“No, not exactly. I beg your pardon, my good Mouston.”
“Oh, you are not in fault, Monsieur!” said Mouston, graciously. “You were in Paris; and as for us, we were in Pierrefonds.”
“Well, well, my dear Porthos; there was a time when Mouston began to grow fat. Is that what you wished to say?”
“Yes, my friend; and I greatly rejoiced over it at that time.”
“Indeed, I believe you did,” exclaimed d’Artagnan.
“You understand,” continued Porthos, “what a world of trouble it spared me.”
“No, my dear friend, I do not yet understand; but perhaps with the help of explanation-”
“Here it is, my friend. In the first place, as you have said, to be measured is a loss of time, even though it occur only once a fortnight. And then, one may be travelling, and may wish to have seven suits always ready. In short, I have a horror of letting any one take my measure. Confound it! either one is a gentleman or he is not. To be scrutinized and scanned by a fellow who completely analyzes you by inch and line,- ’tis degrading. Here, they find you too hollow; there, too prominent. They recognize your strong and weak points. See, now, when we leave the measurer’s hands, we are like those strongholds whose angles and different thicknesses have been ascertained by a spy.”
“In truth, my dear Porthos, you possess ideas entirely your own.”
“Ah! you see, when a man is an engineer-”
“And has fortified Belle-Isle,- ’tis natural, my friend.”
“Well, I had an idea, which would doubtless have proved a good one but for Mouston’s carelessness.”
D’Artagnan glanced at Mouston, who replied by a slight movement of his body, as if to say, “You will see whether I am at all to blame in all this.”
“I congratulated myself, then,” resumed Porthos, “at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout,- always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be measured in my stead.”
“Ah,” cried d’Artagnan, “I see! That spared you both time and humiliation.”
“Consider my joy when after a year and a half’s judicious feeding,- for I used to feed him myself,- the fellow-”
“Oh, I lent a good hand myself, Monsieur!” said Mouston, humbly.
“That’s true. Consider my joy when one morning I perceived Mouston was obliged, like myself, to compress himself to get through the little secret door that those fools of architects had made in the chamber of the late Madame du Vallon, in the chateau of Pierrefonds. And, by the way, about that door, my friend, I should like to ask you, who know everything, why these wretches of architects, who ought by rights to have the compasses in their eye, came to make doorways through which nobody but thin people could pass?”
“Oh! those doors,” answered d’Artagnan, “were meant for gallants, and they have generally slight and slender figures.”
“Madame du Vallon had no gallant!” answered Porthos, majestically.
“Perfectly true, my friend,” resumed d’Artagnan; “but the architects were imagining the possibility of your marrying again.”
“Ah, that is possible!” said Porthos. “And now that I have received an explanation why doorways are made too narrow, let us return to the subject of Mouston’s fatness. But see how the two things fit each other! I have always noticed that ideas run parallel. And so, Observe this phenomenon, d’Artagnan! I was talking to you of Mouston, who is fat, and it led us on to Madame du Vallon-”
“Who was thin?”
“Hum! is it not marvellous?”
“My dear friend, a savant of my acquaintance, M. Costar, has made the same observation as you have; and he calls the process by some Greek name, which I forget.”
“What! my remark is not then original?” cried Porthos, astounded. “I thought I was the discoverer.”
“My friend, the fact was known before Aristotle’s days,- that is to say, about two thousand years ago.”
“Well, well, ’tis no less true,” remarked Porthos, delighted at the idea of having concurred with the sages of antiquity.
“Wonderfully. But suppose we return to Mouston. It seems to me, we have left him fattening under our very eyes.”