Essential Novelists - Alexandre Dumas. Alexandre Dumas

the English like good wine, as you may know, monsieur; these have asked for the best. My wife has perhaps requested permission of Monsieur Athos to go into the cellar to satisfy these gentlemen; and he, as usual, has refused. Ah, good heaven! There is the hullabaloo louder than ever!”

      D’Artagnan, in fact, heard a great noise on the side next the cellar. He rose, and preceded by the host wringing his hands, and followed by Planchet with his musketoon ready for use, he approached the scene of action.

      The two gentlemen were exasperated; they had had a long ride, and were dying with hunger and thirst.

      “But this is tyranny!” cried one of them, in very good French, though with a foreign accent, “that this madman will not allow these good people access to their own wine! Nonsense, let us break open the door, and if he is too far gone in his madness, well, we will kill him!”

      “Softly, gentlemen!” said d’Artagnan, drawing his pistols from his belt, “you will kill nobody, if you please!”

      “Good, good!” cried the calm voice of Athos, from the other side of the door, “let them just come in, these devourers of little children, and we shall see!”

      Brave as they appeared to be, the two English gentlemen looked at each other hesitatingly. One might have thought there was in that cellar one of those famished ogres—the gigantic heroes of popular legends, into whose cavern nobody could force their way with impunity.

      There was a moment of silence; but at length the two Englishmen felt ashamed to draw back, and the angrier one descended the five or six steps which led to the cellar, and gave a kick against the door enough to split a wall.

      “Planchet,” said d’Artagnan, cocking his pistols, “I will take charge of the one at the top; you look to the one below. Ah, gentlemen, you want battle; and you shall have it.”

      “Good God!” cried the hollow voice of Athos, “I can hear d’Artagnan, I think.”

      “Yes,” cried d’Artagnan, raising his voice in turn, “I am here, my friend.”

      “Ah, good, then,” replied Athos, “we will teach them, these door breakers!”

      The gentlemen had drawn their swords, but they found themselves taken between two fires. They still hesitated an instant; but, as before, pride prevailed, and a second kick split the door from bottom to top.

      “Stand on one side, d’Artagnan, stand on one side,” cried Athos. “I am going to fire!”

      “Gentlemen,” exclaimed d’Artagnan, whom reflection never abandoned, “gentlemen, think of what you are about. Patience, Athos! You are running your heads into a very silly affair; you will be riddled. My lackey and I will have three shots at you, and you will get as many from the cellar. You will then have our swords, with which, I can assure you, my friend and I can play tolerably well. Let me conduct your business and my own. You shall soon have something to drink; I give you my word.”

      “If there is any left,” grumbled the jeering voice of Athos.

      The host felt a cold sweat creep down his back.

      “How! ‘If there is any left!’” murmured he.

      “What the devil! There must be plenty left,” replied d’Artagnan. “Be satisfied of that; these two cannot have drunk all the cellar. Gentlemen, return your swords to their scabbards.”

      “Well, provided you replace your pistols in your belt.”

      “Willingly.”

      And d’Artagnan set the example. Then, turning toward Planchet, he made him a sign to uncock his musketoon.

      The Englishmen, convinced of these peaceful proceedings, sheathed their swords grumblingly. The history of Athos’s imprisonment was then related to them; and as they were really gentlemen, they pronounced the host in the wrong.

      “Now, gentlemen,” said d’Artagnan, “go up to your room again; and in ten minutes, I will answer for it, you shall have all you desire.”

      The Englishmen bowed and went upstairs.

      “Now I am alone, my dear Athos,” said d’Artagnan; “open the door, I beg of you.”

      “Instantly,” said Athos.

      Then was heard a great noise of fagots being removed and of the groaning of posts; these were the counterscarps and bastions of Athos, which the besieged himself demolished.

      An instant after, the broken door was removed, and the pale face of Athos appeared, who with a rapid glance took a survey of the surroundings.

      D’Artagnan threw himself on his neck and embraced him tenderly. He then tried to draw him from his moist abode, but to his surprise he perceived that Athos staggered.

      “You are wounded,” said he.

      “I! Not at all. I am dead drunk, that’s all, and never did a man more strongly set about getting so. By the Lord, my good host! I must at least have drunk for my part a hundred and fifty bottles.”

      “Mercy!” cried the host, “if the lackey has drunk only half as much as the master, I am a ruined man.”

      “Grimaud is a well-bred lackey. He would never think of faring in the same manner as his master; he only drank from the cask. Hark! I don’t think he put the faucet in again. Do you hear it? It is running now.”

      D’Artagnan burst into a laugh which changed the shiver of the host into a burning fever.

      In the meantime, Grimaud appeared in his turn behind his master, with the musketoon on his shoulder, and his head shaking. Like one of those drunken satyrs in the pictures of Rubens. He was moistened before and behind with a greasy liquid which the host recognized as his best olive oil.

      The four crossed the public room and proceeded to take possession of the best apartment in the house, which d’Artagnan occupied with authority.

      In the meantime the host and his wife hurried down with lamps into the cellar, which had so long been interdicted to them and where a frightful spectacle awaited them.

      Beyond the fortifications through which Athos had made a breach in order to get out, and which were composed of fagots, planks, and empty casks, heaped up according to all the rules of the strategic art, they found, swimming in puddles of oil and wine, the bones and fragments of all the hams they had eaten; while a heap of broken bottles filled the whole left-hand corner of the cellar, and a tun, the cock of which was left running, was yielding, by this means, the last drop of its blood. “The image of devastation and death,” as the ancient poet says, “reigned as over a field of battle.”

      Of fifty large sausages, suspended from the joists, scarcely ten remained.

      Then the lamentations of the host and hostess pierced the vault of the cellar. D’Artagnan himself was moved by them. Athos did not even turn his head.

      To grief succeeded rage. The host armed himself with a spit, and rushed into the chamber occupied by the two friends.

      “Some wine!” said Athos, on perceiving the host.

      “Some wine!” cried the stupefied host, “some wine? Why you have drunk more than a hundred pistoles’ worth! I am a ruined man, lost, destroyed!”

      “Bah,” said Athos, “we were always dry.”

      “If you had been contented with drinking, well and good; but you have broken all the bottles.”

      “You pushed me upon a heap which rolled down. That was your fault.”

      “All my oil is lost!”

      “Oil is a sovereign balm for wounds; and my poor Grimaud here was obliged to dress those you had inflicted on him.”

      “All my sausages are gnawed!”

      “There