This monologue ended, D’Artagnan began to laugh, whilst making his whip whistle in the air. He was already on the high road, frightening the birds in the hedges, listening to the livres chinking and dancing in his leather pocket, at every step; and, let us confess it, every time that D’Artagnan found himself in such conditions tenderness was not his dominant vice. “Come,” said he, “I cannot think the expedition a very dangerous one; and it will fall out with my voyage as with that piece M. Monk took me to see in London, which was called, I think, ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’” CHAPTER 66. The Journey It was perhaps the fiftieth time since the day on which we open this history, that this man, with a heart of bronze and muscles of steel, had left house and friends, everything, in short, to go in search of fortune and death. The one—that is to say, death—had constantly retreated before him, as if afraid of him; the other—that is to say, fortune—for a month past only had really made an alliance with him. Although he was not a great philosopher, after the fashion of either Epicurus or Socrates, he was a powerful spirit, having knowledge of life, and endowed with thought. No one is as brave, as adventurous, or as skillful as D’Artagnan, without being at the same time inclined to be a dreamer. He had picked up, here and there, some scraps of M. de la Rochefoucauld, worthy of being translated into Latin by MM. de Port Royal, and he had made a collection, en passant, in the society of Athos and Aramis, of many morsels of Seneca and Cicero, translated by them, and applied to the uses of common life. That contempt of riches which our Gascon had observed as an article of faith during the thirty-five first years of his life, had for a long time been considered by him as the first article of the code of bravery. “Article first,” said he, “A man is brave because he has nothing. A man has nothing because he despises riches.” Therefore, with these principles, which, as we have said had regulated the thirty-five first years of his life, D’Artagnan was no sooner possessed of riches, than he felt it necessary to ask himself if, in spite of his riches, he were still brave. To this, for any other but D’Artagnan, the events of the Place de Greve might have served as a reply. Many consciences would have been satisfied with them, but D’Artagnan was brave enough to ask himself sincerely and conscientiously if he were brave. Therefore to this:—