3 THE AUDIENCE

M. de Treville was at the moment in rather ill-humor,
nevertheless he saluted the young man politely, who bowed to the
very ground; and he smiled on receiving d'Artagnan's response,
the Bearnese accent of which recalled to him at the same time
his youth and his country--a double remembrance which makes a man
smile at all ages; but stepping toward the antechamber and making
a sign to d'Artagnan with his hand, as if to ask his permission
to finish with others before he began with him, he called three
times, with a louder voice at each time, so that he ran through
the intervening tones between the imperative accent and the angry
accent.

"Athos! Porthos! Aramis!"

The two Musketeers with whom we have already made acquaintance,
and who answered to the last of these three names, immediately
quitted the group of which they had formed a part, and advanced
toward the cabinet, the door of which closed after them as soon
as they had entered. Their appearance, although it was not quite
at ease, excited by its carelessness, at once full of dignity and
submission, the admiration of d'Artagnan, who beheld in these two
men demigods, and in their leader an Olympian Jupiter, armed with
all his thunders.

When the two Musketeers had entered; when the door was closed
behind them; when the buzzing murmur of the antechamber, to which