“May I not drink to your health, and you to mine?” said d’Artagnan, filling two glasses with the Beaugency wine which he had obtained from the liberality of M. Bonacieux.

“That will do me great honor,” said the leader of the posse, “and I accept thankfully.”

“Then to yours, monsieur—­what is your name?”

“Boisrenard.”

“Monsieur Boisrenard.”

“To yours, my gentlemen!  What is your name, in your turn, if you please?”

“d’Artagnan.”

“To yours, monsieur.”

“And above all others,” cried d’Artagnan, as if carried away by his enthusiasm, “to that of the king and the cardinal.”

The leader of the posse would perhaps have doubted the sincerity of d’Artagnan if the wine had been bad; but the wine was good, and he was convinced.

“What diabolical villainy you have performed here,” said Porthos, when the officer had rejoined his companions and the four friends found themselves alone.  “Shame, shame, for four Musketeers to allow an unfortunate fellow who cried for help to be arrested in their midst!  And a gentleman to hobnob with a bailiff!”

“Porthos,” said Aramis, “Athos has already told you that you are a simpleton, and I am quite of his opinion.  D’Artagnan, you are a great man; and when you occupy Monsieur de Treville’s place, I will come and ask your influence to secure me an abbey.”

“Well, I am in a maze,” said Porthos; “do you approve of what d’Artagnan has done?”

“PARBLEU!  Indeed I do,” said Athos; “I not only approve of what he has done, but I congratulate him upon it.”

“And now, gentlemen,” said d’Artagnan, without stopping to explain his conduct to Porthos, “All for one, one for all—­that is our motto, is it not?”

“And yet—­” said Porthos.

“Hold out your hand and swear!” cried Athos and Aramis at once.

Overcome by example, grumbling to himself, nevertheless, Porthos stretched out his hand, and the four friends repeated with one voice the formula dictated by d’Artagnan: 

“All for one, one for all.”

“That’s well!  Now let us everyone retire to his own home,” said d’Artagnan, as if he had done nothing but command all his life; “and attention!  For from this moment we are at feud with the cardinal.”

10 A mousetrap in the seventeenth Century

The invention of the mousetrap does not date from our days; as soon as societies, in forming, had invented any kind of police, that police invented mousetraps.

As perhaps our readers are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what is a mousetrap.

When in a house, of whatever kind it may be, an individual suspected of any crime is arrested, the arrest is held secret.  Four or five men are placed in ambuscade in the first room.  The door is opened to all who knock.  It is closed after them, and they are arrested; so that at the end of two or three days they have in their power almost all the HABITUES of the establishment.  And that is a mousetrap.