Part 39 (1/2)

Nothing was now left but arranging the general orders, and D'Artagnan gave them with precision He enjoined histhe coast which leads to Breskens, others the road to Antwerp The rendezvous was given, by calculating each day's ht fronan recoo in couples, as they liked best, fro those with the least disreputable look, two guards who drunkards and gamblers These men had not entirely lost all ideas of civilization, and under proper garnan, not to create any jealousy with the others, o forward He kept his two selected ones, clothed them from his oardrobe, and set out with them

It was to these thonan imparted a false secret, destined to secure the success of the expedition He confessed to them that the object was not to learn to what extent French , but to learn how far French slish trade These men appeared convinced; they were effectively so

D'Artagnan was quite sure that at the first debauch, when thoroughly drunk, one of the tould divulge the secret to the whole band His gaht after all we have said had taken place at Calais, the whole troop assenan perceived that all his ence, had already travestied themselves into sailors, nan left theed co of England had come back to his old ally, William II of Nassau, stadtholder of Holland He learned also that the refusal of Louis XIV had a little cooled the protection afforded hione to reside in a little village house at Scheveningen, situated in the downs, on the sea-shore, about a league froue

There, it was said, the unfortunate banished king consoled hi, with the melancholy peculiar to the princes of his race, at that iland, as it had formerly separated Mary Stuart from France There, behind the trees of the beautiful wood of Scheveningen, on the fine sand upon which grows the golden brooetated as it did, ht, and he hoped and despaired by turns

D'Artagnan went once as far as Scheveningen, in order to be certain that all was true that was said of the king He beheld Charles II, pensive and alone, co on the beach in the setting sun, without even attracting the attention of the fisher, drew, like the ancient o, their barks up upon the sand of the shore

D'Artagnan recognized the king; he saw him fix his melancholy look upon the immense extent of the waters, and absorb upon his pale countenance the red rays of the sun already cut by the black line of the horizon

Then Charles returned to his isolated abode, always alone, slow and sad, a sand creak beneath his feet

That very evening D'Artagnan hired for a thousand livres a fishi+ng-boat worth four thousand He paid a thousand livres down, and deposited the three thousand with a Burgo seen, the sixtide, at three o'clock in theostensibly with the four others, and depending upon the science of his galley slave as upon that of the first pilot of the port

Chapter XXIII In which the Author is forced to write a Little History

While kings and overned itself quite alone, and which, it overned, a er, a man predestined to write his na in the face of the world a work full of mystery and audacity He went on, and no one knehither he land, but France, and Europe, watched hih All that was known of this man we are about to tell

Monk had just declared himself in favor of the liberty of the Ru Cromwell, whose lieutenant he had been, had just blocked up so closely, in order to bring it to his will, that no o out, and only one, Peter Wentworth, had been able to get in

La was su military despotism, the second pure republicanism These men were the two sole political representatives of that revolution in which Charles I had first lost his crown, and afterwards his head As regarded Laht to establish a overnid republican, some said, wished to enerated representative of the republic Monk, artful and ambitious, said others, wished simply to make of this parliament, which he affected to protect, a solid step by which to mount the throne which Cromwell had left empty, but upon which he had never dared to take his seat

Thus La for it, had mutually proclaimed themselves enemies of each other Monk and La an army each for himself: Monk in Scotland, where were the Presbyterians and the royalists, that is to say, the malcontents; Lambert in London, where was found, as is always the case, the strongest opposition to the existing pohich it had beneath its eyes

Monk had pacified Scotland, he had there formed for himself an army, and found an asylum The one watched the other Monk knew that the day was not yet coe; his sword, therefore, appeared glued to the sheath Inexpugnable in his wild andof an army of eleven thousand old soldiers, whom he had more than once led on to victory; as well informed, nay, even better, of the affairs of London, than Laarrison in the city,--such was the position of Monk, when, at a hundred leagues from London, he declared himself for the parliament

Lambert, on the contrary, as we have said, lived in the capital That was the center of all his operations, and he there collected all around him all his friends, and all the people of the lower class, eternally inclined to cherish the enemies of constituted power

It was then in London that Lambert learnt the support that, from the frontiers of Scotland, Monk lent to the parliaed there was no time to be lost, and that the Tas not so far distant from the Thames that an army could not march from one river to the other, particularly when it ell commanded He knew, besides, that as fast as the soldiers of Monk penetrated into England, they would forlobe of fortune, which is for the aher to conduct hiether, therefore, his army, formidable at the same time for its composition and its numbers, and hastened toa to the reports which caht of each other near Newcastle; La first, encamped in the city itself Monk, always circueneral quarters at Coldstreah Monk's arht of Monk threw disorder into Laht that these intrepid warriors, who had made such a noise in the streets of London, had set out with the hopes ofthat they had met an army, and that that army hoisted before them not only a standard, but still further, a cause and a principle,--it ht have been believed, we say, that these intrepid warriors had begun to reflect that they were less good republicans than the soldiers of Monk, since the latter supported the parlia, not even himself

As to Monk, if he had had to reflect, or if he did reflect, it must have been after a sad fashi+on, for history relates--and that modest dame, it is well known, never lies--history relates, that the day of his arrival at Coldstreale sheep

If Monk had coht about a general desertion But it is not with the Scots as it is with the English, to whom that fluid flesh which is called blood is a paramount necessity; the Scots, a poor and sober race, live upon a little barley crushed between two stones, diluted with the water of the fountain, and cooked upon another stone, heated

The Scots, their distribution of barley being made, cared very little whether there was or was not any meat in Coldstreary, and his staff, at least as hungry as hiht and left, to knoas being prepared for supper

Monk ordered search to bein the place found it deserted and the cupboards e in Coldstream The seneral's table