The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [142]
“‘Monsieur,’ I said to him, ‘is my going back to a certain house on the rue Payenne as displeasing to you as ever, and will you still give me a caning if I take it into my head to disobey you?’
“The officer looked at me in astonishment, then said: ‘What do you want of me, Monsieur? I do not know you.’
“‘I am,’ I replied, ‘the little abbé who reads the Lives of the Saints and translates Judith into verse.’
“‘Ah, yes, I remember!’ the officer said jeeringly. ‘What do you want of me?’
“‘I want you to take a moment to go for a little stroll with me.’
“‘Tomorrow morning, if you like, and it will be with the greatest pleasure.’
“‘No, not tomorrow morning, if you please, but right now.’
“‘If you absolutely insist…’
“‘Yes, I do insist.’
“‘Let us step out, then. Ladies,’ said the officer, ‘don’t be upset. Only give me a moment to kill this gentleman, and I’ll come back to finish the stanza for you.’
“We went out.
“I brought him to the rue Payenne, to the exact spot where a year ago, hour for hour, he had paid me the compliment I’ve reported to you. It was a superb moonlit night. We drew our swords, and at the first pass, I killed him dead.”
“Devil take it!” said d’Artagnan.
“Now,” Aramis went on, “as the ladies did not see their singer come back, and he was found in the rue Payenne with a great sword stroke through his body, they thought it was I who had done him up like that, and the thing caused a scandal. I was thus forced to renounce the cassock for a while. Athos, whose acquaintance I made at that time, and Porthos, who, beyond my fencing lessons, had taught me a few hearty thrusts, induced me to ask for a musketeer’s tabard. The king had had a great liking for my father, who was killed at the siege of Arras,114 and the tabard was granted me. So you understand that today the moment has come for me to return to the bosom of the Church.”
“And why today rather than yesterday or tomorrow? What’s happened to you today that gives you such nasty ideas?”
“This wound, my dear d’Artagnan, was a warning to me from heaven.”
“This wound? Bah, it’s nearly healed, and I’m sure that’s not what is making you suffer most right now.”
“And what is?” asked Aramis, blushing.
“You have another in your heart, Aramis, a sharper and bloodier one, a wound made by a woman.”
“Ah,” he said, hiding his emotion under a feigned negligence, “don’t speak of such things! Imagine me thinking of such things! Knowing the sorrows of love! Vanitas vanitatem!*115 So my head has been turned, in your opinion, and by whom? By some young seamstress, by some chambermaid, whom I must have courted in garrison! Pah!”
“Forgive me, my dear Aramis, but I thought you aimed a little higher.”
“Higher? And what am I to have so much ambition? A poor musketeer, quite beggarly and obscure, who hates servitude and finds himself completely out of place in the world!”
“Aramis, Aramis!” cried d’Artagnan, looking at his friend with a doubtful air.
“Dust, I return to dust. Life is filled with pain and humiliation,” he went on, waxing gloomy. “The threads that bind it to happiness break one by one in man’s hand, above all the golden threads. Oh, my dear d’Artagnan!” Aramis added, giving his voice a slight tinge of bitterness, “believe me, hide your wounds well when you have them. Silence is the last joy of the unfortunate. Beware of putting anyone on the trail of your sufferings. The curious suck up our tears as flies suck the blood of a wounded buck.”
“Alas, my dear Aramis,” said d’Artagnan, heaving a deep sigh in his turn, “it’s my own story you’re telling there!”
“How’s that?”
“Yes, a woman that I loved, that I adored, has just been taken from me by force. I don’t know where she is, where they’ve taken her. She may be a prisoner, she may be dead.”
“But at least you have the consolation of telling yourself that she has not left you voluntarily; that if you have no news of her, it’s because all communication between you is forbidden, whereas…”
“Whereas…”
“Nothing,” said Aramis, “nothing.”
“So you’re renouncing the world forever? The choice