The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [154]
“No, I put it into execution that very moment.”
“Ah, don’t tell me!” d’Artagnan cried anxiously.
“I staked him and lost.”
“My horse?”
“Your horse; seven to eight; for want of a point…You know the proverb.”120
“Athos, you’re out of your mind, I swear to you!”
“My dear, you should have told me that yesterday, when I was telling you my stupid stories, and not this morning. So I lost him with all possible equipment and harness.”
“But that’s awful!”
“Wait, you haven’t heard everything yet. I’d make an excellent gambler, if I didn’t get carried away; but I do get carried away, just as when I drink. So I got carried away…”
“But what could you stake? You had nothing left!”
“I did, I did, my friend. We still had that diamond sparkling on your finger. I had noticed it yesterday.”
“This diamond!” cried d’Artagnan, quickly putting his hand to the ring.
“And as I’m a connoisseur, having had several of my own, I had estimated it at a thousand pistoles.”
“I hope,” d’Artagnan said seriously, half dead with fright, “that you made no mention of my diamond?”
“On the contrary, my dear friend. You understand, this diamond became our only resource. With it I could win back our harness and our horses, and, what’s more, enough money for the road.”
“Athos, you make me tremble!” cried d’Artagnan.
“So I mentioned your diamond to my partner, who had also noticed it. Devil take it anyhow, my dear, you wear a star from heaven on your finger, and you don’t want anybody to pay attention to it! Impossible!”
“Finish, my dear, finish!” said d’Artagnan, “for, on my honor, your coolheadedness is killing me!”
“So we divided the diamond into ten parts of a hundred pistoles each.”
“Ah, you’re joking in order to test me!” said d’Artagnan, whom wrath was beginning to seize by the hair as Minerva seized Achilles in the Iliad.121
“No, I’m not joking, mordieu! I’d like to have seen you in my place! It was two weeks since I’d laid eyes on a human face and was there besotting myself in converse with bottles.”
“That’s no reason to go staking my diamond,” replied d’Artagnan, clenching his fist with a nervous spasm.
“Hear how it ended, then. Ten parts of a hundred pistoles each, in ten throws, with no revenge. In thirteen throws I lost everything. Thirteen throws! The number thirteen has always been fatal for me; it was on the thirteenth of July that…”
“Ventrebleu!” cried d’Artagnan, getting up from the table, the day’s story making him forget that of the night before.
“Patience,” said Athos, “I had a plan. The Englishman’s an original, I’d seen him talking with Grimaud in the morning, and Grimaud informed me that he had made him proposals of entering into his service. I stake Grimaud with him, the silent Grimaud, divided into ten portions.”
“A master stroke!” cried d’Artagnan, bursting into laughter in spite of himself.
“Grimaud himself, you understand! And with the ten parts of Grimaud, which aren’t worth a ducaton in all, I win back the diamond. Tell me now if persistence isn’t a virtue.”
“By heaven, this is very funny!” cried the consoled d’Artagnan, holding his sides with laughter.
“You understand that, feeling myself in luck, I immediately began staking on the diamond.”
“Ah, devil take it!” said d’Artagnan, turning gloomy again.
“I won back your harness, then your horse, then my harness, then my horse, then lost again. In short, I recovered your harness, then mine. That’s where we’re at. It was a superb throw, so I stopped there.”
D’Artagnan gasped as if the entire hostelry had been lifted off his chest.
“So I still have my diamond?” he asked timidly.
“Intact, my dear friend! Plus the harnesses of your Bucephalus122 and mine.”
“But what good are our harnesses without horses?”
“I have an idea for them.”
“Athos, you make me tremble.”
“Listen, you haven’t gambled for a long time, have you, d’Artagnan?”
“And I have no desire to gamble.”
“Don’t swear to it. You haven’t gambled for a long time, I said, so you should have a lucky hand.”
“Well, what then?”
“Well, the Englishman and his companion