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On account of it being a beautiful April day, the sun shining brightly and no tasks set before them with which to fill it, the three Inseparables decided to spend the warm morning lazing about in the leafy courtyard behind the Hôtel de Treville. Knowing that D’Artagnan had been invited to take breakfast with the captain and the other newly commissioned Musketeers, they expected his presence later, and were thus surprised to find him already perched at one of the courtyard’s tables, polishing his hand weapons with such vigor as though they had done him personal offense.
When D’Artagnan did not so much as acknowledge their loud salutations as they approached his table, nor grant their arrival at it with any more than a red-eyed glare, Aramis observed, “It seems our Gascon is in a worse mood than usual!”
In reply, D’Artagnan gave a sneeze so loud and forceful he was forced to grasp his cup to keep it from toppling off the table. He grumbled and produced a handkerchief from his sleeve, wiping at his nose with the hasty conviction of a man who had already been wronged one too many times by the bothersome appendage.
“And a bit ill as well,” Athos observed, for his part.
“I’m not ill,” D’Artagnan growled. His friends raised their eyebrows at him; surely he could hear how his own voice was pitched about an octave below its usual? He growled again at their expressions, then growled a third time when his nose demanded he sniffle. “It’s the damnable flowers with which the architects of Paris have seen fit to line every bed and fashionable avenue.” He gestured to the pots of lilacs that hung in the windowsills of the courtyard. “I’d like to wring every last one of their necks!”
“Come, such violence to a flower?” Aramis said, laughing. “Well, gentlemen, let it not be said that our noble Gascon has no Achilles heel.”
Porthos laughed, too. “If, God-forbidding, there ever comes a time when we fall out of favor and the occasion rises for a duel between us, I shall remember to schedule it in a botanist’s hovel.”
There was, however, no humor in D’Artagnan’s occluded voice. “Would you care for that duel to come today, Porthos?”
“Come, D’Artagnan,” Athos said, “what has sharpened your temper so?”
D’Artagnan ignored the older man’s inquiry, training his teary eyes on Porthos with a rabid intensity. “Perhaps you would like to schedule it for two o’clock at the Jardins des Tuileries so that I may do away with you there the way I will do away with Menard of the Red Guard just the hour before.”
Athos nodded significantly. “Ah! It is the heat of anticipation that makes his blood boil so fiercely.”
D’Artagnan turned once more to his handkerchief to sneeze twice.
Aramis bit his lip. “And what has Monsieur Menard done to provoke such a challenge?”
“Now, Aramis,” Athos said diplomatically. “I am sure the young man’s ire is justified.”
“I lay no accusation of the contrary,” Aramis said, raising his hands, palms up, in a gesture of surrender. “It is merely that I wish for our D’Artagnan to keep in mind my warnings against senseless escalations.”
Porthos scoffed. “Fie! Your warnings. Too much time with your prayer books, Master Abbé, makes you forget. A man cannot let any insult against his person stand, no matter how slight!”
Athos turned to the Gascon, who was again wiping his nose on his handkerchief. “Tell us, D’Artagnan, what caused you to issue the challenge.”
D’Artagnan told them the story of how Menard had found him taking his breakfast on a bench outside the Hôtel de Treville and how he had asked D’Artagnan why he was not dining inside with the rest of his company. At first, D’Artagnan had rebuffed the man’s inquiry, stating that if the Red Guard minded the law half as much as they minded another man’s private business, France would be all the safer indeed. But then he had sneezed thrice, awfully, and Menard wondered aloud whether the Musketeer hadn’t been kicked out on account of plague, and so D’Artagnan felt forced to impose upon the Guard that he was indeed healthy, and the true cause for his suffering and his solitude were the lilacs that the had lined the serving tables at breakfast. He had then sneezed a good four times more, and Menard insulted the quality of the expulsions. D’Artagnan in turn insulted the presumed quality of some of Menard’s other bodily expulsions, and the two men agreed to settle their insults with a duel. D’Artagnan relayed this story with all the gravity and attention it deserved, and so was immensely incensed when Aramis and Porthos commenced to laugh so hard they clutched their sides. Even Athos was smiling broadly. Aramis at least had the good grace to look a tad contrite when he glimpsed D’Artagnan’s iron scowl.
