gentlemen, too many! If you go on so, his Eminence will be forced to renew his company in three weeks, and I to put the edicts in force in all their rigor. One now and then I don’t say much about; but seven in two days, I repeat, it is too many, it is far too many!”
“Therefore, sire, Your Majesty sees that they are come, quite contrite and repentant, to offer you their excuses.”
“Quite contrite and repentant! Hem!” said the king. “I place no confidence in their hypocritical faces. In particular, there is one yonder of a Gascon look. Come hither, Monsieur.”
D’Artagnan, who understood that it was to him this compliment was addressed, approached, assuming a most deprecating air.
“Why, you told me he was a young man? This is a boy, Tréville, a mere boy! Do you mean to say that it was he who bestowed that severe thrust at Jussac?”
“And those two equally fine thrusts at Bernajoux.”
“Truly!”
“Without reckoning,” said Athos, “that if he had not rescued me from the hands of Cahusac, I should not now have the honor of making my very humble reverence to Your Majesty.”
“Why he is a very devil, this Béarnais! Ventre-saint-gris , M. de Tréville, as the king my father would have said. But at this sort of work, many doublets must be slashed and many swords broken. Now, Gascons are always poor, are they not?”
“Sire, I can assert that they have hitherto discovered no gold mines in their mountains; though the Lord owes them this miracle in recompense for the manner in which they supported the pretensions of the king your father.”