It was only when he alighted in the alley and took a deep breath that he took a look at the clothes he was holding. They’d been resting on a chair, on the way to the window-and they were not even vaguely his. They consisted of a dark red dress, and a matching hat, with a very slight veil.
D’Artagnan looked at them in dismay. Well… he couldn’t walk naked through the streets of Paris. [9]
Where Monsieur le Comte Receives Several Surprises; The Difference Between a Roasted Chicken and a Live Countess; Athos Loses his Battle with Reality
BY the time Athos got home, he could have truthfully said that not much was on his mind, other than his desire for some dinner and for the comfort of his bed. He was telling himself he needed to shave, and wondering if he should do it now or leave it till tomorrow morning. His beard and moustache, which he wore carefully trimmed and shaped, depended for their look on his keeping the rest of his face hair free, which he was sure it wasn’t now.
If he had been in an introspective mood, he would have admitted that another part of him was thinking of the duchess’s soft breasts pressed against his chest, of the feeling of her, light and lively, in his hands, of the taste of her mouth against his, of the sheer joy of their kiss. But he shut out any such thoughts and told himself that if he dwelt on them it would only mean he would turn his feet towards the palace once more. And then, where that led no one knew, save that Athos was not one to share, and he was not one to take kindly to his ladylove exposing herself to danger. So their affair would be of very short duration and end with his heart broken.
Instead, he walked along and thought that he would have to ask Grimaud to ask of Planchet to make sure his master returned Athos’s doublet and shirt. Or if not, Athos would have to procure new ones, an activity he found so distasteful that he tended to avoid doing it more than once a decade.
In this mood, divided, he reached his lodgings and unlocked the door and went in. The sight of Grimaud standing in the small vestibule was so unexpected that, for a long moment, Athos did not realize he was there. And when he did, it was to blink, bewilderedly. “Grimaud!” he said. “What has happened?”
The second because his old retainer had his arms crossed, and his legs planted, as though ready for a battle. His eyes were blazing and his face pale, and he looked altogether as though he were preparing to challenge Athos on something, which was always a very strange and rare event. The poor man submitted to using sign language and uttering not a word for months at a time, when Athos was in such a state of mind that the sound of a human voice disturbed him. He submitted to leaving behind the estate in which he had a good many friends, and even more sycophants. All for the sake of Athos.
But now the light of battle was in his eyes, and he was treating Athos as if Athos had never left behind his dignity, which was always a very bad sign. “If you think I’m going to allow you to cede your bed to your friends night after night, and sleep all cramped up in some corner, or worse-I know you!-rolled up on a cloak on the floor, let me tell you, milord, it will not do. And as for Bazin telling me that his master has been out doing holy work, that won’t be believed either. Bazin can pray all he wants to, and lard all his conversations with Latin, but you won’t get me to believe that Monsieur Aramis can come in smelling of liquor and with straw matted in his hair, and talking about dangerous chickens and have been out in the service of the Lord.”
For Grimaud this speech was an epic oration, comparable to other men going on for hours on end, and yet Athos could make neither head nor tail of it.
He frowned at his servant. “Grimaud, I do not have the pleasure of understanding you at all. What happened, and why am I the bout of your wrath?”
“Monsieur Aramis. He came in dead drunk, smelling of wine, and behaving in such a way… well… he could not stay on his own two feet, and our only choice was to strip him to his shirt and put him in your bed. But if you think I intend to let you pass another unquiet night-”
“Oh, now I see,” Athos said. “Your concern is for how I shall sleep, because in your mind I am still the sickly boy whom you watched for through the long nights. But Grimaud, I’m an adult now, and I would thank you-” His mind had caught up with his mouth, and it was informing him rather urgently of something that Grimaud had clearly said. He looked at the weather-beaten face of his servant, and he took a deep breath. “Grimaud, did you say that Monsieur Aramis told you to beware of dangerous chickens?”
