er.
The conspirators have fled by the garden. The archers are dragging the
culprits to the gibbets. From this moment the affair did not occupy much
time. The executioner, heedless about operating according to the rules
of the art, made such haste that he dispatched the condemned in a couple
of minutes. In the meantime the people gathered around D'Artagnan,--they
felicitated, they cheered him. He wiped his brow, streaming with sweat,
and his sword, streaming with blood. He shrugged his shoulders at seeing
Menneville writhing at his feet in the last convulsions. And, while
Raoul turned away his eyes in compassion, he pointed to the musketeers
the gibbets laden with their melancholy fruit. "Poor devils!" said he,
"I hope they died blessing me, for I saved them with great difficulty."
These words caught the ear of Menneville at the moment when he himself
was breathing his last sigh. A dark, ironical smile flitted across his
lips; he wished to reply, but the effort hastened the snapping of the
chord of life--he expired.

"Oh! all this is very frightful!" murmured Raoul: "let us begone,
monsieur le chevalier."

"You are not wounded?" asked D'Artagnan.

"Not at all; thank you."

"That's well! Thou art a brave fellow, _mordioux!_ The head of the
father, and the arm of Porthos. Ah! if he had been here, good Porthos,
you would have seen something worth looking at." Then as if by way of
remembrance--

"But where the devil can that brave Porthos be?" murmured D'Artagnan.

"Come, chevalier, pray come away," urged Raoul.

"One minute, my friend; let me take my thirty-seven and a half
pistols, and I am at your service. The house is a good property," added
D'Artagnan, as he entered the Image-de-Notre-Dame, "but decidedly,
even if it were less profitable, I should prefer its being in another
quarter."

Chapter LXIII. How M. d'Eymeris's Diamond passed into the Hands of M.
d'Artagnan.

Whilst this violent, noisy, and bloody scene was passing on the Greve,
several men, barricaded behind the gate of communication with the
garden, replaced their swords in their sheaths, assisted one among them
to mount a ready saddled horse which was waiting in the garden, and like
a flock of startled birds, fled in all directions, some climbing the
walls, others rushing out at the gates with all the fury of a panic. He
who mounted the horse, and gave him the spur so sharply that the animal
was near leaping the wall, this cavalier, we say, cr