IV.
It is full time to return to one of the most important personages of this narrative, whom we shall find riding an excellent horse along the road from Paris to Bordeaux, with five companions, whose eyes sparkled at every sound that came from a bag filled with gold crowns, hanging at Ferguzon's saddle-bow. The melody rejoiced and refreshed the little troop, as the music of the drum and fife imparts renewed life to the soldier on the march.
"Never mind, never mind," one of the men was saying; "ten thousand livres is a pretty little sum."
"You might say," rejoined Ferguzon, "that it is a magnificent sum, if it owed nothing to anybody; but it owes a company to Madame la Princesse. Nimium satis est, as the ancients used to say; which may be translated thus: 'Nothing less than too much is enough. Now, my dear Barrabas, we haven't that desirable enough which is equivalent to too much."
"How much it costs to appear to be an honest man!" said Cauvignac; "all that we took from the royal tax-gatherer has gone into equipments, doublets, and trimming. We cut as fine a figure as any nobleman, and we carry luxury so far as to have purses; to be sure, there's nothing in them. Oh, appearances!"
"Speak for us, captain, and not for yourself," said Barrabas. "You have the purse and ten thousand livres to boot."
"My good fellow," said Cauvignac, "did you not hear, or did you misunderstand what Ferguzon just said touching our obligation to Madame la Princesse? I am not of those who promise one thing and do another. Monsieur Lenet paid over ten thousand livres to me to raise a company, and if I don't raise it may the devil fly away with me! On the day when it is raised he will owe me forty thousand more. When that time comes, if he doesn't pay the forty thousand livres we will see."
"With ten thousand livres!" cried four satirical voices in chorus; for Ferguzon, whose confidence in his leader's resources was unbounded, seemed to be the only one of the troop convinced that Cauvignac would attain the promised result; "with ten thousand livres you will raise a company?"