The Modern Library Children's Classics by Kenneth Grahame

Author:Kenneth Grahame [Grahame, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8447-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-07-24T04:00:00+00:00

VII

HOME LIFE OF THE MUSKETEERS

When the four young men were outside the Louvre, D’Artagnan consulted his friends on what use he might best make of his share of the forty pistoles. Athos suggested he order a good meal at The Sign of the Fir Cone, an excellent tavern. Porthos urged him to engage a lackey. Aramis proposed that D’Artagnan provide himself with a suitable mistress.

The banquet took place that very day, with the lackey serving them at table, for Athos had ordered the meal and Porthos had furnished the lackey. D’Artagnan’s domestic was called Planchet; he hailed from Picardy. Porthos had picked him up by the bridge at the Quai de la Tournelle, having found him leaning over the parapet and watching the rings that formed as he spat into the water.

Porthos vowed that this occupation gave proof of reflective and contemplative disposition; he therefore engaged him without further recommendation. The musketeer’s noble bearing had won Planchet over immediately and he congratulated himself on serving so elegant a gentleman, but Porthos soon disabused him by explaining that he already had a valet called Mousqueton, that his mode of life though considerable would not support two servants, and that Planchet must enter D’Artagnan’s service. However, when Planchet waited at the dinner given by his master and saw him take out a handful of gold to pay for it, he believed his fortune made and he gave thanks to Heaven for his luck in meeting such a Croesus. He persevered in this illusion even after the feast, for with its remnants he repaired his long abstinence. But when he made his master’s bed that evening, his chimeras vanished like so much smoke. D’Artagnan’s was the only bed in the apartment, which consisted of an antechamber and a bedroom; Planchet had to sleep in the antechamber on a coverlet which D’Artagnan stripped from the bed and had thenceforth to do without.

Athos, for his part, had a valet named Grimaud (the word means ignoramus and, by extension, a scribbler) whom he had trained to serve him in a singularly original manner. He was an extraordinarily taciturn man, this Athos! He had been living in the strictest intimacy with his comrades Porthos and Aramis for five or six years; during all that time they could remember having often seen him smile but they had never once heard him laugh. His words were brief and expressive, conveying all that was meant and no more, with never any embellishments, embroideries or arabesques. His conversation dealt with hard facts, with never an episode or interlude of fantasy.

Although Athos was barely thirty years old, strikingly handsome and remarkably intelligent, he was never known to have had a mistress. He never spoke of women. To be sure he never prevented others from doing so in his presence but this sort of talk, to which he contributed only bitter comment and misanthropic observations, was obviously disagreeable to him. His reserve, his severity and his silence made almost an old man of him.

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