cardinal is dead. You must contrive to stand well with M.
Fouquet, if you do not wish to molder away all your life as
I have moldered. It is true you have, fortunately, other
protectors.”
Page 298
Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
“M. le Prince, for instance.”
“Worn out! worn out!”
“M. le Comte de la Fere?”
“Athos! Oh! that’s different; yes, Athos — and if you have
any wish to make your way in England, you cannot apply to a
better person; I can even say, without too much vanity, that
I myself have some credit at the court of Charles II. There
is a king — God speed him!”
“Ah!” cried Raoul, with the natural curiosity of well-born
young people, while listening to experience and courage.
“Yes, a king who amuses himself, it is true, but who has had
a sword in his hand, and can appreciate useful men. Athos is
on good terms with Charles II. Take service there, and leave
these scoundrels of contractors and farmers-general, who
steal as well with French hands as others have done with
Italian hands; leave the little snivelling king, who is
going to give us another reign of Francis II. Do you know
anything of history, Raoul?”
“Yes, monsieur le chevalier.”
“Do you know, then, that Francis II. had always the
earache?”
“No, I did not know that.”
“That Charles IV. had always the headache?”
“Indeed!”
“And Henry III. always the stomach-ache?”
Raoul began to laugh.
“Well, my dear friend, Louis XIV. always has the heartache;
it is deplorable to see a king sighing from morning till
night without saying once in course of the day,
ventre-saint-gris! corboeuf! or anything to rouse one.”
“Was that the reason why you quitted the service, monsieur
le chevalier?”
“Yes.”
“But you yourself, M. d’Artagnan, are throwing the handle
after the axe; you will not make a fortune.”
“Who? I?” replied D’Artagnan, in a careless tone; “I am
settled — I had some family property.”
Raoul looked at him. The poverty of D’Artagnan was
proverbial. A Gascon, he exceeded in ill-luck all the
gasconnades of France and Navarre; Raoul had a hundred times
heard Job and D’Artagnan named together, as the twins
Romulus and Remus. D’Artagnan caught Raoul’s look of
astonishment.
“And has not your father told you I have been in England?”
Page 299
Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
“Yes, monsieur le chevalier.”
“And that I there met with a very lucky chance?”
“No, monsieur, I did not know that.”
“Yes, a very worthy friend of mine, a great nobleman, the
viceroy of Scotland and Ireland, has endowed me with an
inheritance.”
“An inheritance?”
“And a good one, too.”
“Then you are rich?”
“Bah!”
“Receive my sincere congratulation.”
“Thank you! Look, that is my house.”
“Place de Greve?”
“Yes, don’t you like this quarter?”
“On the contrary, the look-out over the water is pleasant.
Oh! what a pretty old house!”
“The sign Notre Dame; it is an old cabaret, which I have
transformed into a private house in two days.”
“But the cabaret is still open?”
“Pardieu!”
“And where do you lodge, then?
“I? I lodge with Planchet.”
“You said, just now, `This is my house.'”
“I said so, because, in fact, it is my house. I have bought
it.”
“Ah!” said Raoul.
“At ten years’ purchase, my dear Raoul; a superb affair, I
bought the house for thirty thousand livres; it has a garden
which opens to the Rue de la Mortillerie; the cabaret lets
for a thousand livres, with the first story; the garret, or
second floor, for five hundred livres.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Five hundred livres for a garret? Why, it is not
habitable.”
“Therefore no one inhabits it, only, you see this garret has
two windows which look out upon the Place.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
Page 300
Dumas, Alexandre – Ten Years Later
“Well, then, every time anybody is broken on the wheel or
hung, quartered, or burnt, these two windows let for twenty
pistoles.”
“Oh!” said Raoul, with horror.
“It is disgusting, is it not?” said D’Artagnan.
“Oh!” repeated Raoul.
“It is disgusting, but so it is. These Parisian cockneys are
sometimes real anthropophagi. I cannot conceive how men,