h a good lieutenant--Mordioux! what things
patience and calculation are! Was I not going to embark with forty men,
and I have now reduced them to twenty for an equal success? Ten thousand
livres saved at one stroke, and more safety; that is well! Now, then,
let us see; we have nothing to do but to find this lieutenant--let him
be found, then; and after--That is not so easy; he must be brave and
good, a second myself. Yes, but a lieutenant must have my secret, and as
that secret is worth a million, and I shall only pay my man a thousand
livres, fifteen hundred at the most, my man will sell the secret to
Monk. Mordioux! no lieutenant. Besides, this man, were he as mute as
a disciple of Pythagoras,--this man would be sure to have in the troop
some favourite soldier, whom he would make his sergeant, the sergeant
would penetrate the secret of the lieutenant, in case the latter should
be honest and unwilling to sell it. Then the sergeant, less honest and
less ambitious, will give up the whole for fifty thousand livres. Come,
come! that is impossible. The lieutenant is impossible. But then I must
have no fractions; I cannot divide my troop into two, and act upon
two points, at once, without another self, who--But what is the use of
acting upon two points, as we have only one man to take? What can be the
good of weakening a corps by placing the right here, and the left
there? A single corps--Mordioux! a single one, and that commanded by
D'Artagnan. Very well. But twenty men marching in one band are suspected
by everybody; twenty horsemen must not be seen marching together, or a
company will be detached against them and the password will be required;
the which company, upon seeing them embarrassed to give it, would shoot
M. d'Artagnan and his men like so many rabbits. I reduce myself then to
ten men; in this fashion I shall act simply and with unity; I shall be
forced to be prudent, which is half the success in an affair of the kind
I am undertaking; a greater number might, perhaps, have drawn me into
some folly. Ten horses are not many, either to buy or take. A capital
idea; what tranquillity it infuses into my mind! no more suspicions--no
passwords--no more dangers! Ten men, they are valets or clerks. Ten
men, leading ten horses laden with merchandise of whatever kind, are
tolerated, well received everywhere. Ten men travel on account of the
house of Planchet & Co., of France--nothing can be said against that.
These ten men, clo