The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [156]
“Aramis! Porthos!” cried Athos, and he started to laugh.
“What?” asked d’Artagnan, who did not understand his friend’s hilarity.
“Never mind, never mind, let’s go on,” said Athos.
“So, your advice is?…”
“To take the hundred pistoles, d’Artagnan. With the hundred pistoles, we’ll feast till the end of the month. We’ve suffered hardships, you see, and it will be good if we rest a bit.”
“Me, rest? Ah, no, Athos, as soon as I’m in Paris, I’ll set about searching for that poor woman!”
“Well, then, do you think your horse will be as much use to you in that as some good louis d’or? Take the hundred pistoles, my friend, take the hundred pistoles.”
D’Artagnan needed only one reason to give in. This one seemed excellent to him. Besides, he was afraid that if he held out any longer, he would seem egotistical in Athos’s eyes. So he acquiesced and took the hundred pistoles, which the Englishman counted out on the spot.
Then the only thought was of leaving. The peace treaty signed with the innkeeper cost six pistoles, over and above Athos’s old horse. D’Artagnan and Athos took the horses of Planchet and Grimaud, and the two valets set out on foot, carrying the saddles on their heads.
Poorly mounted as the two friends were, they soon got ahead of their valets and arrived at Crèvecoeur. From afar they caught sight of Aramis leaning melancholically on his windowsill and, like “my sister Anne,”125 watching the horizon dust up.
“Ho, hey, Aramis! What the devil are you doing there?” cried the two friends.
“Ah, it’s you, d’Artagnan, it’s you, Athos!” said the young man. “I was thinking how quickly the good things of this world pass, and my English horse, which is riding off and has just disappeared in a swirling cloud of dust, was a living image for me of the fragility of earthly things. Life itself can be summed up in three words: Erat, est, fuit.”*
“Which means at bottom?” asked d’Artagnan, who was beginning to suspect the truth.
“Which means that I’ve just made a fool’s bargain: sixty louis for a horse which, by the way it moves, could make five leagues an hour at a trot.”
D’Artagnan and Athos burst out laughing.
“My dear d’Artagnan,” said Aramis, “don’t hold it too much against me, I beg you. Necessity knows no law; and besides, I’m the first to be punished, since that infamous horse dealer robbed me of at least fifty louis. Ah, the rest of you are good managers, you come on your lackeys’ horses, and have your deluxe horses led by hand, slowly and in short stages.”
Just then a wagon, which for several minutes had been looming up on the road from Amiens, came to a halt, and Grimaud and Planchet could be seen getting out with their saddles on their heads. The wagon was returning empty to Paris, and in exchange for their transportation, the two lackeys had promised to quench the wagoner’s thirst on the way.
“What’s this?” asked Aramis, seeing what was happening. “Nothing but saddles?”
“Now you understand?” asked Athos.
“My friends, it’s just like me. I kept the harness, by instinct. Ho, there, Bazin! Bring my new harness here alongside these others.”
“And what have you done with your curates?” asked d’Artagnan.
“My dear, I invited them to dinner the next day,” said Aramis. “They have exquisite wine here, incidentally. I got them as tipsy as I could. Then the curate forbade me to quit the tabard, and the Jesuit begged me to get him into the musketeers.”
“Without a thesis!” cried d’Artagnan. “Without a thesis! I demand the suppression of the thesis!”
“Since then,” Aramis went on, “I’ve been living quite pleasantly. I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It’s rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I’ll read you the first canto; it’s four hundred verses long and takes one minute.”
“By heaven, my dear Aramis,” said d’Artagnan, who detested verse almost as much as Latin, “add the merit of brevity to the merit of difficulty, and you’ll be sure your poem has at least two