Devil’s Dance
~ or ~
Louise de La Vallière
By Alexandre Dumas
Edited and Translated by Lawrence Ellsworth
In Last Week’s Episode
At Queen Mother Anne of Austria’s soirée to the minds of France’s royal house off of quarrelling, the main event of the evening was a lottery to determine the winner of a fabulous diamond necklace. To no one’s surprise, King Louis XIV drew the winning ticket, but instead of presenting it to his queen, Marie-Thérèse, or to the expectant Princess Henrietta, “Madame,” his recent flirtation, the king unexpectedly placed the necklace in the hands of his new mistress, Louise de La Vallière. Jealousy was the order of the day, and quarrelling at Court was revived in earnest.
Chapter XLVI
“Malaga!”
During the protracted and sometimes violent conflicts between the ambitions of the Court and the desires of the heart recounted in previous chapters, one of our characters, who perhaps deserved it least, has been left behind, forgotten and unhappy.
We mean d’Artagnan; d’Artagnan, whom we call by name to remind us he was still there; d’Artagnan, who had absolutely nothing to do in that world of folly and frivolity. After following the king around Fontainebleau for several days among the shepherds and shepherdesses, observing the mock-heroic roles adopted by his sovereign, the musketeer had come to the conclusion that this was no life for him.
During the fêtes he was accosted at every turn by people who asked him, “Do you think this outfit suits me, Monsieur d’Artagnan?” He answered them all in his calm, sardonic voice, “I think you’re as well dressed as the handsomest monkey at the Saint-Laurent Fair.” It was just the kind of compliment d’Artagnan would pay when he wasn’t in the mood to be complimentary, and his subject could take it or leave it. And when he was asked, “Monsieur d’Artagnan, how will you dress tonight?”, he replied, “I will undress”—which made even the ladies laugh.
And so, after several days spent like this, the musketeer, seeing that nothing serious was going on, that the king seemed to have completely forgotten about Paris, Saint-Mandé, and Belle-Île, that Monsieur Colbert occupied himself with nothing but stage-lanterns and fireworks, and that the ladies seemed to have enough sly smiles and sidelong glances to bestow for at least a month, d’Artagnan asked the king for a leave of absence to attend to some family matters.
At the moment d’Artagnan asked him this, the king, fatigued from dancing, was preparing for bed. “You want to leave me, Monsieur d’Artagnan?” the monarch asked in astonishment. Louis XIV could never understand why one who had the honor of being near him would ever want to depart.
“Sire,” said d’Artagnan, “I ask for leave because I’m no use to you here. Ah, if I could only hold the balancing-pole for you while you dance, that would be different.”
“But, my dear Monsieur d’Artagnan,” replied the king gravely, “we don’t dance the ballet with a balancing-pole.”
“Oh? I didn’t know,” said the musketeer with gentle irony. “I’m behind the times.”
“You mean you haven’t seen me dance?” asked the king.
“Yes, but I thought you were just practicing, and a balancing-pole might help. My mistake—all the more reason for me to go on leave. Sire, I repeat, you have no need of me here—and if Your Majesty did need me, he’d know where to find me.”
“Very well,” said the king. And he granted the leave.
So, we’ll quit looking for d’Artagnan at Fontainebleau and, with our reader’s permission, catch up with him in the Rue des Lombards at the sign of the Golden Pestle with our old friend Planchet.98
It was eight in the evening, it was hot, but only one window was open, that of a bedroom over the shop front. The perfume of the grocery’s fresh produce, mixed with the less exotic but more penetrating odor of street filth, rose to the musketeer’s nostrils. D’Artagnan was sprawled on a broad chair with a reclining back, his legs not stretched out but rather propped on a stool at the most obtuse angle possible.
His eyes, usually so sharp and alert, were unfocused and fixed on the little patch of blue sky visible between the chimneys across the street, a patch small as a coin, invisible from among the sacks of lentils and beans that formed the main furnishings of the shop downstairs.
Stretched out thus, lost in his out-the-window reveries, d’Artagnan was no longer a man of war, no longer a soldier of the palace, he was like a mere bourgeois lazing away the time between dinner and supper and between supper and bedtime, one of those proudly ossified brains with no room left in them for a single thought, the physical body fiercely guarding the gates of intelligence lest something unwelcome be smuggled into its skull by the intrusion of an idea.
As we said, it was evening: the shop lamps were lighting up as the shutters of the upper windows were closed; patrolling soldiers of the watch announced themselves by the regular march of their footsteps.
But d’Artagnan heard nothing and saw nothing but the little blue patch of sky.
