“Bah!” said he, “to what purpose? He is an Englishman.” And
he in his turn went out, a little confused after the combat.
“So,” said he, “I am a land-owner! But how the devil am I to
share the cottage with Planchet? Unless I give him the land,
and I take the chateau, or that he takes the house and I —
nonsense! M. Monk will never allow me to share a house he
has inhabited, with a grocer. He is too proud for that.
Besides, why should I say anything about it to him? It was
not with the money of the company I have acquired that
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property, it was with my mother-wit alone; it is all mine,
then. So, now I will go and find Athos.” And he directed his
steps towards the dwelling of the Comte de la Fere
CHAPTER 37
How D’Artagnan regulated the “Assets” of the
Company before he established its “Liabilities”
“Decidedly,” said D’Artagnan to himself, “I have struck a
good vein. That star which shines once in the life of every
man, which shone for Job and Iris, the most unfortunate of
the Jews and the poorest of the Greeks, is come at last to
shine on me. I will commit no folly, I will take advantage
of it; it comes quite late enough to find me reasonable.”
He supped that evening, in very good humor, with his friend
Athos; he said nothing to him about the expected donation,
but he could not forbear questioning his friend, while
eating, about country produce, sowing, and planting. Athos
replied complacently, as he always did. His idea was that
D’Artagnan wished to become a land-owner, only he could not
help regretting, more than once, the absence of the lively
humor and amusing sallies of the cheerful companion of
former days. In fact, D’Artagnan was so absorbed, that, with
his knife, he took advantage of the grease left at the
bottom of his plate, to trace ciphers and make additions of
surprising rotundity.
The order, or rather license, for their embarkation, arrived
at Athos’s lodgings that evening. While this paper was
remitted to the comte, another messenger brought to
D’Artagnan a little bundle of parchments, adorned with all
the seals employed in setting off property deeds in England.
Athos surprised him turning over the leaves of these
different acts which establish the transmission of property.
The prudent Monk — others would say the generous Monk —
had commuted the donation into a sale, and acknowledged the
receipt of the sum of fifteen thousand crowns as the price
of the property ceded. The messenger was gone. D’Artagnan
still continued reading, Athos watched him with a smile.
D’Artagnan, surprising one of those smiles over his
shoulder, put the bundle in its wrapper.
“I beg your pardon,” said Athos.
“Oh! not at all, my friend,” replied the lieutenant, “I
shall tell you —- ”
“No, don’t tell me anything, I beg you; orders are things so
sacred, that to one’s brother, one’s father, the person
charged with such orders should never open his mouth. Thus
I, who speak to you, and love you more tenderly than
brother, father, or all the world —- ”
“Except your Raoul?”
“I shall love Raoul still better when he shall be a man, and
I shall have seen him develop himself in all the phases of
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his character and his actions — as I have seen you, my
friend.”
“You said, then, that you had an order likewise, and that
you would not communicate it to me.”
“Yes, my dear D’Artagnan.”
The Gascon sighed. “There was a time,” said he, “when you
would have placed that order open upon the table, saying,
`D’Artagnan, read this scrawl to Porthos, Aramis, and to
me.'”
“That is true. Oh! that was the time of youth, confidence,
the generous season when the blood commands, when it is
warmed by feeling!”
“Well! Athos, will you allow me to tell you?”
“Speak, my friend!”
“That delightful time, that generous season, that ruling by
warm blood, were all very fine things, no doubt; but I do