elf that more than difficult task.

Another thing, not less essential, was to warn Charles Stuart of the
attempt to be made, so that he might assist his rescuers as much as
possible, or at least do nothing to thwart their efforts. Aramis assumed
that perilous charge. Charles Stuart had asked that Bishop Juxon might
be permitted to visit him. Mordaunt had called on the bishop that very
evening to apprise him of the religious desire expressed by the king
and also of Cromwell's permission. Aramis determined to obtain from the
bishop, through fear or by persuasion, consent that he should enter
in the bishop's place, and clad in his sacerdotal robes, the prison at
Whitehall.

Finally, Athos undertook to provide, in any event, the means of leaving
England--in case either of failure or of success.

The night having come they made an appointment to meet at eleven o'clock
at the hotel, and each started out to fulfill his dangerous mission.

The palace of Whitehall was guarded by three regiments of cavalry and by
the fierce anxiety of Cromwell, who came and went or sent his generals
or his agents continually. Alone in his usual room, lighted by two
candles, the condemned monarch gazed sadly on the luxury of his past
greatness, just as at the last hour one sees the images of life more
mildly brilliant than of yore.

Parry had not quitted his master, and since his condemnation had not
ceased to weep. Charles, leaning on a table, was gazing at a medallion
of his wife and daughter; he was waiting first for Juxon, then for
martyrdom.

At times he thought of those brave French gentlemen who had appeared to
him from a distance of a hundred leagues fabulous and unreal, like the
forms that appear in dreams. In fact, he sometimes asked himself if all
that was happening to him was not a dream, or at least the delirium of
a fever. He rose and took a few steps as if to rouse himself from his
torpor and went as far as the window; he saw glittering below him the
muskets of the guards. He was thereupon constrained to admit that he was
indeed awake and that his bloody dream was real.

Charles returned in silence to his chair, rested his elbow on the table,
bowed his head upon his hand and reflected.

"Alas!" he said to himself, "if I only had for a confessor one of those
lights of the church, whose soul has sounded all the mysteries of life,
all the littlenesses of greatness, perhaps his utterance would overawe
the voice that wails withi