"A moi! mousquetaire!" said he. "Look us in the face and say which is the paler, he or I!"
This cry roused D'Artagnan, and stirred in his heart the fiber of obedience. He shook his head, and, without more hesitation, he walked straight up to Philippe, upon whose shoulder he laid his hand, saying, "Monsieur, you are my prisoner!"
Philippe did not raise his eyes toward Heaven, nor stir from the spot, where he seemed nailed to the floor, his eye intensely fixed upon the king his brother. He reproached him by a sublime silence with all his misfortunes past, with all his tortures to come. Against this language of the soul the king felt he had no power; he cast down his eyes, dragging away precipitately his brother and sister, forgetting his mother sitting motionless within three paces of the son whom she left a second time to be condemned to death. Philippe approached Anne of Austria, and said to her, in a soft and nobly agitated voice:
"If I were not your son, I should curse you, my mother, for having rendered me so unhappy."
D'Artagnan felt a shudder pass through the marrow of his bones. He bowed respectfully to the young prince, and said, as he bent, "Excuse me, monseigneur, I am but a soldier, and my oaths are his who has just left the chamber."
"Thank you, M. d'Artagnan. But what is become of M. d'Herblay?"
"M. d'Herblay is in safety, monseigneur," said a voice behind them; "and no one, while I live and am free, shall cause a hair to fall from his head."
"Monsieur Fouquet," said the prince, smiling sadly.
"Pardon me, monseigneur," said Fouquet, kneeling, "but he who is just gone out from hence was my guest."
"Here are," murmured Philippe, with a sigh, "brave friends and good hearts. They make me regret the world. On, M. d'Artagnan, I follow you."