The two men then followed the company, and on leaving the Faubourg St. Antoine mounted two horses properly equipped, which a servant out of livery was holding in expectation of their coming.
Chapter 36 - The Siege of Rochelle
The siege of Rochelle was one of the great political events of Louis XIII’s reign, and one of the cardinal’s great military enterprises. It is therefore interesting and even necessary that we should say a few words about it; moreover, many details of this siege are connected in too important a manner with the story we have undertaken to relate to allow us to pass it over in silence.
The cardinal’s political views when he undertook this siege were considerable. Let us unfold them first, and then we will pass on to his private views, which perhaps, had not less influence on his Eminence than the former.
Of the important cities given up by Henry IV to the Huguenots as places of safety there remained only Rochelle. It became necessary, therefore, to destroy this last bulwark of Calvinism—a dangerous leaven, with which the ferments of civil revolt and foreign war were constantly mingling.
Rochelle, which had derived a new importance from the ruin of the other Calvinist cities, was then the focus of dissensions and ambitions. Moreover, its port was the last gateway in the kingdom of France open to the English, and by closing it against England the cardinal completed the work of Joan of Arc and the Duc de Guise.
The king was to follow as soon as his Bed of Justice was held. But on rising from his Bed of Justice on the 28th of June, he felt himself attacked by fever. He was, notwithstanding, anxious to set out; but his illness becoming more serious, he was obliged to stop at Villeroi.
Now, whenever the king stopped the musketeers stopped. The consequence was that D’Artagnan, who was still in the guards, found himself, for the time at least, separated from his good friends Athos, Aramis and Porthos.
He arrived, however, without accident in the camp established before Rochelle toward the 10th of September, 1627.
Everything was unchanged. The Duke of Buckingham and his English, masters of the Isle of Ré, were still besieging, but unsuccessfully, the citadel of St. Martin and the fort of La Prée; and hostilities with Rochelle had begun, two or three days before, about a fort which the Duc d’Angoulême had just built near the city.
The guards, under M. des Essarts’s command, took up their quarters at the Minimes.
But, as we know, D’Artagnan, preoccupied by the ambition of passing into the musketeers, had formed but few friendships among his comrades. He found himself isolated, and given over to his own reflections.
One day D’Artagnan was walking alone along a pretty little road leading from the camp to the village of Angoutin, when, in the last ray of the setting sun, he thought he saw a musket-barrel glittering behind a hedge.
He determined to direct his course as far away from it as he could, when, behind a rock on the opposite side of the road, he perceived the muzzle of another musket-barrel.
It was evidently an ambuscade.
The young man cast a glance at the first musket, and with a certain degree of anxiety saw that it was levelled in his direction; but as soon as he perceived that the mouth of the barrel was motionless, he threw himself flat on the ground. At the same instant the gun was fired, and he heard a ball whistle over his head.
No time was to be lost. D’Artagnan sprang up with a bound, and at the same instant the ball from the other musket tore up the stones on the very place on the road where he had thrown himself face to the ground.
And immediately taking to his heels, he ran towards the camp, with the swiftness of the young men of his country, so renowned for their agility; but great as was his speed, the one who had first fired, having had time to reload, fired a second shot, so well aimed this time that the bullet struck his hat and carried it ten paces from him.
However, as D’Artagnan had no other hat, he picked up this as he ran, and arrived at his quarters, very pale and quite out of breath. He sat down without saying a word to anybody, and began to reflect.
D’Artagnan took his hat, examined the hole made by the bullet, and shook his head. The ball was not a musket-ball; it was an arque-buse-ball. The accuracy of the aim had first given him the idea that a particular kind of weapon had been employed. It could not, then, be a military ambuscade, as the ball was not of the regulation calibre.
It might be a kind remembrance of the cardinal’s.
But D’Artagnan shook his head. For people against whom he had only to stretch out his hand, his Eminence had rarely recourse to such means.
It might be a vengeance of milady’s.
That was the most probable.
At nine o’clock the next morning the drums beat the salute. The Duc d’Orléans was inspecting the posts. The guards ran to their arms, and D’Artagnan took his place in the midst of his comrades.
