[A Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandra Dumas]@TWC D-Link bookA Man in the Iron Mask ChapterII 4/11
And so, my dear friend, you are really going to Vaux ?" "Indeed I am!" "You will see a magnificent sight." "Alas! I doubt it, though." "Everything that is grand in France will be brought together there!" "Ah!" cried Porthos, tearing out a lock of hair in his despair. "Eh! good heavens, are you ill ?" cried D'Artagnan. "I am as firm as the Pont-Neuf! It isn't that." "But what is it, then ?" "'Tis that I have no clothes!" D'Artagnan stood petrified.
"No clothes! Porthos, no clothes!" he cried, "when I see at least fifty suits on the floor." "Fifty, truly; but not one which fits me!" "What? not one that fits you? But are you not measured, then, when you give an order ?" "To be sure he is," answered Mouston; "but unfortunately _I_ have gotten stouter!" "What! _you_ stouter!" "So much so that I am now bigger than the baron.
Would you believe it, monsieur ?" "_Parbleu!_ it seems to me that is quite evident." "Do you see, stupid ?" said Porthos, "that is quite evident!" "Be still, my dear Porthos," resumed D'Artagnan, becoming slightly impatient, "I don't understand why your clothes should not fit you, because Mouston has grown stouter." "I am going to explain it," said Porthos.
"You remember having related to me the story of the Roman general Antony, who had always seven wild boars kept roasting, each cooked up to a different point; so that he might be able to have his dinner at any time of the day he chose to ask for it.
Well, then, I resolved, as at any time I might be invited to court to spend a week, I resolved to have always seven suits ready for the occasion." "Capitally reasoned, Porthos--only a man must have a fortune like yours to gratify such whims.
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