et, "you
were not my dupe; beware of being so. You did not appear to me to have
any fear of the gibbets of Monk, or the Bastile of his majesty, King
Louis XIV., but you will do me the favor of being afraid of me. Then
listen at the smallest word that shall escape you, I will kill you as
I would a fowl. I have absolution from our holy father, the pope, in my
pocket."

"I assure you I know absolutely nothing, my dear M. d'Artagnan, and that
your words have all been to me so many articles of faith."

"I was quite sure you were an intelligent fellow," said the musketeer;
"I have tried you for a length of time. These fifty gold crowns which
I give you above the rest will prove the esteem I have for you. Take
them."

"Thanks, Monsieur d'Artagnan," said Menneville.

"With that sum you can really become an honest man," replied D'Artagnan,
in the most serious tone possible. "It would be disgraceful for a mind
like yours, and a name you no longer dare to bear, to sink forever under
the rust of an evil life. Become a gallant man, Menneville, and live for
a year upon those hundred gold crowns: it is a good provision; twice the
pay of a high officer. In a year come to me, and, Mordioux! I will make
something of you."

Menneville swore, as his comrades had sworn, that he would be as silent
as the grave. And yet some one must have spoken; and as, certainly, it
was not one of the nine companions, and quite as certainly, it was
not Menneville, it must have been D'Artagnan, who, in his quality of a
Gascon, had his tongue very near to his lips. For, in short, if it were
not he, who could it be? And how can it be explained that the secret of
the deal coffer pierced with holes should come to our knowledge, and
in so complete a fashion that we have, as has been seen, related the
history of it in all its most minute details; details which, besides,
throw a light as new as unexpected upon all that portion of the history
of England which has been left, up to the present day, completely in
darkness by the historian of our neighbors?

CHAPTER 38. In which it is seen that the French Grocer had already been
established in the Seventeenth Century

His accounts once settled, and his recommendations made, D'Artagnan
thought of nothing but returning to Paris as soon as possible. Athos, on
his part, was anxious to reach home and to rest a little. However whole
the character and the man may remain after the fatigues of a voyage, the
tr