his friends out of retirement to save the threatened English monarch,
but Mordaunt, the son of Milady, who seeks to avenge his mother's death
at the musketeers' hands, thwarts their valiant efforts. Undaunted, our
heroes return to France just in time to help save the young Louis XIV,
quiet the Fronde, and tweak the nose of Cardinal Mazarin.

The third novel, The Vicomte de Bragelonne (serialized October, 1847
to January, 1850), has enjoyed a strange history in its English
translation. It has been split into three, four, or five volumes at
various points in its history. The five-volume edition generally does
not give titles to the smaller portions, but the others do. In the
three-volume edition, the novels are entitled The Vicomte de Bragelonne,
Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask. For the purposes of
this etext, I have chosen to split the novel as the four-volume edition
does, with these titles: The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later,
Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask. In this, the first
of the four etexts, the situation is thus:

It is now 1660, and although promised the captaincy of the musketeers at
the close of Twenty Years After, D'Artagnan is still trailing his sword
in the Louvre as a lowly lieutenant. Louis XIV is well past the age
where he should rule, but the ailing Cardinal Mazarin refuses to
relinquish the reins of power. Meanwhile, Charles II, a king without
a country, travels Europe seeking aid from his fellow monarchs. Athos
still resides at La Fere while his son, Raoul de Bragelonne, has entered
into the service in the household of M. le Prince. As for Raoul, he has
his eyes on an entirely different object than his father--his childhood
companion, Louise de la Valliere, with whom he is hopelessly in love.
Porthos, now a baron, is off on some mysterious mission along with
Aramis, who is now the Bishop of Vannes.

Now begins the first chapter of the last of the D'Artagnan Romances, The
Vicomte de Bragelonne. Enjoy!

John Bursey, May, 2000

*****

Chapter I. The Letter.

Towards the middle of the month of May, in the year 1660, at nine
o'clock in the morning, when the sun, already high in the heavens,
was fast absorbing the dew from the ramparts of the castle of Blois, a
little cavalcade, composed of three men and two pages, re-entered
the city by the bridge, without producing any other effect upon the
passengers of the quay beyond a first movement of the