well,” cried D’Artagnan, at last, furious, “very well, since you wish it, let us leave our bones in this beggarly land, where it is always cold, where fine weather is a fog, fog is rain, and rain a deluge; where the sun represents the moon and the moon a cream cheese; in truth, whether we die here or elsewhere matters little, since we must die.”

“Only reflect, my good fellow,” said Athos, “it is but dying rather sooner.”

“Pooh! a little sooner or a little later, it isn’t worth quarreling over.”

“If I am astonished at anything,” remarked Porthos, sententiously, “it is that it has not already happened.”

“Oh, it will