seem to have left me," said D'Artagnan; "it is all over with me. Yet,
supposing I were to attack this poor devil, make him draw his sword and
kill him for the sake of his letter? No harm in that, if it were a
question of a letter from a queen to a nobleman, or a letter from a
cardinal to a queen; but what miserable intrigues are those of Messieurs
Aramis and Fouquet with M. Colbert. A man's life for that? No, no,
indeed; not even ten crowns." As he philosophized in this manner, biting
first his nails, and then his mustaches, he perceived a group of archers
and a commissary of the police engaged in carrying away a man of very
gentlemanly exterior, who was struggling with all his might against
them. The archers had torn his clothes, and were dragging him roughly
away. He begged they would lead him along more respectfully, asserting
that he was a gentleman and a soldier. And observing our soldier walking
in the street, he called out, "Help, comrade."

The soldier walked on with the same step towards the man who had called
out to him, followed by the crowd. An idea suddenly occurred to
D'Artagnan; it was his first one, and we shall find it was not a bad one
either. During the time the gentleman was relating to the soldier that
he had just been seized in a house as a thief, when the truth was he was
only there as a lover; and while the soldier was pitying him, and
offering him consolation and advice with that gravity which a French
soldier has always ready whenever his vanity or his _esprit de corps_ is
concerned, D'Artagnan glided behind the soldier, who was closely hemmed
in by the crowd, and with a rapid sweep, like a sabre slash, snatched the
letter from his belt. As at this moment the gentleman with the torn
clothes was pulling about the soldier, to show how the commissary of
police had pulled him about, D'Artagnan effected his pillage of the
letter without the slightest interference. He stationed himself about
ten paces distant, behind the pillar of an adjoining house, and read on