“Are you going to give me a lesson, Porthos?” cried Aramis, from whose usually mild eye a flash passed like lightning.

“My dear fellow, be a Musketeer or an abbe.  Be one or the other, but not both,” replied Porthos.  “You know what Athos told you the other day; you eat at everybody’s mess.  Ah, don’t be angry, I beg of you, that would be useless; you know what is agreed upon between you, Athos and me.  You go to Madame d’Aguillon’s, and you pay your court to her; you go to Madame de Bois-Tracy’s, the cousin of Madame de Chevreuse, and you pass for being far advanced in the good graces of that lady.  Oh, good Lord!  Don’t trouble yourself to reveal your good luck; no one asks for your secret-all the world knows your discretion.  But since you possess that virtue, why the devil don’t you make use of it with respect to her Majesty?  Let whoever likes talk of the king and the cardinal, and how he likes; but the queen is sacred, and if anyone speaks of her, let it be respectfully.”

“Porthos, you are as vain as Narcissus; I plainly tell you so,” replied Aramis.  “You know I hate moralizing, except when it is done by Athos.  As to you, good sir, you wear too magnificent a baldric to be strong on that head.  I will be an abbe if it suits me.  In the meanwhile I am a Musketeer; in that quality I say what I please, and at this moment it pleases me to say that you weary me.”

“Aramis!”

“Porthos!”

“Gentlemen!  Gentlemen!” cried the surrounding group.

“Monsieur de Treville awaits Monsieur d’Artagnan,” cried a servant, throwing open the door of the cabinet.

At this announcement, during which the door remained open, everyone became mute, and amid the general silence the young man crossed part of the length of the antechamber, and entered the apartment of the captain of the Musketeers, congratulating himself with all his heart at having so narrowly escaped the end of this strange quarrel.

3 The audience

M. de Treville was at the moment in rather ill-humor, nevertheless he saluted the young man politely, who bowed to the very ground; and he smiled on receiving d’Artagnan’s response, the Bearnese accent of which recalled to him at the same time his youth and his country—­a double remembrance which makes a man smile at all ages; but stepping toward the antechamber and making a sign to d’Artagnan with his hand, as if to ask his permission to finish with others before he began with him, he called three times, with a louder voice at each time, so that he ran through the intervening tones between the imperative accent and the angry accent.

“Athos!  Porthos!  Aramis!”

The two Musketeers with whom we have already made acquaintance, and who answered to the last of these three names, immediately quitted the group of which they had formed a part, and advanced toward the cabinet, the door of which closed after them as soon as they had entered.  Their appearance, although it was not quite at ease, excited by its carelessness, at once full of dignity and submission, the admiration of d’Artagnan, who beheld in these two men demigods, and in their leader an Olympian Jupiter, armed with all his thunders.