Page:Ten Years Later.djvu/13

"That is well! that is well, sire; I ask no more," replied D'Artagnan. "My discharge."
"What! your discharge?"
"Without doubt. I am too proud to eat the bread of the king without gaining it, or rather, by gaining it badly. My discharge, sire!"
"Oh! oh!"
"I ask for my discharge, or I shall take it."
"You are angry, monsieur?"
"I have reason, mordioux! I am thirty-two hours in the saddle; I ride night and day; I perform prodigies of speed; I arrive stiff as the corpse of a man who has been hung, and another arrives before me! Come, sire, I am a fool! My discharge, sire!"
"Monsieur d'Artagnan," said Louis, leaning his white hand upon the dusty arm of the musketeer, "what I tell you will not at all affect that which I promised you. A word given, a word should be kept." And the king, going straight to his table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper.
"Here is your commission of captain of musketeers; you have won it, Monsieur d'Artagnan."
D'Artagnan opened the paper eagerly, and looked at it twice. He could scarcely believe his eyes.
"And this commission is given you," continued the king, "not only on account of your journey to Belle Isle, but, moreover, for your brave intervention at the Place de Greve. There, likewise, you served me valiantly."
"Ah! ah!" said D'Artagnan, without his own command being able to prevent a certain redness mounting to his eyes; "you know that also, sire?"
"Yes, I know it."
The king possessed a piercing glance and an infallible judgment, when it was his object to read a conscience. "You have something to say," said he to the musketeer, "something to say which you do not say. Come, speak freely, monsieur; you know that I told you, once for all, that you are to be quite frank with me."
"Well, sire, what I have to say is this, that I would prefer being made captain of musketeers for having charged a battery at the head of my company or taken a city, than for causing two wretches to be hung."
"Is that quite true that you tell me?"
"And why should your majesty suspect me of dissimulation, I ask?"