A PROCURATOR’S DINNER

However brilliant had been the part played by Porthos in the duel, it had not made him forget the dinner of the procurator’s wife.

On the morrow he received the last touches of Mousqueton’s brush for an hour, and took his way toward the Rue aux Ours with the steps of a man who was doubly in favor with fortune.

His heart beat, but not like d’Artagnan’s with a young and impatient love. No; a more material interest stirred his blood. He was about at last to pass that mysterious threshold, to climb those unknown stairs by which, one by one, the old crowns of M. Coquenard had ascended. He was about to see in reality a certain coffer of which he had twenty times beheld the image in his dreams — a coffer