D'Artagnan, the king maker

Preface

Dumas and ‘‘D’Artagnan!”

The Inseparables!

This banner-knight carried '‘the Extraordinary Author’s” fame all over the reading world, and won homage through his favorite — everybody’s — and the most characteristic hero in noveldom.

It was by the Gascon Free-captain, inextinguishable and ever-living in his native wit, that Dumas’ talent was displayed at the first flight. Bold, sustained and vigorous, all could trace to what heretofore inaccessible height and on what delectable ground it would lead us.

As there is no historian more popular and more credited, and no novelist more historic, so his type and model of the Noble Adventurer, brave as his sword, steady as his aim, faithful to virtue as to his King, remains the chief admired and endeared to students as to his own chronicler.

In Louis D’Artagnan, "the Illustrious Dumas” (to use the King of England’s epithet) did what was accounted impossible: created a character. It was thought that times, pressure of men, compact with society, pinches of crises, these formed a man. But our originator was always modest — strange this in him termed plagiarist, monopolist, vainglorious! But let Dumas protest in his own words:

"I am a humanizing and vulgarizing story-teller. Natur-

II Preface

ally, and without pains, I am dramatic. My stories are first composed as plays, the opening clear, the end short and all interesting. Action ejects, shapes and animates my conceptions. A statuary and not a painter, 1 embody sooner than I sketch, model rather than paint. Disciple of the Realistic School, Shakespeare’s, Sheridan’s or Schiller’s, my characters are in fast dyes, not evanescent tints; they do deeds and do not maunder over them, prosing, poetizing or philosophizing. Hence, any actor can slip into my casts — Melingue was my D’Artagnan, the body to my phantasm.”

Well, Dumas was unjust; for the more he is read — nay, the more intimately he is studied, the more consummate and imposing he becomes as a prodigy; clearness of the alabaster lamp, whose body lets the rays diffuse; taste true, because yours and mine, a woman’s or a girl’s, the idler’s or the toiler’s; what verve and fluency! the purling spring becoming rivulet, river, delta, ocean ! a mind that produces wholesome fruit, tart yet sweet enough, plentiful as the wild crab.

As Raphael exclusively loved one model; as one fond head appears on all the marbles a sculptor carves, so D’Artagnan, cherished by his own literary father as by his own friends, reappears throughout the Dumas Gallery.

In one he is chivalric, in another he may be modern; here, a play-actor; there, Coconnas marching gallantly to his doom; in peasant garb, our simple, honest Ange Pitou; in the age of plumes and starch, a beau; as "‘Yacoub,” Jealousy itself; as Dantes, the Avenger! but it is Dumas’ D’Artagnan, by a trait if not complete. Such a Proteus might well flag — but as Dumas was indefatigable, so is D’Artagnan revived on touching new ground.

Such ground! The scene of “D’Artagnan, the King-

PREFACE.

iii

maker," is unknown land — even at our later day! Portugal! the Peninsular! the great rival of Old Spain in conquering the New World. The European Hermit- Kingdom! It was a flash of genius which shot itself into this dark, mysterious corner, brimming with surprises, and revealed how much passion, courage, humor, and sterling virtues struggled from the tempestuous coast to the debated capital.

But on this crude stone D’Artagnan sharpens his sword and his wit; he meets unaccustomed foes, but defeats them as if familiar with their attacks; he inspirits the dullards, he enchants the sluggards, he thrills the masses, and bears off the crown — to give it to the heir with that loyalty and self-sacrifice peculiar to the lion-hearted gentleman-of-fortune.

Alone, his Quixotic Restoration of the Braganzas would be satiety of mental feasting, but allied with him in his exploits is the choicest spirit of the “Four Musketeers”! Porthos! good Porthos!” whose rich humor, smooth patience, unfaltering friendship, and mighty fist make him so cheery that many a reader, divided in admiration and affection, cries, enraptured: “If I were not D’Artagnan, I would I were Porthos!"

In the same way that Dumas’ devotees journey to Marseilles and scratch their names on the wall of “Monte Christo's” cell (that prisoner only existing in Dumas’ mind), so may we expect the readers of this engaging and instructive story to travel— in the spirit— along the course of its pages where the “Kingmaker" brings the true monarch to the audaciously recovered throne.

