ey succumbed to your blind anger. Besides,
why were they not allowed to escape? What crime had they committed? I
admit you may contest with me the right of judging their conduct.
But why suspect me before the action? Why surround me with spies? Why
disgrace me before the army? Why me, in whom till now you showed the
most entire confidence--who for thirty years have been attached to your
person, and have given you a thousand proofs of my devotion--for it must
be said, now that I am accused--why reduce me to see three thousand of
the king's soldiers march in battle against two men?"

"One would say you have forgotten what these men have done to me!" said
the king, in a hollow voice, "and that it was no merit of theirs I was
not lost."

"Sire, one would imagine you forget that I was there."

"Enough, Monsieur d'Artagnan, enough of these dominating interests which
arise to keep the sun itself from my interests. I am founding a state in
which there shall be but one master, as I promised you; the moment is at
hand for me to keep my promise. You wish to be, according to your tastes
or private friendships, free to destroy my plans and save my enemies? I
will thwart you or will drop you--seek a more compliant master. I know
full well that another king would not conduct himself as I do, and would
allow himself to be dominated by you, at the risk of sending you
some day to keep company with M. Fouquet and the rest; but I have an
excellent memory, and for me, services are sacred titles to gratitude,
to impunity. You shall only have this lesson, Monsieur d'Artagnan, as
the punishment of your want of discipline, and I will not imitate my
predecessors in anger, not having imitated them in favor. And, then,
other reasons make me act mildly towards you; in the first place,
because you are a man of sense, a man of excellent sense, a man of
heart, and that you will be a capital servant to him who shall have
mastered you; secondly, because you will cease to have any motives for
insubordination. Your friends are now destroyed or ruined by me. These
supports on which your capricious mind instinctively relied I have
caused to disappear. At this moment, my soldiers have taken or killed
the rebels of Belle-Isle."

D'Artagnan became pale. "Taken or killed!" cried he. "Oh! sire, if you
thought what you tell, if you were sure you were telling me the truth,
I should forget all that is just, all that is magnanimous in your words,
to call you a b