The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [18]
Slovenly, tipsy, scruffy, the king’s musketeers, or rather M. de Tréville’s, spread themselves about the taverns, the promenades, the gambling halls, shouting loudly and twirling their mustaches, clanking their swords, bumping delightedly into M. le cardinal’s guards when they met them, then drawing in the middle of the street with a thousand jests; sometimes killed, but sure then of being mourned and avenged; often killing, but sure then of not rotting in prison, M. de Tréville being there to reclaim them. And so M. de Tréville was praised in all tones, sung in all keys by these men who adored him, and who, gallows birds that they were, trembled before him like schoolboys before their master, obeying at the least word, and ready to get themselves killed in order to wipe out the least reproach.
M. de Tréville had used this powerful lever for the king, first of all, and the king’s friends—and then for himself and his friends. Moreover, in none of the memoirs of that time, which has left so many memoirs, do we find that this worthy gentleman had been accused, even by his enemies—and he had as many among quillsmen as among swordsmen—nowhere, as we said, do we find that this worthy gentleman had been accused of profiting from the cooperation of his henchmen. With a rare genius for intrigue, which made him a match for the best intriguers, he remained an honest man. What’s more, despite great crippling sword strokes and arduous, exhausting exercises, he had become one of the most gallant men about town, one of the most discriminating of ladies’ men, and one of the most refined sweet talkers of his time. The successes of Tréville were spoken of as those of Bassompierre13 had been spoken of twenty years before—and that is saying a lot. The captain of the musketeers was thus admired, feared, and loved, which constitutes the apogee of human fortunes.
Louis XIV absorbed all the lesser stars of his court in his own vast radiance; but his father, a sun pluribus impar,*14 allowed each of his favorites his own personal splendor, each of his courtiers his own individual worth. Besides the king’s levee and the cardinal’s, they counted in Paris then more than two hundred lesser levees that were somewhat select. Among those two hundred lesser levees, that of Tréville was one of the most frequented.
The courtyard of his hôtel, located on the rue du Vieux-Colombier, resembled a camp, starting from six o’clock in the morning in the summer and eight o’clock in the winter. Fifty or sixty musketeers, who apparently took turns there in order to maintain an imposing number, walked about constantly, armed for war and ready for anything. Up and down the length of one of its great stairways, on the site of which our civilization could build an entire house, moved a procession of Paris solicitors seeking some sort of favor, provincial gentlemen anxious to enlist, and lackeys decked out in all colors, who came to bring M. de Tréville messages from their masters. In the antechamber, on long circular benches, rested the elite, that is, those who had been summoned. A buzzing went on there from morning till night, while M. de Tréville, in his office adjacent to this antechamber, received visits, listened to complaints, gave his orders, and, like the king on his balcony at the Louvre, had only to go to his window to pass men and arms in review.
On the day d’Artagnan presented himself, the gathering was impressive, above all for a provincial fresh from his province: true, this provincial was a Gascon, and especially at that time d’Artagnan’s compatriots had the reputation of not being easily daunted.