Portugal, in this work, becomes another memorial to the vernal writer, a stranger now to no land, an idol to every appreciative reader.

H. L. W.

D’RRTAGNAN, THE KINGMAKER.

Chapter 1. Avoid A New Inn

In the middle of the seventeenth century, to the west of San Sebastian, on the Bay of Biscay, then a fortified port (and not a watering-place) of northern Spain, was a hamlet known ephemerally as Las Salinas.

It was salty in every respect, but salt had failed to preserve it; on the contrary, salt had been its ruin.

It was a cove beneath a highland, where the sea incursions had made a deltas — the point inland — and smoothed the finely-grounded granite sands into flats, furrowed by ditches as regular as if traced by human hands; these were salt pans for which Nature consulted no engineer.

A fisfher, perceiving this advantage, had begun salt making on a fair scale, augmenting his plant by the assistance of his family, and finally his fellows in the craft, of which the Apostles were the patrons.

Soon the growth of the little saltern was strengthened by disabled seamen, discharged soldiers, since the great wars were presumed over between Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Austria — aggressors, allies and combatants by turns. At the end came rovers, sea gypsies, not averse to a few days’ work where the alguazils and constables would not suspect them to be honest toilers.

In time, Salinas gained a name. As the cove, though exposed to the very focus of storms, was deep in its channel, and the highlands partly shielded it, small craft dropped in. Petty fishers, sardineers, tunny catchers, and even the cod fishers, stopping to cure a catch, instead of going home, so that they could continue with the “buckalow” to vend on the African coast. They

Avoid a New Inn.

eschewed Las Salinas on the return, but that was because they carried gold dust, ivory, spices and merchandise, on the whole above the Salinaists.

Unhappily, fortune, in this world, attracts envy and covetousness.

Little by little, more slowly on the land than on the seas. Las Salinas’ reputation spread until it had reached San Sebastian.

San Sebastian, for the most part, was swayed by the class of which Virgil rhymed — they profit by others’ laborious accumulations.

The governor of the fort and town at the time was Don Nuestradamus Palliro, who, as pro-ruler for King Philip IV., then reigning, had a coast right to anything ‘'cast up” by the waves, and, on the face of it, salt seems to be comprised in this elastic scope. At least, without consulting the Spanish Grotiuses, he meant to exact his toll. Hearing this, the champion knight of the good Sisters of Maria, Star of the Sea, remembered its claim on all sea produce; and what is salt but a production of the sea — a sort of skimming of that great open kettle of the Atlantic ? And, being asked to lend his armed marchers on a visit of inquiry to Salinas, the noble Don Esteban de Sagres, Lord of the Salt Marshes, considered that he had a special grievance, under the Crown, against any one manufacturing salt without each bag being stamped and sealed.

In the last instance, while these gentlemen conferred, the Bishop of Catalona considered tithe was due him on this industry, since the fulness of the earth — and the sea — are the Church’s.

In short, what with soldiers, javelin men, constables, gendarmes, all about their several captains and chief clerks, a formidable force dropped off the cliffs, as from the clouds, upon unwitting Salinas.

Being gentry accustomed to spend their earnings as received, at the inn in their midst, which was mart, exchange and refreshment hall, they were perfectly unable to pay any tolls and taxes, rightfully or otherwise demanded.

Whereupon the disappointed cohort seized the stoutest

Avoid a New Inn. ii

of the penniless saltmakers and talked of lugging them ofif as hostages for the cess required.

Upon seeing their chiefs arrested, like so many brothers, the fishers, sailors, soldiers out of uniform, and the women of the hamlet, fell upon the strangers with uncouth cries of war in sea lingo and rural dialect, and beat them off. with oars, boat hooks, rudder staves and the like. The Spanish, in order to preserve their lives, were glad to leave the captives with their friends, consoling themselves with the last word : “They would come again and give the victors rue to mix with their salt cakes !*’

It is a fact that a true nomad “marches lightly.’’

