“Bah!” said Athos to the commissary, “if you have no more need of me, send me somewhere. Your M. Bonacieux is very tiresome.”
The commissary designated by the same gesture Athos and Bonacieux, “Let them be guarded more closely than ever.”
“And yet,” said Athos, with his habitual calmness, “if it be M. d’Artagnan who is concerned in this matter, I do not perceive how I can take his place.”
“Do as I bade you,” cried the commissary, “and preserve absolute secrecy. You understand!”
Athos shrugged his shoulders, and followed his guards silently, while M. Bonacieux uttered lamentations enough to break the heart of a tiger.
They locked the mercer in the same dungeon where he had passed the night, and left him to himself during the day. Bonacieux wept all day, like a true mercer, not being at all a military man, as he himself informed us. In the evening, about nine o’clock, at the moment he had made up his mind to go to bed, he heard steps in his corridor. These steps drew near to his dungeon, the door was thrown open, and the guards appeared.
“Follow me,” said an officer, who came up behind the guards.
“Follow you!” cried Bonacieux, “follow you at this hour! Where, my God?”
“Where we have orders to lead you.”
“But that is not an answer.”
“It is, nevertheless, the only one we can give.”
“Ah, my God, my God!” murmured the poor mercer, “now, indeed, I am lost!” And he followed the guards who came for him, mechanically