Monsieur passed along the front of the line. Then all the superior officers approached him to pay him their compliments, M. des Essarts, captain of the guards, among the rest.
It seems the Rochellais had made a sortie during the night, and had retaken a bastion which the royal army had gained possession of two days before; the point was to ascertain, by reconnoitring, how the enemy guarded this bastion.
In fact, at the end of a few minutes, Monsieur raised his voice and said,
“I want for this mission three of four volunteers, led by a trusty man.”
“As to the trusty man, I have him at hand, monseigneur,” said M. des Essarts, pointing to D’Artagnan; “and as to the four or five volunteers, monseigneur has but to make his intentions known, and the men will not be wanting.”
“Four gallant men who will risk being killed with me!” said D’Artagnan, raising his sword.
Two of his comrades of the guards immediately sprang forward, and two soldiers having joined them, the number was deemed sufficient; so D’Artagnan declined all others, as he was unwilling to injure the chances of those who came forward first.
It was not known whether, after taking the bastion, the Rochellais had evacuated it or left a garrison in it; so the object was to examine the place near enough to ascertain.
D’Artagnan set out with his four companions, and followed the trench.
Screened by the revetment, they came within a hundred paces of the bastion. There, on turning round, D’Artagnan perceived that the two soldiers had disappeared.
He thought that they had stayed behind from fear, and so he continued to advance.
At the turning of the counterscarp they found themselves within about sixty paces of the bastion.
No one was to be seen, and the bastion seemed abandoned.
The three men of the forlorn hope were deliberating whether to proceed any farther, when suddenly a circle of smoke enveloped the stone giant, and a dozen balls came whistling round D’Artagnan and his two companions.
They knew what they wanted to know: the bastion was guarded. A longer stay in this dangerous spot would therefore have been uselessly imprudent. D’Artagnan and his two companions turned their backs, and beat a retreat like a flight.
On arriving at the angle of the trench which was to serve them as a rampart, one of the guardsmen fell; a ball had passed through his breast. The other, who was safe and sound, kept on his way to camp.
D’Artagnan was not willing to abandon his companion thus, and stooped down to raise him and assist him in regaining the lines. But at this moment two shots were fired. One ball hit the head of the already wounded guardsman, and the other flattened itself against a rock, after passing within two inches of D’Artagnan.
The young man turned quickly round, for this attack could not come from the bastion, which was masked by the angle of the trench. The idea of the two soldiers who had abandoned him occurred to his mind, and reminded him of the assassins of two evenings before. So he resolved this time to satisfy himself on this point, and fell on his comrade’s body as though he were dead.
He instantly saw two heads appearing above an abandoned work, within thirty paces of him; they were the heads of his two soldiers.
But as he might be merely wounded and might accuse them of their crime, they came up to him with the purpose of making sure of him. Fortunately, deceived by D’Artagnan’s trick, they neglected to reload their guns.
When they were within ten paces of him, D’Artagnan, who in falling had taken great care not to let go his sword, suddenly got up, and with one leap came upon them.
The assassins realized that if they fled toward the camp without killing their man they should be accused by him; therefore their first idea was to desert to the enemy. One of them took his gun by the barrel, and used it as he would a club. He aimed a terrible blow at D’Artagnan, who dodged it by springing on one side; but by this movement he left free passage to the bandit, who at once darted off toward the bastion. As the Rochellais who guarded the bastion were ignorant of the intentions of the man they saw coming toward them, they fired at him, and he fell, struck by a ball which broke his shoulder.
Meantime D’Artagnan had thrown himself on the other soldier, attacking him with his sword. The struggle was not long. The wretch had nothing to defend himself with but his discharged arquebuse. The guardsman’s sword slipped down the barrel of the now useless weapon, and pierced the thigh of the assassin, who fell.
D’Artagnan immediately placed the point of the weapon at his throat.
“Wretch,” cried D’Artagnan, “see here, speak quickly! Who employed you to assassinate me?”
“A woman whom I don’t know, but who is called milady.”
“But if you don’t know this woman, how do you know her name?”
“My comrade knew her and called her so. She made the bargain with him, and not with me; he has even now in his pocket a letter from that person, which must be of great importance to you, judging by what I have heard.”
“But how are you concerned in this ambuscade?”
