ustomed to render to viceroys without
disagreeable consequences.

It would not be at all necessary for the king to be active in that
_contrepartie_ of the play in which Monk should take his revenge. The
part of the king would be confined to simply pardoning the viceroy of
Ireland all he should undertake against D'Artagnan. Nothing more was
necessary to place the conscience of the Duke of Albemarle at rest than
a _te absolvo_ said with a laugh, or the scrawl of "Charles the King,"
traced at the foot of a parchment; and with these two words pronounced,
and these two words written, poor D'Artagnan was forever crushed beneath
the ruins of his imagination.

And then, a thing sufficiently disquieting for a man with such foresight
as our musketeer, he found himself alone; and even the friendship of
Athos could not restore his confidence. Certainly if the affair had only
concerned a free distribution of sword-thrusts, the musketeer would have
counted upon his companion; but in delicate dealings with a king, when
the _perhaps_ of an unlucky chance should arise in justification of Monk
or of Charles of England, D'Artagnan knew Athos well enough to be sure
he would give the best possible coloring to the loyalty of the survivor,
and would content himself with shedding floods of tears on the tomb of
the dead, supposing the dead to be his friend, and afterwards composing
his epitaph in the most pompous superlatives.

"Decidedly," thought the Gascon; and this thought was the result of the
reflections which he had just whispered to himself and which we have
repeated aloud--"decidedly, I must be reconciled with M. Monk, and
acquire proof of his perfect indifference for the past. If, and God
forbid it should be so! he is still sulky and reserved in the expression
of this sentiment, I shall give my money to Athos to take away with him,
and remain in England just long enough to unmask him, then, as I have
a quick eye and a light foot, I shall notice the first hostile sign;
to decamp or conceal myself at the residence of my lord Buckingham, who
seems a good sort of devil at the bottom, and to whom, in return for his
hospitality, I shall relate all that history of the diamonds, which can
now compromise nobody but an old queen, who need not be ashamed, after
being the wife of a miserly creature like Mazarin, of having formerly
been the mistress of a handsome nobleman like Buckingham. _Mordioux!_
that is the thing, and this Monk shall not ge