e coast of France
has made us lose sight of for an instant.

We shall find her still in the despairing attitude in which we left her,
plunged in an abyss of dismal reflection--a dark hell at the gate of
which she has almost left hope behind, because for the first time she
doubts, for the first time she fears.

On two occasions her fortune has failed her, on two occasions she has
found herself discovered and betrayed; and on these two occasions it was
to one fatal genius, sent doubtlessly by the Lord to combat her, that
she has succumbed. D'Artagnan has conquered her--her, that invincible
power of evil.

He has deceived her in her love, humbled her in her pride, thwarted her
in her ambition; and now he ruins her fortune, deprives her of liberty,
and even threatens her life. Still more, he has lifted the corner of her
mask--that shield with which she covered herself and which rendered her
so strong.

D'Artagnan has turned aside from Buckingham, whom she hates as she hates
everyone she has loved, the tempest with which Richelieu threatened him
in the person of the queen. D'Artagnan had passed himself upon her as de
Wardes, for whom she had conceived one of those tigerlike fancies common
to women of her character. D'Artagnan knows that terrible secret which
she has sworn no one shall know without dying. In short, at the moment
in which she has just obtained from Richelieu a carte blanche by
the means of which she is about to take vengeance on her enemy, this
precious paper is torn from her hands, and it is d'Artagnan who holds
her prisoner and is about to send her to some filthy Botany Bay, some
infamous Tyburn of the Indian Ocean.

All this she owes to d'Artagnan, without doubt. From whom can come so
many disgraces heaped upon her head, if not from him? He alone could
have transmitted to Lord de Winter all these frightful secrets which he
has discovered, one after another, by a train of fatalities. He knows
her brother-in-law. He must have written to him.

What hatred she distills! Motionless, with her burning and fixed
glances, in her solitary apartment, how well the outbursts of passion
which at times escape from the depths of her chest with her respiration,
accompany the sound of the surf which rises, growls, roars, and breaks
itself like an eternal and powerless despair against the rocks on which
is built this dark and lofty castle! How many magnificent projects
of vengeance she conceives by the light of the fla