Aramis and His Thesis — The Three Musketeers

D'Artagnan leaves Chantilly without naming Porthos's wound or Madame Coquenard. He is young enough to think a surprised secret ends a friendship, and he is already collecting strings he can pull later. The ride to Crèvecœur still hurts. He thinks less of the night he missed with Mme. Bonacieux than of the cardinal's vengeance falling on her. At the inn a cheerful hostess says the wounded Musketeer is upstairs with the curate of Montdidier and the Jesuit superior of Amiens. Grace has touched him. He means to take orders. Bazin bars the corridor. For years the lackey has waited for a cassock; a sore shoulder and a vanished mistress look like heaven's warning. D'Artagnan moves him aside and opens Number Five. Aramis sits in a black gown and flat cap between two men in black. Sword, pistols, and plumes are gone. A discipline cord hangs on the wall. The greeting is mild. The mind is already elsewhere.

The churchmen are arguing a thesis required before ordination. The principal wants it dogmatic. Aramis wants credit for leaving a world that still attracts him. That, he says, is a sacrifice Scripture asks for. He pinches his ear pink, shows a white hand, and recites a rondeau he once showed to Voiture. The Jesuit hears ladies and the world still speaking. Aramis calls his resolution irrevocable. They leave him in an excellent tone of mind until tomorrow. Friday dinner is spinach and, as a serious infraction, eggs. D'Artagnan stays for the poor feast because he will not give the room back to the men in black.

Alone, Aramis says he is not entering the Church. He is re-entering it. He tells the seminary story. At nearly twenty, three days from becoming an abbé, an officer found him reading the Lives of the Saints to the mistress of a house and later asked if he liked blows with a cane. Aramis went pale and said nothing. He delayed ordination a year, took a daily fencing lesson, hung the cassock on a peg, and on the anniversary killed the man by moonlight on the Rue Payenne. Scandal pushed him toward Athos, Porthos, and a Musketeer's uniform granted for his father's sake. He calls the shoulder wound a warning from heaven. D'Artagnan names the deeper wound: a woman. Aramis cries fie on love, calls the world a sepulcher, and says friends will be shadows by tomorrow.

D'Artagnan then offers to burn the scented letter that came in Aramis's absence, as if it were a chambermaid's complaint. Aramis starts. The letter is produced. He reads that she was forced back to Tours and still loves him. The two of them dance around St. Chrysostom and kick the thesis sheets across the floor. Bazin enters with spinach and an omelet. Aramis throws the skullcap in his face and orders a larded hare, a fat capon, garlic mutton, and four bottles of old Burgundy. D'Artagnan quotes the morning's Latin back at him. Aramis tells him to go to the devil with it, and to drink while the wine is fresh.