sans; and he, Richelieu--the French minister,
the national minister--would be ruined. The king, even while obeying him
like a child, hated him as a child hates his master, and would abandon
him to the personal vengeance of Monsieur and the queen. He would
then be lost, and France, perhaps, with him. All this must be prepared
against.

Courtiers, becoming every instant more numerous, succeeded one another,
day and night, in the little house of the bridge of La Pierre, in which
the cardinal had established his residence.

There were monks who wore the frock with such an ill grace that it was
easy to perceive they belonged to the church militant; women a little
inconvenienced by their costume as pages and whose large trousers could
not entirely conceal their rounded forms; and peasants with blackened
hands but with fine limbs, savoring of the man of quality a league off.

There were also less agreeable visits--for two or three times reports
were spread that the cardinal had nearly been assassinated.

It is true that the enemies of the cardinal said that it was he himself
who set these bungling assassins to work, in order to have, if wanted,
the right of using reprisals; but we must not believe everything
ministers say, nor everything their enemies say.

These attempts did not prevent the cardinal, to whom his most inveterate
detractors have never denied personal bravery, from making nocturnal
excursions, sometimes to communicate to the Duc d'Angouleme important
orders, sometimes to confer with the king, and sometimes to have an
interview with a messenger whom he did not wish to see at home.

On their part the Musketeers, who had not much to do with the siege,
were not under very strict orders and led a joyous life. The was the
more easy for our three companions in particular; for being friends of
M. de Treville, they obtained from him special permission to be absent
after the closing of the camp.

Now, one evening when d'Artagnan, who was in the trenches, was not able
to accompany them, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, mounted on their battle
steeds, enveloped in their war cloaks, with their hands upon their
pistol butts, were returning from a drinking place called the Red
Dovecot, which Athos had discovered two days before upon the route to
Jarrie, following the road which led to the camp and quite on their
guard, as we have stated, for fear of an ambuscade, when, about a
quarter of a league from the village of Boisnau,