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Dear Cousin,

Here is my sister’s authorization for my sister to take our little servant from the convent in Béthune, where you think the air is bad for her. My sister sends you this authorization with great pleasure, for she loves the little girl very much and intends to be useful to her later on.

I embrace you.

Marie Michon

To this letter was attached an authorization drawn up in these terms:

The mother superior of the convent of Béthune will put into the hands of the person who gives her this note the novice who entered her convent with my recommendation and under my patronage.

At the Louvre, 10 August 1628.

Anne

We can imagine how these family relations between Aramis and a seamstress who called the queen her sister lifted the young men’s spirits. But Aramis, after blushing to the roots of his hair two or three times at Porthos’s gross pleasantries, had begged his friends not to return to the subject, declaring that if another word was said to him about it, he would no longer employ his cousin as an intermediary in these sorts of affairs.

There was thus no further question of Marie Michon among the four musketeers, who anyhow had what they wanted: the order to take Mme Bonacieux from the convent of the Carmelites in Béthune. It is true that this order would not be of much use to them so long as they were in the camp at La Rochelle, that is, at the other end of France. And so d’Artagnan was going to ask M. de Tréville for leave, confessing to him quite openly the importance of his departure, when the news was passed on to him, as well as to his three companions, that the king was going to Paris with an escort of twenty musketeers, and that they would make part of that escort.

They were overjoyed. The valets were sent ahead with the baggage, and they set out on the morning of the sixteenth.

The cardinal accompanied His Majesty from Surgères to Mauzé, and there the king and his minister took leave of each other with great shows of friendship.

However, the king, who sought distraction even while traveling as fast as he possibly could, for he wished to reach Paris by the twenty-third, stopped from time to time to hawk for magpies, a pastime he had once acquired a taste for from de Luynes,197 and for which he had always kept a great predilection. Of the twenty musketeers, sixteen rejoiced greatly for the good sport whenever this happened, but four grumbled loudly. D’Artagnan, in particular, had a constant buzzing in his ears, which Porthos explained as follows:

“A very grand lady taught me that that means someone is talking about you somewhere.”

At last the escort traversed Paris on the night of the twenty-third. The king thanked M. de Tréville, and allowed him to hand out four-day leaves, on condition that none of those so favored should appear in any public place, on pain of the Bastille.

The first leaves granted, as we might well imagine, were to our four friends. What’s more, Athos managed to get six days instead of four from M. de Tréville, and added two more nights, for they set off on the twenty-fourth at five in the afternoon, and M. de Tréville obligingly postdated the leave to the morning of the twenty-fifth.

“Ah, my God,” said d’Artagnan, who, as we know, never suspected anything, “it seems to me that we’re making a lot of fuss over a rather simple thing: in two days, at the risk of foundering two or three horses (I don’t care, I have money), I’m in Béthune, I hand the queen’s letter to the mother superior, and I go off with the dear treasure I’m seeking, not to Lorraine, not to Belgium, but to Paris, where it will be better hidden, above all as long as M. le cardinal is in La Rochelle. Then, once we’re back from the campaign, half through the protection of her cousin, half owing to what we’ve done for her personally, we will get what we want from the queen. Stay here, then, don’t wear yourselves out uselessly; Planchet and I are enough for such a simple expedition.”

To this Athos calmly replied:

“We also have money,