"What is the matter?" asked Porthos; "are you faint?"
"No, only I feel how utterly helpless our position is. Can we three pretend to go and take the Bastille?"
"Well, if D'Artagnan were only here," replied Porthos, "I don't know about that."
Raoul could not resist a feeling of admiration at the sight of such a perfect confidence, heroic in its simplicity. These were truly the celebrated men who, by three or four, attacked armies and assaulted castles! Those men who had terrified death itself, and who survived the wrecks of an age, and were still stronger than the most robust of the young.
"Monsieur," said he to Porthos, "you have just given me an idea; we absolutely must see M. d'Artagnan."
"Undoubtedly."
"He ought by this time to have returned home, after having taken my father to the Bastille. Let us go to his house."
"First, inquire at the Bastille," said Grimaud, who was in the habit of speaking little, but that to the purpose.
Accordingly, they hastened toward the fortress, when one of those chances which Heaven bestows on men of strong will, caused Grimaud suddenly to perceive the carriage, which was entering by the great gate of the drawbridge. This was at the moment that D'Artagnan was, as we have seen, returning from his visit to the king. In vain was it that Raoul urged on his horse in order to join the carriage, and to see whom it contained. The horses had already gained the other side of the great gate, which again closed, while one of the sentries struck the nose of Raoul's horse with his musket; Raoul turned about, only too happy to find he had ascertained something respecting the carriage which had contained his father. "We have him," said Grimaud.
"If we wait a little it is certain he will leave; don't you think so, my friend?"