a
Holofernes as he would in crossing swords with a recruit or caviling
with a landlady. Then he resembled the sparrow-hawk which, when fasting,
will attack a ram. Hunger is blind. But D'Artagnan satisfied--D'Artagnan
rich--D'Artagnan a conqueror--D'Artagnan proud of so difficult a
triumph--D'Artagnan had too much to lose not to reckon, figure by
figure, with probable misfortune.

His thoughts were employed, therefore, all the way on the road from his
presentation, with one thing, and that was, how he should conciliate a
man like Monk, a man whom Charles himself, kind as he was, conciliated
with difficulty; for, scarcely established, the protected might again
stand in need of the protector, and would, consequently, not refuse
him, such being the case, the petty satisfaction of transporting M.
d'Artagnan, or of confining him in one of the Middlesex prisons, or
drowning him a little on his passage from Dover to Boulogne. Such sorts
of satisfaction kings are accustomed to render to viceroys without
disagreeable consequences.

It would not be at all necessary for the king to be active in that
contrepartie of the play in which Monk should take his revenge. The part
of the king would be confined to simply pardoning the viceroy of Ireland
all he should undertake against D'Artagnan. Nothing more was necessary
to place the conscience of the Duke of Albemarle at rest than a te
absolvo said with a laugh, or the scrawl of "Charles the King," traced
at the foot of a parchment; and with these two words pronounced, and
these two words written, poor D'Artagnan was forever crushed beneath the
ruins of his imagination.

And then, a thing sufficiently disquieting for a man with such foresight
as our musketeer, he found himself alone; and even the friendship of
Athos could not restore his confidence. Certainly if the affair had only
concerned a free distribution of sword-thrusts, the musketeer would have
counted upon his companion; but in delicate dealings with a king, when
the perhaps of an unlucky chance should arise in justification of Monk
or of Charles of England, D'Artagnan knew Athos well enough to be sure
he would give the best possible coloring to the loyalty of the survivor,
and would content himself with shedding floods of tears on the tomb of
the dead, supposing the dead to be his friend, and afterwards composing
his epitaph in the most pompous superlatives.

"Decidedly," thought the Gascon; and this thought was the result o