“I see how it will be,” said Athos: “we shall get into some pretty quarrel or other, and we have no need of one just now. D’Artagnan, tell us what sort of a night you have had, and we will describe ours afterward.”
“Ah, yes,” said a light-horseman, with a glass of brandy in his hand, which he sipped slowly. “I hear you gentlemen of the Guards have been in the trenches tonight, and that you did not get much the best of the Rochellais.”
D’Artagnan looked at Athos to know if he ought to reply to this intruder who thus mixed unasked in their conversation.
“Well,” said Athos, “don’t you hear M. de Busigny, who does you the honor to ask you a question? Relate what has passed during the night, since these gentlemen desire to know it.”
“Have you not taken a bastion?” said a Swiss, who was drinking rum out of a beer glass.
“Yes, Monsieur,” said d’Artagnan, bowing, “we have had that honor. We even have, as you may have heard, introduced a barrel of powder under one of the angles, which in blowing up made a very pretty breach. Without reckoning that as the bastion was not built yesterday all the rest of the building was badly shaken.”
“And what bastion is it?” asked a dragoon, with his saber run through a goose which he was taking to be cooked.
“The bastion Saint-Gervais,” replied d’Artagnan, “from behind which the Rochellais annoyed our workmen.”
“Was that affair hot?”
“Yes, moderately so. We lost five men, and the Rochellais eight or ten.”