Page:The Man in the Iron Mask.djvu/46

32 floor, "when I think I shall have no clothes, I am ready to burst with rage. I should like to strangle somebody or destroy something!"

"Neither strangle anybody nor destroy anything, Porthos; I will manage it all; put on one of your thirty-six suits, and come with me to a tailor."

"Pooh! my agent has seen them all this morning."

"Even Monsieur Percerin?"

"Who is Monsieur Percerin?"

"Only the king's tailor."

"Oh! ah! yes," said Porthos, who wished to appear to know the king's tailor, but now heard his name mentioned for the first time; "to Monsieur Percerin's, by Jove! I thought he would be too much engaged."

"Doubtless he will be; but be at ease, Porthos; he will do for me what he won't do for another. Only you must allow yourself to be measured."

"Ah!" said Porthos, with a sigh, "'tis vexatious, but what would you have me do?"

"Do? as others do; as the king does."

"What! do they measure the king, too? Does he put up with it?"

"The king is a beau, my good friend, and so are you, too, whatever you may say about it."

Porthos smiled triumphantly.

"Let us go to the king's tailor," he said; "and, since he measures the king, I think, by my faith! I may well allow him to measure me."

CHAPTER III.

WHO M. JEAN PEKCERIN WAS.

THE king's tailor, M. Jean Percerin, occupied a rather large house in the Rue SL Honore, near the Rue de I'Arbre Sec. He was a man of great taste in elegant stuffs, embroideries, and velvet, being hereditary tailor to the king. The preferment of his house reached as far back as the time of Charles IX.; from whose reign dated, as we know, fancies in bravery difficult enough to gratify. The Percerin of that period was a Huguenot, like Ambroise Paré, and had been spared by the Queen of Navarre, the beautiful Margot, as they used to write and say, too, in those days; because, in sooth, he was the only one who could make for her those