Ten Years Later: The Vicomte of Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas Chapter 36 Page 15

as I do. You have a right to feel your susceptibility excited, however benignant it may be. What, the devil! it is not the place for a man like you, a man who plays with crowns and scepters as a Bohemian plays with his balls; it is not the place of a serious man, I said, to be shut up in a box like some freak of natural history; for you must understand it would make all your enemies ready to burst with laughter, and you are so great, so noble, so generous, that you must have many enemies. This secret is enough to set half the human race laughing, if you were represented in that box. It is not decent to have the second personage in the kingdom laughed at.”

Monk was quite out of countenance at the idea of seeing himself represented in this box. Ridicule, as D’Artagnan had judiciously foreseen, acted upon him in a