of the carriage if you can and make
another draw up; be quick, or in five minutes the mob will be on us
again with swords and muskets and you will be killed. Hold! there's a
carriage coming over yonder."

Then bending again to Raoul, he whispered: "Above all things do not
divulge your name."

"That's right. I will go," said Comminges; "and if they come back,
fire!"

"Not at all--not at all," replied D'Artagnan; "let no one move. On the
contrary, one shot at this moment would be paid for dearly to-morrow."

Comminges took his four guards and as many musketeers and ran to the
carriage, from which he made the people inside dismount, and brought
them to the vehicle which had upset. But when it was necessary to convey
the prisoner from one carriage to the other, the people, catching sight
of him whom they called their liberator, uttered every imaginable cry
and knotted themselves once more around the vehicle.

"Start, start!" said D'Artagnan. "There are ten men to accompany you.
I will keep twenty to hold in check the mob; go, and lose not a moment.
Ten men for Monsieur de Comminges."

As the carriage started off the cries were redoubled and more than
ten thousand people thronged the Quai and overflowed the Pont Neuf and
adjacent streets. A few shots were fired and one musketeer was wounded.

"Forward!" cried D'Artagnan, driven to extremities, biting his
moustache; and then he charged with his twenty men and dispersed them in
fear. One man alone remained in his place, gun in hand.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "it is thou who wouldst have him assassinated? Wait
an instant." And he pointed his gun at D'Artagnan, who was riding toward
him at full speed. D'Artagnan bent down to his horse's neck, the young
man fired, and the ball severed the feathers from the hat. The horse
started, brushed against the imprudent man, who thought by his strength
alone to stay the tempest, and he fell against the wall. D'Artagnan
pulled up his horse, and whilst his musketeers continued to charge, he
returned and bent with drawn sword over the man he had knocked down.

"Oh, sir!" exclaimed Raoul, recognizing the young man as having seen him
in the Rue Cocatrix, "spare him! it is his son!"

D'Artagnan's arm dropped to his side. "Ah, you are his son!" he said;
"that is a different thing."

"Sir, I surrender," said Louvieres, presenting his unloaded musket to
the officer.

"Eh, no! do not surrender, egad! On the contrary, be off, and quickly.
I