had not gained the goal, for there were still the landing place and
the antechamber.

On the landing they were no longer fighting, but amused themselves with
stories about women, and in the antechamber, with stories about
the court. On the landing d'Artagnan blushed; in the antechamber he
trembled. His warm and fickle imagination, which in Gascony had rendered
formidable to young chambermaids, and even sometimes their mistresses,
had never dreamed, even in moments of delirium, of half the amorous
wonders or a quarter of the feats of gallantry which were here set
forth in connection with names the best known and with details the least
concealed. But if his morals were shocked on the landing, his respect
for the cardinal was scandalized in the antechamber. There, to his great
astonishment, d'Artagnan heard the policy which made all Europe
tremble criticized aloud and openly, as well as the private life of the
cardinal, which so many great nobles had been punished for trying to pry
into. That great man who was so revered by d'Artagnan the elder served
as an object of ridicule to the Musketeers of Treville, who cracked
their jokes upon his bandy legs and his crooked back. Some sang ballads
about Mme. d'Aguillon, his mistress, and Mme. Cambalet, his niece; while
others formed parties and plans to annoy the pages and guards of
the cardinal duke--all things which appeared to d'Artagnan monstrous
impossibilities.

Nevertheless, when the name of the king was now and then uttered
unthinkingly amid all these cardinal jests, a sort of gag seemed to
close for a moment on all these jeering mouths. They looked hesitatingly
around them, and appeared to doubt the thickness of the partition
between them and the office of M. de Treville; but a fresh allusion soon
brought back the conversation to his Eminence, and then the laughter
recovered its loudness and the light was not withheld from any of his
actions.

"Certes, these fellows will all either be imprisoned or hanged," thought
the terrified d'Artagnan, "and I, no doubt, with them; for from the
moment I have either listened to or heard them, I shall be held as an
accomplice. What would my good father say, who so strongly pointed out
to me the respect due to the cardinal, if he knew I was in the society
of such pagans?"

We have no need, therefore, to say that d'Artagnan dared not join in the
conversation, only he looked with all his eyes and listened with all his
ears, stretching