Grimaud glared. “He said that she was intending to kill us all, and that if the fire caught all the chickens would be roasted, or something like that, and then, when he became more or less conscious again, as we were putting him to bed, he informed me with the utmost urgency that the chickens might set fire to the sun and kill us all. What was I to make of all this, pray?”
Athos almost chuckled. He couldn’t help it. He’d seen Aramis drunk quite a few times, in their years of friendship. But what operated there is that he’d never yet seen Aramis drunk when he, himself, hadn’t been drunk. And, in company, when Aramis had got drunk, he had usually amused himself in long arguments with Porthos-or occasionally Athos, though considering that Athos tended to go monosyllabic when drunk, that was a hard feat to achieve-about theology or the manufacture of drinking cups, or whatever else struck his fancy. At the end of it, Aramis would do his best to duel someone, only by that time he was so far gone, he couldn’t take his sword out of its sheath. “So Monsieur Aramis is drunk,” he said. “Given what we’ve gone through in the last few days I can hardly make a comment on that. Besides, last night, it was Monsieur Aramis and Monsieur Porthos who put me to bed.”
“But didn’t strip you down. They didn’t even take your sword.”
Athos, thinking that this was true and also that it betrayed a naivete as touching as it was dangerous, said, “Yes. I daresay they were a bit gone into their cups, as well.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, Grimaud. The bed is large enough to accommodate half a dozen people, and at least a normal person and Monsieur Porthos. It is more than large enough for myself and Monsieur Aramis.”
But Grimaud’s arms remained crossed on his chest. “It’s just no use at all thinking that I will countenance your spending another disturbed night, because I won’t. When you stop sleeping, it is always the beginning of a troubled time, and I have no intention of allowing you to do that again.”
There was this thing about being raised by a male, Athos thought-which in many ways, between his sickly mother and his unbending father, he had been-that should frighten everyone. Mother lions could be scary, but father lions, who had condescended to take notice of their offspring, and devote time to them, could be terrifying.
Still, he knew what lay at the back of it, and he was sure that over the years he’d given the poor man quite a few sleepless nights himself. So, instead of protesting, he put his hand on Grimaud’s shoulder, gently. “Don’t worry. I can let Monsieur Aramis sleep here. I don’t know what he meant by chickens being after him, but I am sure it is nothing but one of those drunken alarms that mean nothing. He will wake tomorrow, and he will be in a better mood, and then we will talk to him and find out what he meant. And meanwhile his taking up a quarter or less of my bed will not disturb me.”
“He is snoring fit to wake the saints,” Grimaud said. “He is snoring louder than the final trumpet.”
“Well, then I shall snore in competition with him,” said Athos, feeling like he might very well do that, because his late night the night before, the alcohol ingested, and the emotional shocks of the last few hours had all dropped on his shoulders like a heavy burden, making him totter. The duchess had reminded him that he would not see thirty again and, right then, he felt it. He said, “But first, if you could procure me some broth, or a slice of meat, or something. Just to take the edge off the hunger. I don’t think I can sit through an entire dinner just now.” At any rate, he had a dread of sitting alone and eating at that polished table, where Grimaud would attend to him as though he were still the Count de la Fere in his ancestral estate.
[9] Some will note that in Monsieur Dumas’ Three Musketeers the whole “affaire milady” was rather more complex and drawn out, and while the scene at the end of it was roughly similar, it involved the complicity of a little maid named Kitty. I trust I don’t need to explain to the readers who have been faithfully following these chronicles how unlikely it would be that young, romantic D’Artagnan would be involved not only with one woman but with three. Indeed, it would be somewhat wrenching to think of him betraying Constance-whom even in Monsieur Dumas’s embellished chronicle, he mourned lifelong-with the seductive but brittle milady, who might be experienced but cannot help but appear non-genuine.
We’ll leave Monsieur Dumas’s account, enjoyable and well crafted as it is, in the realm of a pleasant fiction concocted to accord to the morals and manners of his time and the idea that a brave and strong man must, of course, also be promiscuous.