Chapter 34 - Page 2

freedom of thought, reflected upon the prodigious genius of Aramis,- a genius of craft and intrigue, of which the Fronde and the civil war had produced but two similar examples. Soldier, priest, and diplomatist, gallant, avaricious, and cunning, Aramis had taken the good things of this life only as steppingstones to rise to bad ones. Generous in spirit, if not high in heart, he never did ill but for the sake of shining a little more brilliantly. Towards the end of his career, at the moment of reaching the goal, like the patrician Fiesco, he had made a false step upon a plank, and had fallen into the sea.

But Porthos, the good, simple Porthos! To see Porthos hungry; to see Mousqueton without gold lace, imprisoned, perhaps; to see Pierrefonds, Bracieux, razed to the very stones, dishonored even to the timber,- these were so many poignant griefs for d’Artagnan, and every time that one of these griefs struck him he bounded like a horse at the sting of the gadfly beneath the vaults of foliage where he has sought shade and shelter from the burning sun.

Never was the man of spirit subjected to ennui if his body was exposed to fatigue; never did the man healthy of body fail to find life light if he had something to engage his mind. D’Artagnan, riding fast, always thinking, alighted from his horse in Paris, fresh and tender in his muscles as the athlete preparing for the gymnasium. The King did not expect him so soon, and had just departed for the chase towards Meudon. D’Artagnan, instead of riding after the King, as he would formerly have done, took off his boots, had a bath, and waited till his Majesty should return dusty and tired. He occupied the interval of five hours in taking, as people say, the air of the house, and in arming himself against all ill-chances. He learned that the King during the last fortnight had been gloomy; that the Queen-Mother was ill and much depressed; that Monsieur the King’s brother was exhibiting a devotional turn; that Madame had the vapors; and that M. de Guiche had gone to one of his estates. He learned that M. Colbert was radiant; that M. Fouquet consulted a fresh physician every day who still did not cure him, and that his principal complaint was one which physicians do not usually cure unless they are political physicians. The King, d’Artagnan was told, behaved in the kindest manner to M. Fouquet, and did not allow him to be ever out of his sight; but the superintendent, touched to the heart, like one of those fine trees which a worm has punctured, was declining daily, in spite of the royal smile- that sun of court trees.

D’Artagnan learned that Mademoiselle de la Valliere had become indispensable to the King; that the King, during his sporting excursions, if he did not take her with him, wrote to her frequently, no longer verses, but, what was still much worse, prose,- and that whole pages at a time. Thus, as the poetical Pleiad of the day said,