The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [36]
Cahusac ran to the guard Aramis had killed, took his rapier, and was returning to d’Artagnan; but on his way he met Athos, who had caught his breath during the moment’s pause that d’Artagnan had procured him, and who, for fear d’Artagnan might kill his enemy for him, wanted to take up the fight again.
D’Artagnan understood that it would be offensive to Athos not to let him do so. Indeed, a few seconds later Cahusac fell, his throat run through by the stroke of a sword.
At the same moment, Aramis pressed his sword to the chest of his fallen adversary and forced him to beg for mercy.
There remained Porthos and Biscarat. Porthos produced a thousand fanfaronades, asking Biscarat what time it might be, and complimenting him on the company his brother had just obtained in the regiment of Navarre. But his mockery gained him nothing. Biscarat was one of those men of iron who only fall when dead.
However, it had to end. The watch might come and seize all the combatants, wounded or not, royalists or cardinalists. Athos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan surrounded Biscarat and called on him to surrender. Though alone against them all, and with a sword stroke through the thigh, Biscarat wanted to hold out; but Jussac, who had raised himself on one elbow, called on him to surrender. Biscarat was a Gascon like d’Artagnan; he turned a deaf ear and contented himself with laughing, and between two parries, finding time to point out a place on the ground with the tip of his sword, he said, parodying a verse from the Bible:
“Here dies Biscarat, alone of those who are with him.”
“But you’ve got four men against you; end it, I order you.”
“Ah! if you order it, that’s another thing,” said Biscarat. “Since you’re my commander, I must obey.”
And, leaping back, he broke his sword over his knee, so as not to surrender it, threw the pieces over the convent wall, and crossed his arms, whistling a cardinalist tune.
Bravery is always respected, even in an enemy. The musketeers saluted Biscarat with their swords and put them back in their scabbards. D’Artagnan did the same; then, aided by Biscarat, the only one left standing, he carried Jussac, Cahusac, and the one of Aramis’s adversaries who was merely wounded, under the porch of the convent. The fourth, as we have said, was dead. Then they rang the bell, and, taking four of the five swords, went off drunk with joy to the hôtel of M. de Tréville.
They were seen arm in arm, taking up the whole width of the street, and accosting every musketeer they met, so that in the end they formed a triumphal march. D’Artagnan’s heart was drunk to overflowing; he walked between Athos and Porthos, clutching them tenderly.
“If I’m not yet a musketeer,” he said to his new friends, as they went through the door to the hôtel of M. de Tréville, “at least I’ve been accepted as an apprentice, haven’t I?”
VI
HIS MAJESTY KING LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH
The affair caused a big stir. M. de Tréville scolded his musketeers a great deal aloud, and congratulated them quietly; but, as there was no time to lose in warning the king, M. de Tréville hastened to the Louvre. It was already too late, the king was locked in with the cardinal, and M. de Tréville was told that the king was working and could not receive at the moment. That evening, M. de Tréville went to the king’s games. The king was winning, and as he was quite miserly, he was in excellent humor. And so, catching sight of M. de Tréville from afar, he said:
“Come here, Monsieur le capitaine, come and let me scold you. Do you know that His Eminence came to complain to me about your musketeers, and with such emotion that His Eminence is sick from it this evening? Ah, but what daredevils, what gallows birds your musketeers are!”
“No, Sire,” replied Tréville, who saw at first glance how things would turn out, “no, on the contrary, they