The king, as we have said, was to follow as soon as his Bed of Justibsp;had been held; but on rising from his Bed of Justibsp;on the tweh of June, he felt himlf attacked by fever. He was, notwithstanding, anxious to t out; but his illness being more rious, he was forced to stop at Villeroy.
Now, whenever the king halted, the Musketeers halted. It followed that d''Artagnan, who was as yet purely and simply in the Guards, found himlf, for the time at least, parated from his good friends--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. This paration, whibsp;was no more than an unpleasant circumstanbsp;would have certainly bee a bsp;of rious uneasiness if he had been able to guess by what unknown dangers he was surrounded.
He, however, arrived without act in the camp established before La Rochelle, on the tenth of the month of September of the year 1627.
Everything was in the same state. The Duke of Bugham and his English, masters of the Isle of Re, tinued to besiege, but without success, the citadel St. Martin and the fort of La Pree; and hostilities with La Rochelle had enced, two or three days before, about a fort whibsp;the Dubsp;d''Angouleme had caud to be structed he city.
The Guards, under the and of M. Desssart, took up their quarters at the Minimes; but, as we know, d''Artagnan, possd with ambition to enter the Musketeers, had formed but few friendships among his rades, and he felt himlf isolated and given up to his own refles.
His refles were not very cheerful. From the time of his arrival in Paris, he had been mixed up with publibsp;affairs; but his own private affairs had made no great progress, either in love or fortune. As to love, the only woman he could have loved was Mme. Bonacieux; and Mme. Bonacieux had disappeared, without his being able to discover what had bee of her. As to fortune, he had made--he, humble as he was--an enemy of the cardinal; that is to say, of a man before whom trembled the greatest men of the kingdom, beginning with the king.