tanding, anxious to set out; but his illness becoming more
serious, he was forced to stop at Villeroy.

Now, whenever the king halted, the Musketeers halted. It followed
that d'Artagnan, who was as yet purely and simply in the Guards, found
himself, for the time at least, separated from his good friends--Athos,
Porthos, and Aramis. This separation, which was no more than an
unpleasant circumstance, would have certainly become a cause of serious
uneasiness if he had been able to guess by what unknown dangers he was
surrounded.

He, however, arrived without accident in the camp established before La
Rochelle, of the tenth of the month of September of the year 1627.

Everything was in the same state. The Duke of Buckingham and his
English, masters of the Isle of Re, continued to besiege, but without
success, the citadel St. Martin and the fort of La Pree; and hostilities
with La Rochelle had commenced, two or three days before, about a fort
which the Duc d'Angouleme had caused to be constructed near the city.

The Guards, under the command of M. Dessessart, took up their quarters
at the Minimes; but, as we know, d'Artagnan, possessed with ambition to
enter the Musketeers, had formed but few friendships among his comrades,
and he felt himself isolated and given up to his own reflections.

His reflections were not very cheerful. From the time of his arrival
in Paris, he had been mixed up with public affairs; but his own private
affairs had made no great progress, either in love or fortune. As to
love, the only woman he could have loved was Mme. Bonacieux; and Mme.
Bonacieux had disappeared, without his being able to discover what had
become of her. As to fortune, he had made--he, humble as he was--an
enemy of the cardinal; that is to say, of a man before whom trembled the
greatest men of the kingdom, beginning with the king.

That man had the power to crush him, and yet he had not done so. For a
mind so perspicuous as that of d'Artagnan, this indulgence was a light
by which he caught a glimpse of a better future.

Then he had made himself another enemy, less to be feared, he thought;
but nevertheless, he instinctively felt, not to be despised. This enemy
was Milady.

In exchange for all this, he had acquired the protection and good will
of the queen; but the favor of the queen was at the present time an
additional cause of persecution, and her protection, as it was known,
protected badly--as witness Chalais and Mme.