se of delicacy, did not tell you; I should say--'Sire,
you have sacrificed his son, and he defended his son--you sacrificed
himself; he addressed you in the name of honor, of religion, of
virtue--you repulsed, drove him away, imprisoned him.' I should be
harder than he was, for I should say to you--'Sire; it is for you
to choose. Do you wish to have friends or lackeys--soldiers or
slaves--great men or mere puppets? Do you wish men to serve you, or to
bend and crouch before you? Do you wish men to love you, or to be afraid
of you? If you prefer baseness, intrigue, cowardice, say so at once,
sire, and we will leave you,--we who are the only individuals who are
left,--nay, I will say more, the only models of the valor of former
times; we who have done our duty, and have exceeded, perhaps, in courage
and in merit, the men already great for posterity. Choose, sire! and
that, too, without delay. Whatever relics remain to you of the great
nobility, guard them with a jealous eye; you will never be deficient in
courtiers. Delay not--and send me to the Bastile with my friend; for, if
you did not know how to listen to the Comte de la Fere, whose voice is
the sweetest and noblest in all the world when honor is the theme; if
you do not know how to listen to D'Artagnan, the frankest and honestest
voice of sincerity, you are a bad king, and to-morrow will be a poor
king. And learn from me, sire, that bad kings are hated by their people,
and poor kings are driven ignominiously away.' That is what I had to say
to you, sire; you were wrong to drive me to say it."

The king threw himself back in his chair, cold as death, and as livid as
a corpse. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet, he could not have been
more astonished; he seemed as if his respiration had utterly ceased,
and that he was at the point of death. The honest voice of sincerity,
as D'Artagnan had called it, had pierced through his heart like a
sword-blade.

D'Artagnan had said all he had to say. Comprehending the king's anger,
he drew his sword, and, approaching Louis XIV. respectfully, he placed
it on the table. But the king, with a furious gesture, thrust aside
the sword, which fell on the ground and rolled to D'Artagnan's feet.
Notwithstanding the perfect mastery which D'Artagnan exercised over
himself, he, too, in his turn, became pale, and, trembling with
indignation, said: "A king may disgrace a soldier,--he may exile him,
and may even condemn him to death; but were h