n guard."

"Ah! yes; I know, my lord, and I expected nothing less from your
partiality; so that if it were only the abduction in itself, Mordieux!
that would be nothing; but there are----"

"What?"

"The circumstances of that abduction."

"What circumstances?"

"Oh! you know very well what I mean, my lord."

"No, curse me if I do."

"There is--in truth, it is difficult to speak it."

"There is?"

"Well, there is that devil of a box!"

Monk colored visibly. "Well, I have forgotten it."

"Deal box," continued D'Artagnan, "with holes for the nose and mouth.
In truth, my lord, all the rest was well; but the box, the box! that
was really a coarse joke." Monk fidgeted about in his chair. "And,
notwithstanding my having done that," resumed D'Artagnan, "I, a soldier
of fortune, it was quite simple, because by the side of that action, a
little inconsiderate I admit, which I committed, but which the gravity
of the case may excuse, I am circumspect and reserved."

"Oh!" said Monk, "believe me, I know you well, Monsieur d'Artagnan, and
I appreciate you."

D'Artagnan never took his eyes off Monk; studying all which passed in
the mind of the general, as he prosecuted his idea. "But it does not
concern me," resumed he.

"Well, then, whom does it concern?" said Monk, who began to grow a
little impatient.

"It relates to the king, who will never restrain his tongue."

"Well! and suppose he should say all he knows?" said Monk, with a degree
of hesitation.

"My lord," replied D'Artagnan, "do not dissemble, I implore you, with
a man who speaks so frankly as I do. You have a right to feel your
susceptibility excited, however benignant it may be. What, the devil!
it is not the place for a man like you, a man who plays with crowns and
scepters as a Bohemian plays with his balls; it is not the place of a
serious man, I said, to be shut up in a box like some freak of natural
history; for you must understand it would make all your enemies ready to
burst with laughter, and you are so great, so noble, so generous, that
you must have many enemies. This secret is enough to set half the human
race laughing, if you were represented in that box. It is not decent to
have the second personage in the kingdom laughed at."

Monk was quite out of countenance at the idea of seeing himself
represented in his box. Ridicule, as D'Artagnan had judiciously
foreseen, acted upon him in a manner which neither the chances of war,
the aspiratio