A coin’s toss from him, in the shadows and lying on a sack of grain, Planchet, on his belly with his arms under his chin, observed d’Artagnan as he was thinking, or dreaming, or sleeping with his eyes open.
After watching for a while, Planchet decided it was time for a change. “Ahem,” he said. And then, “Ahem!”
D’Artagnan didn’t budge.
Planchet saw that he must resort to more rigorous means. After careful consideration, the means he chose was to slip clumsily from his grain sack to the floor and then say to himself, “Idiot!”
But however much noise Planchet made in this fall, it was nothing to other noises d’Artagnan had heard in his career, and he didn’t seem to pay it the slightest attention. Besides, just at that moment an enormous cart loaded with stones came around the corner from the Rue Saint-Médéric, and the noise of its wheels obscured the sound of Planchet’s fall. Nonetheless, Planchet was pleased to see d’Artagnan’s lips twitch in silent approval at the sound of the word idiot. This made him bold enough to ask, “Are you asleep, Monsieur d’Artagnan?”
“No, Planchet, I’m not even asleep,” replied the musketeer.
“I’m crushed,” said Planchet, “to hear the word even.”
“Why? Isn’t that a proper French word, Monsieur Planchet?”
“It is, Monsieur d’Artagnan.”
“So?”
“So, that word distresses me.”
“Tell me why that distresses you, Planchet,” said d’Artagnan.
“If you say you’re not even asleep, it’s like saying you don’t even have the consolation of sleeping. It’s the same as saying, ‘Planchet, I’m bored to death.’”
“Planchet, you know I’m never bored.”
“Except for today and yesterday and the day before that.”
“Bah!”
“Monsieur d’Artagnan, it’s been a week since you returned from Fontainebleau, a week in which you’ve had no orders to give and no company to maneuver. You miss the sounds of muskets and drums and the pomp of royal ceremony. I’m a man who’s carried a musket, so I can understand that.”
“Planchet,” replied d’Artagnan, “I assure you I’m not the least bit bored.”
“What are you doing, then, lying there like a corpse?”
“Friend Planchet, when you and I were at the Siege of La Rochelle, there was an Arab who was famous for his skill at aiming culverins. He was a lad of spirit, even if he was the color of your olives. Anyway, this Arab, when his labors and supper were over, sat and smoked some kind of magic leaves in a large amber-colored tube, and if an officer came by and reproached him for it, he quietly replied, ‘It is better to sit than to stand, better to sleep than to sit, and better to be dead than asleep.’”
“That Arab was dark in more ways than one,” said Planchet. “I remember him perfectly. He beheaded Protestants with great satisfaction.”
“Yes, and embalmed their heads if he thought them worth the effort.”
“Right, and when he was working at embalming them, with all his herbs and dried plants, he looked like a basket maker making baskets.”
“Yes, Planchet, that’s it exactly.”
“Oh, my memory is still pretty sharp!”
“No doubt about it. But what did you think of his philosophy?”
“Monsieur, I find it perfect in one regard but stupid in another.”
“Elucidate, Planchet, elucidate.”
“Well, Monsieur! In fact, it is better to sit than to stand, especially when you’re tired, and in certain circumstances,” Planchet smirked mischievously, “it’s better to be reclining than sitting. But as for that final clause, ‘better to be dead than asleep,’ I think it’s absurd. No, I prefer the bed to the grave, and if you don’t agree with me it’s because, as I had the honor to tell you, you’re bored to death.”
“Planchet, do you know Monsieur La Fontaine?”99
“The pharmacist on the corner of Rue Saint-Médéric?”
“No, the fable author.”
“Ah! Master Crow?”100
“Exactly. Well, I’m like his hare.”
“He has a hare as well as a crow?”
“He has all kinds of animals.”
“All right! What’s he like, this hare?”
“He thinks.”
“Oh?”
“Planchet, I’m like Monsieur La Fontaine’s hare: I think.”
“Have you been thinking?” asked Planchet, worried.
“Yes. Your household, Planchet, is certainly dull enough to encourage meditation, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“However, Monsieur, you do have a view of the street.”
“By God, so I do! Some recreation, eh?”
“Nonetheless, Monsieur, if you had a room in the rear, you’d be bored … I mean, you’d think even more.”
“Faith, I don’t know about that, Planchet.”
“However,” said the grocer, “if your thoughts were like those that led you to the restoration of King Charles II….” And Planchet gave a small but significant chuckle.
“Ah, Planchet!” said d’Artagnan. “You’re becoming ambitious, my friend.”
