Nothing was now left but arranging the general orders, and 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 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 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.