“Planchet,” said D’Artagnan, “you argue like a cheese!  The nation — the nation is tired of these gentlemen who give themselves such barbarous names, and who sing songs to it.  Chanting for chanting, my dear Planchet; I have remarked that nations prefer singing a merry chant to the plain chant.  Remember the Fronde; what did they sing in those times?  Well, those were good times.”

“Not too good, not too good!  I was near being hung in those times.”

“Well, but you were not.”

“No.”

“And you laid the foundations of your fortune in the midst of all those songs?”

“That is true.”

“Then you have nothing to say against them.”

“Well, I return, then, to the army and parliament.”

“I say that I borrow twenty thousand livres of M. Planchet, and that I put twenty thousand livres of my own to it; and with these forty thousand livres I raise an army.”

Planchet clasped his hands; he saw that D’Artagnan was in earnest, and, in good truth, he believed his master had lost his senses.

“An army! — ah, monsieur,” said he, with his most agreeable smile, for fear of irritating the madman, and rendering him furious, — “an army! — how many?”

“Of forty men,” said D’Artagnan.

“Forty against forty thousand! that is not enough.  I know very well that you, M. d’Artagnan, alone, are equal to a thousand men; but where are we to find thirty-nine men equal to you?  Or, if we could find them, who would furnish you with money to pay them?”

“Not bad, Planchet.  Ah, the devil! you play the courtier.”

“No, monsieur, I speak what I think, and that is exactly why I say that, in the first pitched battle you fight with your forty men, I am very much afraid — "

“Therefore I shall fight no pitched battles, my dear Planchet,” said the Gascon, laughing.  “We have very fine examples in antiquity of skillful retreats and marches, which consisted in avoiding the enemy instead of attacking them.  You should know that, Planchet, you who commanded the Parisians the day on which they ought to have fought against the musketeers, and who so well calculated marches and countermarches, that you never left the Palais Royal.”

Planchet could not help laughing.  “It is plain,” replied he, “that if your forty men conceal themselves, and are not unskillful, they may hope not to be beaten:  but you propose obtaining some result, do you not?”

“No doubt.  This, then, in my opinion, is the plan to be proceeded upon in order quickly to replace his majesty Charles II. on his throne.”

“Good!” said Planchet, increasing his attention; “let us see your plan.  But in the first place it seems to me we are forgetting something.”

“What is that?”

“We have set aside the nation, which prefers singing merry songs to psalms, and the army, which we will not fight; but the parliament remains, and that seldom sings.”