The Three Musketeers (Translated by Richard Pevear) - Alexandre Dumas [50]
This way of acting gave the musketeers a great deal of respect for d’Artagnan’s diplomacy. Planchet was also struck with admiration and said nothing more about quitting.
The lives of the four young men became a common one. D’Artagnan, who had no habits, since he had come from his province and fallen into the midst of a world that was entirely new to him, soon took up the habits of his friends.
They got up towards eight o’clock in the winter, towards six o’clock in the summer, and went to take their orders and the air of events at M. de Tréville’s. D’Artagnan, though he was not a musketeer, did the service of one with a touching punctuality: he was always on guard duty, because he always kept company with the one of his three friends, who mounted guard himself. He was known in the hôtel of the musketeers, and everyone held him to be a good comrade. M. de Tréville, who had appraised him at first glance, and who bore a genuine affection for him, constantly recommended him to the king.
For their part, the three musketeers loved their young friend greatly. The friendship that united the four men, and the need to see each other three or four times a day, either for a duel, or for business, or for pleasure, kept them constantly running after one another like shadows; and one could always come upon the inseparables if one searched between the Luxembourg and the place Saint-Sulpice, or between the rue du Vieux-Colombier and the Luxembourg.
Meanwhile M. de Tréville’s promises were taking their course. One fine day, the king commanded M. le chevalier des Essarts to take d’Artagnan as a cadet in his guards company. D’Artagnan sighed as he put on the uniform, which he would have exchanged at the price of ten years of his existence against the tabard of a musketeer. But M. de Tréville promised him that favor after a two-year novitiate, a novitiate which, moreover, could be shortened, if the occasion presented itself for d’Artagnan to render some service to the king or to perform some brilliant action. D’Artagnan withdrew on that promise, and the next day began his service.
Then it was the turn of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis to mount guard with d’Artagnan when he was on duty. The company of M. le chevalier des Essarts thus acquired four men instead of one on the day it acquired d’Artagnan.
VIII
A COURT INTRIGUE
However, the forty pistoles of King Louis XIII, like all things in this world, having had a beginning, also had an end, and since that end our four companions had fallen into tight straits. At first Athos had supported the association for a time out of his own pocket. Porthos had succeeded him, and, thanks to one of those disappearances to which they were accustomed, had met the needs of all for another fortnight. Finally had come the turn of Aramis, who had complied with good grace, and managed, as he said, to get hold of a few pistoles by selling his theology books.
Then, as usual, they had recourse to M. de Tréville, who gave them some advances on their pay; but on these advances three musketeers who already had many accounts in arrears, and a guard who as yet had none, could not go far.
Finally, when they saw that they would soon run out entirely, they gathered eight or ten pistoles in a last effort, and Porthos gambled on them. Unfortunately, his luck was bad: he lost it all, plus twenty-five pistoles on credit.
Then tight straits became real distress. The hungry men were seen, followed by their valets, roaming the quais and guards’ quarters, gleaning from their outside friends all the dinners they could find; for, according to Aramis, in prosperity one should sow meals right and left, in order to harvest some in adversity.
Athos was invited four times and each time brought along his friends with their lackeys. Porthos had six occasions and let his friends enjoy them equally. Aramis had eight. He was a man, as we have already been able to perceive, of little noise and much work.
As for d’Artagnan, who still knew no one in the capital, he found only a breakfast of chocolate with a priest from his part of the