king, for I descended from my throne in order to insult a gentleman.'"
"Monsieur," said the king, "do you think you can excuse your friend by exceeding him in insolence?"
"Oh! sire, I should go much further than he did," said D'Artagnan; "and it would be your own fault. I should tell you what he, a man full of the finest sense of delicacy, did not tell you; I should say, 'Sire, you have sacrificed his son, and he defended his son — you sacrified himself; he addressed you in the name of honor, of religion, of virtue — you repulsed, drove him away, imprisoned him.' I should be harder than he was, for I should say to you, 'Sire, it is for you to choose. Do you wish to have friends or lackeys — soldiers or slaves — great men or mere puppets? Do you wish men to serve you, or to bend and crouch before you? Do you wish men to love you, or to be afraid of you? If you prefer baseness, intrigue, cowardice, say so at once, sire, and we will leave you — we who are the only individuals who are left — nay, I will say more, the only models of the valor of former times; we who have done our duty, and have exceeded, perhaps, in courage and in merit the men already great for posterity. Choose, sire! and that, too, without delay. Whatever remains to you of great nobles, guard it with a jealous eye; you will never be deficient in courtiers. Delay not — and send me to the Bastile with my friend; for, if you have not known how to listen to the Comte de la Fere, whose voice is the sweetest and noblest when honor is his theme; if you do not know how to listen to D'Artagnan, the frankest and honestest voice of sincerity, you are a bad king, and to-morrow will be a poor king. And learn from me, sire, that bad kings are hated by their people, and poor kings are driven ignominiously away.' That is what I had to say to you, sire; you are wrong to have driven me to do it."
The king threw himself back in his chair, cold as death and as livid as a corpse. Had a thunderbolt fallen at his feet he could not have been more astonished; he seemed as if his respiration had utterly ceased, and that he was at the point of death. The honest voice of sincerity, as D'Artagnan had called it, had pierced through his heart like a sword-blade.
D'Artagnan had said all he had to say. Comprehending the king's anger, he drew his sword, and approaching Louis XIV. respectfully, he placed it on the table. But the king, with a furious gesture, thrust aside the sword, which fell
