that is the best way, after all.
Only one must make haste, and in order to make haste, four legs are
better than two, and I, unhappily, have only two. 'A horse, a horse,' as
I heard them say at the theater in London, 'my kingdom for a horse!' And
now I think of it, it need not cost me so much as that, for at the
Barriere de la Conference there is a guard of musketeers, and instead of
the one horse I need, I shall find ten there."

So, in pursuance of this resolution, which he had adopted with his usual
rapidity, D'Artagnan immediately turned his back upon the heights of
Chaillot, reached the guard-house, took the fastest horse he could find
there, and was at the palace in less than ten minutes. It was striking
five as he reached the Palais Royal. The king, he was told, went to bed
at his usual hour, after having been engaged with M. Colbert, and, in
all probability, was still fast asleep. "Come," said D'Artagnan, "she
spoke the truth, and the king is ignorant of everything; if he only knew
one half of what has happened, the Palais Royal by this time would be
turned upside down."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

SHOWING HOW LOUIS, ON HIS SIDE, HAD PASSED THE TIME FROM TEN TO
HALF-PAST TWELVE AT NIGHT.

When the king left the apartment of the maids of honor, he found Colbert
awaiting him to receive his directions with regard to the next day's
ceremony, as the king was then to receive the Dutch and Spanish
ambassadors. Louis XIV. had serious causes of dissatisfaction with the
Dutch; the States had already been guilty of many mean shifts, and
evasions with France, and without perceiving or without caring about the
chances of a rupture, they again abandoned the alliance with his Most
Christian Majesty, for the purpose of entering into all kinds of plots
with Spain. Louis XIV. at his accession, that is to say, at the death of
Cardinal Mazarin, had found this political question roughly sketched
out; the solution was difficult for a young man, but as, at that time,
the king represented the whole nation, anything that the head resolved
upon, the body would be found ready to carry out. Any sudden impulse of
anger, the reaction of young and hot blood to the brain, would be quite
sufficient to change an old form of policy and to create another and new
system altogether. The part that diplomatists had to play in those days
was that of arranging among themselves the different _coups-d'etat_
which their sovereign masters might wish to eff