“M. le Prince, for instance.”

“Worn out! worn out!”

“M. le Comte de la Fere?”

“Athos!  Oh! that’s different; yes, Athos — and if you have any wish to make your way in England, you cannot apply to a better person; I can even say, without too much vanity, that I myself have some credit at the court of Charles II.  There is a king — God speed him!”

“Ah!” cried Raoul, with the natural curiosity of well-born young people, while listening to experience and courage.

“Yes, a king who amuses himself, it is true, but who has had a sword in his hand, and can appreciate useful men.  Athos is on good terms with Charles II.  Take service there, and leave these scoundrels of contractors and farmers-general, who steal as well with French hands as others have done with Italian hands; leave the little snivelling king, who is going to give us another reign of Francis II.  Do you know anything of history, Raoul?”

“Yes, monsieur le chevalier.”

“Do you know, then, that Francis II. had always the earache?”

“No, I did not know that.”

“That Charles IV. had always the headache?”

“Indeed!”

“And Henry III. had always the stomach-ache?”

Raoul began to laugh.

“Well, my dear friend, Louis XIV. always has the heart-ache; it is deplorable to see a king sighing from morning till night without saying once in the course of the day, ventre-saint-gris! corboef! or anything to rouse one.”

“Was that the reason why you quitted the service, monsieur le chevalier?”

“Yes.”

“But you yourself, M. d’Artagnan, are throwing the handle after the axe; you will not make a fortune.”

“Who?  I?” replied D’Artagnan, in a careless tone; “I am settled — I had some family property.”

Raoul looked at him.  The poverty of D’Artagnan was proverbial.  A Gascon, he exceeded in ill-luck all the gasconnades of France and Navarre; Raoul had a hundred times heard Job and D’Artagnan named together, as the twins Romulus and Remus.  D’Artagnan caught Raoul’s look of astonishment.

“And has not your father told you I have been in England?”

“Yes, monsieur le chevalier.”

“And that I there met with a very lucky chance?”

“No, monsieur, I did not know that.”

“Yes, a very worthy friend of mine, a great nobleman, the viceroy of
Scotland and Ireland, has endowed me with an inheritance.”

“An inheritance?”

“And a good one, too.”

“Then you are rich?”

“Bah!”

“Receive my sincere congratulation.”

“Thank you!  Look, that is my house.”

“Place de Greve?”

“Yes; don’t you like this quarter?”

“On the contrary, the look-out over the water is pleasant.  Oh! what a pretty old house!”

“The sign Notre Dame; it is an old cabaret, which I have transformed into a private house in two days.”