whether Athos was at home. No; all
those idlers, standing with their arms crossed, would have been at
work if the eye of the master was near. Athos gone a journey?--that is
incomprehensible. Bah! it is all devilish mysterious! And then--no--he
is not the man I want. I want one of a cunning, patient mind. My
business is at Melun, in a certain presbytery I am acquainted with.
Forty-five leagues--four days and a half! Well, it is fine weather, and
I am free. Never mind the distance!"

And he put his horse into a trot, directing his course towards Paris. On
the fourth day he alighted at Melun as he had intended.

D'Artagnan was never in the habit of asking any one on the road for any
common information. For these sorts of details, unless in very serious
circumstances, he confided in his perspicacity, which was so seldom
at fault, in his experience of thirty years, and in a great habit of
reading the physiognomies of houses, as well as those of men. At Melun,
D'Artagnan immediately found the presbytery--a charming house, plastered
over red brick, with vines climbing along the gutters, and a cross, in
carved stone, surmounting the ridge of the roof. From the ground-floor
of this house came a noise, or rather a confusion of voices, like the
chirping of young birds when the brood is just hatched under the down.
One of these voices was spelling the alphabet distinctly. A voice,
thick, yet pleasant, at the same time scolded the talkers and corrected
the faults of the reader. D'Artagnan recognized that voice, and as the
window of the ground-floor was open, he leant down from his horse under
the branches and red fibers of the vine and cried "Bazin, my dear Bazin!
good-day to you."

A short, fat man, with a flat face, a craniun ornamented with a crown
of gray hairs, cut short, in imitation of a tonsure, and covered with an
old black velvet cap, arose as soon as he heard D'Artagnan--we ought not
to say arose, but bounded up. In fact, Bazin bounded up, carrying with
him his little low chair, which the children tried to take away, with
battles more fierce than those of the Greeks endeavoring to recover the
body of Patroclus from the hands of the Trojans. Bazin did more than
bound; he let fall both his alphabet and his ferule. "You!" said he,
"you, Monsieur d'Artagnan?"

"Yes, myself! Where is Aramis--no, M. le Chevalier d'Herblay--no, I am
still mistaken--Monsieur le Vicaire-General?"

"Ah, monsieur," said Bazin, with dignity, "mo