Little Gentlemen (Ch2)
28 December 2025 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeHaving decided to rename Auguste-Philippe-Gérard du Chaligret de Fouilgieux to Henri-Auguste-Gérard in order to avoid an overlap with the familiar Raoul and Philippe of my "Phantom" stories, I then decided to retain the original reference to "Philippe" at the start of this chapter, which was intended to be Jakob talking about random aristocratic pupils, and which I had subsequently amended to "Gérard" when changing the name elsewhere. My concept was always that Athos's 'school' would have consisted largely of noblemen's sons, by analogy with medieval fostering arrangements and because all his natural beliefs and prejudices† (and those of the parents of any boys likely to be entrusted to his tutelage!) would lead him that way. So the fact that the majority of those OCs actually mentioned are, for plot reasons, Venya's fellow-'waifs and strays', gives a false impression of the general make-up of the establishment, of which I was becoming increasingly conscious.
So 'Philippe and Adalbert' are now 'Gérard and Adalbert', the Philippe who was 'Auguste-Philippe-Gérard du Chaligret' and became an 'Henri-Auguste-Gérard' is now an 'Henri-Clément-Gérard', and Jakob refers to a "Philippe and Auguste" who are two completely different, by implication aristocratic, boys... with Philippe being explicitly substituted in for a previously un-named boy whom d'Artagnan pokes fun at in Ch3, in order to flesh out his existence slightly :-p
We know that there are approximately a dozen boys at Bragelonne, including the three named orphans/foreigners, Jakob, Raoul and Franz, and the male Porthos twin (and two more unnamed 'younger ones' somewhere in age between Jakob and Venya), so there ought to be eight or so noblemen's sons in that bunch...
† In which context it is interesting to note that in Dumas' Twenty Years After it is the high-born Athos who seeks to take Planchet warmly by the hand (the former valet doesn't accept more than a token brush of fingertips), and it is Aramis, the landless younger son, who is as shocked as Planchet by this unheard-of act of egalitarianism :-p It helps to be entirely confident in one's own position...
Viewing stats: Chapter 1 received a grand total of six views [edit: now eight!] in its first few days before getting stuck. However, I did get a message (by 'review reply', this being AO3) asking me to read someone else's 90,000-word story featuring Raoul de Bragelonne's upbringing, in the context of Aramis and Athos conducting a steamy homosexual relationship with Athos beating Aramis up and Aramis being madly jealous of d'Artagnan.
Which is just *so* far from my take on either the characters or canon (both Aramis and Athos being notable for their heterosexual tendencies, albeit in Athos' case in a fairly damaged way, and the two only teaming up at all in that one book, during which Aramis by implication manages to *father a child* on his current aristocratic patroness) -- and it being a major plot point in actual canon that Athos 'reforms' his heavy-drinking habits as a direct result of adopting Raoul, which both pulls him out of depression and gives him someone to whom he wants to be a good example -- that I gave up on even attempting to read the fic after forty thousand words or so, request or no request. (If I had realised she was writing Athos/Aramis slash in the story which I favourably reviewed, my review might have been less favourable; I had interpreted it as the canonical bond between the four being tragically ruptured by Aramis' actions, rather than a lovers' quarrel....)
But I see she has 39 views and 3 kudos (and one ecstatic reviewer), so someone likes it at least.
Ironically, the other "Raoul story" currently being posted sounds like something I might be interested in reading (Raoul is taken captive in Africa rather than dying in battle, and Athos goes after him rather than dying vicariously of Raoul's broken heart at home)... but it's in Polish, and attempting to read it as phonetic Russian ('Prawda', 'Posluchaj') can only get me a few words here and there :-P
Chapter 2 — A Fresh Start
Warm, well-fed and comfortable, Venya slept until long past daybreak, and woke to find himself sharing a bed with a small and wriggling body that was kicking him in its sleep. Venya kicked back, instinctively, with one of Big Dima’s favourite oaths, and sat up with a jolt in the realization that he was no longer in Dima’s cellar. Sun was streaming in through open shutters, boys’ voices echoed down the corridor outside the room and dogs were barking somewhere beyond the window, and it seemed his companion of the night was a curly-headed child some three or four years younger than himself, into whose bed he had evidently been put the evening before.
The two of them pummelled one another wordlessly for a moment, then broke off by unspoken common agreement, with honour satisfied on both sides. The little boy bestowed a beaming smile upon Venya, along with a hopeful enquiry in a language he could not understand at all. He did his best, haltingly, to explain.
“I can speak French.” The little boy bounced out of bed, fair curls flying. “I’m Jakob and I speak very good French now. Raoul said so.”
Venya caught at the name from amid a confused sea of memories. “Where... Raoul?”
