n was quite sure that at the first debauch when thoroughly
drunk, one of the two would divulge the secret to the whole band. His
game appeared infallible.

A fortnight after all we have said had taken place at Calais, the whole
troop assembled at the Hague.

Then D'Artagnan perceived that all his men, with remarkable
intelligence, had already travestied themselves into sailors, more or
less ill-treated by the sea. D'Artagnan left them to sleep in a den in
Newkerke street, whilst he lodged comfortably upon the Grand Canal. He
learned that the king of England had come back to his old ally, William
II. of Nassau, stadtholder of Holland. He learned also that the refusal
of Louis XIV. had a little cooled the protection afforded him up to that
time, and in consequence he had gone to reside in a little village house
at Scheveningen, situated in the downs, on the sea-shore, about a league
from the Hague.

There, it was said, the unfortunate banished king consoled himself in
his exile, by looking, with the melancholy peculiar to the princes
of his race, at that immense North Sea, which separated him from his
England, as it had formerly separated Mary Stuart from France. There
behind the trees of the beautiful wood of Scheveningen on the fine sand
upon which grows the golden broom of the down, Charles II. vegetated as
it did, more unfortunate, for he had life and thought, and he hoped and
despaired by turns.

D'Artagnan went once as far as Scheveningen, in order to be certain that
all was true that was said of the king. He beheld Charles II., pensive
and alone, coming out of a little door opening into the wood, and
walking on the beach in the setting sun, without even attracting the
attention of the fishermen, who, on their return in the evening, drew,
like the ancient mariners of the Archipelago, their barks up upon the
sand of the shore.

D'Artagnan recognized the king; he saw him fix his melancholy look upon
the immense extent of the waters, and absorb upon his pale countenance
the red rays of the sun already cut by the black line of the horizon.
Then Charles returned to his isolated abode, always alone, slow and sad,
amusing himself with making the friable and moving sand creak beneath
his feet.

That very evening D'Artagnan hired for a thousand livres a fishing-boat
worth four thousand. He paid a thousand livres down, and deposited
the three thousand with a Burgomaster, after which he brought on board
without their b