Prostate Health
Prostate Articles
Antioxidant levels key for prostate cancer risk
Obesity and prostate health
Tomatoes for prostate health
Green tea and prostate health
Screening tests for prostate
Books
The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
|
|
The Three Musketeers 68 at Prostate Health
that your name was dArtagnan."
"Who, I?"
"Yes, you."
"Somebody said to me, You are Monsieur dArtagnan? I answered,
You think so? My guards exclaimed that they were sure of it.
I did not wish to contradict them; besides, I might be deceived."
"Monsieur, you insult the majesty of justice."
"Not at all," said Athos, calmly.
"You are Monsieur dArtagnan."
"You see, monsieur, that you say it again."
"But I tell you, Monsieur Commissary," cried Bonacieux, in his
turn, "there is not the least doubt about the matter. Monsieur
dArtagnan is my tenant, although he does not pay me my rent--and
even better on that account ought I to know him. Monsieur
dArtagnan is a young man, scarcely nineteen or twenty, and this
gentleman must be thirty at least. Monsieur dArtagnan is in
Monsieur Dessessarts Guards, and this gentleman is in the company of
Monsieur de Trevilles Musketeers. Look at his uniform, Monsieur
Commissary, look at his uniform!"
"Thats true," murmured the commissary; "PARDIEU, thats true."
At this moment the door was opened quickly, and a messenger,
introduced by one of the gatekeepers of the Bastille, gave a
letter to the commissary.
"Oh, unhappy woman!" cried the commissary.
"How? What do you say? Of whom do you speak? It is not of my
wife, I hope!"
"On the contrary, it is of her. Yours is a pretty business."
"But," said the agitated mercer, "do me the pleasure, monsieur,
to tell me how my own proper affair can become worse by anything
my wife does while I am in prison?"
"Because that which she does is part of a plan concerted between
you--of an infernal plan."
"I swear to you, Monsieur Commissary, that you are in the
profoundest error, that I know nothing in the world about what my
wife had to do, that I am entirely a stranger to what she has
done; and that if she has committed any follies, I renounce her,
I abjure her, I curse her!"
"Bah!" said Athos to the commissary, "if you have no more need of
me, send me somewhere. Your Monsieur Bonacieux is very
tiresome."
The commissary designated by the same gesture Athos and
Bonacieux, "Let them be guarded more closely than ever."
"And yet," said Athos, with his habitual calmness, "if it be
Monsieur dArtagnan who is concerned in this matter, I do not
perceive how I can take his place."
"Do as I bade you," cried the commissary, "and preserve absolute
secrecy. You understand!"
Athos shrugged his shoulders, and followed his guards silently,
while M. Bonacieux uttered lamentations enough to break the heart
of a tiger.
They locked the mercer in the same dungeon where he had passed
the night, and left him to himself during the day. Bonacieux
wept all day, like a true mercer, not being at all a military
man, as he himself informed us. In the evening, about nine
oclock, at the moment he had made up his mind to go to bed, he
heard steps in his corridor. These steps drew near to his
dungeon, the door was thrown open, and the guards appeared.
"Follow me," said an officer, who came up behind the guards.
"Follow you!" cried Bonacieux, "follow you at this hour! Where,
my God?"
"Where we have orders to lead you."
"But that is not an answer."
"It is, nevertheless, the only one we can give."
"Ah, my God, my God!" murmured the poor mercer, "now, indeed, I
am lost!" And he followed the guards who came for him,
mechanically and without resistance.
He passed along the same corridor as before, crossed one court,
then a second side of a building; at length, at the gate of the
entrance court he found a carriage surrounded by four guards on
horseback. They made him enter this carriage, the officer placed
himself by his side, the door was locked, and they were left in a
rolling prison. The carriage was put in motion as slowly as a
funeral car. Through the closely fastened windows the prisoner
could perceive the houses and the pavement, that was all; but,
true Parisian as he was, Bonacieux could recognize every street
by the milestones, the signs, and the lamps. At the moment of
arriving at St. Paul--the spot where such as were condemned at
the Bastille were executed--he was near fainting and crossed
himself twice. He thought the carriage was about to stop there.
The carriage, however, passed on.
Farther on, a still greater terror seized him on passing by the
cemetery of St. Jean, where state criminals
The Three Musketeers page 67 The Three Musketeers page 69 |
