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By Root 1213 0

he had borne for scholars since childhood. He had less of a grand air than Athos, and his feeling of inferiority in that regard, at the beginning of their relations, had often made him unfair towards that gentleman, whom he attempted to surpass by his splendid outfits. But, with his simple musketeer’s tabard, and merely by the way he threw back his head and advanced his foot, Athos instantly took the place that was his due and relegated the showy Porthos to second rank. Porthos consoled himself for that by filling M. de Tréville’s antechamber and the guards corps at the Louvre with the noise of his successes, which Athos never spoke of, and for the moment, after passing from the nobility of the robe to the nobility of the sword, from the “judgess” to the baroness, it was a question for Porthos of nothing less than a foreign princess who wished him enormously well.

An old proverb says: “Like master, like man.” Let us go on, then, from Athos’s man to Porthos’s man, from Grimaud to Mousqueton.

Mousqueton was a Norman whose master had changed his name from the pacific name of Boniface to the infinitely more sonorous and bellicose Mousqueton.44 He had entered Porthos’s service on condition that he would be housed and clothed only, but in magnificent fashion; he required just two hours a day to devote himself to an industry that was sufficient to provide for his other needs. Porthos had accepted the deal; the thing suited him perfectly. He had doublets made for Mousqueton out of his old clothes and spare cloaks, and, thanks to a highly intelligent tailor, who made these rags like new by turning them inside out, and whose wife was suspected of wishing to bring Porthos down from his aristocratic habits, Mousqueton cut a very fine figure behind his master.

As for Aramis, whose character we believe we have sufficiently introduced, a character moreover which, like that of his companions, we will be able to follow in its development, his lackey was named Bazin. Thanks to his master’s hope of one day entering into orders, he always went dressed in black, as a churchman’s servant should do. He came from Berry, was thirty-five or forty years old, gentle, peaceable, plump, occupied with reading pious works in the moments of leisure his master left him, and in a pinch could prepare a dinner for two, of few dishes, but excellent. Deaf, dumb, and blind to boot, and of the staunchest loyalty.

Now that we know both the masters and the valets, at least superficially, let us go on to the dwellings they occupied.

Athos lived on the rue Férou, two steps from the Luxembourg. His apartment consisted of two small rooms, very decently furnished, in a rooming house whose still young and truly still beautiful hostess uselessly made soft eyes at him. Some fragments of a great past splendor shone here and there on the walls of these modest lodgings: there was a sword, for example, richly damascened, of the sort fashionable in the period of François I, and of which the hilt alone, encrusted with precious stones, might have been worth two hundred pistoles, and yet, in his moments of greatest distress, Athos had never agreed to pawn or sell it. Porthos had long had his heart set on this sword. He would have given ten years of his life to own it.

One day when he had a rendezvous with a duchess, he even tried to borrow it from Athos. Athos, without saying a word, emptied his pockets, collected all his jewels—purses, aiguillettes, and gold chains—and offered it all to Porthos; but, as for the sword, it was sealed in its place and would never leave it until its master himself left his lodgings. Besides his sword, he also had a portrait of a lord from the time of Henri III, dressed with the greatest elegance and wearing the Order of the Holy Spirit,45 and this portrait bore a certain resemblance to Athos in its lineaments, a certain family resemblance, which indicated that this great lord, a chevalier of the king’s orders, was his ancestor.

Finally, a casket of magnificent goldsmith’s work, with the same coat of arms as the sword and the portrait, made a