“Then you have nothing to say against them.”

“Well, I return, then, to the army and parliament.”

“I say that I borrow twenty thousand livres of M. Planchet, and that I put twenty thousand livres of my own to it; and with these forty thousand livres I raise an army.”

Planchet clasped his hands; he saw that D’Artagnan was in earnest, and, in good truth, he believed his master had lost his senses.

“An army! — ah, monsieur,” said he, with his most agreeable smile, for fear of irritating the madman, and rendering him furious, — ”an army! — how many?”

“Of forty men,” said D’Artagnan.