Being men of the ocean firstly, and saltmakers secondly, they made a pyramid of the tools of their temporary trade and set fire to it, after a preliminary bathing with tar; then they embarked all their families, household goods and gods — if these pagans worshiped any one and on any day but that of the Good Thief ! — ^and, when the locusts returned with an army at their back, Salinas the Hale was Salinas the Wasted.

To the devourers — burnt meat !

The inn ought to have remained, a large structure in oak and stone; that was counted on, but you must not count on your host or his inn. As by witchcraft, that only real building of the town had disappeared. One could discern the site, for the foundation stones and tree were there ; but the wood had been sawed off at every post, and the iron securing the stones against storms which would have made children’s building blocks of Trajan’s Column, had been wrenched out of the leaden sockets. As for the wine casks, said to be in its cellars, since your saltmaker is fabulously thirsty, there was not even a cellar ; all the contents had been hoisted out and the breeze had steadily played at filling it to the brim with a quicksand which almost swallowed up the explorers under the eyes of their companions.

We say that this solitary shelter had been depended upon.

The soldiers haa been promised it as a guardhouse, and the civilians reckoned on having a portion as a custom house.

Avoid a New Inn.

Arabs would have asked if this work was for the glory of Mahommed, and, if the answer were in the negative, would have burned the place ; these Christians meant to conserve the building, but to store away their levies in it.

But it was gone, past preying on, or praying for — we quote a clerk who was facetious, but whose merry mood did not long continue. Indeed, there came on, while the soldiers were searching the district, one of those northwest blows, which sailors afterward describe as a “fresh wind,” but which landsmen remember as the worst tempest of the age. Such make the Bay of Biscay no pretender to the title of “Cemetery of the Atlantic.” Such depth have the waves that one expects to see the lost Atlantis’ inhabitants looking up at poor drowned man, and such force have the breakers that the spray covers the land for half a mile inward.

This particular nor’wester was accompanied, or rather stripped from time to time by gusts out of the north, probably all the way from the North Sea, which brought sleet to mingle with the rain. The knights, captains, monks, soldiers, mariners and clerks suffered a night of anguish in the desolation, so that, in the dawn, sneezing, coughing, wet to the skin, their armor rusty and their swords congealed in the scabbard, they straggled back to the port, disconsolate as if they had passed the time in purgatory without the time being allowed off their score.

Thereafter, Las Salinas was accursed like the Dead City of the Plains, wihere Lot’s wife, incrusted with salt, stands at the gates.

The fishers and smugglers procured their salt elsewhere, being far-roving persons, and only a very few poor ’long-shore roamers, with fishers who contented themselves with near-at-hand game, ventured to return to the deserted village. They scooped out burrows in the shifting sands between detached rocks, for their wives and children to thatch them with seaweed, while they sailed out where toll gatherers were scarce.

It was, therefore, with surprise that a man, who must have expected to see this little Tyre in her majesty, reined in his horse after coming down upon the plain, once covered with snowy, glistening salt pans. He reined in his steed to that steed’s satisfaction, however, though it was one of those slab-sided, raw-boned, longlegged brutes, called, in France, '' clamp onniers” from “clamp,” that is, a heaviness of tread. In fact, this one’s big hoofs opened like a camel’s in the soft sand and enabled him to get a foothold which had the one defect that he went in so deeply that he could barely draw it out, and when it came, it made a sound of suction like reports of a mortar.

The man looked around and sighed, like one thoroughly disenchanted — his illusion dispelled.

He must have been furnished with a description of the spot before the beast descended and the people destroyed the village, as the Jews destroyed the Holy City to spite the Emperor Titus.

It had been a hot day, and while he might be of cast bronze, having that complexion of southrons, baked from birth, and did not show fatigue, it was not so with his ugly mount. It did not care to move a step farther in the trying and fickle sands, so different a footing to the turf on the mountains.

The sea was tolerably calm for this part, but it tremulously refreshed the long streakings of purple across the whitish golden glare ; by the tint, one could understand the Spanish discoverers calling platinum white gold.

