The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [137]
“Right,” said d’Artagnan, “I’d forgotten he was only an interim musketeer.”
“Does Monsieur still insist on seeing him?”
“More than ever.”
“Well, then, Monsieur has only to take the stairway to the right in the courtyard, third floor, number five.”
D’Artagnan dashed off in the direction indicated and found one of those outside stairways such as we still see today in the courtyards of old inns. But one did not reach the future abbé’s quarters just like that. The access to Aramis’s room was guarded no more nor less than the gardens of Armida.103 Bazin was stationed in the corridor and barred his way with all the more intrepidity in that, after many years of trial, he saw himself at last about to reach the result he had eternally striven for.
Indeed, poor Bazin’s dream had always been to serve a man of the Church, and he awaited impatiently the moment ceaselessly glimpsed in the future when Aramis would finally throw his tabard to the nettles and take the cassock. The young man’s daily renewed promise that the moment was not far off had been the only thing that had kept him in service to a musketeer, a service in which, he said, he could not fail to lose his soul.
Bazin was thus overjoyed. In all probability, this time his master would not retract. The combination of physical pain and moral pain had produced the long-desired effect: Aramis, suffering in both body and soul, had finally rested his eyes and thoughts on religion, and he had taken as a warning from heaven the double accident that had befallen him; that is, the sudden disappearance of his mistress and the wound in his shoulder.
We can well understand that, in his present frame of mind, nothing could have been more disagreeable to Bazin than the arrival of d’Artagnan, who might throw his master back into the whirlwind of worldly ideas that had so long carried him away. He thus resolved to defend the door bravely; and since, having been betrayed by the mistress of the inn, he could not say that Aramis was not there, he tried to prove to the new arrival that it would be the height of indiscretion to disturb his master in the pious conference he had entered upon that morning, which, according to Bazin, could not possibly end before evening.
But d’Artagnan took no account of Master Bazin’s eloquent discourse, and as he did not care to enter into polemics with his friend’s valet, he quite simply moved him aside with one hand and with the other turned the knob of door number five.
The door opened, and d’Artagnan went into the room.
Aramis, in a black robe, his head covered with a sort of round and flat cap that bore a fair resemblance to a calotte, was seated at an oblong table covered with scrolls of paper and enormous folio volumes. To his right sat the superior of the Jesuits and to his left the curate of Montdidier. The curtains were half drawn and admitted only a mysterious light, intended for blessed musings. All the worldly objects that might strike the eye when one enters a young man’s room, above all if that young man is a musketeer, had disappeared as if by magic, and, no doubt for fear the sight of them might bring his master back to thoughts of this world, Bazin had spirited away the sword, the pistols, the plumed hat, the embroideries and laces of every sort and kind.
But in their place d’Artagnan thought he made out a scourge hanging in a dark corner from a nail in the wall.
At the noise d’Artagnan made on opening the door, Aramis raised his head and recognized his friend. But, to the young man’s great astonishment, the sight of him did not seem to make a great impression on the musketeer, so detached was his spirit from earthly things.
“Good day, my dear d’Artagnan,” said Aramis. “Believe me, I’m happy to see you.”
“And I you,” said d’Artagnan, “though I’m not quite sure yet that I’m speaking to Aramis.”
“Himself, my friend, himself. But who could have made you doubt it?”
“I was afraid I’d mistaken the room, and I thought at first I was entering some churchman’s quarters. Then another error came over