The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [316]
“Alas, dear friend!” said Aramis, “our latest adventures have disgusted me entirely with the life of a man of the sword. This time my choice is made irrevocably: after the siege, I am entering the Lazarists.200 Keep this brevet, d’Artagnan, the profession of arms suits you; you will be a brave and adventurous captain.”
D’Artagnan, his eye moist with gratitude and shining with joy, went back to Athos, whom he found still at table and holding his last glass of Malaga up to the light of the lamp.
“Well,” he said, “they also refused me.”
“That is because no one, my dear friend, is more worthy of it than you.”
He took a pen, wrote d’Artagnan’s name on the brevet, and handed it back to him.
“So I’ll have no more friends,” said the young man. “Alas! nothing but bitter memories…”
And he let his head drop into his hands, while two tears rolled down his cheeks.
“You are young,” replied Athos, “and your bitter memories have time to turn into sweet ones.”
EPILOGUE
La Rochelle, deprived of the help of the English fleet and the division promised by Buckingham, surrendered after a year of siege. On the twenty-eighth of October 1628, the capitulation was signed.
The king made his entry into Paris on the twenty-third of December of the same year. He was given a triumph, as if he was coming back from defeating an enemy and not fellow Frenchmen. He entered by the faubourg Saint-Jacques under archways of greenery.
D’Artagnan took over his rank. Porthos left the service and, in the course of the following year, married Mme Coquenard. The so-coveted coffer contained eight hundred thousand livres.
Mousqueton got a magnificent livery, and on top of that the satisfaction, which he had sought all his life, of mounting behind a gilded carriage.
Aramis, after a trip to Lorraine, disappeared all at once and stopped writing to his friends. It was learned later, through Mme de Chevreuse, who told it to two or three of her lovers, that he had taken holy orders in a monastery in Nancy.
Bazin became a lay brother.
Athos remained a musketeer under d’Artagnan’s command until 1633, at which time, following a trip to the Touraine, he also left the service, under the pretext that he had just come into a small inheritance in Rousillon.
Grimaud followed Athos.
D’Artagnan fought three times with Rochefort and wounded him three times.
“I’ll probably kill you the fourth time,” he said to him, as he offered a hand to get him to his feet.
“It would be better, then, for you and for me, if we stopped here,” replied the wounded man. “Corbleu! I’m more of a friend to you than you think, for from our first meeting on, with one word to the cardinal, I could have had your throat cut.”
This time they kissed each other good-heartedly and with no second thoughts.
Planchet obtained from Rochefort the rank of sergeant in the guards.
M. Bonacieux lived on quite peacefully, perfectly unaware of what had become of his wife and hardly worrying about it. One day he had the imprudence to remind the cardinal of his existence. In response, the cardinal said he would see to it that henceforth he lacked for nothing.
Indeed, the next day M. Bonacieux, having left his house at seven o’clock in the evening to go to the Louvre, never reappeared again on the rue des Fossoyeurs. The opinion of those who seemed best informed was that he was being housed and fed in some royal castle at the expense of His Generous Eminence.
Notes
PREFACE
1. my history of Louis XIV: The two volumes of Dumas’s Louis XIV et son siècle (“Louis XIV and his century”) were published in 1844–45, at about the same time as The Three Musketeers.
2. Memoirs: Three anonymous editions of the pseudo Mémoires de M. d’Artagnan were published between 1700 and 1705, all three bearing fictitious bibliographical addresses: the first “in Cologne, by Pierre Marteau,” the second “in Amsterdam, by Pierre Rouge,” and the third “in Amsterdam, by P. de Coup.” The “memoirs” were actually written by Gatien Courtilz de Sandras (1644?–1712). However,