twenty!"

Thus fortified by his laborious calculations, D'Artagnan
stopped at this plan, and determined to change nothing in
it. He had already on a list furnished by his inexhaustible
memory, ten men illustrious amongst the seekers of
adventures, ill-treated by fortune, and not on good terms
with justice. Upon this D'Artagnan rose, and instantly set
off on the search, telling Planchet not to expect him to
breakfast, and perhaps not to dinner. A day and a half spent
in rummaging amongst certain dens of Paris sufficed for his
recruiting; and, without allowing his adventurers to
communicate with each other, he had picked up and got
together, in less than thirty hours, a charming collection
of ill-looking faces, speaking a French less pure than the
English they were about to attempt. These men were, for the
most part, guards, whose merit D'Artagnan had had an
opportunity of appreciating in various encounters, whom
drunkenness, unlucky sword-thrusts, unexpected winnings at
play, or the economical reforms of Mazarin, had forced to
seek shade and solitude, those two great consolers of
irritated and chafing spirits. They bore upon their
countenances and in their vestments the traces of the
heartaches they had undergone. Some had their visages
scarred, -- all had their clothes in rags. D'Artagnan
comforted the most needy of these brotherly miseries by a
prudent distribution of the crowns of the society; then,
having taken care that these crowns should be employed in
the physical improvement of the troop, he appointed a
trysting place in the north of France, between Berghes and