Sword.
D’Artagnan knew his part well; he was aware that opportunity
has a forelock only for him who will take it and he was not
a man to let it go by him without seizing it. He soon
arranged a prompt and certain manner of traveling, by
sending relays of horses to Chantilly, so that he might be
in Paris in five or six hours. But before setting out he
reflected that for a lad of intelligence and experience he
was in a singular predicament, since he was proceeding
toward uncertainty and leaving certainty behind him.
“In fact,” he said, as he was about to mount and start on
his dangerous mission, “Athos, for generosity, is a hero of
romance; Porthos has an excellent disposition, but is easily
influenced; Aramis has a hieroglyphic countenance, always
illegible. What will come out of those three elements when I
am no longer present to combine them? The deliverance of the
cardinal, perhaps. Now, the deliverance of the cardinal
would be the ruin of our hopes; and our hopes are thus far
the only recompense we have for labors in comparison with
which those of Hercules were pygmean.”
He went to find Aramis.
“You, my dear Chevalier d’Herblay,” he said, “are the Fronde
incarnate. Mistrust Athos, therefore, who will not prosecute
the affairs of any one, even his own. Mistrust Porthos,
especially, who, to please the count whom he regards as God
on earth, will assist him in contriving Mazarin’s escape, if
Mazarin has the wit to weep or play the chivalric.”
Aramis smiled; his smile was at once cunning and resolute.
“Fear nothing,” he said; “I have my conditions to impose. My
private ambition tends only to the profit of him who has
justice on his side.”
“Good!” thought D’Artagnan: “in this direction I am
satisfied.” He pressed Aramis’s hand and went in search of
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Porthos.
“Friend,” he said, “you have worked so hard with me toward
building up our fortune, that, at the moment when we are
about to reap the fruits of our labours, it would be a
ridiculous piece of silliness in you to allow yourself to be
controlled by Aramis, whose cunning you know — a cunning
which, we may say between ourselves, is not always without
egotism; or by Athos, a noble and disinterested man, but
blase, who, desiring nothing further for himself, doesn’t
sympathize with the desires of others. What should you say
if either of these two friends proposed to you to let
Mazarin go?”
“Why, I should say that we had too much trouble in taking
him to let him off so easily.”
“Bravo, Porthos! and you would be right, my friend; for in
losing him you would lose your barony, which you have in
your grasp, to say nothing of the fact that, were he once
out of this, Mazarin would have you hanged.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Then I would kill him rather than let him go.”
“And you would act rightly. There is no question, you
understand, provided we secure our own interests, of
securing those of the Frondeurs; who, besides, don’t
understand political matters as we old soldiers do.”
“Never fear, dear friend,” said Porthos. “I shall see you
through the window as you mount your horse; I shall follow
you with my eyes as long as you are in sight; then I shall
place myself at the cardinal’s door — a door with glass
windows. I shall see everything, and at the least suspicious
sign I shall begin to exterminate.”
“Bravo!” thought D’Artagnan; “on this side I think the
cardinal will be well guarded.” He pressed the hand of the
lord of Pierrefonds and went in search of Athos.
“My dear Athos,” he said, “I am going away. I have only one
thing to say to you. You know Anne of Austria; the captivity
of Mazarin alone guarantees my life; if you let him go I am
a dead man.”
“I needed nothing less than that consideration, my dear
D’Artagnan, to persuade myself to adopt the role of jailer.
I give you my word that you will find the cardinal where you