“Because I happened to be in the ante-chamber when the cardinal called me, by the merest chance. I am still a lieutenant in the musketeers and have been so these twenty years.”

“Then no misfortune has happened to you?”

“And what misfortune could happen to me?

To quote some Latin verses I have forgotten, or rather, never knew well, ‘the thunderbolt never falls on the valleys,’ and I am a valley, dear Rochefort, — one of the lowliest of the low.”

“Then Mazarin is still Mazarin?”

“The same as ever, my friend; it is said that he is married to the queen.”

“Married?”