baretier, half distracted, "one
minute if you please. I have here a hundred mad devils turning my cellar
upside down."

"The cellar, if you like, but not the money-box."

"Oh, monsieur, your thirty-seven and a half pistoles are all counted
out ready for you, upstairs in my chamber, but there are in that chamber
thirty customers, who are sucking the staves of a little barrel
of Oporto which I tapped for them this very morning. Give me a
minute,--only a minute."

"So be it; so be it."

"I will go," said Raoul, in a low voice, to D'Artagnan; "this hilarity
is vile!"

"Monsieur," replied D'Artagnan, sternly, "you will please to remain
where you are. The soldier ought to familiarize himself with all kinds
of spectacles. There are in the eye, when it is young, fibers which we
must learn how to harden; and we are not truly generous and good save
from the moment when the eye has become hardened, and the heart remains
tender. Besides, my little Raoul, would you leave me alone here? That
would be very wrong of you. Look, there is yonder in the lower court a
tree, and under the shade of that tree we shall breathe more freely than
in this hot atmosphere of spilt wine."

From the spot on which they had placed themselves the two new guests of
the Image-de-Notre-Dame heard the ever-increasing hubbub of the tide of
people, and lost neither a cry nor a gesture of the drinkers, at tables
in the cabaret, or disseminated in the chambers. If D'Artagnan had
wished to place himself as a vidette for an expedition, he could not
have succeeded better. The tree under which he and Raoul were seated
covered them with its already thick foliage; it was a low, thick
chestnut-tree, with inclined branches, that cast their shade over a
table so dilapidated the drinkers had abandoned it. We said that from
this post D'Artagnan saw everything. He observed the goings and comings
of the waiters; the arrival of fresh drinkers; the welcome, sometimes
friendly, sometimes hostile, given to the newcomers by others already
installed. He observed all this to amuse himself, for the thirty-seven
and a half pistoles were a long time coming. Raoul recalled his
attention to it. "Monsieur," said he, "you do not hurry your tenant,
and the condemned will soon be here. There will then be such a press we
shall not be able to get out."

"You are right," said the musketeer; "Hola! oh! somebody there!
Mordioux!" But it was in vain he cried and knocked upon the wreck of