The illimitable swell softly rolled in with slow grandeur, the deep just heaving as though Neptune, slumbering in the wave-hollowed caverns, troubled the mass with his ponderous breathing.

Only a few tiny sails dotted the enormous green expanse, like daisies on a well-tended pasture.

All the fishers were out at sea. Their families were in their kennels, enjoying the sole luxury of the poor — idleness.

The traveler had come over the inland, not the coast, hig!h along the shore, sloping down to it or rising abruptly, all the scene visible from below.

With the melancholy of a stricken pine, a tall mast rose mockingly of trees like a gallows, for it had a crosspiece, the signboard of the vanished tavern dangling by a corner, one bent spike refusing to let go its hold. It was the stemboard of a rowboat anciently, which, perhaps, had been in civilized parts, for it was lettered in Latin characters, “The Black Petrel,” but the hanger of it at the inn front had probably judged the literacy of his neighbors justly in surmounting the line with a daub of asphaltum, representing a flying blackbird.

“The Black Petrel,” read the stranger, if he could not recognize the delineation, “assuredly, I see the creature, but where is its nest?”

He must have had excellent sight for, presently, he spied an all but invisible column of smoke, spirally rising out of a hole in the overhanging cliff. This was one of those holes made by pressure of the sea in a mistral, when these outlets became “spouting horns.”

It oozed out like a dying whale’s “blow,” fine as spundrift.

The air was dry, and the smoke almost instantly was dissipated.

But the traveler could distinguish spray from smoke by another good faculty of his — smell.

“Cooking !” he muttered, beginning to champ his mustache, as his horse had been champing his bit, “and on a generous system, I take it. There is conger, olives, onions, pork and I know not what in that mess. If it be but for one diner, then I have to meet a Titan in his cave. Certainly, the inn has withdrawn its kitchen into the solid earth. But why? I was not so badly misinformed, after all ! There was a village, and there is an inn, though cramped up in the mountain.”

He seemed to be one of those spirits, common to an earlier period, who went to discover and did not wait until another had preceded them and made a chart for guidance.

He alighted nimbly in spite of the extremely heavy boots worn by riders, which would turn a musket ball, and unbitted his grateful horse. He was sure that it would not stray far, where nothing alluring presented, and that no one, a judge of horseflesh, would attempt to decoy it afar. So he walked, disembarrassed, toward the hollow of the bluff, with a firm and graceful tread, althoug'h the boots, with their other disadvantages, were a new purchase.

Avoid a New Inn.

Such seasoned leather, soft as silk though thick, and good workmanship could only have come out of the workshop of a cordwainer of Cordovan training, where the tradition was maintained.

His Moorish saddle was probably of the same origin.

As he mounted the ascent, he perceived some signs ot a path. Bare feet and bark-soled sandals had traced it. It led him in under the beetling barrier to the sea’s continual encroachment, the sides of spar fretted intricately and fantastically to equal the finest efforts of the artificers of the Alhambra.

“ ’Sdeath !” exclaimed he, with Spanish accent fortified with Gascon, '‘this is the inn. Faith of a gentleman ! have we the Northmen scourers of the sea again upon the rocky coast of his majesty of United Spain and Portugal, that even that hallowed institution, the tavern, respected by German riders and Italian bandits, should shrink with terror into the granite ?”

As if to prove how wrong or right was his surmise, there darted a man out of the opening and shadow beyond, who blocked his way, but hospitably. For he opened his arms and his hands in that gesture which signifies in that latitude that all that the house contains is at the order of the person motioned to.

It was a host, w’hether the opening was an inn door or not.

Accustomed to the dusk, the traveler looked over the man’s head, the more easy as he was short, and distinguished a rough inner portal of ship oak, fit to resist a battering-ram ; and, beyond, the beginning of a corridor, wide, or a room, narrow, prolonged by the obscurity, into indefiniteness.

For a fitting description of this cavernous hostel, one would have to search “Ossian.”

