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He tried in vain to recall either the features or the dress of the assassins, but he had gotten away from them so quickly that he had not had time to notice anything.

“Ah, my poor friends!” murmured d’Artagnan. “Where are you? How I miss you!”

D’Artagnan spent a very bad night. Three or four times he woke up with a start, imagining that a man was approaching his bed to put a dagger in him. Yet day came without the darkness having brought any mishap.

But d’Artagnan was well aware that what was put off was not forgotten.

D’Artagnan remained in his quarters all day. He gave himself the excuse that the weather was bad.

The day after that, the drums beat assembly. The duc d’Orléans was visiting the posts. The guards rushed to arms, and d’Artagnan fell in among his comrades.

Monsieur passed along the front line. Then all the superior officers approached him to pay their respects, M. des Essarts, the captain of the guards, like the others.

After a moment it seemed to d’Artagnan that M. des Essarts was making a sign for him to approach. He waited for a second gesture from his superior, fearing he was mistaken, but, the gesture being repeated, he left the ranks and went to receive his orders.

“Monsieur is going to ask for men willing to take on a dangerous mission, but one that will bring honor to those who carry it out, and I made a sign to you so that you would keep yourself ready.”

“Thank you, Captain!” replied d’Artagnan, who asked for nothing better than to distinguish himself in the eyes of the lieutenant general.

In fact, the Rochelois had made a sortie during the night and had retaken a bastion that the royalist army had captured two days before. It was a question of sending out a forlorn hope to see how the army was guarding this bastion.

Indeed, after a few moments, Monsieur raised his voice and said:

“For this mission I need three or four volunteers led by a dependable man.”

“As for the dependable man, I have him here, Monseigneur,” said M. des Essarts, pointing to d’Artagnan. “And as for the four or five volunteers, Monseigneur has only to make known his intentions, and he will not lack for men.”

“Four men willing to go and get themselves killed with me!” said d’Artagnan, raising his sword.

Two of his comrades from the guards leaped forward at once, and two soldiers joined them, making up the number called for. D’Artagnan then rejected all others, not wishing to do an injustice to those who had the priority.

It was not known whether, after taking the bastion, the Rochelois had evacuated it or had left a garrison there. The place therefore had to be examined rather closely in order to find out.

D’Artagnan set out with his four companions and followed the trench. The two guards marched beside him, and the soldiers came behind.

Thus, under cover of the revetments, they came to within a hundred paces of the bastion! There d’Artagnan, turning around, saw that the two soldiers had disappeared.

He thought they had lagged behind out of fear and continued his advance.

At the turning of the counterscarp, they found themselves some sixty paces from the bastion.

There was no one to be seen, and the bastion seemed abandoned.

The three forlorn lads were debating whether they should go further on when, all at once, a belt of smoke surrounded the stone giant, and a dozen bullets went whistling past d’Artagnan and his two companions.

They knew what they wanted to know: the bastion was guarded. A longer stay in that dangerous place would thus have been a useless imprudence. D’Artagnan and the two guards did an about-face and beat a retreat that looked more like a rout.

On reaching the corner of the trench that would serve them as a rampart, one of the guards fell with a bullet through his chest. The other, who was safe and sound, continued his run to the camp.

D’Artagnan did not want to abandon his companion like that, and bent over him to pick him up and help him get back to their lines; but at that moment two gunshots rang out: one bullet shattered the head of the already wounded guard, and the other flattened