- The next morning, Athos tells D’Artagnan that he was drunk last night and probably told lots of ridiculous tall tales.
- D’Artagnan says that he doesn’t recall anything particularly crazy.
- Eventually, however, D’Artagnan tells Athos last night they were talking about the hanging of a beautiful woman. Athos resolves not to get drunk again.
- The conversation turns to Athos’s new horse, which Athos lost to an Englishman earlier that morning in a game of dice. D’Artagnan is not pleased.
- It turns out Athos also gambled away D’Artagnan’s horse too.
- Athos then staked D’Artagnan’s diamond ring, in an effort to regain everything he had lost.
- He lost the ring.
- D’Artagnan listens to the story and gets increasingly upset.
- Having no more possessions to gamble, Athos then used Grimaud as a wager. Finally, Athos regained the diamond ring. Using that, he won back the horses’ harnesses. In total, he lost two horses during a morning bout of gambling.
- Athos suggests that D’Artagnan try his hand at gambling in order to get back his horse. He can stake two harnesses against one horse. D’Artagnan finally agrees to just one throw of the dice. (This appears to be a simple dice game: each person throws two dice and whoever throws a higher number wins—diamonds, horses, servants, whatever is staked.)
- D’Artagnan and the Englishman play with the harnesses staked against one horse or one hundred pistoles.
- D’Artagnan wins and Athos counsels him to take the one hundred pistoles instead of the horse.
- The two of them will ride their servants’ horses instead while the servants walk and carry the harnesses.
- They leave and soon make it to Crèvecoeur, where they spy Aramis meditating at a window. He was meditating on the loss of his horse, which he sold to a horse dealer.
- It’s soon clear to Aramis that Athos and D’Artagnan also lack horses.
- They all continue down the road for Porthos and arrive just in time to join him for a superb dinner.
- It turns out their food was paid for by the sale of Porthos’s horse. He needed the money to pay his bill since his mistress didn’t come through.
- He too, however, still has the saddle. It also turns out that Porthos sold his horse for the best deal out of anyone. Although in theory the four friends should at least all have cash, it turns out that they only have forty-seven pistoles between the four of them.
- They arrive back in Paris and D’Artagnan finds out the King has granted him permission to become a Musketeer.
- He runs to go tell his friends the good news, but finds them completely depressed. They are going to war on the first of May and are responsible for their own equipment and rations. This is problematic because none of them has any money! They need about eight thousand livres total to purchase their requirements, not counting the saddles.