Alexandre Dumas

“ Porthos," cried D'Artagnan, letting his arms fall as a conquered man gives up his sword; "ah! my friend, you are not only a Herculean topographer, you are, still further, a dialectician of the first water."
"Is it not powerfully reasoned?" said Porthos: and he puffed and blew like the conger which D'Artagnan had let slip from his hand.
"And now," said D'Artagnan, "that shabby-looking man, who accompanies M. Getard, is he also of the household of M. Fouquet?"
"Oh! yes," said Porthos, with contempt; "it is one M. Jupenet, or Juponet, a sort of poet."
"Who is come to establish himself here?" ”

“ Fortunately, Louise was so bent in her reverential salute, that she did not catch either Madame's words or the king's smile. In fact, if the poor child, who had so much good taste as alone to have chosen to dress herself in white amidst all her companions--if that dove's heart, so easily accessible to painful emotions, had been touched by the cruel words of Madame, or the egotistical cold smile of the king, it would have annihilated her.
And Montalais herself, the girl of ingenious ideas, would not have attempted to recall her to life; for ridicule kills beauty even. ”

“ D’Artagnan bowed.
“And you know I have a good memory,” said the king.
“Yes, sire; and yet I should desire that that memory should fail your majesty in this instance, in order that you might forget all the miseries I have been forced to spread before your eyes. Your majesty is so much above the poor and the mean, that I hope—”
“My majesty, monsieur, will act like the sun, which looks upon all, great and small, rich and poor, giving luster to some, warmth to others, and life to all. Adieu, Monsieur d’Artagnan—adieu: you are free.” ”

“ And yet you feed them well, Mousqueton, apparently."
"Alas, yes! They can reproach me with nothing in that respect," said Mousqueton, with a sigh; "I have always done what I could for my poor body; I am not selfish." And Mousqueton sighed afresh.
"I wonder whether Mousqueton wants to be a baron, too, as he sighs after that fashion?" thought D'Artagnan.
"Mon Dieu, monsieur!" said Mousqueton, as if rousing himself from a painful reverie; "how happy monseigneur will be that you have thought of him!"
"Kind Porthos!" cried D'Artagnan, "I am anxious to embrace him." ”

“ He struck his brow with his open hand, crying,—“King of France! what a title! People of France! what a heap of creatures! I have just returned to my Louvre; my horses, just unharnessed, are still smoking, and I have created interest enough to induce scarcely twenty persons to look at me as I passed. Twenty! what do I say? no; there were not twenty anxious to see the king of France. There are not even ten archers to guard my palace of residence: archers, people, guards, all are at the Palais Royal! Why, my good God! have not I, the king, the right to ask of you all that?” ”

“ A dark, ironical smile flitted across his lips; he wished to reply, but the effort hastened the snapping of the chord of life--he expired.
"Oh! all this is very frightful!" murmured Raoul: "let us begone, monsieur le chevalier."
"You are not wounded?" asked D'Artagnan.
"Not at all; thank you."
"That's well! Thou art a brave fellow, mordioux! The head of the father, and the arm of Porthos. Ah! if he had been here, good Porthos, you would have seen something worth looking at." Then as if by way of remembrance--
"But where the devil can that brave Porthos be?" murmured D'Artagnan. ”

“ When some great and noble action shall have taught me to value Charles, I shall perhaps recognize his rights to a throne from which we cast the father because he wanted the virtues which his son has hitherto lacked, but, in fact of rights, I only recognize my own; the revolution made me a general, my sword will make me protector, if I wish it. Let Charles show himself, let him present himself, let him enter the competition open to genius, and, above all, let him remember that he is of a race from whom more will be expected than from any other. ”

“ If I could have had any suspicion of the happiness that awaited me, believe me, madame, I would have quitted everything to fall at your feet, as I do at this moment."
"Are we quite alone, monsieur?" asked the marquise, looking round the room.
"Oh, yes, madame, I can assure you of that."
"Really?" said the marquise, in a melancholy tone.
"You sigh!" said Fouquet.
"What mysteries! what precautions!" said the marquise, with a slight bitterness of expression; "and how evident it is that you fear the least suspicion of your amours to escape." ”

“ Athos bowed and prepared to absorb greedily the words which fell, one by one, from the mouth of Monk,—those words rare and precious as the dew in the desert.
“You spoke to me,” said Monk, “of Charles II.; but pray, monsieur, of what consequence to me is that phantom of a king? I have grown old in a war and in a policy which are nowadays so closely linked together, that every man of the sword must fight in virtue of his rights or his ambition with a personal interest, and not blindly behind an officer, as in ordinary wars. For myself, I perhaps desire nothing, but I fear much. ”

“ I am come to our business. This young Prince of Wales, a king without a kingdom, as you have so well said, Planchet, has interested me. I, D'Artagnan, have seen him begging assistance of Mazarin, who is a miser, and the aid of Louis, who is a child, and it appeared to me, who am acquainted with such things, that in the intelligent eye of the fallen king, in the nobility of his whole person, a nobility apparent above all his miseries, I could discern the stuff of a man and the heart of a king. ”

