s--for it must be said, now that I am accused--why reduce
me to see three thousand of the king's soldiers march in battle against
two men?"

"One would say you have forgotten what these men have done to me!" said
the king, in a hollow voice, "and that it was no merit of theirs, that I
was not lost."

"Sire, one would say that you forget I was there."

"Enough, M. d'Artagnan, enough of these dominating interests which arise
to keep the sun from my interests. I am founding a state in which there
shall be but one master, as I promised you formerly; the moment is come
for keeping my promise. You wish to be, according to your tastes or your
friendships, free to destroy my plans and save my enemies? I will thwart
you or will leave you--seek a more compliant master. I know full well
that another king would not conduct himself as I do, and would allow
himself to be dominated over by you, at the risk of sending you some day
to keep company with M. Fouquet and the others; but I have a good
memory, and for me, services are sacred titles to gratitude, to
impunity. You shall only have this lesson, Monsieur d'Artagnan, as the
punishment of your want of discipline, and I will not imitate my
predecessors in their anger, not having imitated them in their favor.
And, then, other reasons make me act mildly toward you; in the first
place, because you are a man of sense, a man of great sense, a man of
heart, and that you will be a good servant for him who shall have
mastered you; secondly, because you will cease to have any motives for
insubordination. Your friends are destroyed or ruined by me. These
supports upon which your capricious mind instinctively relied I have
made to disappear. At this moment, my soldiers have taken or killed the
rebels of Belle-Isle."

D'Artagnan became pale. "Taken or killed!" cried he. "Oh! sire, if you
thought what you tell me, if you were sure you were telling me the
truth, I should forget all that is just, all that is magnanimous in your
words, to call you a barbarous king, and an unnatural man. But I pardon
you these words," said he, smiling with pride; "I pardon them to a young
prince who does not know, who cannot comprehend, what such men as M.
d'Herblay, M. de Valon, and myself are. Taken or killed! Ah! ah! sire!
tell me, if the news is true, how much it has cost you, in men and
money. We will then reckon if the game has been worth the stakes."

As he spoke thus, the king went up to him in great ang