The Carmes fight makes a great noise. Tréville scolds his Musketeers in public, congratulates them in private, and hurries to the Louvre to reach the king first. He is too late. Louis is shut in with the cardinal. That evening, at the gaming table, the king is winning and in a rare good humour, so he calls the captain over to growl: the cardinal has complained again, hard enough to fall indisposed. Tréville answers that his men only draw when the Guards pick a quarrel. Once Louis begins to lose, he pockets his winnings, leaves a fair stake, and walks Tréville to a window. There the captain tells a careful story. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis had a pleasure party with a Gascon boy; five Guards found them; one wounded Musketeer and a youth brought four of the cardinal's best to earth. Louis calls it a complete victory and wants the boy who wounded Jussac. He will see all four tomorrow at midday, by the back staircase, because an edict is still an edict.
D'Artagnan barely sleeps. By eight he is at Athos's rooms and tags along to tennis near the Luxembourg stables. Athos's wound stops him after one left-handed effort. A ball from Porthos misses D'Artagnan's face, and he steps into the gallery rather than risk the audience. Bernajoux, still raw from yesterday, calls him a Musketeer apprentice who fears a ball. D'Artagnan does not know the name that frightens Paris, and he will not walk as far as the Pré-aux-Clercs with midday waiting. In the empty street he touches the shoulder; Bernajoux rushes in, spits himself on the second thrust, and staggers toward the Hôtel de la Trémouille. Friends pour from the court; the three Musketeers pour after them. The hôtel answers one cry; Musketeers and Dessessart Guards answer the other. The doors slam with Bernajoux dying inside. Someone proposes fire. Eleven o'clock saves them. They remember the king.
At the Louvre a valet says Louis has gone stag hunting at St. Germain after first refusing, and the cardinal's carriage went the same way. Tréville sends the four home and writes to M. de la Trémouille. The duke, briefed by an esquire related to Bernajoux, answers that the Musketeers attacked his hôtel and tried to burn it. Tréville goes in person. The two nobles esteem each other; Trémouille usually carries no party. They go down to the wounded man. Bernajoux, between life and death, has no mind to lie, and tells the affair as it passed. That evening the king comes back in dusty boots, passes the three Musketeers as if he had never seen them, and drops his eyes first when he meets Tréville. Inside he is bored of a lost stag and a dead gerfalcon, then vexed: he assumes the rioters are already in prison. Tréville comes to demand justice against calumniators. When Louis cites the cardinal and then the duke, the captain binds himself to whatever Trémouille will say in a private talk, and asks to be seen immediately after.
At half past six Tréville stations the four at the foot of the back stairs. The duke has only just gone in. Ten minutes later Trémouille comes out, admits the fault lay with his own people, and offers his friendship. Louis, listening through the door, calls the Musketeers up to be scolded: seven of the cardinal's Guards in two days is too many. He makes D'Artagnan come forward, calls him a mere boy, and hears Athos say that without the Gascon he would not be standing there. La Chesnaye rummages forty pistoles from the royal pockets. D'Artagnan's tennis-court story matches the duke's. Louis puts the gold in the young man's hand, tells them to keep whole, and, once they are retiring, places the novice in Dessessart's Guards because the Musketeers have no room. He looks forward to the cardinal's face. His Eminence stays away from the table for eight days. That does not stop the king from asking, in the kindest tone, how poor Jussac and poor Bernajoux are getting on.
Coming Up in Chapter 7
Once outside the Louvre, D'Artagnan asks what to do with his share of the forty pistoles. Athos names a supper at the Pomme-de-Pin, Porthos a lackey, and Aramis a suitable mistress. The supper happens that day, and the lackey Porthos has just picked up waits at table.
