“How! ‘If there is any left!'” murmured he.
“What the devil! There must be plenty left,” replied d’Artagnan. “Be satisfied of that; these two cannot have drunk all the cellar. Gentlemen, return your swords to their scabbards.”
“Well, provided you replace your pistols in your belt.”
“Willingly.”
And d’Artagnan set the example. Then, turning toward Planchet, he made him a sign to uncock his musketoon.
The Englishmen, convinced of these peaceful proceedings, sheathed their swords grumblingly. The history of Athos’s imprisonment was then related to them; and as they were really gentlemen, they pronounced the host in the wrong.
“Now, gentlemen,” said d’Artagnan, “go up to your room again; and in ten minutes, I will answer for it, you shall have all you desire.”
The Englishmen bowed and went upstairs.
“Now I am alone, my dear Athos,” said d’Artagnan; “open the door, I beg of you.”
“Instantly,” said Athos.
Then was heard a great noise of fagots being removed and of the groaning of posts; these were the counterscarps and bastions of Athos, which the besieged himself demolished.
An instant after, the broken door was removed, and the pale face of Athos appeared, who with a rapid glance took a survey of the surroundings.
D’Artagnan threw himself on his neck and embraced him tenderly. He then tried to draw him from his moist abode, but to his surprise he perceived that Athos staggered.
“You are wounded,” said he.
“I! Not at all. I am dead drunk, that’s all, and never did a man more strongly set about getting so. By the Lord, my good host! I must at least have drunk for my part a hundred and fifty bottles.”
“Mercy!” cried the host, “if the lackey has drunk only half as much as the master, I am a ruined man.”
“Grimaud is a well-bred lackey. He would never think of faring in the same manner as his master; he only drank from the cask. Hark! I don’t think he put the faucet in again. Do you hear it? It is running now.”
D’Artagnan burst into a laugh which changed the shiver of the host into a burning fever.
In the meantime, Grimaud appeared in his turn behind his master, with the musketoon on his shoulder, and his head shaking. Like one of those drunken satyrs in the pictures of Rubens. He was moistened before and behind with a greasy liquid which the host recognized as his best olive oil.
The four crossed the public room and proceeded to take possession of the best apartment in the house, which d’Artagnan occupied with authority.
In the meantime the host and his wife hurried down with lamps into the cellar, which had so long been interdicted to them and where a frightful spectacle awaited them.
Beyond the fortifications through which Athos had made a breach in order to get out, and which were composed of fagots, planks, and empty casks, heaped up according to all the rules of the strategic art, they found, swimming in puddles of oil and wine, the bones and fragments of all the hams they had eaten; while a heap of broken bottles filled the whole left-hand corner of the cellar, and a tun, the cock of which was left running, was yielding, by this means, the last drop of its blood. “The image of devastation and death,” as the ancient poet says, “reigned as over a field of battle.”
Of fifty large sausages, suspended from the joists, scarcely ten remained.
Then the lamentations of the host and hostess pierced the vault of the cellar. D’Artagnan himself was moved by them. Athos did not even turn his head.
To grief succeeded rage. The host armed himself with a spit, and rushed into the chamber occupied by the two friends.
“Some wine!” said Athos, on perceiving the host.
“Some wine!” cried the stupefied host, “some wine? Why you have drunk more than a hundred pistoles’ worth! I am a ruined man, lost, destroyed!”
“Bah,” said Athos, “we were always dry.”
“If you had been contented with drinking, well and good; but you have broken all the bottles.”
“You pushed me upon a heap which rolled down. That was your fault.”
“All my oil is lost!”