“Oh, Raoul is one of the big boys, so he has a room of his own. Like Philippe and Auguste, only they have fathers. Franz doesn’t have a father, so maybe they’ll put you in his room. Only Charlot said that for now you were in here, because I’m the smallest so there’s more space.” Another sunny look. “I don’t mind.”
He had pulled back the hangings to reveal a scene of complete disarray, where the other inhabitants of the room had clearly been and gone, and was scrambling unaided into his clothes, managing laces and fastenings with a competent little air. Tugging at his collar, he took pity for once on Venya’s complete incomprehension and added, slowly and kindly: “Here— clothes for you. Monsieur Grimaud brought them.”
And indeed somebody —presumably Grimaud— had left a complete suit of clothing in murrey and brown neatly folded on the chest at the foot of the bed. Everything had clearly been made for a taller boy and taken up now for Venya’s benefit with sets of workmanlike stitches, and most of the garments showed signs of wear. But they were warm and clean, and better made than anything Venya had ever possessed. Following Jakob down the corridor to breakfast, he had the proud conviction of being as finely dressed as any other boy at Bragelonne.
There were a great many boys, or so it seemed. Boys of all shapes and sizes came bursting headlong out of doorways or went galloping down the stairs, and young voices rang along the hallways with a general air of excitement that was, as the Comte de La Fère observed, in a quiet voice that cut through the hubbub with rapier precision, more befitting a military encampment than a gentleman’s residence.
He had emerged from his own chamber above to survey the morning chaos with an air of calm tolerance that nonetheless brought instant results. The assorted inhabitants of the chateau were transformed, as if by magic, into what revealed itself to be a group of no more than a dozen boys, who filed in to take their places around the table with well-disciplined precision.
The Comte made no attempt, however, to quell the babel of chatter that immediately broke out once more. Taking his own place at the head of the breakfast table he regarded proceedings with the faintest of smiles, while Raoul, for one, returned his gaze with a look of affection that would have afforded the Abbé d’Herblay considerable amusement.
Venya, seated on Raoul’s left, where Jakob had triumphantly deposited him, found himself from time to time the subject of the Comte’s considering glance, and looked back with open curiosity. The whole room, with its vast table and long windows through which the gardens were visible, seemed to him the stuff of fairy-tale palaces, as did the glimpses of silver and of carved wood that were as rich as anything he had seen through the door of a church. The Comte himself, pale, handsome and composed, might have been a statue come to life. He was not dressed like the nobles of Paris, save for the fine lace that fell across his hands as he moved; indeed, compared to the Abbé d’Herblay, who had descended upon Venya with all the bewildering splendour of a miracle from the skies, his entire person was austere and remote. But Raoul, who was busy chattering away, spoke again and again with the warmest enthusiasm of ‘monsieur le comte’, who appeared to feature largely in every story of life at Bragelonne.
“Do you like animals? I’ll take you round the stables. There’s a cat who lives in the hayloft there, she doesn’t belong to anyone but she lets me touch her. I don’t have my own horse, but monsieur le comte likes us all to ride, and to know how to clean the tack and rub the horses down. I ride Reynard, mostly. He’s not too tall, and very gentle to handle. You’re shorter than I am, so probably monsieur le comte will teach you on Snowball— that’s the pony who pulls the little carriage that Madame du Vallon uses when she is here. She’s the mother of the Porthoslets.”
He turned in his seat to point, and Venya, who had been paying very little attention, looked round and saw, with surprise, a pretty round-cheeked girl seated with complete composure amid all the older boys at the foot of the table, next to a boy of the same age with the same beaming rosy face who was clearly her brother.
“Jeannot and Marguerite du Vallon,” Raoul was saying cheerfully. “They’re Uncle Porthos’ children— monsieur le comte says it’s good for us to have a girl here to teach us how to behave. Uncle Aramis calls them the Porthoslets, but we’re not supposed to. At least, not where Uncle Porthos might hear, because it’s not respectful.”
There was a rueful ring to that last word, as of a lesson driven home by rote.
“But you’ll love Uncle Porthos— Monsieur du Vallon. Everyone does. He’s enormous, and magnificent, and tremendous good fun.”
“And he brings presents,” Jakob put in from beyond, insistent that Raoul had missed out the best part, and Raoul laughed.
“And he brings presents. Once he brought two whole deer—”
“And he ate half of one all by himself,” Jakob added, with the awe of one who has witnessed a never-to-be forgotten feat, along with all the appreciation of a child who had himself —in a time mercifully long past— wandered distraught and starving through the desolation of war.
