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by the advice we have just reported. The farewells on this side were longer and more tender than they had been on the other—not that M. d’Artagnan did not love his son, who was his only progeny, but M. d’Artagnan was a man and would have regarded it as unworthy of a man to let himself give way to his emotion, while Mme d’Artagnan was a woman and, what’s more, a mother. She wept abundantly, and, let it be said in praise of M. d’Artagnan Jr., despite the efforts he made to remain firm as a future musketeer should be, nature prevailed, and he shed many tears, only half of which he managed with great difficulty to conceal.

That same day the young man set out, provided with three paternal presents, which consisted, as we have said, of fifteen écus, a horse, and the letter to M. de Tréville. The advice, of course, had been thrown in on top of it all.

With such a vade mecum, d’Artagnan turned out to be, morally as well as physically, an exact copy of Cervantes’s hero, to whom we so happily compared him when our duties as historian made it necessary for us to draw his portrait. Don Quixote took windmills for giants and sheep for armies; d’Artagnan took every smile for an insult and every glance for a provocation. As a result of which he kept his fist clenched from Tarbes6 to Meung, and all in all brought his hand to the pommel of his sword ten times a day; however, the fist never landed on any jaw, and the sword never left its scabbard. Not that the sight of the wretched yellow nag did not spread many smiles across the faces of passersby; but since above the nag clanked a sword of respectable size, and above this sword shone an eye more fierce than proud, the passersby restrained their hilarity, or, if hilarity won out over prudence, they tried at least to laugh on one side only, like antique masques. D’Artagnan thus remained majestic and intact in his susceptibility until that unfortunate town of Meung.

But there, as he was getting off his horse at the gate of the Jolly Miller, without anyone, host, waiter, or groom, coming to hold his stirrup at the mounting block, d’Artagnan caught sight, through a half-open window on the ground floor, of a gentleman of fine proportion and haughty bearing, though with a somewhat sullen look, talking with two persons who appeared to be listening to him with deference. D’Artagnan quite naturally believed, according to his habit, that he was the subject of conversation, and he listened in. This time d’Artagnan was only half mistaken: it was a question not of him, but of his horse. The gentleman was apparently enumerating all its qualities to his listeners, and since, as I have said, the listeners appeared to show great deference to the narrator, they burst out laughing every moment. Now, since a half smile was enough to awaken the young man’s irascibility, one can imagine what effect this loud hilarity had on him.

However, d’Artagnan wanted first to take account of the physiognomy of the impertinent fellow who was mocking him. He fixed his proud gaze on the stranger and made him out to be a man of forty to forty-five, with dark and piercing eyes, pale skin, a strongly accentuated nose, a black and perfectly trimmed mustache. He was dressed in a violet doublet and knee breeches, with aiguilettes of the same color, without any ornament other than the usual slashes through which the shirt appeared. These knee breeches and doublet, though new, looked wrinkled, like traveling clothes long shut away in a portmanteau. D’Artagnan made all these observations with the rapidity of the most meticulous observer, and no doubt from an instinctive feeling which told him that this unknown man would have a great influence on his life to come.

Now, since at the moment when d’Artagnan fixed his gaze on the gentleman in the violet doublet, the gentleman was making one of his most learned and profound demonstrations anent the Béarnais nag, his two listeners burst out laughing, and he himself, contrary to his habit, visibly allowed a pale smile to stray, if one may put it so, over his face. This time there was no