en illustrious amongst the
seekers of adventure, ill-treated by fortune, and not on good terms with
justice. Upon this D'Artagnan rose, and instantly set off on the search,
telling Planchet not to expect him to breakfast, and perhaps not to
dinner. A day and a half spent in rummaging amongst certain dens of
Paris sufficed for his recruiting; and, without allowing his adventurers
to communicate with each other, he had picked up and got together, in
less than thirty hours, a charming collection of ill-looking faces,
speaking a French less pure than the English they were about to attempt.
These men were, for the most part, guards, whose merit D'Artagnan
had had an opportunity of appreciating in various encounters, whom
drunkenness, unlucky sword-thrusts, unexpected winnings at play, or the
economical reforms of Mazarin, had forced to seek shade and solitude,
those two great consolers of irritated and chafing spirits. They
bore upon their countenances and in their vestments the traces of the
heartaches they had undergone. Some had their visages scarred,--all
had their clothes in rags. D'Artagnan comforted the most needy of
these brotherly miseries by a prudent distribution of the crowns of the
company; then, having taken care that these crowns should be employed in
the physical improvement of the troop, he appointed a trysting place
in the north of France, between Bergues and Saint Omer. Six days were
allowed as the utmost term, and D'Artagnan was sufficiently acquainted
with the good-will, the good-humor, and the relative probity of these
illustrious recruits, to be certain that not one of them would fail in
his appointment. These orders given, this rendezvous fixed, he went to
bid farewell to Planchet, who asked news of his army. D'Artagnan did
not think it proper to inform him of the reduction he had made in his
_personnel_. He feared that the confidence of his associate would be
abated by such an avowal. Planchet was delighted to learn that the army
was levied, and that he (Planchet) found himself a kind of half king,
who from his throne-counter kept in pay a body of troops destined
to make war against perfidious Albion, that enemy of all true French
hearts. Planchet paid down in double louis, twenty thousand livres
to D'Artagnan, on the part of himself (Planchet), and twenty thousand
livres, still in double louis, in account with D'Artagnan. D'Artagnan
placed each of the twenty thousand francs in a bag, and weighing a ba