d to give the horses
breathing time. The inn was full of disreputable looking people,
who seemed as if they were on the point of commencing some nightly
expedition. A man, wrapped in a cloak, appeared at the door, but seeing
a stranger he beckoned to his companions, and two men who were drinking
in the inn went out to speak to him.

D'Artagnan, on his side, went up to the landlady, praised her
wine--which was a horrible production from the country of Montreuil--and
heard from her that there were only two houses of importance in the
village; one of these belonged to the Archbishop of Paris, and was at
that time the abode of his niece the Duchess of Longueville; the other
was a convent of Jesuits and was the property--a by no means unusual
circumstance--of these worthy fathers.

At four o'clock D'Artagnan recommenced his journey. He proceeded slowly
and in deep reverie. Planchet also was lost in thought, but the subject
of their reflections was not the same.

One word which their landlady had pronounced had given a particular
turn to D'Artagnan's deliberations; this was the name of Madame de
Longueville.

That name was indeed one to inspire imagination and produce thought.
Madame de Longueville was one of the highest ladies in the realm; she
was also one of the greatest beauties at court. She had formerly been
suspected of an intimacy of too tender a nature with Coligny, who, for
her sake, had been killed in a duel, in the Place Royale, by the Duc
de Guise. She was now connected by bonds of a political nature with the
Prince de Marsillac, the eldest son of the old Duc de Rochefoucauld,
whom she was trying to inspire with an enmity toward the Duc de Conde,
her brother-in-law, whom she now hated mortally.

D'Artagnan thought of all these matters. He remembered how at the Louvre
he had often seen, as she passed by him in the full radiance of her
dazzling charms, the beautiful Madame de Longueville. He thought of
Aramis, who, without possessing any greater advantages than himself, had
formerly been the lover of Madame de Chevreuse, who had been to a former
court what Madame de Longueville was in that day; and he wondered how it
was that there should be in the world people who succeed in every wish,
some in ambition, others in love, whilst others, either from chance,
or from ill-luck, or from some natural defect or impediment,
remain half-way upon the road toward fulfilment of their hopes and
expectations.

He was conf