The two friends set to work and crowded the space before the door with all the furniture in the room, as not only to make the passage impassable, but so to block the door that by no means could it open inward.
“There!” said D’Artagnan, “we can’t be overtaken. Come! forward!”
Chapter LXXXV.
The Oubliettes of Cardinal Mazarin.
At first, on arriving at the door through which Mazarin had passed, D’Artagnan tried in vain to open it, but on the powerful shoulder of Porthos being applied to one of the panels, which gave way, D’Artagnan introduced the point of his sword between the bolt and the staple of the lock. The bolt gave way and the door opened.
“As I told you, everything can be attained, Porthos, women and doors, by proceeding with gentleness.”
“You’re a great moralist, and that’s the fact,” said Porthos.
They entered; behind a glass window, by the light of the cardinal’s lantern, which had been placed on the floor in the midst of the gallery, they saw the orange and pomegranate trees of the Castle of Rueil, in long lines, forming one great alley and two smaller side alleys.
“No cardinal!” said D’Artagnan, “but only his lantern; where the devil, then, is he?”
Exploring, however, one of the side wings of the gallery, after making a sign to Porthos to explore the other, he saw, all at once, at his left, a tub containing an orange tree, which had been pushed out of its place and in its place an open aperture.
Ten men would have found difficulty in moving that tub, but by some mechanical contrivance it had turned with the flagstone on which it rested.