Epilogue — The Three Musketeers

La Rochelle, cut off from the English fleet and from the diversion Buckingham had promised, holds out for a year and then surrenders. The capitulation is signed on the twenty-eighth of October, 1628. On the twenty-third of December the king enters Paris by the Faubourg Saint-Jacques under green arches. The city receives him as if he had beaten a foreign enemy, not other Frenchmen.

D'Artagnan takes the lieutenancy the cardinal left blank. Porthos leaves the service and, the next year, marries Madame Coquenard. The coffer he wanted holds eight hundred thousand livres. Mousqueton finally stands behind a gilded carriage, which is the satisfaction he has wanted all his life. Aramis travels into Lorraine, then disappears and stops writing. Madame de Chevreuse later tells a few intimates that he has entered a convent. Nobody knows which one. Bazin becomes a lay brother. Athos stays a Musketeer under D'Artagnan's command until 1633. After a journey to Touraine he quits, saying he has inherited a small property in Roussillon. Grimaud follows him.

D'Artagnan fights Rochefort three times and wounds him three times. On the third he offers a hand and says the fourth will probably kill him. Rochefort says they should stop where they are. After their first meeting he could have had D'Artagnan's throat cut with one word to the cardinal. They embrace and keep no malice. Planchet gets a sergeant's rank in the Piedmont regiment from Rochefort. Monsieur Bonacieux lives quietly, knowing little of what became of his wife and caring less. One day he is careless enough to remind the cardinal that he exists. The cardinal promises to provide for him so that he will never want. That evening Bonacieux leaves his house at seven to go to the Louvre. He never appears again in the Rue des Fossoyeurs. People who claim to know say he is fed and lodged in some royal castle, at the expense of his generous Eminence.