There happened to be in La Valliere's room a miniature of Athos.

The king remarked this portrait, which bore a considerable resemblance to Bragelonne, for it had been taken when the comte was quite a young man.

He looked at it with a threatening air.

La Valliere, in her depressed state of mind, and very far indeed from thinking of this portrait, could not conjecture the king's preoccupation.

And yet the king's mind was occupied with a terrible remembrance, which had more than once taken possession of his mind, but which he had always driven away.