"And has fortified Belle-Isle—'tis natural, my friend."
"Well, I had an idea, which would doubtless have proved a good one, but for Mouston's carelessness."
D'Artagnan glanced at Mouston, who replied by a slight movement of his body, as if to say, "You will see whether I am at all to blame in all this."
"I congratulated myself, then," resumed Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be measured in my stead."
"Ah!" cried D'Artagnan. "I see—that spared you both time and humiliation."
"Consider my joy when, after a year and a half's judicious feeding—for I used to feed him up myself—the fellow—"
"Oh! I lent a good hand, myself, monsieur," said Mouston, humbly.
"That's true. Consider my joy when, one morning, I perceived Mouston was obliged to squeeze in, as I once did myself, to get through the little secret door that those fools of architects had made in the chamber of the late Madame de Valon, in the chateau of Pierrefonds. And, by the way, about that door, my friend, I should like to ask you, who know everything, why these wretches of architects, who ought by rights to have the compasses in their eye, came to make doorways through which nobody but thin people could pass?"
"Oh, those doors," answered D'Artagnan, "were meant for gallants, and they have generally slight and slender figures."
"Madame de Valon had no gallant!" answered Porthos, majestically.