"A moi! mousquetaires!" shouted he, with the voice of a giant, with one of those voices which dominate over cannon, the sea, the tempest."A moi! mousquetaires!" And suspending himself by the arm from the balcony, he allowed himself to drop amidst the crowd, which began to draw back from a house that rained men.Raoul was on the ground as soon as he, both sword in hand.All the musketeers on the Place heard that challenging cry -- all turned round at that cry, and recognized D'Artagnan."To the captain, to the captain!"cried they, in their turn.And the crowd opened before them as though before the prow of a vessel.At that moment D'Artagnan and Menneville found themselves face to face.
"Passage, passage!" cried Menneville, seeing that he was within an arm's length of the door.
"No one passes here," said D'Artagnan.
"Take that, then!" said Menneville, firing his pistol, almost within arm's length.But before the cock fell, D'Artagnan had struck up Menneville's arm with the hilt of his sword and passed the blade through his body.
"I told you plainly to keep yourself quiet," said D'Artagnan to Menneville, who rolled at his feet.
"Passage! passage!" cried the companions of Menneville, at first terrified, but soon recovering, when they found they had only to do with two men.But those two men were hundred-armed giants, the swords flew about in their hands like the burning glaive of the archangel.They pierce with its point, strike with the flat, cut with the edge, every stroke brings down a man."For the king!" cried D'Artagnan, to every man he struck at, that is to say, to every man that fell.This cry became the charging word for the musketeers, who guided by it, joined D'Artagnan.During this time the archers, recovering from the panic they had undergone, charge the aggressors in the rear, and regular as mill strokes, overturn or knock down all that oppose them.The crowd, which sees swords gleaming, and drops of blood flying in the air -- the crowd falls back and crushes itself.At length cries for mercy and of despair resound; that is, the farewell of the vanquished.The two condemned are again in the hands of the archers.D'Artagnan approaches them, seeing them pale and sinking: "Console yourselves, poor men," said he, "you will not undergo the frightful torture with which these wretches threatened you.The king has condemned you to be hung: you shall only be hung.Go on, hang them, and it will be over."There is no longer anything going on at the Image-de-Notre-Dame.The fire has been extinguished with two tuns of wine in default of water.The conspirators have fled by the garden.The archers were dragging the culprits to the gibbets.From this moment the affair did not occupy much time.The executioner, heedless about operating according to the rules of art, made such haste that he dispatched the condemned in a couple of minutes.In the meantime the people gathered around D'Artagnan, -- they felicitated, they cheered him.He wiped his brow, streaming with sweat, and his sword, streaming with blood.He shrugged his shoulders at seeing Menneville writhing at his feet in the last convulsions.And, while Raoul turned away his eyes in compassion, he pointed to the musketeers the gibbets laden with their melancholy fruit."Poor devils!" said he, "I hope they died blessing me, for I saved them with great difficulty." These words caught the ear of Menneville at the moment when he himself was breathing his last sigh.A dark, ironical smile flitted across his lips, he wished to reply, but the effort hastened the snapping of the chord of life --he expired.
"Oh! all this is very frightful!" murmured Raoul: "let us begone, monsieur le chevalier.""You are not wounded?" asked D'Artagnan.
"Not at all, thank you."
"That's well! Thou art a brave fellow, mordioux! The head of the father, and the arm of Porthos.Ah! if he had been here, good Porthos, you would have seen something worth looking at." Then as if by way of remembrance --"But where the devil can that brave Porthos be?" murmured D'Artagnan.
"Come, chevalier, pray come away," urged Raoul.
"One minute, my friend, let me take my thirty-seven and a half pistoles and I am at your service.The house is a good property," added D'Artagnan, as he entered the Image-de-Notre-Dame, "but decidedly, even if it were less profitable, I should prefer its being in another quarter."