The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [150]
Of fifty sausages hung from the joists, hardly ten remained.
Then the howls of the host and hostess pierced the cellar’s vault. D’Artagnan himself was moved. Athos did not even turn his head.
But grief gave way to rage. The host armed himself with a spit and, in his despair, rushed into the room to which the two friends had retired.
“Wine!” said Athos, on catching sight of the host.
“Wine?” cried the stupefied host. “Wine? But you’ve drunk more than a hundred pistoles’s worth on me! I’m a ruined man, lost, destroyed!”
“Bah!” said Athos, “we’re constantly going thirsty!”
“If you’d been content with drinking, that would be one thing; but you’ve broken all the bottles.”
“You shoved me into a heap that came crashing down. It’s your fault.”
“All my oil is lost!”
“Oil is a sovereign balm for wounds, and poor Grimaud simply had to bandage the ones you gave him.”
“All my sausages gobbled up!”
“There’s an enormous number of rats in that cellar.”
“You’re going to pay me for it all!” cried the exasperated host.
“You triple rascal!” said Athos, getting up. But he fell back again at once; he had just used up the last of his strength. D’Artagnan came to his aid by raising his riding crop.
The host backed away and dissolved in tears.
“That will teach you,” said d’Artagnan, “to treat the guests God sends you in a more courteous fashion.”
“God?…you mean the devil!”
“My dear friend,” said d’Artagnan, “if you go on making such noise, the four of us will shut ourselves up in your cellar, and we’ll see if the damage is really as great as you say.”
“Very well, gentlemen,” said the host, “I’m wrong, I admit it. But every sin deserves mercy. You are noblemen, and I’m a poor innkeeper, you should take pity on me.”
“Ah, if you talk like that,” said Athos, “you’ll break my heart, and the tears will pour from my eyes the way the wine poured from your barrels. We’re not such devils as we seem. Come here and we’ll talk.”
The host approached uneasily.
“Come, I say, and don’t be afraid,” Athos went on. “At the moment when I was going to pay you, I had put my purse on the table.”
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
“That purse contained sixty pistoles. Where is it?”
“Deposited with the city clerk, Monseigneur: it was said to be counterfeit money.”
“Well, then, have my purse returned to me, and keep the sixty pistoles.”
“But Monseigneur knows very well that the clerk never lets go of what he has taken. If it was counterfeit money, there would still be hope; but unfortunately the coins were good.”
“Settle with him, my good man, it no longer concerns me, the more so as I haven’t got a single livre left.”
“Wait,” said d’Artagnan, “where is Athos’s old horse?”
“In the stable.”
“How much is he worth?”
“Fifty pistoles at the most.”
“He’s worth eighty. Take him, and there’s an end to it.”
“What? You’re selling my horse?” said Athos. “You’re selling my Bajazet? And what will I go campaigning on—Grimaud?”
“I’ve brought you another,” said d’Artagnan.
“Another?”
“And a magnificent one!” cried the host.
“Well, then, if there’s another that’s handsomer and younger, take the old one, and let’s drink!”
“Which wine?” asked the host, thoroughly satisfied.
“The one that’s in the back, near the laths. There are still twenty-five bottles left, all the others got broken in my fall. Bring up six.”
“Why, he’s a tun of a man!” the host said to himself. “If he’d stay just two weeks and pay for what he drinks, I’d be back in business!”
“And don’t forget,” d’Artagnan went on, “to bring up four bottles of the same for the two English gentlemen.”
“Now, d’Artagnan,” said Athos, “while we wait for them to bring us the wine, tell me what’s become