“Your father brings you up rather strictly?” said he.
“Justly, monsieur le chevalier.”
“Oh, yes, I know Athos is just, but close, perhaps?”
“A royal hand, Monsieur d’Artagnan.”
“Well, never want, my boy! If ever you stand in need of a few pistoles, the old musketeer is at hand.”
“My dear Monsieur d’Artagnan!”
“Do you play a little?”
“Never.”
“Successful with the ladies, then?—Oh, my little Aramis! That, my dear friend, costs even more than play. It is true we fight when we lose, that is a compensation. Bah! that little sniveller, the king, makes winners give him his revenge. What a reign! my poor Raoul, what a reign! When we think that, in my time, the musketeers were besieged in their houses like Hector and Priam in the city of Troy, and the women wept, and then the walls laughed, and then five hundred beggarly fellows clapped their hands, and cried, ‘Kill! kill!’ when not one musketeer was hurt. Mordioux! you will never see anything like that.”
“You are very hard upon the king, my dear Monsieur d’Artagnan; and yet you scarcely know him.”