whose shoulder he laid his hand, saying,
"Monsieur, you are my prisoner!"

Philippe did not raise his eyes towards Heaven, nor stir from the spot,
where he seemed nailed to the floor, his eye intently fixed upon the
king his brother. He reproached him with a sublime silence for all
misfortunes past, all tortures to come. Against this language of the
soul the king felt he had no power; he cast down his eyes, dragging away
precipitately his brother and sister, forgetting his mother, sitting
motionless within three paces of the son whom she left a second time to
be condemned to death. Philippe approached Anne of Austria, and said to
her, in a soft and nobly agitated voice:

"If I were not your son, I should curse you, my mother, for having
rendered me so unhappy."

D'Artagnan felt a shudder pass through the marrow of his bones. He
bowed respectfully to the young prince, and said as he bent, "Excuse me,
monseigneur, I am but a soldier, and my oaths are his who has just left
the chamber."

"Thank you, M. d'Artagnan.... What has become of M. d'Herblay?"

"M. d'Herblay is in safety, monseigneur," said a voice behind them; "and
no one, while I live and am free, shall cause a hair to fall from his
head."

"Monsieur Fouquet!" said the prince, smiling sadly.

"Pardon me, monseigneur," said Fouquet, kneeling, "but he who is just
gone out from hence was my guest."

"Here are," murmured Philippe, with a sigh, "brave friends and good
hearts. They make me regret the world. On, M. d'Artagnan, I follow you."

At the moment the captain of the musketeers was about to leave the room
with his prisoner, Colbert appeared, and, after remitting an order from
the king to D'Artagnan, retired. D'Artagnan read the paper, and then
crushed it in his hand with rage.

"What is it?" asked the prince.

"Read, monseigneur," replied the musketeer.

Philippe read the following words, hastily traced by the hand of the
king:

"M. d'Artagnan will conduct the prisoner to the Ile Sainte-Marguerite.
He will cover his face with an iron vizor, which the prisoner shall
never raise except at peril of his life."

"That is just," said Philippe, with resignation; "I am ready."

"Aramis was right," said Fouquet, in a low voice, to the musketeer,
"this one is every whit as much a king as the other."

"More so!" replied D'Artagnan. "He wanted only you and me."

Chapter XXV. In Which Porthos Thinks He Is Pursuing a Duchy.

Aramis and Porthos, havin