“Apologies, dear friend,” Aramis said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But surely you can see the humor in this situation?”
“No,” D’Artagnan growled, his words bouncing dully off swollen sinuses. “I certainly cannot.”
Porthos snorted again, but was silenced by the unmistakable crack of a foot striking his shin beneath the table.
Athos regarded the Gascon seriously. “Who chose the location? ”
“Menard.”
Aramis clucked his tongue in reply. “Have you been to the Jardins des Tuileries yet this season?”
D’Artagnan shook his heavy head.
“I have been with a–” Aramis colored almost imperceptibly, but continued, “--a friend.” At this, both Athos and Porthos swallowed down choked noises in their throats. “The gardens are absolutely filled with lilacs. Menard must have known this.”
Athos nodded. “It is the only reason he would have chosen such a location, out of the way for you both. It is on the outskirts of Paris. Would not the square behind the Louvre serve you just as well?”
D’Artagnan slammed his blade and towel on the table with such force as to cause the birds nesting in the tree across the courtyard to take flight. “He wishes to humiliate me further, the dog! The scoundrel! As if insulting me for my damned hayfever, over which I have no control, wasn’t enough.”
Athos nodded sagely, watching as D’Artagnan pawed at his reddened nose with a series of enraged sniffles. “The only question which remains is,” the older man said, “what do you intend to do about it?”
“Well, there is only one thing that can be done, I suppose.” When none of his friends showed indication of following his logic, Aramis continued as though supremely put-upon. “We convey a message to the rascal Menard and pray that he sees sense.”
Immediately, Porthos and D’Artagnan rose with a clamor from the table, and Aramis shook his head. “He cannot fight like this!” He gestured to the sniffling Gascon. “If the flowers have such an effect on him merely by being in the vicinity, imagine what it will be like when they are at his feet!”
“You advise him to back down from a challenge?” Porthos snarled. “ Pardieu , Aramis, I fear you really have taken your clerical lessons too much to heart!”
D’Artagnan opened his mouth, no doubt to add another remark in spirited agreement with Porthos, but the only thing which issued forth from his mouth was another fit of sneezing, which of course incidentally supported Aramis’s argument.
Once it was clear the young man had finished, Athos spoke. “The challenge is D’Artagnan’s, and so it is up to the Gascon to decide the course of action.” His light eyes roved the length of D’Artagnan’s body, like an appraiser studying a jewel. “But as his second, I issue this condition: Spar with me now. If you land a touch, you may go.”
D’Artagnan whined like a child. “But Athos is the best swordsman in the regiment!”
“All the more reason a touch should be proof of your fitness, then.”
Athos drew his longsword and, with a discomfited hmph, so too did D’Artagnan. Soon the crash of sword against sword broke the silent air as the two fought, Athos wearing an expression of curious disengagement all the while D’Artagnan scurried around like a rat to parry his blows.
“Don’t tire him out before he’s even fought!” Porthos called.
Aramis hit him on the shoulder. “Oh, hush Porthos!”
But the two of them had noticed the sweat that was already beading on D’Artagnan’s forehead, especially in contrast to the way Athos hardly seemed to move. The Gascon was far from fighting fit, that much was certain, his position firmly on the defensive even though Athos was clearly not giving his all. He leaned to the side to let off two sneezes.
“Sneezing on me does not count as a touch,” Athos said. He raised the tip of his sword to D’Artagnan’s throat as the man blinked heavily. “Let’s go!”
Perhaps the ribbing had induced some new vigor in the young man, for not long afterward did he make a small, neat cut on the fabric of Athos’s shirt near his shoulder. D’Artagnan smiled, his breaths heaving, and stowed his sword back in its sheath.
Athos did the same and shrugged. “A promise is a promise.”
“This is folly,” Aramis said sharply.
Athos tapped his chin. “That balm from your mother—would it help in this situation?”
