For a time D’Artagnan was separated from his friends, for the musketeers were escorting the king to the seat of war, and our intrepid Gascon was with the main army.  It was now that D’Artagnan began to realise that he had attracted, not only the displeasure of the cardinal, but also the deadly hatred of Milady, the cardinal’s secret agent, whose overtures at friendship, made in the cardinal’s interest, he had insulted before leaving Paris, and whose secret shame he had discovered.

Twice his life was nearly taken by hired assassins, and the third time a present of wine turned out to be poisoned.

To add to his natural discomfort, Madame Bonacieux had disappeared from Paris, and probably was in prison.

The arrival of the musketeers restored his spirits, and the four were again inseparable.  One drawback to their intercourse was the fact that the cardinal and his spies were all over the camp, and that, consequently, it was difficult to talk confidentially without being overheard.

In order to secure privacy for a conference, they decided to go and breakfast in a bastion near the enemy’s lines, and wagered with some officers they would stay there an hour.  It was a position of terrible danger, but the feat was accomplished, and the wild undertaking of the musketeers was acclaimed with tremendous enthusiasm in the French camp.

The noise reached the cardinal’s ears, and he inquired its meaning.

“Monseigneur,” said the officer, “three musketeers and a guard laid a wager that they would go and breakfast in the Bastion St. Gervais, and they breakfasted and held it for two hours against the enemy, killing I don’t know how many Rochellais.”

“Did you inquire the names of those three musketeers?”

“Yes, monseigneur.  MM.  Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.”

“Still the three braves!” muttered the cardinal.  “And the guard?”

“M.  D’Artagnan!”

“Still my reckless young friend!  I must have these four men as my own.”

That same night the cardinal spoke to M. de Treville of the episode of the bastion, and gave permission for D’Artagnan to become a musketeer, “for such men should be in the same company,” he said.

One night during the siege, the three musketeers, seeking D’Artagnan, were met in a country lane by the cardinal, travelling, as he often did, with a single attendant.  Athos recognised him, and the cardinal bade the three men escort him to a lonely inn.  At the door they all alighted.  The landlord of the inn received the cardinal, for he had been expecting an officer to visit a lady who was within.  The three musketeers were accommodated in a large room on the ground floor, and the cardinal passed up the staircase as a man who knew his road.  Porthos and Aramis sat down at the table to dice, while Athos walked up and down the room in a thoughtful mood.  To his astonishment, Athos found that, the stovepipe being broken, he could hear all that was passing in the room above.