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Porthos bowed to his friend. Mazarin was as fond of fine soldiers as, in later times, Frederick of Prussia used to be. He admired the strong hands, the broad shoulders and the steady eye of Porthos. He seemed to see before him the salvation of his administration and of the kingdom, sculptured in flesh and bone. He remembered that the old association of musketeers was composed of four persons.
The four servants of the musketeers guarded the house; Athos, D'Artagnan, Aramis, Porthos, and De Winter entered. "What do you want?" screamed Milady. "We want Charlotte Backson, first called Countess de la Fère, and afterwards Lady de Winter," said Athos. "M. D'Artagnan, it is for you to accuse her first."
"Perhaps I don't give the letter of my speech, but I give the sense of it." "But did not the king have you arrested immediately?" "By whom? It was I who commanded the musketeers; he must have commanded me to convey myself to prison; I would never have consented: I would have resisted myself. And then I went into England no more D'Artagnan.
He was the passionate worshipper of the divine Giulia Gonzaga, whose portrait he caused to be painted by Sebastiano del Piombo. His part in the war undertaken by Charles V. in 1532, against the Turks, had been a strange one. Clement VII., his relative, had appointed him Legate and sent him to Vienna at the head of three hundred musketeers.
After a company of musketeers, a closely ranked troop of gentlemen, came the litter of monsieur le cardinal, drawn like a carriage by four black horses. The pages and people of the cardinal marched behind. Next came the carriage of the queen-mother, with her maids of honor at the doors, her gentlemen on horseback at both sides.
"You will mount on horseback to-morrow, at about half-past four in the morning, and you will have a horse saddled for me." "From your majesty's stables?" "No; one of your musketeers' horses." "Very well, sire. Is that all?" "And you will accompany me." "Alone?" "Alone." "Shall I come to seek your majesty, or shall I wait?" "You will wait for me." "Where, sire?" "At the little park-gate."
They found no shipping there, however, and little succour against the storm. The Spaniards had seen them come to moorings, and managed to send some thirty or forty musketeers among the rocks, within gunshot of them. These kept up a continual musket fire, which did bodily hurt to none, but proved a sad annoyance to sailors who were wearied and out of victuals.
As we know, large bodies move slowly, and the royal party must have been sufficiently cumbersome, with the heavy coaches of the King, of the two Queens, Anne of Austria and Maria Teresa, and the several coaches of their maids of honor, to say nothing of the outriders, the Swiss Guards and the Musketeers with our friend D'Artagnan at their head.
As to the wounded man, he had been taken in at once, and, as we have said, in a very bad state. Excitement was at its height among the Musketeers and their allies, and they even began to deliberate whether they should not set fire to the hotel to punish the insolence of M. de la Tremouille's domestics in daring to make a SORTIE upon the king's Musketeers.
The road from Dearsley's pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite recognize the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a "fence" for stolen property.
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