D’Artagnan sniffled bitterly, taking his friend’s concern as a mockery. “Seeing as though I have no wound which is external , I should think not.”
“Given his nose’s sensitivity at present, the herbal scent would likely do more harm than good anyway,” Aramis added, and then sighed deeply. “If you must fight, promise me you will duel only to first blood.”
Porthos and D'Artagnan rose again in a bleating chorus. “Aramis—“
Athos shook his head. “On this I must side with Aramis, I’m afraid.”
D’Artagnan cried out with the sharp fervor only a young man deeply incensed by the injustices of the world can possess. “But I landed my touch!”
“Only after I would have taken your sneezing head off ten times over.”
Aramis smiled to himself, and D’Artagnan sulked into his handkerchief. He remained nearly as taciturn as Athos for the rest of the morning, despite his friend’s attempts to rouse his spirits and engage him in their conversations to pass the time. In his view, there was not much to be said, not when every bit of the world from his friends to the fauna seemed to side against him.
At last the time came for them to depart to the Tuileries for the duel, which revived D’Artagnan somewhat, as much as a man who can hardly breathe through his nose can be lively. The first thing he noted upon arrival at the gardens was that Aramis had told the truth; all other types of verdure had seemingly been neglected in favor of the accursed purple blossoms. The tickle which had assaulted his nose all day quadrupled, despite being near the bounds of intolerable before.
The second thing he noted was that Menard awaited him, with only one man as his second. “I must say, Monsieur D’Artagnan,” the Red Guard said, “given the state of you earlier, I am quite surprised to see you here.”
D’Artagnan rubbed his nose in an attempt to quit the infernal tickle before he spoke, but the gesture was futile. “What is it, Monsieur Menard?” was all he could manage before succumbing to a pair of wrenching sneezes. “Do you mean to imply that I am–” his nose interrupted for a third paroxysm “--not a man of my word?”
“Nothing of the sort!” Menard held up his hands. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I am shocked to see a man remain so bound to his word despite the obvious…” He trailed off, brow furrowed in slight disgust at the noises D’Artagnan was making. “The obvious cost to him to do so.”
The Gascon regarded his opponent through vision made blurry with tears. “I am not a man to be felled easily, of that you can be certain! Not by you and most definitely–” a sneeze “-- not— ” and here another “-- by a damn hay fever!” He sneezed again, sniffling lamentably.
Menard gave a clipped nod. “That much is plain to see.” For a moment all was silent (save, of course, for the various noises of D’Artagnan which could not be helped), until at last the Red Guard spoke again. “I am willing to withdraw my earlier statements and dueling challenge in the face of such determination, if you are willing to do the same?”
He sneezed again; his nose was beginning to feel as though it was swelling shut, and D’Artagnan could scarcely see through all the irritated tears which clouded his vision. A year ago, perhaps, he would have barreled on with the challenge like a headstrong ox–in all honesty, he was still quite tempted to–but he congratulated himself on the wise temperament he was developing with age as he nodded.
“I am.”
Menard offered his hand. “In that case, Monsieur D’Artagnan? ”
“Monsieur Renard,” D’Artagnan said, and shook his hand.
“It is settled?”
He sneezed, leaning to the side and withdrawing his hand to grasp for his sodden handkerchief. “So it is.”
With that, the two parted ways. The Gascon returned to his friends, his whole face feeling as though it were being pressed in a vice, and they hurried to lead him out of the gardens and hopefully, back to his apartments by way of streets that were relatively flower-free.
“I still say we let the scoundrel off too easily,” Porthos grumbled. “He obviously knew what he was doing, setting the Tuileries as the meeting place.”
“I still maintain that D'Artagnan should not have gone at all,” Aramis countered. “Look what a scant ten minutes there has done to him!”
“The two of you can bicker all you like once we have deposited the Gascon back at his lodgings and me back at mine,” Athos said. “We face more pressing issues at the moment, like whose handkerchiefs D’Artagnan will use now, that his has clearly been used up.”
D’Artagnan was helpless to reply, save for a thundering sneeze.