f M. Fouquet's, for an advance of fifteen thousand livres, for a
diamond worth a thousand pistoles, for a smile in which there was as
much bitterness as kindness?--I save his life."

"Now, then, I hope," continued the musketeer, "that this imbecile of
a heart is going to preserve silence, and so be fairly quits with M.
Fouquet. Now, then, the king becomes my sun, and as my heart is quits
with M. Fouquet, let him beware who places himself between me and my
sun! Forward, for his majesty Louis XIV.!--Forward!"

These reflections were the only impediments which were able to retard
the progress of D'Artagnan. These reflections once made, he increased
the speed of his horse. But, however perfect his horse Zephyr might
be, it could not hold out at such a pace forever. The day after his
departure from Paris, his mount was left at Chartres, at the house of an
old friend D'Artagnan had met with in an _hotelier_ of that city. From
that moment the musketeer travelled on post-horses. Thanks to this
mode of locomotion, he traversed the space separating Chartres from
Chateaubriand. In the last of these two cities, far enough from the
coast to prevent any one guessing that D'Artagnan wished to reach the
sea--far enough from Paris to prevent all suspicion of his being a
messenger from Louis XIV., whom D'Artagnan had called his sun, without
suspecting that he who was only at present a rather poor star in the
heaven of royalty, would, one day, make that star his emblem; the
messenger of Louis XIV., we say, quitted his post and purchased a
_bidet_ of the meanest appearance,--one of those animals which an
officer of the cavalry would never choose, for fear of being disgraced.
Excepting the color, this new acquisition recalled to the mind of
D'Artagnan the famous orange-colored horse, with which, or rather upon
which, he had made his first appearance in the world. Truth to say, from
the moment he crossed this new steed, it was no longer D'Artagnan
who was travelling,--it was a good man clothed in an iron-gray
_justaucorps_, brown _haut-de-chausses_, holding the medium between a
priest and a layman; that which brought him nearest to the churchman
was, that D'Artagnan had placed on his head a _calotte_ of threadbare
velvet, and over the _calotte_, a large black hat; no more sword, a
stick hung by a cord to his wrist, but to which, he promised himself,
as an unexpected auxiliary, to join, upon occasion, a good dagger,
ten inches long, conceale