cks one with another. In order to make one's
way amid these turbulent and conflicting waves, it was necessary to be
an officer, a great noble, or a pretty woman.

It was, then, into the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young
man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky
leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile
of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When
he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could
not help observing that they turned round to look at him, and for the
first time in his life d'Artagnan, who had till that day entertained a
very good opinion of himself, felt ridiculous.

Arrived at the staircase, it was still worse. There were four Musketeers
on the bottom steps, amusing themselves with the following exercise,
while ten or twelve of their comrades waited upon the landing place to
take their turn in the sport.

One of them, stationed upon the top stair, naked sword in hand,
prevented, or at least endeavored to prevent, the three others from
ascending.

These three others fenced against him with their agile swords.

D'Artagnan at first took these weapons for foils, and believed them
to be buttoned; but he soon perceived by certain scratches that every
weapon was pointed and sharpened, and that at each of these scratches
not only the spectators, but even the actors themselves, laughed like so
many madmen.

He who at the moment occupied the upper step kept his adversaries
marvelously in check. A circle was formed around them. The conditions
required that at every hit the man touched should quit the game,
yielding his turn for the benefit of the adversary who had hit him. In
five minutes three were slightly wounded, one on the hand, another on
the ear, by the defender of the stair, who himself remained intact--a
piece of skill which was worth to him, according to the rules agreed
upon, three turns of favor.

However difficult it might be, or rather as he pretended it was, to
astonish our young traveler, this pastime really astonished him. He
had seen in his province--that land in which heads become so easily
heated--a few of the preliminaries of duels; but the daring of these
four fencers appeared to him the strongest he had ever heard of even
in Gascony. He believed himself transported into that famous country of
giants into which Gulliver afterward went and was so frightened; and yet
he