same price. Finally, Farmer Louis sold
them eighty trusses, making in all four hundred and thirty.

There was no more to be had in Saint Germain. This foraging did not
occupy more than half an hour. Mousqueton, duly instructed, was put at
the head of this sudden and new business. He was cautioned not to let
a bit of straw out of his hands under a louis the truss, and they
intrusted to him straw to the amount of four hundred and thirty louis.
D'Artagnan, taking with him three trusses of straw, returned to the
chateau, where everybody, freezing with cold and more than half asleep,
envied the king, the queen, and the Duke of Orleans, on their camp beds.
The lieutenant's entrance produced a burst of laughter in the great
drawing-room; but he did not appear to notice that he was the object of
general attention, but began to arrange, with so much cleverness, nicety
and gayety, his straw bed, that the mouths of all these poor creatures,
who could not go to sleep, began to water.

"Straw!" they all cried out, "straw! where is there any to be found?"

"I can show you," answered the Gascon.

And he conducted them to Mousqueton, who freely distributed the trusses
at the rate of a louis apiece. It was thought rather dear, but people
wanted to sleep, and who would not give even two or three louis for a
few hours of sound sleep?

D'Artagnan gave up his bed to any one who wanted it, making it over
about a dozen times; and since he was supposed to have paid, like the
others, a louis for his truss of straw, he pocketed in that way thirty
louis in less than half an hour. At five o'clock in the morning the
straw was worth eighty francs a truss and there was no more to be had.

D'Artagnan had taken the precaution to set apart four trusses for his
own use. He put in his pocket the key of the room where he had hidden
them, and accompanied by Porthos returned to settle with Mousqueton,
who, naively, and like the worthy steward that he was, handed them four
hundred and thirty louis and kept one hundred for himself.

Mousqueton, who knew nothing of what was going on in the chateau,
wondered that the idea had not occurred to him sooner. D'Artagnan
put the gold in his hat, and in going back to the chateau settled the
reckoning with Porthos, each of them had cleared two hundred and fifteen
louis.

Porthos, however, found that he had no straw left for himself. He
returned to Mousqueton, but the steward had sold the last wisp. He then
repai