“How is that? What the devil had Planchet to do in all this?”
“Ah, yes, my friend, but this king, so spruce, so smiling, so adored, M. Monk fancies he has recalled him, you fancy you have supported him, I fancy I have brought him back, the people fancy they have reconquered him, he himself fancies he has negotiated his restoration; and yet nothing of all this is true, for Charles II., king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, has been replaced upon the throne by a French grocer, who lives in the Rue des Lombards, and is named Planchet. And such is grandeur! ‘Vanity!’ says the Scripture: ‘vanity, all is vanity.’”
Athos could not help laughing at this whimsical outbreak of his friend.
“My dear D’Artagnan,” said he, pressing his hand affectionately, “should you not exercise a little more philosophy? Is it not some further satisfaction to you to have saved my life as you did by arriving so fortunately with Monk, when those damned parliamentarians wanted to burn me alive?”
“Well, but you, in some degree, deserved a little burning, my friend.”
“How so? What, for having saved King Charles’s million?”
“What million?”
“Ah, that is true! you never knew that, my friend; but you must not be angry, for it was not my secret. That word ‘Remember’ which the king pronounced upon the scaffold.”
“And which means ‘souviens-toi!’”
“Exactly. That was signified. ‘Remember there is a million buried in the vaults of Newcastle Abbey, and that that million belongs to my son.’”