Porthos to the second rank.
Porthos consoled himself by filling the antechamber of M. de Treville
and the guardroom of the Louvre with the accounts of his love scrapes,
after having passed from professional ladies to military ladies, from
the lawyer's dame to the baroness, there was question of nothing less
with Porthos than a foreign princess, who was enormously fond of him.

An old proverb says, "Like master, like man." Let us pass, then, from
the valet of Athos to the valet of Porthos, from Grimaud to Mousqueton.

Mousqueton was a Norman, whose pacific name of Boniface his master had
changed into the infinitely more sonorous name of Mousqueton. He had
entered the service of Porthos upon condition that he should only be
clothed and lodged, though in a handsome manner; but he claimed two
hours a day to himself, consecrated to an employment which would provide
for his other wants. Porthos agreed to the bargain; the thing suited
him wonderfully well. He had doublets cut out of his old clothes and
cast-off cloaks for Mousqueton, and thanks to a very intelligent tailor,
who made his clothes look as good as new by turning them, and whose wife
was suspected of wishing to make Porthos descend from his aristocratic
habits, Mousqueton made a very good figure when attending on his master.

As for Aramis, of whom we believe we have sufficiently explained the
character--a character which, like that of his lackey was called Bazin.
Thanks to the hopes which his master entertained of someday entering
into orders, he was always clothed in black, as became the servant of
a churchman. He was a Berrichon, thirty-five or forty years old, mild,
peaceable, sleek, employing the leisure his master left him in the
perusal of pious works, providing rigorously for two a dinner of few
dishes, but excellent. For the rest, he was dumb, blind, and deaf, and
of unimpeachable fidelity.

And now that we are acquainted, superficially at least, with the masters
and the valets, let us pass on to the dwellings occupied by each of
them.

Athos dwelt in the Rue Ferou, within two steps of the Luxembourg. His
apartment consisted of two small chambers, very nicely fitted up, in
a furnished house, the hostess of which, still young and still really
handsome, cast tender glances uselessly at him. Some fragments of past
splendor appeared here and there upon the walls of this modest lodging;
a sword, for example, richly embossed, which belonged by its make to