“Ah, you are quite the pet of the ladies, Monsieur Porthos!” resumed the procurator’s wife, with a sigh.

“Well,” responded Porthos, “you may imagine, with the physique with which nature has endowed me, I am not in want of good luck.”

“Good Lord, how quickly men forget!” cried the procurator’s wife, raising her eyes toward heaven.

“Less quickly than the women, it seems to me,” replied Porthos; “for I, madame, I may say I was your victim, when wounded, dying, I was abandoned by the surgeons. I, the offspring of a noble family, who placed reliance upon your friendship — I was near dying of my wounds at first, and of hunger afterward, in a beggarly inn at Chantilly, without