“Sire!” stammered Colbert, confused with pleasure and fear.

“I always understood why,” murmured D’Artagnan in the king’s ear; “he was jealous.”

“Precisely, and his jealousy confined his wings.”

“He will henceforward be a winged-serpent,” grumbled the musketeer, with a remnant of hatred against his recent adversary.

But Colbert, approaching him, offered to his eyes a physiognomy so different from that which he had been accustomed to see him wear; he appeared so good, so mild, so easy; his eyes took the expression of an intelligence so noble, that D’Artagnan, a connoisseur in physiognomies, was moved, and almost changed in his convictions.