I am a man who, in one particular at least, has chosen his way of life with care; I have seen to it that I should walk a road unencumbered by any petticoat.

What happens?
What comes of all my careful plans?
"Fate sends an infernal cut-throat to murder our good king--whose soul God rest eternally! And since his son is of an age too tender to wield the sceptre, the boy's mother does it in his name.

Thus, I, a soldier, being subject to the head of the State, find myself, by no devising of my own, subject to a woman.
"In itself that is bad enough.

Too bad, indeed--Ventregris!--too bad.
Yet Fate is not content.

It must occur to this woman to select me--me of all men--to journey into Dauphiny, and release another woman from the clutches of yet a third.