"Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers." - читать интересную книгу автора

his lodging, and passed the remainder of the day in sewing onto his doublet
and hose some ornamental braiding which his mother had taken off an
almost-new doublet of the elder M. D'Artagnan, and which she had given her
son secretly. Next he went to the Quai de Feraille to have a new blade put
to his sword, and then returned toward the Louvre, inquiring of the first
Musketeer he met for the situation of the hotel of M. de Treville, which
proved to be in the Rue du Vieux-Colombier; that is to say, in the
immediate vicinity of the chamber hired by D'Artagnan--a circumstance which
appeared to furnish a happy augury for the success of his journey.
After this, satisfied with the way in which he had conducted himself
at Meung, without remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full
of hope for the future, he retired to bed and slept the sleep of the brave.
This sleep, provincial as it was, brought him to nine o'clock in the
morning; at which hour he rose, in order to repair to the residence of M.
de Treville, the third personage in the kingdom paternal estimation.


2. THE ANTECHAMBER OF M. DE TREVILLE

M. de Troisville, as his family was still called in Gascony, or M. de
Treville, as he has ended by styling himself in Paris, had really commenced
life as D'Artagnan now did; that is to say, without a sou in his pocket,
but with a fund of audacity, shrewdness, and intelli-gence which makes the
poorest Gascon gentleman often derive more in his hope from the paternal
inheritance than the richest Perigordian or Berrichan gentleman derives in
reality from his. His insolent bravery, his still more insolent success at
a time when blows poured down like hail, had borne him to the top of that
difficult ladder called Court Favor, which he had climbed four steps at a
time.
He was the friend of the king, who honored highly, as everyone knows,
the memory of his father, Henry IV. The father of M. de Treville had served
him so faithfully in his wars against the league that in default of
money--a thing to which the Bearnais was accustomed all his life, and who
constantly paid his debts with that of which he never stood in need of
borrowing, that is to say, with ready wit--in default of money, we repeat,
he authorized him, after the reduction of Paris, to assume for his arms a
golden lion passant upon gules, with the motto Fidelis et fortis. This was
a great matter in the way of honor, but very little in the way of wealth;
so that when the illustrious companion of the great Henry died, the only
inheritance he was able to leave his son was his sword and his motto.
Thanks to this double gift and the spotless name that accompanied it, M. de
Treville was admitted into the household of the young prince where he made
such good use of his sword, and was so faithful to his motto, that Louis
XIII, one of the good blades of his kingdom, was accus-tomed to say that if
he had a friend who was about to fight, he would advise him to choose as a
second, himself first, and Treville next--or even, perhaps, before himself.
Thus Louis XIII had a real liking for Treville--a royal liking, a
self-interested liking, it is true, but still a liking. At that unhappy
period it was an important consideration to be sur-rounded by such men as
Treville. Many might take for their device the epithet STRONG, which formed