as
decided--neither treaty nor battle--the rebel army, as M. d'Artagnan
had foreseen, began to prefer the good cause to the bad one, and the
parliament, rumpish as it was, to the pompous nothings of Lambert's
designs.

They remembered, likewise, the good feasts of London---the profusion of
ale and sherry with which the citizens of London paid their friends
the soldiers;--they looked with terror at the black war bread, at the
troubled waters of the Tweed,--too salt for the glass, not enough so for
the pot; and they said to themselves, "Are not the roast meats kept warm
for Monk in London?" From that time nothing was heard of but desertion
in Lambert's army. The soldiers allowed themselves to be drawn away by
the force of principles, which are, like discipline, the obligatory
tie in everybody constituted for any purpose. Monk defended the
parliament--Lambert attacked it. Monk had no more inclination to support
parliament than Lambert, but he had it inscribed on his standards, so
that all those of the contrary party were reduced to write upon theirs
"Rebellion," which sounded ill to puritan ears. They flocked, then, from
Lambert to Monk, as sinners flock from Baal to God.

Monk made his calculations, at a thousand desertions a day Lambert had
men enough to last twenty days; but there is in sinking things such a
growth of weight and swiftness, which combine with each other, that
a hundred left the first day, five hundred the second, a thousand the
third. Monk thought he had obtained his rate. But from one thousand the
deserters increased to two thousand, then to four thousand, and, a week
after, Lambert, perceiving that he had no longer the possibility of
accepting battle, if it were offered to him, took the wise resolution
of decamping during the night, returning to London, and being beforehand
with Monk in constructing a power with the wreck of the military party.

But Monk, free and without uneasiness, marched towards London as a
conqueror, augmenting his army with all the floating parties on his
way. He encamped at Barnet, that is to say, within four leagues of the
capital, cherished by the parliament, which thought it beheld in him a
protector, and awaited by the people, who were anxious to see him reveal
himself, that they might judge him. D'Artagnan himself had not been able
to fathom his tactics; he observed--he admired. Monk could not enter
London with a settled determination without bringing about civil war. He