“Once he brought an entire troupe of actors from the fair at Tours —no, Jakob, you don’t remember, it was before you came— and even Gérard and Adalbert were impressed.” Raoul pointed again. “That’s Adalbert. His father is the Comte de Vaugison, and Gérard is Henri-Clément-Gérard du Chaligret de Fouilgieux. Only monsieur le comte is better-born than any of them, Grimaud says so, and ten times more the gentleman. He doesn’t mind that I don’t have a father, or a mother either. He’s teaching me about astronomy and fortification just the same, as well as Plato and dancing, and he says I fence better already than Adalbert even though I’m two years younger.”
He cast a glowing look up at the head of the table, and met the quiet smile in the eyes of the Comte de La Fère.
“I’m going to ask if I can take you round Bragelonne today,” he confided to Venya. “They can’t expect you to do lessons yet, and if I promise to help with the horses I expect monsieur le comte won’t mind if I miss mine...”
But he was wrong, as it happened, on both counts. Raoul was borne away, disconsolate, in company with two or three of the other boys, in order to continue his studies with globes and maps, while Venya, brought face to face with the Comte himself, underwent a calm inquisition which sent him into such panic that his halting French, threadbare at best, deserted him altogether.
But the Comte did not punish him for dumb insolence, let alone turn him out of doors. He simply set the tips of his fingers together upon the table, and said a few words to Grimaud, when the latter, lean and unsmiling, came in answer to his call. Monsieur Grimaud spoke very little at all; but his hands and face were eloquent, and his keen eyes quick to discern answers, and between them the depths of Venya’s ignorance were laid bare, without judgement or any sign of surprise.
He had played the flute with his father to earn a few scant coins in the street. He did not know the word for that, but Grimaud’s quick hands ran through a pantomime of instruments until he nodded, and Grimaud and the Comte exchanged a glance. The Comte de La Fère rose and gave a brief order, and presently a tall youth with a cap of bright hair came in, carrying a fingered wooden pipe that was not quite the same as the one his father had lost but for which Venya’s heart yearned at once.
He took the instrument in his hands, turning it over and over, and after a minute or two of fumbling for the fingerings was able to draw from it a plaintive, lilting melody that was at one and the same time both a comfort and an almost unbearable memory of home. He broke off on a sob, and the older boy laid a consoling hand upon his shoulder.
So it came about that Venya found himself under the tutelage of the young Switzer Franz, who had once been a boy soldier left behind by the tides of war, and was the eldest of those still at Bragelonne, having nowhere else to go. From being a pupil he had become more than half assistant to Charlot, and harboured hopes that when he was grown he might find a place as steward to some great estate through monsieur le comte’s recommendation.
For the present he set himself, slowly and patiently, to instruct Venya in the basics of the alphabet, just as he himself had at that age been taught. His pupil proved more apt than he was expecting, and after a certain amount of confusion amid the half-familiar signs managed to trace a complete set of staggering letters, and his own name, or at least the best approximation of it that Franz could guess.
It was an accomplishment that merited celebration in a far more mutually comprehensible language. When Grimaud looked around the door an hour or so later, it was to find the two young musicians trading tunes from their own native lands, with the younger of the two by no means the less accomplished. He withdrew silently. The Comte, he thought, would be pleased.
Still, growing boys could not spend the whole day in scratching out the ABC, or even in the study of geography, and at length Raoul duly begged and received permission to take the newcomer out with him around the grounds. The domain of Bragelonne was not, by the standards of the world, a very large one, but to an imaginative child it was more than enough to constitute a kingdom of one’s own, and Raoul’s generosity of spirit was such as to inspire in him a pressing desire to share all its secrets.
The Comte de La Fère watched the two of them disappearing across the parterre at full pelt, provisioned with a couple of cold collops and some pasties begged from Madame Charlot, before vanishing into the trees, pursued by plaintive cries from Jakob, who had not been invited and whose legs were too short to keep up. With a sigh he went down to retrieve the child, with a promise to take him up later on his own saddle-bow as consolation. He must needs ride over to La Vallière in any case to speak with Madame de Saint-Remy, and Jakob, like the other boys, adored little Louise. Behind the ancient grey walls of her home, she fulfilled for them the rôle of a tiny fairytale princess.
From this position of advantage he was the first to catch sight of the approaching riders, and called out, pointing. “Monsieur le comte!”
It was a phrase that had found its way so often to Raoul’s lips in the course of their acquaintance that it fell now quite naturally from his own.
Raoul scrambled to his feet, balancing easily atop the broad highway of the elm branch below. “So it is... but that’s not Blaisois beside him.”
The young attendant Blaisois, a boy of about Franz’s age, could be seen riding a length or two behind two cavaliers in close conversation. The taller of the two, familiar in every aspect from the grace of his seat to the grey that touched the flowing locks beneath his hat, was the Comte de La Fère. His companion along the high-road bestrode a compact, energetic charger that made light of its double burden— for its rider bore in front of him a small, triumphant figure that was recognisable, even at this distance, as Jakob.
