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Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas père
page 269 of 1350 (19%)
the horses by ten, which is a consideration; and then, with
a good lieutenant -- Mordioux! what things patience and
calculation are! Was I not going to embark with forty men,
and I have now reduced them to twenty for an equal success?
Ten thousand livres saved at one stroke, and more safety;
that is well! Now, then, let us see; we have nothing to do
but to find this lieutenant -- let him be found, then; and
after -- That is not so easy; he must be brave and good, a
second myself. Yes, but a lieutenant must have my secret,
and as that secret is worth a million, and I shall only pay
my man a thousand livres, fifteen hundred at the most, my
man will sell the secret to Monk. Mordioux! no lieutenant.
Besides, this man, were he as mute as a disciple of
Pythagoras, -- this man would be sure to have in the troop
some favourite soldier, whom he would make his sergeant, the
sergeant would penetrate the secret of the lieutenant, in
case the latter should be honest and unwilling to sell it.
Then the sergeant, less honest and less ambitious, will give
up the whole for fifty thousand livres. Come, come! that is
impossible. The lieutenant is impossible. But then I must
have no fractions; I cannot divide my troop into two, and
act upon two points, at once, without another self, who --
But what is the use of acting upon two points, as we have
only one man to take? What can be the good of weakening a
corps by placing the right here, and the left there? A
single corps -- Mordioux! a single one, and that commanded
by D'Artagnan. Very well. But twenty men marching in one
band are suspected by everybody; twenty horsemen must not be
seen marching together, or a company will be detached
against them and the password will be required; the which
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