onor on duty, and the patrols of the musketeers, paced up and
down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks. It
seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers; while the
murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of the
fountains, whose waters fell tumbling into the basins, still went on
uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight noises and
matters of trifling moment which constitute the life and death of human
nature.

CHAPTER XCIV.

THE MORNING.

In opposition to the sad and terrible destiny of the king imprisoned in
the Bastille, and tearing, in sheer despair, the bolts and bars of his
dungeon, the rhetoric of the chroniclers of old would not fail to
present, as a complete antithesis, the picture of Philippe lying asleep
beneath the royal canopy. We do not pretend to say that such rhetoric is
always bad, and always scatters, in places it should not, the flowers
with which it embellishes and enlivens history. But we shall, on the
present occasion, carefully avoid polishing the antithesis in question,
but shall proceed to draw another picture as carefully as possible, to
serve as a companion to the one we have drawn in the last chapter. The
young prince descended from Aramis' room, in the same way the king had
descended from the apartment dedicated to Morpheus. The dome gradually
and slowly sank down under Aramis' pressure, and Philippe stood beside
the royal-bed, which had ascended again after having deposited its
prisoner in the secret depths of the subterranean passage. Alone, in the
presence of all the luxury which surrounded him; alone, in the presence
of his power; alone, with the part he was about to be forced to act,
Philippe for the first time felt his heart, and mind, and soul expand
beneath the influence of a thousand varied emotions, which are the vital
throbs of a king's heart. But he could not help changing color when he
looked upon the empty bed, still tumbled by his brother's body. This
mute accomplice had returned, after having completed the work it had
been destined to perform; it returned with the traces of the crime; it
spoke to the guilty author of that crime, with the frank and unreserved
language which an accomplice never fears using toward his companion in
guilt; for it spoke the truth. Philippe bent over the bed, and
perceived a pocket-handkerchief lying on it, which was still damp from
the cold sweat which had poure