discretion. But since you possess that
virtue, why the devil don't you make use of it with respect to her
Majesty? Let whoever likes talk of the king and the cardinal, and how he
likes; but the queen is sacred, and if anyone speaks of her, let it be
respectfully."

"Porthos, you are as vain as Narcissus; I plainly tell you so," replied
Aramis. "You know I hate moralizing, except when it is done by Athos.
As to you, good sir, you wear too magnificent a baldric to be strong
on that head. I will be an abbe if it suits me. In the meanwhile I am
a Musketeer; in that quality I say what I please, and at this moment it
pleases me to say that you weary me."

"Aramis!"

"Porthos!"

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" cried the surrounding group.

"Monsieur de Treville awaits Monsieur d'Artagnan," cried a servant,
throwing open the door of the cabinet.

At this announcement, during which the door remained open, everyone
became mute, and amid the general silence the young man crossed part of
the length of the antechamber, and entered the apartment of the captain
of the Musketeers, congratulating himself with all his heart at having
so narrowly escaped the end of this strange quarrel.

3 THE AUDIENCE

M. de Treville was at the moment in rather ill-humor, nevertheless he
saluted the young man politely, who bowed to the very ground; and he
smiled on receiving d'Artagnan's response, the Bearnese accent of which
recalled to him at the same time his youth and his country--a double
remembrance which makes a man smile at all ages; but stepping toward the
antechamber and making a sign to d'Artagnan with his hand, as if to ask
his permission to finish with others before he began with him, he called
three times, with a louder voice at each time, so that he ran through
the intervening tones between the imperative accent and the angry
accent.

"Athos! Porthos! Aramis!"

The two Musketeers with whom we have already made acquaintance, and who
answered to the last of these three names, immediately quitted the group
of which they had formed a part, and advanced toward the cabinet, the
door of which closed after them as soon as they had entered. Their
appearance, although it was not quite at ease, excited by its
carelessness, at once full of dignity and submission, the admiration of
d'Artagnan, who beheld in these two men demigods, and in their leader an
Olympian Jupiter, armed with all his thunders.

When the two Musketeers had entered; w