D’Artagnan gave them with precision. He enjoined his men to
be ready to set out for the Hague, some following the coast
which leads to Breskens, others the road to Antwerp. The
rendezvous was given, by calculating each day’s march, a
fortnight from that time upon the chief place at the Hague.
D’Artagnan recommended his men to go in couples, as they
liked best, from sympathy. He himself selected from among
those with the least disreputable look, two guards whom he
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had formerly known, and whose only faults were being
drunkards and gamblers. These men had not entirely lost all
ideas of civilization, and under proper garments their
hearts would beat again. D’Artagnan, not to create any
jealousy with the others, made the rest go forward. He kept
his two selected ones, clothed them from his own wardrobe,
and set out with them.
It was to these two, whom he seemed to honor with an
absolute confidence, that D’Artagnan 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 the French merchants were injured by English
smuggling, but to learn how far French smuggling could annoy
English 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 two would divulge
the secret to the whole band. His game appeared infallible.
A fortnight after all we have said had taken place at
Calais, the whole troop assembled at the Hague.
Then D’Artagnan perceived that all his men, with remarkable
intelligence, had already travestied themselves into
sailors, more or less ill-treated by the sea. D’Artagnan
left them to sleep in a den in Newkerke street, whilst he
lodged comfortably upon the Grand Canal. He learned that the
king 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 him up to that time, and in consequence he had gone
to reside in a little village house at Scheveningen,
situated in the downs, on the sea-shore, about a league from
the Hague.
There, it was said, the unfortunate banished king consoled
himself in his exile, by looking, with the melancholy
peculiar to the princes of his race, at that immense North
Sea, which separated him from his England, 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 broom of the down, Charles II.
vegetated as it did, more unfortunate, for he had life and
thought, 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, coming out of a
little door opening into the wood, and walking on the beach
in the setting sun, without even attracting the attention of
the fishermen, who, on their return in the evening, drew,
like the ancient mariners of the Archipelago, 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,
amusing himself with making the friable and moving sand
creak beneath his feet.
That very evening D’Artagnan hired for a thousand livres a
fishing-boat worth four thousand. He paid a thousand livres
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down, and deposited the three thousand with a Burgomaster,
after which he brought on board without their being seen,
the ten men who formed his land army; and with the rising
tide, at three o’clock in the morning, he got into the open
sea, maneuvering ostensibly with the four others, and
depending upon the science of his galley slave as upon that