“Certainly.” And the giant took up these two articles, and without any apparent effort produced in them the metamorphoses suggested by his companion.
“There!” he cried.
“Capital!” exclaimed the Gascon. “Really, Porthos, you are a gifted individual!”
“I have heard speak,” said Porthos, “of a certain Milo of Crotona, who performed wonderful feats, such as binding his forehead with a cord and bursting it—of killing an ox with a blow of his fist and carrying it home on his shoulders, et cetera. I used to learn all these feat by heart yonder, down at Pierrefonds, and I have done all that he did except breaking a cord by the corrugation of my temples.”
“Because your strength is not in your head, Porthos,” said his friend.
“No; it is in my arms and shoulders,” answered Porthos with gratified naivete.
“Well, my dear friend, let us approach the window and there you can match your strength against that of an iron bar.”
Porthos went to the window, took a bar in his hands, clung to it and bent it like a bow; so that the two ends came out of the sockets of stone in which for thirty years they had been fixed.
“Well! friend, the cardinal, although such a genius, could never have done that.”
“Shall I take out any more of them?” asked Porthos.