should ever have the honour to be presented—an honour, however, to which your long line of noble ancestors entitles you—support with dignity the name of gentleman, which has been honourably borne by your ancestors, for the sake of you and yours, for more than 500 years. Never submit quietly to the slightest indignity, except it proceed from the cardinal or the king. It is by his courage—mark this well—it is by his courage alone, that a gentleman makes his way nowadays. Whoever hesitates one moment, lets perhaps that chance escape him, which fortune, for that moment alone, has offered him. You are young, and ought to be brave, for two reasons: the first, because you are a Gascon; the second, because you are my son. Have no fear of many imbroglios, and look about for adventures. You have been taught to handle the sword; you have muscles of iron, a wrist like steel; fight whenever you can, the more so because duels are forbidden, and consequently it requires twice as much courage to fight. I have to give you but fifteen crowns, my son, besides the horse, and the advice which you have heard. Your mother will add to them the recipe for a certain balsam, which she received from a Bohemian woman, and which has the miraculous power of curing every wound which has fallen short of the heart. Take advantage of all, and live long and happily. I have only one word more to add, and it is the offer of an example: not my own, for I have never been at court; I have only served in the religious wars as a volunteer. I wish to speak to you of M. de Treville, once my neighbour, who has had the honour of playing, whilst a boy, with our king, Louis XIII., whom God preserve. Sometimes their play turned to battles, and in these battles the king did not always conquer; yet his conquests by M. de Treville imbued him with a great deal of esteem and friendship for him. Afterwards, M. de Treville fought other battles; indeed, merely during his journey to Paris, he fought five times; from the death of the late monarch, to the majority of the young king, he has fought seven times, without reckoning campaigns and sieges; and since that majority till now, perhaps a hundred times! And yet, in spite of edicts, ordinances, and writs, behold him now captain of the Musketeers; that is, chief of a legion of Caesars, upon whom the king mainly depends, and who are feared by the cardinal, who, as everyone knows, is not easily alarmed. Moreover, M. de Treville gains ten thousand crowns a year, and therefore is a man of consequence. He began the world as you do. Go to him with this letter, and let your conduct be regulated by him, that you may meet with the same results.”
Hereupon M. d’Artagnan, the father, girded his own sword upon his son, tenderly kissed him on either cheek, and gave him his blessing. Leaving the paternal chamber, the young man found his mother waiting with the famous recipe, which, from the advice he had just received, it seemed very probable that he would require to use pretty often. The adieus were longer and more tender on this side than on the other; not but that M. d’Artagnan loved his son, who was his only child, but that M. d’Artagnan was a man who would have considered it unworthy of himself to give way to any sentiment; whilst Madame d’Artagnan was a woman, and, what is more, a mother. She wept much; and, to the credit of M. d’Artagnan the younger, we may as well say that, whatever efforts he made to remain firm, as became the future Musketeer, nature gained the day, and he shed many tears, some of which he had great difficulty in concealing.
Our youth took his way the same day, furnished with the three paternal gifts, which were, as we have said, the fifteen crowns, the steed, and the letter to M. de Treville. As may be well imagined, the advice was thrown into the bargain. With such a vade mecum, d’Artagnan found himself, morally and physically, the counterpart of the hero of Cervantes, to whom we so happily compared him, when our duty as his historian obliged us to draw his portrait. Don Quixote took windmills for giants, and sheep for armies; d’Artagnan considered every smile an insult, and even a look a provocation. Therefore, his fist was doubled from Tarbes to Meung; and, from one cause or another, his hand was on the pommel of his sword ten times a day. However, the fist did not descend upon any jaw, nor did the sword leave its scabbard. It was not that the unlucky yellow sheltie did not excite many a smile on the countenances of passers-by; but as beside the said yellow sheltie clashed a sword of respectable length, and above the sword glistened an eye rather stern than fierce, the wayfarers repressed their mirth, or, if their mirth surpassed their prudence, they took care only to laugh on one side of their faces, like the ancient masques. D’Artagnan, therefore, remained dignified and uninterrupted in his susceptibility, even to this fatal town of Meung. But there, when he dismounted at the door of the Jolly Miller, without any one, either landlord, waiter, or hostler, coming to hold the stirrup of his horse, d’Artagnan perceived at the open window of a room, on the ground-floor, a gentleman of distinguished air and handsome figure, although with a countenance slightly grim, conversing with two persons who appeared to listen to him with deference. D’Artagnan naturally thought, according to his usual custom, that they were talking about him, and listened accordingly. This time, however, he was partly correct: he was not the subject of conversation, but his horse was. The gentleman appeared to be enumerating to his hearers all his qualities; and since, as I have said, his hearers appeared to pay him great deference, they every moment laughed heartily.
Now, since even the slightest smile was sufficient to rouse the anger of our youth, we may well imagine what effect such unbounded mirth was likely to produce upon him. Nevertheless, d’Artagnan wished first to examine the countenance of the impertinent fellow who thus laughed at him. He therefore fixed his stern look upon the stranger, and saw a man from forty to forty-five years of age, with eyes black and piercing, complexion pale, nose strongly-marked, and moustache black and carefully trimmed. He was attired in a violet-coloured doublet and breeches, with points of the same colour, with no other ornament than the sleeves through which the shirt passed. This doublet and these breeches, though new, displayed divers wrinkles and creases, as if they had been for some time packed up in a portmanteau. D’Artagnan made these observations with the rapidity of a most minute observer, and doubtless with an instinct which told him that this unknown was to have a vast influence on his future life.
At the very moment that d’Artagnan fixed his eyes upon the gentleman with the violet doublet, that individual made one of his wisest and most profound remarks upon the Beaunese sheltie. His two auditors roared with laughter, and he himself, contrary to his usual custom, permitted a sort of sickly smile to wander over his countenance. This time there was no room for doubt. D’Artagnan was really insulted. Being convinced of this, he pulled his cap over his eyes, and trying to imitate the courtly airs which he had seen among some chance Gascon nobility in their provincial visits, he placed one hand on the guard of his sword, and the other on his hip. Unfortunately, the nearer he advanced, the more angry he grew, so that instead of the high and dignified language which he had prepared as the prelude to his challenge, he found nothing at the tip of his tongue but a rough personality, which he accompanied with a furious gesture.
“Hollo, sir!” he cried; “you, sir, who hide yourself behind the shutter—yes, you! tell me what you are laughing at, and we will laugh together.”
The gentleman slowly turned his eyes from the steed to his rider, as if it required some time to comprehend that these strange reproaches were addressed to himself; then, when he could no longer doubt it, he slightly knit his brows, and, after a pretty long pause, with an accent of irony and insolence impossible to describe, answered d’Artagnan, “I am not speaking to you, sir.”
“But I am speaking to you,” cried the young man, exasperated by this mixture of insolence and good manners—this polite contempt.
The unknown regarded him yet a moment with a slight smile, and then leaving the window, slowly sauntered out of the inn, and stationed himself opposite the horse, at two paces from d’Artagnan. His calm face and jeering aspect redoubled the mirth of his companions, who still remained at the window. D’Artagnan, seeing him come out, drew his sword a foot out of its scabbard.
“This horse decidedly is, or rather has been, a buttercup,” continued the unknown, pursuing his remarks, and addressing his auditors at the window, without appearing to notice the exasperation of d’Artagnan, who, nevertheless, swelled and strutted between them; “it is of a colour,” he continued, “well known in botany, but as yet very rare amongst horses.”
“A man may laugh