There was an attempt to light up this vast interior : a ship lantern swung on high under a stretch of canvas,' supplied with oil, and that less strongly smelling. Several candles, certainly such as are made for churches, were stuck in cnacks on the rocky wall. All these rays fell on a table, evidently from a great West Indiaman, since it was of mahogany, not well known to European

Avoid a New Inn.

cabinetmakers ; it 'had benches around it, carved by seamen’s knives; on it were miscellaneous articles, silver and pewter drinking vessels, some ecclesiastical in aspect, others adorned with arms of high families, whose representatives probably never honored the Petrel ; Bohemian glasses, curiously delicate in such a rough place ; Dutdh and Flemish mugs, German cups and pitdhers, English jugs.

A capacious brazier in the Moresque style held glowing charcoal, but the chief culinary shrine was a wood fire on an enormous flat stone, from which, up the natural chimney, floated that column betraying the modest nook of the Petrel.

This steady light showed also a terra-cotta image of a saint in Sevillan pottery, highly glazed, probably female, as there had been attached to its base a strip of parchment in Gothic type, appealing to one.

It was the stock curative cure of this marshy ground, no doubt, for its lin^s might be thus translated :

"Charm of St. Agnes to dispel the shaking fever.

Tremble and go !

(First day, shiver and burn!)

Tremble and quake I

(Second day, shiver and burn!)

Tremble and die !

(Third day, never return!)’"

A similarly saintly image, but in rougher work, and dyed instead of being glazed, had these words incised on it, and filled up with burnt rosin to make the old English text apparent :

“This be Sint (sic) Dennis, to me dear,

For love of drink and, eke, good cheer!”

Doubtlessly these objects were precious and 'had been transferred from the original inn when its removal was decided upon.

Over the hearth fire, by an old anchor chain, swung by a pulley hook, as used to hoist a whale up for cutting oflf the blubber, such an immense iron pot as slave ships had in order to cook as much porridge as possible at one heat.

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«7

If it had been full, it would have contented a regiment. As it was, more than the bottom was covered with a fish stew, mingled with vegetables such as seaside heights supply, but not in variety or delicacy.

“So, this is the Petrel’s Nest?” said the traveler, halfw‘himsically after surveying the picture, delightful to a Teniers or a Zurbaran, for its appeals to the gross senses and its light and shade.

He might be testing his host, for he spoke in Portuguese.

The landlord replied, after the same furtive manner, in Cantabrian, that ancient tongue of which it has been said none but the natives can speak it, and they with difficulty.

To redouble the astonishment at having a gentleman guest, the speaker was startled to hear the reply in this same mode, and more fluently than in Portuguese.

“Then, I come to an anchor!” He sat astride of a bench, easily enough, and demanded :

“Your name?”

“Pedro. Sailors from the north, as I am not tall, call me Bitts, likening me to the two Samson-posts which secure the anchor cable, or the hawser is snubbed

“Then, Master Pedro Bitts, see that I have a bit for my teeth 1” showing perfect ones under the black mustache. “I am the long-looked-for guest of the Petrel.”

As if he fully understood these tyrants of the roadside, even when there was no worn road to their abodes, he slapped his side where, from the chink, he carried a pouch well lined with coin.

As if this sound were almost unknown, the host waited to hear the echo before hurrying, with a broad smile, into the depths, but beckoning the other to follow.

First, the traveler looked back, not from any apprehension — Heaven forbid such a jolly fellow excited that emotion — ^but to see how his ungainly steed was faring.

The inestimable clamponnier had stumbled along the ledge with a sea-footing, stuck a hoof into a fishskin and, thus slippered, reached the first hovel. Here, after a sniff, and concluding, with the fine epicurean taste of his species, that the maritime thatching was edible,, he i8 Avoid a New Inn.

began to strip it off. A couple of brown children at once jumped out and stared with spelUbound eyes at this creature, which bid fair to eat them out of house.

“I see that Plegon has made himself at home in Salinas,” observed his master. “So be it with the rider !”

Chapter II. The Petrel Changes Hands

The fearless wayfarer plunged into the passage of the obscure den, fit for serpents, hermits, bandits and those ogres w'hom the common people believed to occupy subterranean refuges.