“ They pierce with its point, strike with the flat, cut with the edge; every stroke brings down a man. "For the king!" cried D'Artagnan, to every man he struck at, that is to say, to every man that fell. This cry became the charging word for the musketeers, who, guided by it, joined D'Artagnan. During this time the archers, recovering from the panic they had undergone, charge the aggressors in the rear, and regular as mill strokes, overturn or knock down all that opposed them. The crowd, which sees swords gleaming, and drops of blood flying in the air--the crowd falls back and crushes itself. ”

“ Your majesty is an exile, a fugitive, but you have right on your side; you ought to aspire to combats, dangers, business, and not to rest in heavens."
"Count," said Charles II., with a smile of indescribable sadness, "have you ever heard of a king who reconquered his kingdom with one servant the age of Parry, and with three hundred crowns which that servant carried in his purse?"
"No, sire; but I have heard--and that more than once--that a dethroned king has recovered his kingdom with a firm will, perseverance, some friends, and a million skillfully employed." ”

“ We shall look like portraits from the time of Henry IV. Ah, monsieur! this is sad news you bring us!"
"But, mesdemoiselles, you will be still beautiful!"
"That's no news! Yes, we shall always be beautiful, because nature has made us passable; but we shall be ridiculous, because the fashion will have forgotten us. Alas! ridiculous! I shall be thought ridiculous--I!"
"And by whom?" said Louise, innocently.
"By whom? You are a strange girl, my dear. Is that a question to put to me? I mean everybody; I mean the courtiers, the nobles; I mean the king." ”

“ Planchet reigned with as much majesty in his dining-room as in his shop. He set before his master a frugal, but perfectly Parisian repast: roast meat, cooked at the baker’s, with vegetables, salad, and a dessert borrowed from the shop itself. D’Artagnan was pleased that the grocer had drawn from behind the fagots a bottle of that Anjou wine which during all his life had been D’Artagnan’s favorite wine.
“Formerly, monsieur,” said Planchet, with a smile full of bonhomie, “it was I who drank your wine; now you do me the honor to drink mine.” ”

“ I have no house to be burnt in Bretagne; I have no treasure there that can be taken from me.—No; but I have my skin; that precious skin of M. d’Artagnan, which to him is worth more than all the houses and all the treasures of the world. That skin to which I cling above everything, because it is, everything considered, the binding of a body which encloses a heart very warm and ready to fight, and, consequently, to live. Then, I do desire to live: and, in reality, I live much better, more completely, since I have become rich. ”

“ A red sky signifies nothing to such people but wind and disturbance. White and fleecy clouds upon the azure only say that the sea will be smooth and peaceful. D’Artagnan found the sky blue, the breeze embalmed with saline perfumes, and he said: “I will embark with the first tide, if it be but in a nutshell.”
At Le Croisic as at Piriac, he had remarked enormous heaps of stone lying along the shore. These gigantic walls, diminished every tide by the barges for Belle-Isle, were, in the eyes of the musketeer, the consequence and the proof of what he had well divined at Piriac. ”

“ Give me a minute,—only a minute?”
“So be it; so be it.”
“I will go,” said Raoul, in a low voice, to D’Artagnan; “this hilarity is vile!”
“Monsieur,” replied D’Artagnan, sternly, “you will please to remain where you are. The soldier ought to familiarize himself with all kinds of spectacles. There are in the eye, when it is young, fibers which we must learn how to harden; and we are not truly generous and good save from the moment when the eye has become hardened, and the heart remains tender. Besides, my little Raoul, would you leave me alone here? ”

“ This maneuver was accompanied by a little tacit monologue. "Ah! you want to humble me, do you?--you, whom I have seen so young--you, whom I have saved as I would my own child,--you, whom I have served as I would a God--that is to say, for nothing. Wait awhile! wait awhile! you shall see what a man can do who has suffered the air of the fire of the Huguenots, under the beard of monsieur le cardinal--the true cardinal." At this moment Louis turned round.
"Ah! are you there, Monsieur d'Artagnan?" said he.
D'Artagnan saw the movement and imitated it. "Yes, sire," said he. ”

“ Amongst this noisy crowd of courtiers and worshipers, who did not appear to remember they had conducted to the scaffold at Whitehall the father of the new king, a man, in the garb of a lieutenant of musketeers, looked, with a smile upon his thin, intellectual lips, sometimes at the people vociferating their blessings, and sometimes at the prince, who pretended emotion, and who bowed most particularly to the women, whose bouquets fell beneath his horse’s feet. ”

“ D’Artagnan looked at his prisoner like a man who knows the value of every word, and who fixes that value according to the accent with which it has been pronounced.
“The fact is,” said he, in a whisper to the king, “the general is an obstinate man; he would not take a mouthful of bread, nor swallow a drop of wine, during the two days of our voyage. But as from this moment it is your majesty who must decide his fate, I wash my hands of him.”
Monk, erect, pale, and resigned, waited with his eyes fixed and his arms folded. D’Artagnan turned towards him. ”