“He proposed to me to undertake it with him, and I agreed.”
“And how much did she give you for this fine enterprise?”
“A hundred louis.”
“Well, good enough!” said the young man, laughing; “she thinks I am worth something. A hundred louis! Well, that was a temptation for two miserable creatures like you. So I understand you accepted it, and I grant you my pardon, but on one condition.”
“What is that?” said the soldier, uneasy at perceiving that all was not over.
“That you go and fetch me the letter your comrade has in his pocket.”
“Why,” cried the bandit, “that is only another way of killing me. How can you wish me to go and fetch that letter under the fire from the bastion?”
Terror was so strongly painted on his face, covered with a cold sweat, that D’Artagnan took pity on him, and casting on him a look of contempt,
“Well,” said he, “I will show you the difference between a man of true courage and a coward, as you are. Stay, I will go.”
And with a light step, an eye on the watch, observing the movements of the enemy and taking advantage of all the aid afforded by the nature of the ground, D’Artagnan succeeded in reaching the second soldier.
There were two means of attaining his object—to search him on the spot, or to carry him away, making a buckler of his body, and then search him in the trench.
D’Artagnan preferred the second means, and lifted the assassin on his shoulders at the very moment the enemy fired.
A slight shock, the dull thud of three balls penetrating the flesh, a last cry, a convulsion of agony, proved to D’Artagnan that the man who had just tried to assassinate him had saved his life.
D’Artagnan regained the trench, and threw the body down by the wounded man, who was as pale as death.
He instantly began the search. Among some unimportant papers he found the following letter, the one which he had gone to get at the risk of his life:
“Since you have lost track of that woman, and she is now in safety in the convent, which you should never have allowed her to reach, try, at least, not to miss the man. If you do, you know that my hand reaches far, and that you shall repay me very dearly the hundred louis you have had of me.”
No signature. Nevertheless it was plain the letter came from milady. He consequently kept it as a piece of evidence, and as he was in safety behind the angle of the trench, he began to question the wounded man. He confessed that he had undertaken, with his comrade, the man just killed, to abduct a young woman about to leave Paris by the gate of La Villette; but having stopped to drink at a saloon, they had missed the carriage by ten minutes.
“But what were you to have done with the woman?” asked D’Artagnan, in great agitation.
“We were to have conveyed her to a h?tel in the Place Royale,” said the wounded man.
“Yes, yes,” murmured D’Artagnan; “that’s the place—milady’s own residence.”
Then the young man, shuddering, felt what a terrible thirst of vengeance impelled this woman to destroy him, as well as those who loved him, and how well acquainted she must be with affairs of the court, since she had discovered everything. Doubtless she owed this information to the cardinal.
But he also perceived, with a feeling of genuine joy, that the queen must have at last discovered the prison in which poor Madame Bonacieux was expiating her devotion, and that she had freed her from that prison. And the letter he had received from the young woman, and her passing along the Chaillot road like an apparition, were now explained.
He turned to the wounded man, who had watched with intense anxiety all the varying expressions of his countenance, and holding out his arm to him,
“Come,” said he; “I will not abandon you thus. Lean upon me, and let us return to camp.”
The guardsman who had returned at the first discharge had announced the death of his four companions. There was therefore much astonishment and delight in the regiment when the young man was seen to come back safe and sound.
D’Artagnan explained the sword-wound of his companion by a sortie which he improvised. He told of the other soldier’s death and the perils they had encountered. This recital was for him the occasion of a veritable triumph. The whole army talked of this expedition for a day, and Monsieur sent him his compliments on it.
Chapter 37 - The Anjou Wine
D’Artagnan had become more tranquil. He felt only one uneasiness, and that was not hearing from his three friends.
But one morning early in November everything was explained to him by this letter, dated from Villeroi:
“Monsieur D’Artagnan,—MM. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis after giving an entertainment at my house, and having a very gay time, created such a disturbance that the provost of the castle, a very rigid man, has had them confined for some days; but I fulfil the order they have given me by forwarding to you a dozen bottles of my Anjou wine, with which they are much taken. They are desirous that you should drink to their health in their favourite wine. I have done so, and am, sir, with great respect, your very humble and obedient servant,
