HENRI D’Artagnan had arrived in Paris four months ago and so far his experience of the city was both better and worse than he could have anticipated. This mixed result could be directly traced back to the influence of Monsieur D’Artagnan’s two parents.

An only child and just barely out of adolescence at seventeen, Monsieur D’Artagnan looked very much like his mother-a small Gascon with olive skin, straight dark hair and piercing, intelligent eyes. From her, beyond appearance, he had inherited a certain hardheadedness of mind and manner and an unwillingness to let any perceived event rest till he’d ascertained the cause behind it.

From his father, a veteran of the religious wars, Monsieur D’Artagnan had received a more romantic inheritance, to wit, an old sword which had broken in two in his first skirmish; an orange horse of uncertain parentage which Monsieur D’Artagnan had seen fit to divest himself of; a letter of introduction to Monsieur de Treville which had been stolen from Henri on his way to the capital; and the advice to fight often, fight much, and not to tolerate any disrespect except from the King or the Cardinal.

The letter having been stolen had made it impossible for D’Artagnan to get a post in the musketeers as he had hoped. He had instead been offered a position in the guards of Monsieur des Essarts, a sort of probation he was enduring with all the determined stubbornness of a not very patient man.

However, the advice to fight often had led him-on his very first day in Paris -to challenge all three of the best duelists in the musketeers. Such his luck, when Athos, Porthos and Aramis made good on their planned confrontation, they had been interrupted by guards of the Cardinal. In a moment-one of those sudden moments of youthful enthusiasm that can and often do decide a man’s whole life-D’Artagnan had thrown his allegiance with the musketeers and against the guards of the Cardinal. Even better, his fighting had been material in turning the duel in favor of the musketeers.

This had set seal to an unlikely friendship in which the trio of inseparables was transformed into a quartet. And four months, many fights, many duels and countless drunken revels together later, D’Artagnan was not sure he would trade his three friends for a shiny, new uniform of the King’s Musketeers.

At any rate, he thought, as he sat in his quarters, eating a sparse meal of bread and cheese-having just come off his guard duty and preparing to sleep before whatever revels or duels his friends might have planned for this afternoon-this friendship had earned him the confidence of Monsieur de Treville and it bode fair to win him, also, a place in the musketeers, should one open up.

A sharp knock on the door startled him and woke his servant, Planchet, who had been asleep on a nest of blankets on the floor. Since D’Artagnan had often heard that sleeping was like eating, and since food was often too scarce in these lodgings for the still-growing Planchet, he’d advised the young man to snatch a sleep-meal whenever he was not urgently needed. Having scarfed down his portion of bread and cheese Planchet had gone to sleep almost instantly. He now rose, rubbing his eyes, his thatch of dark red hair standing on end and looking like nothing so much as an uncertainly piled haystack.

D’Artagnan waved him towards the door, and, for his part, drank up the rest of the somewhat sour wine in his white ceramic cup, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His lodging consisting of exactly two rooms- the inner chamber in which he slept and this outer chamber, with a table, chairs and a blanket in the corner for Planchet-this was where he must perforce receive all visitors.

The entrance door was down some stairs, at the same level as the door to the ground floor where D’Artagnan’s neighbor, Monsieur Bonacieux-a worthy merchant- lived. But since D’Artagnan didn’t hear any sounds of arguing and nothing that sounded like Planchet’s heated avowal of his master’s being asleep or on guard duty, D’Artagnan assumed this would not be the landlord in search of his overdue rent. And because he didn’t hear any protests, he assumed also it was not either a merchant seeking payment or an enemy trying to find D’Artagnan.

Instead, there was a soft murmur of voices, and then the sound of two steps up the stairs. D’Artagnan rose, half expecting one of his friends to come into the room.

But the man who came in was Bazin. Bazin looked much like a particularly rotund medieval monk and dressed like a monk, in dark and dreary wool. His hair loss imitated a tonsure with some credibility and he walked in small and measured steps well suited to treading a monastery’s hallowed halls.

That he was not a monk was not in fact his fault. From childhood, Bazin had attached himself to Aramis as Aramis’s servant, reasoning that when the young man achieved the religious orders towards which he was being raised then Bazin could at the very least be a lay brother in the same order.

The interruption of this course through Aramis’s impetuous if successful duel, and Aramis’s entrance into the musketeers were events which had shattered Bazin’s world as unexpectedly and surely as though a comet had struck through the endless stratosphere and hit the Earth. He couldn’t fully comprehend what would cause his master- whom he was used to thinking of as a well-mannered and pious youth-to abandon such a sure course or to embark on such violent ways.

Long ago, and through no particular course of thinking, but more through the blind resentment of an animal who must blame someone for his misfortune, he’d settled upon blaming the other musketeers for Aramis’s downfall. That D’Artagnan was too late a comer to their friendship to be in any way guilty for Aramis’s present life did not in any way change this resentment. D’Artagnan wenched and drank and dueled with the other three, and therefore D’Artagnan too was to blame. D’Artagnan too-should Bazin be allowed to expound on the matter-encouraged Bazin’s master’s fondness of a sinful world.

All this-which D’Artagnan had heard expressed in voice once or twice-was written in the servant’s sullen expression as he bowed in D’Artagnan’s general direction, all the while glaring at him out of eyes that seemed too small for the large and round face.

“Ah, Bazin,” D’Artagnan said, seeking to appear pleased. He should be pleased, because Aramis was-after all-a good friend. And yet, why would Aramis send his curdle-faced servant to D’Artagnan if he knew how Bazin would resent it. Out of the corner of his eye, D’Artagnan saw Planchet settle himself on his blankets to watch, smiling a little.

Planchet being who he was, and a genius in his own way, D’Artagnan was never too sure what amused Planchet more-Bazin’s sullen dislike or D’Artagnan’s attempt to disguise his own antipathy. Ignoring his own servant, he looked at Aramis’s. “So, Bazin, what brings you here?”

“My master sent me, sir,” Basin said with that excess of humility that betrays someone very sure of talking to an equal if not to an inferior. “He would like you to come with me to Monsieur Porthos’s house.”

“What? Now?” D’Artagnan asked, because Aramis knew his schedule and very often one or the other of the musketeers would stand guard with him at Monsieur des Essarts. “But I just came off guard and was about to…” His words slowed down. “Is it a duel?” he asked, reaching for his sword on the table.

Bazin crossed himself and shook his head, and, as D’Artagnan moved away from the sword, sighed and said, “Not a duel, sir… and yet it might not be a bad idea to bring your sword. There are… It pains me truly, but my master seems to always end up setting himself against men of the church and the Cardinal…”