“Isn’t there some other king to restore to his throne, Monsieur d’Artagnan, some other General Monck101 to put in a box?”
“No, my dear Planchet, all the kings are comfortable on their thrones … not as comfortable, maybe, as I am on this chair, but well enough.”
And d’Artagnan let out a sigh.
“You’re paining me, Monsieur d’Artagnan,” said Planchet.
“You’re a good man, Planchet.”
“God forgive me, but I have… a suspicion.”
“About what?”
“The reason, Monsieur d’Artagnan, that you’re losing weight.”
“Me?” said d’Artagnan, striking his chest, which resounded like an empty breastplate. “Impossible, Planchet.”
“But surely you see,” said Planchet earnestly, “that if you lost weight while staying with me….”
“Well?”
“Well! That would be a blot on my hospitality.”
“Come, now!”
“But yes.”
“What do you suspect, then? Tell me.”
“I suspect I know who’s causing you grief.”
“Oh, now I’m grieving?”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, Planchet, of course not.”
“I know that when I’ve got a grievance, I lose weight.”
“But me, losing weight? Really?”
“Really. Malaga! If you lose any more weight, I swear I’ll take my rapier and go cut Monsieur d’Herblay’s throat!”
“What!” said d’Artagnan, sitting up in his chair. “What are you saying, Planchet? Why do I hear Monsieur d’Herblay being insulted in your grocery?”
“Fine! Get angry if you want, but, morbleu! I know what I know.”
D’Artagnan, during this second outburst from Planchet, had placed himself so as not to lose a single word, seating himself with both hands resting on his knees and his neck stretched toward the worthy grocer. “Come, explain yourself,” he said, “and tell me how you could have blasphemed so against the name of Monsieur d’Herblay, my friend, your former leader, a man of the Church, a musketeer turned bishop. Is this a man you’d draw a sword on, Planchet?”
“I’d draw my sword on my father if I thought him responsible for your condition.”
“But Monsieur d’Herblay, a gentleman!”
“Gentleman or no gentleman, it’s all the same to me. He’s giving you nightmares, and don’t think I don’t know it. And when you have nightmares every night, you lose weight. Malaga! I’ll not have Monsieur d’Artagnan go out of my house thinner than when he came in.”
“What do you mean, he gives me nightmares? Come, now, explain!”
“You’ve had nightmares for three nights running.”
“I have?”
“Yes, and in your nightmares you cry out, ‘Aramis! Sly Aramis!’”
“I said that?” muttered d’Artagnan, worried.
“You said it, by the faith of a Planchet!”
“Well, what of it? You know the proverb: ‘All dreams are lies.’”
“Not all, especially since, for the last three days, every time you’ve gone out, when you returned you asked me, ‘Have you seen Monsieur d’Herblay?’ or ‘Has a letter come for me from Monsieur d’Herblay?’”
“But isn’t it only natural that I’d be interested in my dear old friend?” said d’Artagnan.
“Sure, but not so much as to lose weight from it.”
“Planchet, I’ll bulk up again, I give you my word of honor.”
“Good, Monsieur! Because I know that when you give your word of honor, it’s sacred.”
“I won’t dream any more about Aramis.”
“Excellent!”
“I won’t ask you any more about letters from Monsieur d’Herblay.”
“Perfect.”
“But explain something to me.”
“What, Monsieur?”
“I’m an observant man.”
“As well I know.”
“And earlier you swore a curious oath.”
“I did.”
“One I haven’t heard from you before.”
“Malaga, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s been my oath since I became a grocer.”
“Makes sense, it’s a kind of raisin.”
“It’s my curse of ferocity; when I say Malaga, I’ve been pushed beyond the bounds of humanity!”
“But I’d never heard it from you before.”
“True, Monsieur—I got it from someone as a sort of gift.”
And Planchet, saying this, gave a sly and significant wink that focused all d’Artagnan’s attention. “Ah?” he said.
“Ah!” Planchet repeated.
“Come, Monsieur Planchet. What have you been up to?”
“Dame, Monsieur!” said Planchet. “I’m not like you, I don’t spend my life thinking.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I’d rather be bored. Life is short, why not enjoy it?”
“Have you become an Epicurean philosopher, Planchet?”
“Why not? While the hand is deft, we write and weigh sugar and spices; while the foot is sure, we dance or we walk; while the stomach is sound, we eat and digest; and while the heart isn’t too shriveled, well, Monsieur….”
“Well, what, Planchet?”
“Why, this.” And the grocer rubbed his hands together vigorously.
D’Artagnan crossed one leg over the other. “Planchet, my friend,” he said, “you stun me with surprise.”
