Louise de la Valliere

Versailles at its zenith: d'Artagnan and his friends have grown old in a court where the young king has fallen in love with a maid of honour, and where Fouquet's fall is already being arranged. This is the third movement of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, the long, cold, courtly one - Dumas slowing down before the ending that made grown readers write him letters.