“You see,” said Porthos, “this is my usual style.”

“Devil take me!” answered D’Artagnan, “I wish you joy of it.  The king has nothing like it.”

“No,” answered Porthos, “I hear it said that he is very badly fed by the cardinal, Monsieur de Mazarin.  Taste this cutlet, my dear D’Artagnan; ’tis off one of my sheep.”

“You have very tender mutton and I wish you joy of it.” said D’Artagnan.

“Yes, the sheep are fed in my meadows, which are excellent pasture.”

“Give me another cutlet.”

“No, try this hare, which I had killed yesterday in one of my warrens.”

“Zounds! what a flavor!” cried D’Artagnan; “ah! they are fed on thyme only, your hares.”

“And how do you like my wine?” asked Porthos; “it is pleasant, isn’t it?”

“Capital!”

“It is nothing, however, but a wine of the country.”

“Really?”

“Yes, a small declivity to the south, yonder on my hill, gives me twenty hogsheads.”

“Quite a vineyard, hey?”

Porthos sighed for the fifth time —­ D’Artagnan had counted his sighs.  He became curious to solve the problem.

“Well now,” he said, “it seems, my dear friend, that something vexes you; you are ill, perhaps?  That health, which ——­ "

“Excellent, my dear friend; better than ever.  I could kill an ox with a blow of my fist.”

“Well, then, family affairs, perhaps?”

“Family!  I have, happily, only myself in the world to care for.”

“But what makes you sigh?”

“My dear fellow,” replied Porthos, “to be candid with you, I am not happy.”

“You are not happy, Porthos?  You who have chateau, meadows, mountains, woods —­ you who have forty thousand francs a year —­ you —­ are —­ not —­ happy?”

“My dear friend, all those things I have, but I am a hermit in the midst of superfluity.”

“Surrounded, I suppose, only by clodhoppers, with whom you could not associate.”

Porthos turned rather pale and drank off a large glass of wine.

“No; but just think, there are paltry country squires who have all some title or another and pretend to go back as far as Charlemagne, or at least to Hugh Capet.  When I first came here; being the last comer, it was for me to make the first advances.  I made them, but you know, my dear friend, Madame du Vallon ——­ "

Porthos, in pronouncing these words, seemed to gulp down something.

“Madame du Vallon was of doubtful gentility.  She had, in her first marriage —­ I don’t think, D’Artagnan, I am telling you anything new —­ married a lawyer; they thought that `nauseous;’ you can understand that’s a word bad enough to make one kill thirty thousand men.  I have killed two, which has made people hold their tongues, but has not made me their friend.  So that I have no society; I live alone; I am sick of it —­ my mind preys on itself.”

D’Artagnan smiled.  He now saw where the breastplate was weak, and prepared the blow.