rrested me?"

"No, I _don't_."

"Say met me, then. So, you were saying _if_ you were to succeed me after
having arrested me?"

"Your musketeers, at the first exercise with ball cartridges, would fire
_my_ way, by mistake."

"Oh, as to that I won't say; for the fellows _do_ love me a little."

Gesvres made D'Artagnan pass in first, and took him straight to the
cabinet where Louis was waiting for his captain of the musketeers, and
placed himself behind his colleague in the ante-chamber. The king could
be heard distinctly, speaking aloud to Colbert in the same cabinet where
Colbert might have heard, a few days before, the king speaking aloud
with M. d'Artagnan. The guards remained as a mounted picket before the
principal gate; and the report was quickly spread throughout the city
that monsieur le capitaine of the musketeers had been arrested by order
of the king. Then these men were seen to be in motion, and as in the
good old times of Louis XIII. and M. de Treville, groups were formed,
and staircases were filled; vague murmurs, issuing from the court below,
came rolling to the upper stories, like the distant moaning of the
waves. M. de Gesvres became uneasy. He looked at his guards, who, after
being interrogated by the musketeers who had just got among their ranks,
began to shun them with a manifestation of innocence. D'Artagnan was
certainly less disturbed by all this than M. de Gesvres, the captain of
the guards. As soon as he entered, he seated himself on the ledge of a
window whence with his eagle glance he saw all that was going on without
the least emotion. No step of the progressive fermentation which had
shown itself at the report of his arrest escaped him. He foresaw
the very moment the explosion would take place; and we know that his
previsions were in general correct.

"It would be very whimsical," thought he, "if, this evening, my
praetorians should make me king of France. How I should laugh!"

But, at the height, all was stopped. Guards, musketeers, officers,
soldiers, murmurs, uneasiness, dispersed, vanished, died away; there was
an end of menace and sedition. One word had calmed the waves. The king
had desired Brienne to say, "Hush, messieurs! you disturb the king."

D'Artagnan sighed. "All is over!" said he; "the musketeers of the
present day are not those of his majesty Louis XIII. All is over!"

"Monsieur d'Artagnan, you are wanted in the ante-chamber of the king,"
proclaimed an usher.

C