cles of steel, had
left house and friends, everything, in short, to go in search of fortune
and death. The one--that is to say, death--had constantly retreated
before him, as if afraid of him; the other--that is to say, fortune--for
a month past only had really made an alliance with him. Although he
was not a great philosopher, after the fashion of either Epicurus
or Socrates, he was a powerful spirit, having knowledge of life, and
endowed with thought. No one is as brave, as adventurous, or as skillful
as D'Artagnan, without being at the same time inclined to be a dreamer.
He had picked up, here and there, some scraps of M. de la Rochefoucauld,
worthy of being translated into Latin by MM. de Port Royal, and he had
made a collection, en passant, in the society of Athos and Aramis, of
many morsels of Seneca and Cicero, translated by them, and applied to
the uses of common life. That contempt of riches which our Gascon had
observed as an article of faith during the thirty-five first years
of his life, had for a long time been considered by him as the first
article of the code of bravery. "Article first," said he, "A man is
brave because he has nothing. A man has nothing because he despises
riches." Therefore, with these principles, which, as we have said had
regulated the thirty-five first years of his life, D'Artagnan was no
sooner possessed of riches, than he felt it necessary to ask himself if,
in spite of his riches, he were still brave. To this, for any other
but D'Artagnan, the events of the Place de Greve might have served as
a reply. Many consciences would have been satisfied with them, but
D'Artagnan was brave enough to ask himself sincerely and conscientiously
if he were brave. Therefore to this:--
"But it appears to me that I drew promptly enough and cut and thrust
pretty freely on the Place de Greve to be satisfied of my bravery,"
D'Artagnan had himself replied. "Gently, captain, that is not an answer.
I was brave that day, because they were burning my house, and there
are a hundred, and even a thousand, to speak against one, that if those
gentlemen of the riots had not formed that unlucky idea, their plan of
attack would have succeeded, or, at least, it would not have been I who
would have opposed myself to it. Now, what will be brought against me? I
have no house to be burnt in Bretagne; I have no treasure there that
can be taken from me.--No; but I have my skin; that precious skin of M.
d'Artagnan, which t
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