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The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
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The Three Musketeers 159 at Prostate Health
a comfortable
establishment, and to give himself up to those little
attentions which "the harder one is, the more they please,"
as old soldiers say.
To come in the capacity of a cousin, and seat himself every
day at a good table; to smooth the yellow, wrinkled brow of
the old procurator; to pluck the clerks a little by teaching
them BASSETTE, PASSE-DIX, and LANSQUENET, in their utmost
nicety, and winning from them, by way of fee for the lesson
he would give them in an hour, their savings of a month--all
this was enormously delightful to Porthos.
The Musketeer could not forget the evil reports which then
prevailed, and which indeed have survived them, of the
procurators of the period--meanness, stinginess, fasts; but
as, after all, excepting some few acts of economy which
Porthos had always found very unseasonable, the procurators
wife had been tolerably liberal--that is, be it understood,
for a procurators wife--he hoped to see a household of a
highly comfortable kind.
And yet, at the very door the Musketeer began to entertain
some doubts. The approach was not such as to prepossess
people--an ill-smelling, dark passage, a staircase half-
lighted by bars through which stole a glimmer from a
neighboring yard; on the first floor a low door studded with
enormous nails, like the principal gate of the Grand
Chatelet.
Porthos knocked with his hand. A tall, pale clerk, his face
shaded by a forest of virgin hair, opened the door, and
bowed with the air of a man forced at once to respect in
another lofty stature, which indicated strength, the
military dress, which indicated rank, and a ruddy
countenance, which indicated familiarity with good living.
A shorter clerk came behind the first, a taller clerk behind
the second, a stripling of a dozen years rising behind the
third. In all, three clerks and a half, which, for the
time, argued a very extensive clientage.
Although the Musketeer was not expected before one oclock,
the procurators wife had been on the watch ever since
midday, reckoning that the heart, or perhaps the stomach, of
her lover would bring him before his time.
Mme. Coquenard therefore entered the office from the house
at the same moment her guest entered from the stairs, and
the appearance of the worthy lady relieved him from an
awkward embarrassment. The clerks surveyed him with great
curiosity, and he, not knowing well what to say to this
ascending and descending scale, remained tongue-tied.
"It is my cousin!" cried the procurators wife. "Come in,
come in, Monsieur Porthos!"
The name of Porthos produced its effect upon the clerks, who
began to laugh; but Porthos turned sharply round, and every
countenance quickly recovered its gravity.
They reached the office of the procurator after having
passed through the antechamber in which the clerks were, and
the study in which they ought to have been. This last
apartment was a sort of dark room, littered with papers. On
quitting the study they left the kitchen on the right, and
entered the reception room.
All these rooms, which communicated with one another, did
not inspire Porthos favorably. Words might be heard at a
distance through all these open doors. Then, while passing,
he had cast a rapid, investigating glance into the kitchen;
and he was obliged to confess to himself, to the shame of
the procurators wife and his own regret, that he did not
see that fire, that animation, that bustle, which when a
good repast is on foot prevails generally in that sanctuary
of good living.
The procurator had without doubt been warned of his visit,
as he expressed no surprise at the sight of Porthos, who
advanced toward him with a sufficiently easy air, and
saluted him courteously.
"We are cousins, it appears, Monsieur Porthos?" said the
procurator, rising, yet supporting his weight upon the arms
of his cane chair.
The old man, wrapped in a large black doublet, in which the
whole of his slender body was concealed, was brisk and dry.
His little gray eyes shone like carbuncles, and appeared,
with his grinning mouth, to be the only part of his face in
which life survived. Unfortunately the legs began to refuse
their service to this bony machine. During the last five or
six months that this weakness had been felt, the worthy
procurator had nearly become the slave of his wife.
The cousin was received with resignation, that was all. M.
Coquenard, firm upon his legs, would have declined all
relationship with M. Porthos.
"Yes, monsieur, we are cousins," said Porthos, without being
disconcerted, as he had never reckoned upon being received
enthusiastically by
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