our?"

"In a quarter of an hour at most."

"Your arm is still strong enough, is it not, Porthos?"

Porthos unbuttoned his sleeve, raised his shirt and looked complacently
on his strong arm, as large as the leg of any ordinary man.

"Yes, indeed," said he, "I believe so."

"So that you could without trouble convert these tongs into a hoop and
yonder shovel into a corkscrew?"

"Certainly." And the giant took up these two articles, and without any
apparent effort produced in them the metamorphoses suggested by his
companion.

"There!" he cried.

"Capital!" exclaimed the Gascon. "Really, Porthos, you are a gifted
individual!"

"I have heard speak," said Porthos, "of a certain Milo of Crotona, who
performed wonderful feats, such as binding his forehead with a cord and
bursting it--of killing an ox with a blow of his fist and carrying it
home on his shoulders, et cetera. I used to learn all these feat by
heart yonder, down at Pierrefonds, and I have done all that he did
except breaking a cord by the corrugation of my temples."

"Because your strength is not in your head, Porthos," said his friend.

"No; it is in my arms and shoulders," answered Porthos with gratified
naivete.

"Well, my dear friend, let us approach the window and there you can
match your strength against that of an iron bar."

Porthos went to the window, took a bar in his hands, clung to it and
bent it like a bow; so that the two ends came out of the sockets of
stone in which for thirty years they had been fixed.

"Well! friend, the cardinal, although such a genius, could never have
done that."

"Shall I take out any more of them?" asked Porthos.

"No; that is sufficient; a man can pass through that."

Porthos tried, and passed the upper portion of his body through.

"Yes," he said.

"Now pass your arm through this opening."

"Why?"

"You will know presently--pass it."

Porthos obeyed with military promptness and passed his arm through the
opening.

"Admirable!" said D'Artagnan.

"The scheme goes forward, it seems."

"On wheels, dear friend."

"Good! What shall I do now?"

"Nothing."

"It is finished, then?"

"No, not yet."

"I should like to understand," said Porthos.

"Listen, my dear friend; in two words you will know all. The door of the
guardhouse opens, as you see."

"Yes, I see."

"They are about to send into our court, which Monsieur de Mazarin
crosses on his way to the orangery, the two guards who attend