“I wonder...” Raoul breathed quietly, on a note of hope; then, aloud, “Come on! Let’s get back. I’ll race you.”
He slid down to the foot of the tree on the instant, while the other boy, less accustomed to this form of exercise, made his more cautious descent. Constrained by his sense of honour, Raoul awaited him impatiently, bouncing on his feet. Having learned to interpret Venya’s questioning looks, he pointed.
“To the house— quickly.” Understanding dawned with a grin, and Raoul laughed in return. “Go!”
But he waited a couple of moments before setting off in eager pursuit. He was taller, after all, and he had not been half-starved... and it was only fair.
“D’Artagnan— d’Artagnan!” Raoul cried out, echoed by other excited voices as the boys piled into the yard. “It’s monsieur d’Artagnan!”
The Comte held up a hand for silence.
“As some of you will remember,” he said quietly, smiling, “this is my friend, the bravest of soldiers and one of the finest men I know: monsieur le chevalier d’Artagnan, whom I encountered upon the road on his way to visit us.”
There was a general cheer.
“My d’Artagnan,” Jakob announced, with a possessive look up at the officer, who dismounted to ruffle his fair curls.
“And my Jakob has grown again, I see, little corn-top,” he retorted, laughing. “A poor little scrap you were when I found you, and you clung to my boot and would not let go. But it came to me that I could do no better than to send you back to add to monsieur le comte’s collection here at Bragelonne— and see how right I have been. Why, he will make a little gentleman of you yet.”
“Not quite yet, I fear,” the Comte put in, regarding the youngest of his charges with a rueful gaze. “But you have not brought any further contributions this time, I trust? Our friend d’Herblay has just sent me another boy from Paris, and he is as tongue-tied as was your little Dutchman when first he came.”
His eyes sought out Venya hanging back among the others, and the boy came forward reluctantly in answer to his name.
D’Artagnan laid a friendly hand on Venya’s shoulder and addressed him in Spanish, followed by a few words of halting Dutch, but Venya simply hung his head, looking very much as if he would prefer to disappear.
He was rescued by Jeannot, pushing forward eagerly. “Monsieur, monsieur d’Artagnan, monsieur le comte is teaching us English, and I know two dozen words already!”
“Indeed?” D’Artagnan, swinging round with dancing eyes, released his grasp. “Then you have the advantage of me, though I was in England once in my youth. For I can recall only one— and perhaps,” he added with belated caution, “I had better not say it.”
“Oh, I can guess,” Jeannot assured him. “Goddamn!”
The word was brought out with such a triumphant air that d’Artagnan broke into a laugh, admitting defeat, and even the Comte could not help but smile. D’Artagnan cast him a look of apology.
“Monsieur le comte has been good enough to call me his friend; and so I hope I am. But what he has not said is that I was his first pupil, and that in those days, when I was little older than some of you, I strove to model myself upon him in every way. You will do, I hope, better than I did —don’t shake your head at me, Athos!”—under his breath to his friend—“for it is not his fault if I profited so poorly by it. But you should know that whatever praise he may have deigned to give me must fall entirely to his credit.”
“My dear d’Artagnan,” the Comte returned warmly, “it was you who gave me the example, and showed me what I might make of my life and where my true future lay. If this pet project of mine has shown any success, then it is to you that the boys owe thanks... and your swordsmanship at least you cannot disclaim to my account. In that impetuous youth of yours, you were already one of the best blades of my experience.”
“We were quite something in those days,” d’Artagnan allowed, stroking his moustache in Gascon pride. “And even now—”
“And even now we can ourselves learn by setting an example. There are those among us”—the Comte’s gaze dwelt for a moment upon young Gérard du Chaligret, who flushed—“who consider themselves already masters of the salle d’armes, and might benefit from a lesson or two in humility.”
D’Artagnan, who would not have endured so much as a shadow of reproof from any other man alive, took the hint nonetheless in both of the senses in which it was given, setting his hand upon his sword-hilt and sweeping a low bow to the onlookers with a flourish.
“Messieurs, behold me entirely and humbly then at your disposal for all who wish to try a passage of arms, or a fencing trick or two. But not,” he added, with a droll turn of expression, “before tomorrow, by monsieur le comte’s leave— for I should prefer to sample the hospitality of Bragelonne freely given, rather than extract it at sword-point, and that after a ride of fifteen leagues.”
The Comte laughed. “Dear friend, we are all growing older, but all the same I cannot be persuaded that fifteen leagues would discommode you in the slightest, if you wished to lay siege to this establishment... Blaisois, see to the horse of monsieur le chevalier.”
He linked a hand affectionately through d’Artagnan’s arm and bore him off towards the house in what amounted to a triumphal procession, escorted by a chattering crowd of boys.