“ Do you see any inconvenience in having an army at the end of a year, instead of two regiments? Do you not see that your garrison of to-day will make you partisans at La Rochelle, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse—in short, wherever they may be sent to? Go to the king, monsieur; go; time flies, and D’Artagnan, while we are losing time, is flying, like an arrow, along the high-road. ”

“ Let them be on horseback, let them be on foot, let them carry a larding-pin, a spit, a sword, or nothing—what is it to me?”
“My dear Monsieur d’Artagnan, I beseech you speak no more ill of the king. I am almost in his service, and my father would be very angry with me for having heard, even from your mouth, words injurious to his majesty.”
“Your father, eh! He is a knight in every bad cause. Pardieu! yes, your father is a brave man, a Caesar, it is true—but a man without perception.” ”

“ Mordioux! that’s true,” cried D’Artagnan, coloring; “there is Planchet. I had forgotten Planchet, upon my life! Well! there are my three hundred thousand livres broken into. That’s a pity! it was a round sum, and sounded well. That is true, Athos; I am no longer rich. What a memory you have!”
“Tolerably good; yes, thank God!”
“The worthy Planchet!” grumbled D’Artagnan; “his was not a bad dream! What a speculation! Peste! Well! what is said is said.”
“How much are you to give him?”
“Oh!” said D’Artagnan, “he is not a bad fellow; I shall arrange matters with him. ”

“ It is known that in the Prince de Conde, the aquiline nose rose out sharply and incisively from a brow slightly retreating, rather low than high, and according to the railers of the court,—a pitiless race without mercy even for genius,—constituted rather an eagle’s beak than a human nose, in the heir of the illustrious princes of the house of Conde. This penetrating look, this imperious expression of the whole countenance, generally disturbed those to whom the prince spoke, more than either majesty or regular beauty could have done in the conqueror of Rocroi. ”

“ Aramis then assisted Porthos to dress, piece by piece, with as much celerity as the most skillful valet de chambre could have done. Porthos, half stupefied, let him do as he liked, and confounded himself in excuses. When he was ready, Aramis took him by the hand, and led him, making him place his foot with precaution on every step of the stairs, preventing him running against door-frames, turning him this way and that, as if Aramis had been the giant and Porthos the dwarf. Soul set fire to and animated matter. ”

“ Athos smiled. “So be it,” said he. “But a propos of this cloak, dear D’Artagnan, will you allow me to offer you a little advice?”
“Yes, willingly.”
“You will not be angry?”
“Proceed.”
“When wealth comes to a man late in life or all at once, that man, in order not to change, must most likely become a miser—that is to say, not spend much more money than he had done before; or else become a prodigal, and contract so many debts as to become poor again.”
“Oh! but what you say looks very much like a sophism, my dear philosophic friend.”
“I do not think so. Will you become a miser?” ”

“ Besides, there are in this faubourg a mall, a tennis-court, and a house of Dominicans. Look, that where the handsome steeple rises to the heavens.”
“Well?”
“Next, you see the faubourg is like a separate city, it has its walls, its towers, its ditches; the quay is upon it likewise, and the boats land at the quay. If our little corsair did not draw eight feet of water, we could have come full sail up to Aramis’s windows.”
“Porthos, Porthos,” cried D’Artagnan, “you are a well of knowledge, a spring of ingenious and profound reflections. Porthos, you no longer surprise me, you confound me.” ”

“ D’Artagnan had an opportunity of convincing himself that Porthos, though engineer and topographer, was not deeply versed in affairs of state. His perfect ignorance, with any other, might have passed for well-informed dissimulation. But D’Artagnan knew too well all the folds and refolds of his Porthos, not to find a secret if there were one there; like those regular, minute old bachelors, who know how to find, with their eyes shut, each book on the shelves of their library and each piece of linen in their wardrobe. ”

“ I see youth full of discouragement and fear, I see it timid and despoiled, when it ought to be rich and powerful. I yesterday evening, for example, open the door to a king of England, whose father, humble as I am, I was near saving, if God had not been against me—God, who inspired His elect, Cromwell! I open, I said, the door, that is to say, the palace of one brother to another brother, and I see—stop, sire, that is a load on my heart!—I see the minister of that king drive away the proscribed prince, and humiliate his master by condemning to want another king, his equal. ”

“ Louis rose from his seat, passed his hand over his brow, then, stopping opposite to D'Artagnan, he looked at him with an air at once imperious and kind, "What the devil does he want with me? I wish he would begin!" thought the musketeer.
"Monsieur," said the king, "you know, without doubt, that monsieur le cardinal is dead?"
"I suspected so, sire."
"You know that, consequently, I am master in my own kingdom?"
"That is not a thing that dates from the death of monsieur le cardinal, sire; a man is always master in his own house, when he wishes to be so." ”