The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [5]
The reader may imagine my immense joy when in this manuscript, my last hope, I came upon the name of Athos in Chapter II, of Porthos in Chapter III, and of Aramis in Chapter III.
The discovery of a completely unknown manuscript, at a period in which the science of history has progressed to such an extraordinary degree, seemed to me to be almost miraculous. I therefore hastened to ask for permission to print it in order to present my candidacy to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres on the strength of another’s work in case I could not enter the Académie Française on the strength of my own—which is exceedingly probable! I must add that this permission was graciously granted. I do so in order publicly to refute the slanderers who maintain that we live under a government scarcely favorable to men of letters.
It is the first part of this precious manuscript which I now offer to my readers, restoring the fitting title that belongs to it.
Should this first part meet with the success it deserves (of which I have no doubt) I hereby undertake to publish the second part immediately.
In the meantime, since godfathers are second fathers, as it were, I beg the reader to hold myself and not the Comte de la Fère responsible for such pleasure or boredom as he may experience.
This being understood, let us proceed with our story.
THE THREE
MUSKETEERS
I
THE THREE GIFTS OF MONSIEUR D’ARTAGNAN THE ELDER
Meung, a pretty market town on the Loire and the birthplace of Jean de Meung, author of the Romance of the Rose, was more or less used to disturbances of one sort or another because of the troublous times. But on the first Monday in April, 1625, it appeared as though all the armed hosts of the Huguenots had descended upon the place in order to make of it a second La Rochelle. The citizens, seeing the women fleeing over by the main street and hearing the abandoned children crying from the doorsteps, hurriedly donned their breastplates. Then, bolstering up their somewhat uncertain courage by seizing musket, axe or pike, they sped toward the hostelry At the Sign of the Jolly Miller. There they found a compact, ever-swelling group, all agog, milling about, full of curiosity and clamor.
Panics were frequent in France at that period; few days passed without some city or another recording an event of this sort in its archives. There were the nobles fighting among themselves, the King making war upon the Cardinal, and Spain battling against the King. Besides these conflicts, concealed or public, secret or patent, other riots were occasioned by brigands, beggars, Huguenots, wolves and knaves who attacked all comers. The citizenry always took up arms against brigands and wolves and knaves, often against the nobles and Huguenots, sometimes against the King, but never against the Cardinal or Spain.
Accordingly, custom being what it was, on the first Monday in April 1625, the burghers of Meung, hearing the tumult and seeing neither the red-and-yellow standard of Spain nor the livery of the Cardinal Duc de Richelieu, rushed toward The Sign of the Jolly Miller. One glance was enough to make clear to everybody what was causing all this hullabaloo.
A young man—but let us sketch his portrait with one bold stroke of the pen! Imagine, then, a Don Quixote aged eighteen . . . a Don Quixote lacking breastplate, coat-of-mail or thighguards . . . a Don Quixote clad in a woolen doublet,