“Heaven be praised!”
“Come into the courtyard with me; it’s a beautiful moonlit night; we will walk up and down, arm in arm, under the trees, while you tell me your pitiful tale.” He drew the doleful governor into the courtyard, took him by the arm as he had said, and, in his rough, good-humored way, cried: “Out with it, rattle away, Baisemeaux; what have you got to say?”
“It’s a long story.”
“You prefer your own lamentations, then; my opinion is, it will be longer than ever. I’ll wager you are making fifty thousand francs out of your pigeons in the Bastille.”
“Would to heaven that were the case, M. d’Artagnan.”
“You surprise me, Baisemeaux; just look at you, acting the anchorite. I should like to show you your face in a glass, and you would see how plump and florid-looking you are, as fat and round as a cheese, with eyes like lighted coals; and if it were not for that ugly wrinkle you try to cultivate on your forehead, you would hardly look fifty years old, and you are sixty, if I am not mistaken.”
“All quite true.”
“Of course I knew it was true, as true as the fifty thousand francs profit you make”; at which remark Baisemeaux stamped on the ground.
“Well, well,” said d’Artagnan, “I will add up your accounts for you: you were captain of M. Mazarin’s Guards; and twelve thousand francs a year would in twelve years amount to one hundred and forty thousand francs.”
“Twelve thousand francs! Are you mad?” cried Baisemeaux; “the old miser gave me no more than six thousand, and the expenses of the post amounted to six thousand five hundred francs. M. Colbert, who deducted the other six thousand francs, condescended to allow me to take fifty pistoles as a gratification; so that, if it were not for my little estate at Montlezun, which brings me in twelve thousand francs a year, I could not have met my engagements.”
“Well, then, how about the fifty thousand francs from the Bastille? There, I trust, you are boarded and lodged, and get your six thousand francs salary besides.”
“Admitted!”
“Whether the year be good or bad, there are fifty prisoners, who, on the average, bring you in a thousand francs a year each.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“Well, there is at once an income of fifty thousand francs; you have held the post three years, and must have received in that time one hundred and fifty thousand francs.”
“You forget one circumstance, dear M. d’Artagnan.”
“What is that?”
“That while you received your appointment as captain from the king himself, I received mine as governor from Messieurs Tremblay and Louvière.”
“Quite right, and Tremblay was not a man to let you have the post for nothing.”
“Nor Louvière either: the result was, that I gave seventy-five thousand francs to Tremblay as his share.”
“Very agreeable that! and to Louvière?”
“The very same.”
“Money down?”
“No: that would have been impossible. The king did not wish, or rather M. Mazarin did not wish, to have the appearance of removing those two gentlemen, who had sprung from the barricades; he permitted them, therefore, to make certain extravagant conditions for their retirement.”
“What were those conditions?”
“Tremble … three years’ income for the goodwill.”
“The deuce! so that the one hundred and fifty thousand francs have passed into their hands.”
“Precisely so.”
“And beyond that?”
“A sum of one hundred and fifty thousand francs, or fifteen thousand pistoles, whichever you please, in three payments.”
“Exorbitant.”
“Yes, but that is not all.”
“What besides?”
“In default of the fulfillment by me of any one of those conditions, those gentlemen enter upon their functions again. The king has been induced to sign that.”
“It is monstrous, incredible!”
“Such is the fact, however.”
“I do indeed pity you, Baisemeaux. But why, in the name of fortune, did M. Mazarin grant you this pretended favor? It would have been far better to have refused you altogether.”
“Certainly, but he was strongly persuaded to do so by my protector.”
“Who is he?”
“One of your own friends, indeed; M. d’Herblay.”
“M. d’Herblay! Aramis!”
“Just so; he has been very kind towards me.”
“Kind! to make you enter into such a bargain!”
“Listen! I wished to leave the cardinal’s service. M. d’Herblay spoke on my behalf to Louvière and Tremblay—they objected; I wished to have the appointment very much, for I knew what it could be made to produce; in my distress I confided in M. d’Herblay, and he offered to become my surety for the different payments.”
“You astound me! Aramis became your surety?”
“Like a man of honor; he procured the signature; Tremblay and Louvière resigned their appointments; I have paid every year twenty-five thousand francs to these two gentlemen; on the thirty-first of May, every year, M. d’Herblay himself comes to the Bastille, and brings me five thousand pistoles to distribute between my crocodiles.”
“You owe Aramis one hundred and fifty thousand francs, then?”
“That is the very thing which is the cause of my despair, for I only owe him one hundred thousand.”
“I don’t quite understand you.”
“He came and settled with the vampires only two years. Today, however, is the thirty-first of May, and he has not been yet, and tomorrow, at midday, the payment falls due; if, therefore, I don’t pay tomorrow, those gentlemen can, by the terms of the contract, break off the bargain; I shall be stripped of everything; I shall have worked for three years, and given two hundred and fifty thousand francs for nothing, absolutely for nothing at all, dear M. d’Artagnan.”
“This is very strange,” murmured d’Artagnan.
“You can now imagine that I may well have wrinkles on my forehead, can you not?”
“Yes, indeed!”
“And you can imagine, too, that notwithstanding I may be as round as a cheese, with a complexion like an apple, and my eyes like coals on fire, I may almost be afraid that I shall not have a cheese or an apple left me to eat, and that my eyes will be left me only to weep with.”
“It is really a very grievous affair.”
“I have come to you, M. d’Artagnan, for you are the only man who can get me out of
