you tremble, gentlemen, do you?”
“Yes, general, for you.”
“Oh! pray meddle with your own concerns. If I have not the
wit God gave to Oliver Cromwell, I have that which He has
sent to me: I am satisfied with it, however little it may
be.”
The officer made no reply; and Monk, having imposed silence
on his people, all remained persuaded that he had
accomplished some important work or made some important
trial. This was forming a very poor conception of his
patience and scrupulous genius. Monk, if he had the good
faith of the Puritans, his allies, must have returned
fervent thanks to the patron saint who had taken him from
the box of M. d’Artagnan. Whilst these things were going on,
our musketeer could not help constantly repeating, —
“God grant that M. Monk may not have as much pride as I
have; for I declare if any one had put me into a coffer with
that grating over my mouth, and carried me packed up, like a
calf, across the seas, I should cherish such a memory of my
piteous looks in that coffer, and such an ugly animosity
against him who had inclosed me in it, I should dread so
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greatly to see a sarcastic smile blooming upon the face of
the malicious wretch, or in his attitude any grotesque
imitation of my position in the box, that, Mordioux! I
should plunge a good dagger into his throat in compensation
for the grating, and would nail him down in a veritable
bier, in remembrance of the false coffin in which I had been
left to grow moldy for two days.”
And D’Artagnan spoke honestly when he spoke thus; for the
skin of our Gascon was a very thin one. Monk, fortunately,
entertained other ideas. He never opened his mouth to his
timid conqueror concerning the past; but he admitted him
very near to his person in his labors, took him with him to
several reconnoiterings, in such a way as to obtain that
which he evidently warmly desired, — a rehabilitation in
the mind of D’Artagnan. The latter conducted himself like a
past-master in the art of flattery: he admired all Monk’s
tactics, and the ordering of his camp, he joked very
pleasantly upon the circumvallations of Lambert’s camp, who
had, he said, very uselessly given himself the trouble to
inclose a camp for twenty thousand men, whilst an acre of
ground would have been quite sufficient for the corporal and
fifty guards who would perhaps remain faithful to him.
Monk, immediately after his arrival, had accepted the
proposition made by Lambert the evening before, for an
interview, and which Monk’s lieutenants had refused under
the pretext that the general was indisposed. This interview
was neither long nor interesting: Lambert demanded a
profession of faith from his rival. The latter declared he
had no other opinion than that of the majority. Lambert
asked if it would not be more expedient to terminate the
quarrel by an alliance than by a battle. Monk hereupon
demanded a week for consideration. Now, Lambert could not
refuse this: and Lambert, nevertheless, had come, saying
that he should devour Monk’s army. Therefore, at the end of
the interview, which Lambert’s party watched with
impatience, nothing was decided — neither treaty nor battle
— the rebel army, as M. d’Artagnan had foreseen, began to
prefer the good cause to the bad one, and the parliament,
rumpish as it was, to the pompous nothings of Lambert’s
designs.
They remembered, likewise, the good feasts of London —the
profusion of ale and sherry with which the citizens of
London paid their friends the soldiers; — they looked with
terror at the black war bread, at the troubled waters of the
Tweed, — too salt for the glass, not enough so for the pot;
and they said to themselves, “Are not the roast meats kept
warm for Monk in London?” From that time nothing was heard
of but desertion in Lambert’s army. The soldiers allowed
themselves to be drawn away by the force of principles,
which are, like discipline, the obligatory tie in everybody
constituted for any purpose. Monk defended the parliament —