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is all the more reason why we should not abandon the august
head so threatened.”
“Athos, you are becoming mad.”
“No, my friend,” Athos gently replied, “but De Winter sought
us out in France and introduced us, Monsieur d’Herblay and
myself, to Madame Henrietta. Her majesty did us the honor to
ask our aid for her husband. We engaged our word; our word
included everything. It was our strength, our intelligence,
our life, in short, that we promised. It remains now for us
to keep our word. Is that your opinion, D’Herblay?”
“Yes,” said Aramis, “we have promised.”
“Then,” continued Athos, “we have another reason; it is this
— listen: In France at this moment everything is poor and
paltry. We have a king ten years old, who doesn’t yet know
what he wants; we have a queen blinded by a belated passion;
we have a minister who governs France as he would govern a
great farm — that is to say, intent only on turning out all
the gold he can by the exercise of Italian cunning and
invention; we have princes who set up a personal and
egotistic opposition, who will draw from Mazarin’s hands
only a few ingots of gold or some shreds of power granted as
bribes. I have served them without enthusiasm — God knows
that I estimated them at their real value, and that they are
not high in my esteem — but on principle. To-day I am
engaged in a different affair. I have encountered misfortune
in a high place, a royal misfortune, a European misfortune;
I attach myself to it. If we can succeed in saving the king
it will be good; if we die for him it will be grand.”
“So you know beforehand you must perish!” said D’Artagnan.
“We fear so, and our only regret is to die so far from both
of you.”
“What will you do in a foreign land, an enemy’s country?”
“I traveled in England when I was young, I speak English
like an Englishman, and Aramis, too, knows something of the
language. Ah! if we had you, my friends! With you,
D’Artagnan, with you, Porthos — all four reunited for the
first time for twenty years — we would dare not only
England, but the three kingdoms put together!”
“And did you promise the queen,” resumed D’Artagnan,
petulantly, “to storm the Tower of London, to kill a hundred
thousand soldiers, to fight victoriously against the wishes
of the nation and the ambition of a man, and when that man
is Cromwell? Do not exaggerate your duty. In Heaven’s name,
my dear Athos, do not make a useless sacrifice. When I see
you merely, you look like a reasonable being; when you
speak, I seem to have to do with a madman. Come, Porthos,
join me; say frankly, what do you think of this business?”
“Nothing good,” replied Porthos.
“Come,” continued D’Artagnan, who, irritated that instead of
listening to him Athos seemed to be attending to his own
thoughts, “you have never found yourself the worse for my
advice. Well, then, believe me, Athos, your mission is
ended, and ended nobly; return to France with us.”
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“Friend,” said Athos, “our resolution is irrevocable.”
“Then you have some other motive unknown to us?”
Athos smiled and D’Artagnan struck his hand together in
anger and muttered the most convincing reasons that he could
discover; but to all these reasons Athos contented himself
by replying with a calm, sweet smile and Aramis by nodding
his head.
“Very well,” cried D’Artagnan, at last, furious, “very well,
since you wish it, let us leave our bones in this beggarly
land, where it is always cold, where fine weather is a fog,
fog is rain, and rain a deluge; where the sun represents the
moon and the moon a cream cheese; in truth, whether we die
here or elsewhere matters little, since we must die.”
“Only reflect, my good fellow,” said Athos, “it is but dying
rather sooner.”
“Pooh! a little sooner or a little later, it isn’t worth
quarreling over.”
“If I am astonished at anything,” remarked Porthos,