arrived at the camp
of Perpignan, and happily also had the opportunity of accepting the
proposition of the Abbe de Gondi--for the reader has no doubt recognized
Cinq-Mars in the person of that young stranger in mourning, so careless
and so melancholy, whom the duellist in the cassock invited to be his
second.

He had ordered his tent to be pitched as a volunteer in the street of
the camp assigned to the young noblemen who were to be presented to
the King and were to serve as aides-de-camp to the Generals; he
soon repaired thither, and was quickly armed, horsed, and cuirassed,
according to the custom of the time, and set out alone for the Spanish
bastion, the place of rendezvous. He was the first arrival, and found
that a small plot of turf, hidden among the works of the besieged place,
had been well chosen by the little Abbe for his homicidal purposes; for
besides the probability that no one would have suspected officers
of engaging in a duel immediately beneath the town which they were
attacking, the body of the bastion separated them from the French camp,
and would conceal them like an immense screen. It was wise to take these
precautions, for at that time it cost a man his head to give himself the
satisfaction of risking his body.

While waiting for his friends and his adversaries, Cinq-Mars had time
to examine the southern side of Perpignan, before which he stood. He had
heard that these works were not those which were to be attacked, and
he tried in vain to account for the besieger's projects. Between this
southern face of the town, the mountains of Albere, and the Col du
Perthus, there might have been advantageous lines of attack, and
redoubts against the accessible point; but not a single soldier was
stationed there. All the forces seemed directed upon the north of
Perpignan, upon the most difficult side, against a brick fort called the
Castillet, which surmounted the gate of Notre-Dame. He discovered that a
piece of ground, apparently marshy, but in reality very solid, led up
to the very foot of the Spanish bastion; that this post was guarded with
true Castilian negligence, although its sole strength lay entirely in
its defenders; for its battlements, almost in ruin, were furnished with
four pieces of cannon of enormous calibre, embedded in the turf, and
thus rendered immovable, and impossible to be directed against a troop
advancing rapidly to the foot of the wall.

It was easy to see that these enormous pi