Then the cardinal, by fostering the royal suspicion, persuaded the king to give a grand ball whereat the queen should wear the diamond studs.  By this means Louis would be convinced of Buckingham’s visit, for the set of studs would be incomplete.

The queen was in dispair.  It was D’Artagnan and the three musketeers who saved her honour.  D’Artagnan loved Madame Bonacieux, a confidential dressmaker of the queen’s; and this woman, devoted to her royal mistress, gave D’Artagnan a secret note from the queen to Buckingham.

D’Artagnan went at once to M. de Treville, obtained leave of absence for himself and his friends, and set out for England.  It was not a minute too soon, for the cardinal had already made plans to prevent any such counter-move, giving orders that no one was to sail from France without a permit.

Between Paris and Calais, Porthos, Aramis, and Athos were all left behind, wounded by Richelieu’s guards, and D’Artagnan only effected a passage to Dover by fighting and nearly killing a young noble who held a permit from the cardinal to leave France.

Once in England, D’Artagnan hastened to find Buckingham.  The latter discovered, to his horror, that Milady had already become possessed cunningly of two of the precious studs, and D’Artagnan had to wait while the skill of the first English jeweller made good the loss beyond detection.

He returned to Paris with the twelve studs in time for the royal ball.  Milady had already given the two she had stolen to the cardinal, who had passed them on to the king.

“What does this mean, Monsieur le Cardinal?” said the king severely, when in the middle of the ball he found, to his joy, that the queen was already wearing twelve diamonds.

“It means, sire,” the cardinal replied, with vexation, “that I was anxious to present her majesty with two studs, but did not dare to offer them myself.”

“I am very grateful,” said Anne of Austria, fully alive to the cardinal’s defeat, “only I am afraid these two studs must have cost your eminence as much as all the others cost his majesty.”

The man, D’Artagnan, to whom the queen owed this extraordinary triumph over her enemy, stood unknown in the crowd that gathered round the doors.  It was only when the queen retired that someone touched him on the shoulder and bade him follow.  He readily obeyed; D’Artagnan waited in an ante-room of the queen’s apartments; he could hear voices within, and presently a hand and an arm, marvellously white and beautiful, came through the tapestry.

D’Artagnan felt that this was his reward.  He dropped on his knees, seized the hand, and touched it modestly with his lips.  Then the hand was withdrawn, and in his own a ring was left.  The tapestry closed, and his guide, no other than Bonacieux, reappeared and escorted him hastily to the corridor.

III.—­The Musketeers at La Rochelle

The siege of La Rochelle was an important affair, one of the chief political events of the reign of Louis XIII.