“Why?”
“Because you reveal yourself in an absolutely new light.”
Planchet, flattered, rubbed his hands so vigorously they were in danger of losing skin. “Ha!” he said. “Because I’m just an animal, do you take me for a fool?”
“Not when you reason so clearly.”
“Follow my reasoning, Monsieur,” Planchet continued. “Without pleasure, there is no happiness on earth.”
“How right you are, Planchet!” interrupted d’Artagnan.
“And if we can’t find pleasure, pleasure being sometimes hard to find, we can at least have… consolations.”
“So, you console yourself?”
“Exactly.”
“Tell me how you console yourself.”
“I have a shield that I wear against boredom: I pace my activities against the time I have to do them so that, just when I’m about to become bored, it’s time for some fun.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Yes.”
“And you figured that out yourself?”
“On my own.”
“It’s miraculous.”
“You think so?”
“I think it’s the finest philosophy in the world.”
“All right! Then just live by my example.”
“It’s tempting.”
“Do as I do.”
“I couldn’t ask for better, but not all souls are the same. If I pursued your kind of fun, I might find myself horribly bored….”
“Bah! Just give it a try.”
“So, what are your pursuits? Tell me.”
“Have you noticed that sometimes I’m not around the shop?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“It’s quite regular.”
“Quite so, ma foi! How did you spot it?”
“My dear Planchet, when we see each other nearly every day, if one of us is gone, the other notices it. Don’t you miss me when I go on campaign?”
“Immensely! I feel like a body without a soul.”
“That’s it exactly. You may continue.”
“When have you noticed that I’m absent?”
“Around the 15th and the 30th of each month.”
“And I’m gone for…?”
“Usually two, sometimes three, occasionally four days.”
“And where did you think I was going?”
“Collecting payments owed to you.”
“And when I return, my expression…?”
“Is thoroughly satisfied.”
“There, you said it yourself: satisfied. And to what do you attribute this satisfaction?”
“That your business is successful, and that your purchases of rice, prunes, dried pears, brown sugar, and molasses are going well. Your character has always been picturesque, Planchet, so I wasn’t at all surprised when you went into the grocery business. It’s always so varied, and you love to handle goods that are sweet and aromatic.”
“Well reasoned, Monsieur. But quite mistaken.”
“Where did I go wrong?”
“In thinking that I travel every two weeks just to collect payments and make purchases. Ha ha ha! How the devil could you believe such a thing?”
And Planchet laughed so hard d’Artagnan began to have doubts about his own intelligence. “I must admit that you’ve lost me,” said the musketeer.
“True, Monsieur.”
“True, how?”
“It’s true, of course, since you say it. But I assure you it doesn’t make me think the less of you.”
“Ah! How lucky for me!”
“No, you’re a man of genius—when it comes to war, to ambushes, to tactics and sudden assaults, dame! Kings aren’t in it with you. But when it comes to satisfaction of the soul, of care of the body, of savoring the sweetness of life, well, don’t talk to me about men of genius, they’re their own worst enemies.”
“Really, Planchet!” said d’Artagnan, eyes sparkling with curiosity. “You certainly have my attention.”
“You’re already less bored than you were, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t bored—but your conversation is certainly amusing.”
“We’re off to a good start! I shall heal you.”
“I couldn’t ask for better.”
“Are you ready to try my method?”
“Right away.”
“So be it! Do you have any horses?”
“Yes, as many as I need: ten, twenty, even thirty.”
“Oh, we don’t need that many—two will be enough.”
“They’re at your disposal, Planchet.”
“Good! Then I’m taking you with me.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And to where?”
“Ah! That’s asking too much.”
“However, you must admit it’s important that I know where I’m going.”
“Do you like the country?”
“Not so much, Planchet.”
“You prefer the city?”
“That depends.”
“Well, I’ll take you to a place that’s half town and half countryside.”
“Sounds ideal!”
“A place where I’m sure you’ll be amused.”
“Wonderful!”
“And, strangely enough, a place you left because you were bored there.”
“Bored, me?”
“Mortally bored!”
“You mean we’re going to Fontainebleau?”
“To Fontainebleau: exactly!”
“When you leave the shop, you go to Fontainebleau?”
“I do.”
“And what in God’s name do you do in Fontainebleau?”
Planchet’s only reply was a mischievous wink.
“You have a place there, you scoundrel!”
“Oh, a little shack, nothing more.”
“I have to see this.”
“It’s not so bad, to be honest.”
“We’re going to Planchet’s country estate!” laughed d’Artagnan.
“Whenever you like.”
