"And why not?"
"Oh, for many reasons—in the first place, for this: If I were to succeed you in the musketeers, after having arrested you—"
"Ah! then, you admit you have arrested me?"
"No, I don't."
"Say, met me, then. So you were saying, if you were to succeed me, after having arrested me?"
"Your musketeers, at the first exercise with ball cartridges, would all fire toward me, by mistake."
"Ah! as to that I won't say; for the fellows do love me a little."
Gesvres made D'Artagnan pass in first, and took him straight to the cabinet where the king was waiting for his captain of the musketeers, and placed himself behind his colleague in the antechamber. The king could be heard distinctly, speaking aloud to Colbert, in the same cabinet where Colbert might have heard, a few days before, the king speaking aloud with M. d'Artagnan. The guards remained as a mounted piquet before the principal gate; and the report was quickly spread through the city that monsieur le capitaine of the musketeers had just been arrested by order of the king. Then, these men were seen to be in motion, as, in the good old times of Louis XIII., and M. de Treville; groups were formed, the staircases were filled; vague murmurs, issuing from the courts below, came rolling up to the upper stories, like the hoarse moanings of the tide-waves. M. de Gesvres became very uneasy. He looked at his guards, who, after being interrogated by the musketeers who had just got among their ranks, began to shun them with a manifestation of uneasiness. D'Artagnan was certainly less disturbed than M. de Gesvres, the captain of the guards, was. As soon as he entered, he had seated himself on the ledge of a window, whence, with his eagle glance, he saw all that was going on, without the least emotion. None of the progress of the fermentation which had manifested itself at the report of his arrest had escaped him. He foresaw the moment when the explosion would take place, and we know that his previsions were pretty correct.
"It would be very whimsical," thought he, "if, this evening, my prætorians should make me king of France. How I should laugh!"
But, at the height, all was stopped. Guards, musketeers, officers, soldiers, murmurs and uneasinesses, all dispersed, vanished, died away; no more tempest, no more menace, no more sedition. One word had calmed all the waves. The king had desired Brienne to say, "Hush, messieurs! you disturb the king."