrashed before being dismissed; Aramis contended that a good master should heed only the compliments paid him.
“Easy enough to say,” D’Artagnan objected. “You, Athos, live with Grimaud, you forbid him to talk, your life is a complete silence, and so you never have words with him . . . you, Porthos, live like a magnifico and therefore are a god to your valet Mousqueton . . . and you, Aramis, forever intent upon your theological studies, inspire your valet Bazin, a mild religious sort of man, with the most profound respect. . . . But what about me? I have no settled means and no resources, I am neither a musketeer nor even a guardsman. How on earth can I inspire Planchet with affection, terror or respect?”
His three friends acknowledged that the matter was serious. It was, they added, a family affair. Valets were like wives, they must be placed at outset upon the footing they were subsequently to remain. They advised D’Artagnan to think it all over with great care.
D’Artagnan did exactly that. First, he gave Planchet a cautionary but healthy drubbing; then, Planchet drubbed, he forbade him ever to leave his service, and, for good measure, he told him:
“The future cannot fail to prosper me, I am but waiting for the better times that must inevitably come. If you stay with me, your fortune is made. I am much too good a master to allow you to forfeit it by granting you the dismissal you request.”
D’Artagnan’s firmness won the approval of his three friends, and, equally important, that of Planchet, who said no more about quitting his service. And so their comradely, happy-go-lucky life went on. D’Artagnan, fresh from his province in a world that was bafflingly novel, fell in easily with their habits.
In winter they would rise at eight o’clock, in summer at six, and report immediately at Monsieur de Tréville’s to receive orders and to see how the land lay. Though not a musketeer, D’Artagnan performed this duty with touching punctuality; he mounted guard whenever one or another of his friends was on duty. People at the Hôtel de Tréville knew him and considered him a good comrade. Monsieur de Tréville, who had liked him from the first and who bore him a real affection, never ceased to commend him to the King.
The three musketeers thought the world of him. They would all meet, three or four times daily, whether for dueling, business or pleasure. Each was the other’s shadow and from the Luxembourg to the Place Saint-Sulpice or from the Rue du Vieux-Colombier