“Didn’t you say tomorrow?”
“Let it be tomorrow, then—and since tomorrow is the 14th, the day before I’m due to be bored, the timing is perfect.”
“Agreed!”
“You’ll lend me one of your horses?”
“The very best!”
“No, I’d prefer the gentlest. I was never that great a rider, you know, and since I’ve been a grocer, I’ve gotten rusty. And also….”
“Also what?”
“And also,” added Planchet with a wink, “I want to make sure I don’t arrive tired.”
“And why is that?” d’Artagnan ventured to ask.
“So I’ll be ready for my fun,” Planchet replied. And with that he got up from his sack of grain and stretched and cracked all his joints, which popped one after another in a sort of harmony.
“Planchet! Planchet!” cried d’Artagnan. “I declare there’s not a sybarite in the world who compares to you. It’s clear we still haven’t shared enough salt with one another.”
“Why do you say that, Monsieur?”
“Because I still scarcely know you,” said d’Artagnan. “Really, I must return to the realization I had on that day in Calais102 when you just about strangled Lubin, the elder de Wardes’s valet: Planchet, you are a man of resource.”
Planchet gave a happy laugh, bade the musketeer good night, and went down to the rear chamber that served as his bedroom.
D’Artagnan resumed his original position on his chair, and his forehead, which had briefly cleared, once again clouded with thought. He had already forgotten Planchet’s jokes and follies.
“Yes,” he said to himself, picking up the thread of his ideas, which had been interrupted by the pleasant conversation we’ve shared with our readers, “yes, my course is clear. First, I must know what Baisemeaux wanted from Aramis. Second, why Aramis sends me no news. And third, where Porthos is. Between these three points lies the mystery.
“And so,” continued d’Artagnan, “since our friends tell us nothing, it’s time for some intelligence work. We’ll see what we can ascertain, mordioux! Or rather, as Planchet says, Malaga!”
Notes on the text of Devil’s Dance
98. PLANCHET: Like his counterparts who serve the three musketeers, d’Artagnan’s stalwart Picard lackey appears throughout the novels of the Musketeers Cycle, eventually becoming less servant to the Gascon than friend and partner.
99. LA FONTAINE: Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) was a poet best known for his many volumes of Fables, published from 1668 to 1694. Charming but notoriously absent-minded, La Fontaine was one of the early literary protégés of Superintendent Fouquet, but he didn’t find real fame until the mid-1660s, when he was one of the famous “Quartet of the Rue du Vieux Colombier” that also included Molière, Racine, and Boileau, the leading literary lights of their time.
100. MASTER CROW: La Fontaine’s verse about the Crow and the Fox about the dangers of flattery is another fable that goes back to Æsop.
101. GENERAL MONCK: General George Monck or Monk, 1st Duke of Albemarle (1608-1670) was a career soldier who worked his way up through the ranks, fighting on the Continent, the Scottish border, and against the Irish in the rebellion of 1641. He became one of Oliver Cromwell’s most trusted commanders and proved to be as canny at political strategy as he was at warfare. After Cromwell’s death, he finally threw his support behind Charles II and was instrumental in the Restoration that put the Stuarts back on the throne. (Monck’s abduction by d’Artagnan in Between Two Kings played no small part in this decision.)
102. THAT DAY IN CALAIS: In Chapter XX of The Three Musketeers.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS’ MUSKETEERS CYCLE
Devil’s Dance is part of a series. Everyone has heard of The Three Musketeers and its heroes d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, but what’s less well known nowadays is that Dumas followed up his greatest novel with a series of sequels that are just as great. Your Cheerful Editor Lawrence Ellsworth has been compiling all-new contemporary translations of these novels, and the entire series, when complete, will fill nine volumes:
- The Three Musketeers, Book One
- The Red Sphinx, Book Two
- Twenty Years After, Book Three
- Blood Royal, Book Four
- Between Two Kings, Book Five
- Court of Daggers, Book Six
- Devil’s Dance, Book Seven
- Shadow of the Bastille, Book Eight
- The Man in the Iron Mask, Book Nine
Volumes one through six are already in print, the first five from Pegasus Books, while Book Six, Court of Daggers, is available as an independent publication. Each week now brings a new episode in the serialization of Book Seven, Devil’s Dance.
If you’re interested in my work, you can learn more about it at swashbucklingadventure.net. Also, be sure to check out my parallel Substack, cinemaofswords.substack.com.
Welcome, fellow cavaliers, and enjoy the ride!
—Lawrence Ellsworth
Copyright © 2023 Lawrence Schick. All rights reserved.