how with Threat and Pen more is effected than by the Sword.

D'Artagnan knew his part well; he was aware that opportunity has a
forelock only for him who will take it and he was not a man to let it go
by him without seizing it. He soon arranged a prompt and certain manner
of traveling, by sending relays of horses to Chantilly, so that he might
be in Paris in five or six hours. But before setting out he reflected
that for a lad of intelligence and experience he was in a singular
predicament, since he was proceeding toward uncertainty and leaving
certainty behind him.

"In fact," he said, as he was about to mount and start on his dangerous
mission, "Athos, for generosity, is a hero of romance; Porthos has
an excellent disposition, but is easily influenced; Aramis has a
hieroglyphic countenance, always illegible. What will come out of
those three elements when I am no longer present to combine them?
The deliverance of the cardinal, perhaps. Now, the deliverance of the
cardinal would be the ruin of our hopes; and our hopes are thus far the
only recompense we have for labors in comparison with which those of
Hercules were pygmean."

He went to find Aramis.

"You, my dear Chevalier d'Herblay," he said, "are the Fronde incarnate.
Mistrust Athos, therefore, who will not prosecute the affairs of any
one, even his own. Mistrust Porthos, especially, who, to please the
count whom he regards as God on earth, will assist him in contriving
Mazarin's escape, if Mazarin has the wit to weep or play the chivalric."

Aramis smiled; his smile was at once cunning and resolute.

"Fear nothing," he said; "I have my conditions to impose. My private
ambition tends only to the profit of him who has justice on his side."

"Good!" thought D'Artagnan: "in this direction I am satisfied." He
pressed Aramis's hand and went in search of Porthos.

"Friend," he said, "you have worked so hard with me toward building up
our fortune, that, at the moment when we are about to reap the fruits of
our labours, it would be a ridiculous piece of silliness in you to allow
yourself to be controlled by Aramis, whose cunning you know--a cunning
which, we may say between ourselves, is not always without egotism;
or by Athos, a noble and disinterested man, but blase, who, desiring
nothing further for himself, doesn't sympathize with the desires of
others. What should you say if either of these two friends proposed to
you to let Mazarin go?"

"Why, I should