an old, well-grounded noble family could afford. Ask Athos about philosophy, about the virtues of the ancients, about that corruption which had caused the fall of the mighty Roman Empire and you’d get well reasoned explanations, concise and set into words so carefully picked that even a school master could take no exception to them.
Athos, when he was thus inclined—often after he’d drunk far more than anyone should drink—would debate even theology with Aramis himself, and could make his points over Aramis’s even on those things in which Aramis was well schooled. But Athos’s practical intelligence, his knowledge of people and people’s motives . . . well . . .
Like most misanthropes, Athos tended to assume the worst of humankind. While this was better than assuming the best, it was just as fallible. Athos saw every man as a mirror of himself and himself as composed of the worst qualities he’d not even observed but read about. Aramis was not so dense that he hadn’t gathered that in Athos’s past there was something he viewed as a crime and for which he blamed himself. He would bet—from knowing Athos—that it was something no other human being would feel guilty about. Or at least, no other sane human being. Athos’s long silences, his brooding, his imbibing, his reckless and always unlucky gambling all seemed to bespeak a great love with ruin and death.
How could Aramis trust Athos to save Aramis from ruin and death, when those seemed to be the older man’s true lovers?
Then there was D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan was cunning. Aramis would give him that. In fact, when he’d first met D’Artagnan, Aramis thought he might very well have met his match and watched the young man in careful, if horrified, attention, to make sure that D’Artagnan did not mean to maneuver behind Aramis’s back.
He’d come to be satisfied of the young man’s loyalty and probity. None of which meant he didn’t think that D’Artagnan wasn’t cunning.
But part of what made D’Artagnan’s cunning not so threatening was the fact that the young man was young yet. Just seventeen and newly arrived in Paris, D’Artagnan wouldn’t be able to penetrate the secret places of the court, nor to ask questions of those who knew Violette best. And even if he did, their motives might be opaque to him, who had never been a courtier.
Oh, with the four of them together it was true that the whole often seemed far more than the sum of its parts, and yet . . .
Aramis became aware that he had been quiet for a long while. And his quietness was echoed in the thunderous frown on the Dominican’s face.
“You were thinking of her again,” the man said. He was middle-aged. Though, to be honest, he was probably no older than Athos’s thirty-five years of age. But he was greyer, what remained of his hair around the monacal tonsure, an iron grey and faded. And his face too had a curious faded look, the skin seeming almost colorless and wrinkled, around mouth and eyes, as if he’d frowned disconsolately once too many.
“Tell me at least,” he said, with a beseeching tone. “That you were thinking of her in sorrow. That you were sorry for the torments she must be suffering for those delights you shared with her.”
“I wasn’t thinking of—” Aramis said.
The Dominican smirked. “No, I imagine you weren’t. You were thinking of her luscious thighs, her soft breasts. This is what you dream about, is it not?”
“Her breasts were not so much soft as firm,” Aramis said, and then realized what he had said, as the Dominican stared at him in horror.
“I cannot save you, Chevalier. I cannot save you,” he said. “You are headed for the fiery pit headlong, and I can’t save you. As much as I respect your honorable mother, as much as I would like to help her convert her son, I don’t think I can do it.” He opened his arms in a show of helplessness and, instead of resuming his ranting as Aramis hoped, he opened the door and headed out, slamming it behind himself.
Aramis took a couple of breaths, contemplating the closed door. Truth be told, he was growing bored with the sermons and tired of the narrow view of a man who had entered a monastery as a child and clearly knew nothing about the world he railed against.
On the other hand, the Dominican was his mother’s spiritual counselor and had great influence over Madame D’Herblay. If Aramis’s