When the two Musketeers had entered; when the door was closed behind them; when the buzzing murmur of the antechamber, to which the summons which had been made had doubtless furnished fresh food, had recommenced; when M. de Treville had three or four times paced in silence, and with a frowning brow, the whole length of his cabinet, passing each time before Porthos and Aramis, who were as upright and silent as if on parade—­he stopped all at once full in front of them, and covering them from head to foot with an angry look, “Do you know what the king said to me,” cried he, “and that no longer ago than yesterday evening—­do you know, gentlemen?”

“No,” replied the two Musketeers, after a moment’s silence, “no, sir, we do not.”

“But I hope that you will do us the honor to tell us,” added Aramis, in his politest tone and with his most graceful bow.

“He told me that he should henceforth recruit his Musketeers from among the Guards of Monsieur the Cardinal.”

“The Guards of the cardinal!  And why so?” asked Porthos, warmly.

“Because he plainly perceives that his piquette* stands in need of being enlivened by a mixture of good wine.”

A watered liquor, made from the second pressing of the grape.

The two Musketeers reddened to the whites of their eyes. d’Artagnan did not know where he was, and wished himself a hundred feet underground.

“Yes, yes,” continued M. de Treville, growing warmer as he spoke, “and his majesty was right; for, upon my honor, it is true that the Musketeers make but a miserable figure at court.  The cardinal related yesterday while playing with the king, with an air of condolence very displeasing to me, that the day before yesterday those damned Musketeers, those daredevils—­he dwelt upon those words with an ironical tone still more displeasing to me—­those BRAGGARTS, added he, glancing at me with his tiger-cat’s eye, had made a riot in the Rue Ferou in a cabaret, and that a party of his Guards (I thought he was going to laugh in my face) had been forced to arrest the rioters!  MORBLEU!  You must know something about it.  Arrest Musketeers!  You were among them—­you were!  Don’t deny it; you were recognized, and the cardinal named you.  But it’s all my fault; yes, it’s all my fault, because it is myself who selects my men.  You, Aramis, why the devil did you ask me for a uniform when you would have been so much better in a cassock?  And you, Porthos, do you only wear such a fine golden baldric to suspend a sword of straw from it?  And Athos—­I don’t see Athos.  Where is he?”

“Ill—­”

“Very ill, say you?  And of what malady?”

“It is feared that it may be the smallpox, sir,” replied Porthos, desirous of taking his turn in the conversation; “and what is serious is that it will certainly spoil his face.”