thirty-seven and a half pistoles are all counted out ready for you, upstairs in my chamber; but there are in that chamber thirty customers, who are sucking the staves of a little barrel of Oporto which I tapped for them this very morning. Give me a minute, — only a minute?”

“So be it; so be it.”

“I will go,” said Raoul, in a low voice, to D’Artagnan; “this hilarity is vile!”

“Monsieur,” replied D’Artagnan, sternly, “you will please to remain where you are. The soldier ought to familiarize himself with all kinds of spectacles. There are in the eye, when it is young, fibers which we must learn how to harden; and we are not truly generous and good save from the moment when the eye