After d’Artagnan and the Musketeers win their brawl, Monsieur de Tréville pretends to scold them for appearances’ sake, but he is actually pleased. Privately he praises the four men, especially d’Artagnan, to Louis XIII. The King asks to meet with them the following day at noon, but he asks them to come in through the back door so that Cardinal Richelieu does not see Musketeers being rewarded for defeating the Cardinal’s guards. Monsieur de Tréville smiles and agrees, reflecting privately that the King is like “a child” and the Cardinal “his master.”

D’Artagnan is so excited to meet the King that he can barely sleep. In the morning, he goes to see Athos, who invites him to a tennis game. D’Artagnan does not know how to play, and he nearly gets hit in the face with the ball. Worried that he might get hurt and spoil his chances to meet the King, d’Artagnan chooses to watch from the sidelines instead.

Some of the Cardinal’s guards are nearby, and one of them taunts d’Artagnan for being afraid of a ball. D’Artagnan immediately challenges this man to a duel, and he does not seem fazed in the least when the man introduces himself as Bernajoux. As it happens, Bernajoux is known for being a ferocious dueler, but d’Artagnan is too new in Paris to know this. They fight in the street outside, and d’Artagnan wounds Bernajoux badly.

Near the end of this duel, Bernajoux’s friends notice his distress and attack d’Artagnan. The three Musketeers see d’Artagnan in trouble and join the brawl. Soon an outright riot begins. The Musketeers and their allies have more men, so the Cardinal’s guards retreat into the home of Monsieur de la Trémouille, a relative of Bernajoux’s.

After this retreat, the riot does not immediately stop. Some of the Musketeers want to burn down Monsieur de la Trémouille’s home, but the ringleaders—d’Artagnan and his three friends—need to leave and see the King. Their departure calms everyone else, and no more harm is done for the day.

King Louis XIII hears about this scandal and, with his characteristic weakness, runs away. Monsieur de Tréville tells d’Artagnan and the three Musketeers to lie low. In the meantime, Tréville conducts a series of nuanced political maneuvers to pressure the King to reward the victorious young men rather than punishing them for disobeying anti-dueling laws. Most importantly, he visits Monsieur de la Trémouille, who agrees to interview Bernajoux about how the fight started. Bernajoux is on his deathbed, and he is not willing to tell a lie and risk eternal damnation for it. He admits that he deliberately insulted d’Artagnan to pick a fight.

Monsieur de Tréville decides to trust Monsieur de la Trémouille to relay Bernajoux’s story truthfully to the King. This plan works out, and the King honors d’Artagnan and his three friends as heroes. He thanks them and gives them a large sum of money. He also tells Tréville to make sure d’Artagnan is appointed as a soldier among a corps of guards led by Monsieur Des Essarts. (The reader should note that this is not the same group of guards that protects Cardinal Richelieu.) The King’s clear expectation is that d’Artagnan will join the Musketeers at the end of a period of apprenticeship among Des Essarts’s guards.

When Cardinal Richelieu finds out that d’Artagnan and the Musketeers have been rewarded, he is furious—but there is nothing he can do about it. For several weeks after these events, the King loses no opportunity to tease the Cardinal about his Musketeers’ recent victories.