retty Kitty; that was the name of the
SOUBRETTE. She looked at him with an expression of kindness which it was
impossible to mistake; but d'Artagnan was so preoccupied by the mistress
that he noticed absolutely nothing but her.

D'Artagnan came again on the morrow and the day after that, and each day
Milady gave him a more gracious reception.

Every evening, either in the antechamber, the corridor, or on the
stairs, he met the pretty SOUBRETTE. But, as we have said, d'Artagnan
paid no attention to this persistence of poor Kitty.

32 A PROCURATOR'S DINNER

However brilliant had been the part played by Porthos in the duel, it
had not made him forget the dinner of the procurator's wife.

On the morrow he received the last touches of Mousqueton's brush for an
hour, and took his way toward the Rue aux Ours with the steps of a man
who was doubly in favor with fortune.

His heart beat, but not like d'Artagnan's with a young and impatient
love. No; a more material interest stirred his blood. He was about at
last to pass that mysterious threshold, to climb those unknown stairs by
which, one by one, the old crowns of M. Coquenard had ascended. He was
about to see in reality a certain coffer of which he had twenty times
beheld the image in his dreams--a coffer long and deep, locked, bolted,
fastened in the wall; a coffer of which he had so often heard, and
which the hands--a little wrinkled, it is true, but still not without
elegance--of the procurator's wife were about to open to his admiring
looks.

And then he--a wanderer on the earth, a man without fortune, a man
without family, a soldier accustomed to inns, cabarets, taverns, and
restaurants, a lover of wine forced to depend upon chance treats--was
about to partake of family meals, to enjoy the pleasures of a
comfortable establishment, and to give himself up to those little
attentions which "the harder one is, the more they please," as old
soldiers say.

To come in the capacity of a cousin, and seat himself every day at a
good table; to smooth the yellow, wrinkled brow of the old procurator;
to pluck the clerks a little by teaching them BASSETTE, PASSE-DIX, and
LANSQUENET, in their utmost nicety, and winning from them, by way of
fee for the lesson he would give them in an hour, their savings of a
month--all this was enormously delightful to Porthos.

The Musketeer could not forget the evil reports which then prevailed,
and which indeed have survived them, of