--I don't see Athos. Where is he?"

"Ill--"

"Very ill, say you? And of what malady?"

"It is feared that it may be the smallpox, sir," replied Porthos,
desirous of taking his turn in the conversation; "and what is serious is
that it will certainly spoil his face."

"The smallpox! That's a great story to tell me, Porthos! Sick of the
smallpox at his age! No, no; but wounded without doubt, killed, perhaps.
Ah, if I knew! S'blood! Messieurs Musketeers, I will not have this
haunting of bad places, this quarreling in the streets, this swordplay
at the crossways; and above all, I will not have occasion given for
the cardinal's Guards, who are brave, quiet, skillful men who never put
themselves in a position to be arrested, and who, besides, never allow
themselves to be arrested, to laugh at you! I am sure of it--they would
prefer dying on the spot to being arrested or taking back a step. To
save yourselves, to scamper away, to flee--that is good for the king's
Musketeers!"

Porthos and Aramis trembled with rage. They could willingly have
strangled M. de Treville, if, at the bottom of all this, they had not
felt it was the great love he bore them which made him speak thus. They
stamped upon the carpet with their feet; they bit their lips till the
blood came, and grasped the hilts of their swords with all their might.
All without had heard, as we have said, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis
called, and had guessed, from M. de Treville's tone of voice, that he
was very angry about something. Ten curious heads were glued to the
tapestry and became pale with fury; for their ears, closely applied to
the door, did not lose a syllable of what he said, while their mouths
repeated as he went on, the insulting expressions of the captain to
all the people in the antechamber. In an instant, from the door of the
cabinet to the street gate, the whole hotel was boiling.

"Ah! The king's Musketeers are arrested by the Guards of the cardinal,
are they?" continued M. de Treville, as furious at heart as his
soldiers, but emphasizing his words and plunging them, one by one, so to
say, like so many blows of a stiletto, into the bosoms of his auditors.
"What! Six of his Eminence's Guards arrest six of his Majesty's
Musketeers! MORBLEU! My part is taken! I will go straight to the louvre;
I will give in my resignation as captain of the king's Musketeers to
take a lieutenancy in the cardinal's Guards, and if he refuses me,
MORBLEU! I will turn abbe."