On reaching the middle of the cavity, he saw that it was roomier than suspected from the exterior. Indeed, it was a hall of which the stretched canvas, an old mainsail, was the velarium, cutting it into two stories. It was so blackened with smoke that he had not reckoned the extent. At one corner a ship’s wooden companionway was used to ascend to this upper floor.

In another corner, the two tops of a clumsy ladder come up through a hole, suggesting the wine vaults, since a vinous aroma permeated the stagnant air.

Odd bales and casks encumbered the sides, being used as seats and lounges when the company was numerous — evidently a rarity ! but there was nothing for the timorous to take alarm at.

The host and he stood before the only other tenant. This was a very strong and stout negress, to whom Pedro, sturdy as he was, looked boyish and slight. She was of Nubian blackness, not the warm brown of other negroes, but unshiny jet. She had a ladle with which a pond could be baled out or a bull be stunned. With this, as if proud of her mess, she began to stir the kettle swiftly to set the newcomer’s mouth watering.

'Tt is the 'slow-boiling fish stew’ of Marseilles,” ex-, plained the host. “It is fish, fish and fish to us here every day! I wish I could take a week off and go into the country, where there would be nothing but meat and fowl, for a change I”

“Well, I came from ‘there, and I shall enjoy this very much.”

Convinced by this that he had an easily-contented patron, the man waved his hand in encouragement to his cordon-hleu, and busied bimself with the other preparations of the meal. He set one of those loaves on the table, common where bread is baked at one time for a fortnight, flanking it with a knife so broad as to lead it to 'be supposed a portion of a scimeter ; salt in a silver reliquary, chased with sacred emblems and a dedication to a saint; two kinds of pepper in a calabash, divided by a pearl shell, and silver plates, massive and sculptured as works of art.

The table had no cloth, but the scarce and beautiful wood, defying the sailors’ whittles, was smoothed and polished by grease and bare arms, so that it was bright as a mirror.

Taking down one of those high flagons which have gone from vogue since toping went out, he dived into the hole down the ladder like a powder-monkey into the magazine. In the hollow, he could be heard singing in a mellow voice:

"And some are wrecked on th’ Indian coast.

Thither by gain invited ;

Some are in smoke of battle lost,

Whom a dance and lute delighted !”

Although the flagon held a runlet’s eighteen gallons, he lugged it, frothing over, up the ladder like a puff of eider-down; that he had broached a cask the guest had heard, with ravishment, it gurgled so rapturously.

The negress had braced herself by tightening a yellow zoner, or belt, which Christians are compelled to wear in a Mohammedan country; she put forth a strength which she might not be suspected of, and tilted the great kettle over so as to spill some of its delicious medley into a ewer of gold, and carried this to the table as if it were an egg on a plate.

'‘The sky bless you all !” This seemed to be her conception of a grace.

Instantly the air was transformed. What one had inhaled of a balm superior to Gilead’s was but a mean foretaste of the perfume overwhelming the space. The guest clapped his hand, like those voyagers, who, sick of the bilge, tar and wet sailcloth odor, rejoice at the off --shore breeze from the spice islands. To be so enlivening, and at the same time so soothing, was a triumph of culinary

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The Petrel Changes Hands.

harmony ; each contribuent component to this programme was distinct ; pork fried before it was associated with the other ingredients, fish of all sorts, sweet and bitter herbs, onions and their fierce brother, garlic ; these blended into the supernal hodge-podge.

The guest stretched his rather long arms as though, metaphorically, to embrace the delicious dish, seized the loaf like his dearest foe, and with the shortened scimeter, sliced off one piece for a sop, another to eat and a third to wipe his spoon on. He was supplied by precaution with one of those comprehensive instruments, embracing, in one handle, knife, spoon and fork, which the Italians invented and which other nations were slow in adopting.

The negress knew what a fork, a spoon and a knife were, but never had she seen persons eat with them or hold them in combination. She followed their movements, which were not slow, with the eyes of one watching a conjurer’s wand.

The traveler used the spoon so quickly that the host felt enforced to apwDlogize for him, while secretly admiring such prowess and compliment to his chefs abilities.

“He comes from afar, and from the island where they open oysters with pitchforks! Again, these tall blades, they are hollow to their boots I”