th the proceeds certain
lands around my father's chateau, which is a pretty place, well enough,
but with no land to it at all, except a garden about the size of the
Cemetery des Innocents; and I should wait in all my glory till some
rich heiress, attracted by my good looks, rode along to marry me. Then I
should like to have three sons; I should make the first a nobleman, like
Athos; the second a good soldier, like Porthos; the third an excellent
abbe, like Aramis. Faith! that would be a far better life than I lead
now; but Monsieur Mazarin is a mean wretch, who won't dispossess himself
of his diamond in my favor."

On entering the Rue Tiquetonne he heard a tremendous noise and found a
dense crowd near the house.

"Oho!" said he, "is the hotel on fire?" On approaching the hotel of the
Roe he found, however, that it was in front of the next house the mob
was collected. The people were shouting and running about with torches.
By the light of one of these torches D'Artagnan perceived men in
uniform.

He asked what was going on.

He was told that twenty citizens, headed by one man, had attacked a
carriage which was escorted by a troop of the cardinal's bodyguard; but
a reinforcement having come up, the assailants had been put to flight
and the leader had taken refuge in the hotel next to his lodgings; the
house was now being searched.

In his youth D'Artagnan had often headed the bourgeoisie against
the military, but he was cured of all those hot-headed propensities;
besides, he had the cardinal's hundred pistoles in his pocket, so he
went into the hotel without a word. There he found Madeleine alarmed for
his safety and anxious to tell him all the events of the evening, but he
cut her short by ordering her to put his supper in his room and give him
with it a bottle of good Burgundy.

He took his key and candle and went upstairs to his bedroom. He had
been contented, for the convenience of the house, to lodge in the fourth
story; and truth obliges us even to confess that his chamber was just
above the gutter and below the roof. His first care on entering it was
to lock up in an old bureau with a new lock his bag of money, and then
as soon as supper was ready he sent away the waiter who brought it up
and sat down to table.

Not to reflect on what had passed, as one might fancy. No, D'Artagnan
considered that things are never well done when they are not reserved to
their proper time. He was hungry; he supped, he went