would willingly exchange
my profits for yours."

"Don't speak of profits to me, if you wish to save me the bitterest
anguish of mind."

"Why do you look first on one side and then on the other, as if you were
afraid of being arrested yourself, you whose business it is to arrest
others?"

"I was looking to see whether any one could see or listen to us; it
would be safer to confer more in private, if you would grant me such a
favor."

"Baisemeaux, you seem to forget we are acquaintances of five and thirty
years' standing. Don't assume such sanctified airs; make yourself quite
comfortable; I don't eat governors of the Bastile raw."

"Heaven be praised!"

"Come into the courtyard with me; it's a beautiful moonlit night; we
will walk up and down, arm in arm, under the trees, while you tell me
your pitiful tale." He drew the doleful governor into the courtyard,
took him by the arm as he had said, and, in his rough, good-humored way,
cried: "Out with it, rattle away, Baisemeaux; what have you got to say?"

"It's a long story."

"You prefer your own lamentations, then; my opinion is, it will be
longer than ever. I'll wager you are making fifty thousand francs out of
your pigeons in the Bastile."

"Would to heaven that were the case, M. d'Artagnan."

"You surprise me, Baisemeaux; just look at you, acting the anchorite.
I should like to show you your face in a glass, and you would see how
plump and florid-looking you are, as fat and round as a cheese, with
eyes like lighted coals; and if it were not for that ugly wrinkle you
try to cultivate on your forehead, you would hardly look fifty years
old, and you are sixty, if I am not mistaken."

"All quite true."

"Of course I knew it was true, as true as the fifty thousand francs
profit you make;" at which remark Baisemeaux stamped on the ground.

"Well, well," said D'Artagnan, "I will add up your accounts for you: you
were captain of M. Mazarin's guards; and twelve thousand francs a year
would in twelve years amount to one hundred and forty thousand francs."

"Twelve thousand francs! Are you mad?" cried Baisemeaux; "the old miser
gave me no more than six thousand, and the expenses of the post amounted
to six thousand five hundred francs. M. Colbert, who deducted the other
six thousand francs, condescended to allow me to take fifty thousand
francs as a gratification; so that, if it were not for my little estate
at Montlezun, which brings me in twelve thousand francs