At the corner of the Rue Vaugirard, which passes the front of the Luxembourg Palace, and the Rue Cassette, is the wall of the Carmelite Friary, where D'Artagnan repaired to fulfil his duelling engagements with the three musketeers of the company of De Treville, after the incidents of the shoulder of Athos, the baldric of Porthos, and the handkerchief of Aramis. [Illustration: CARMELITE FRIARY, RUE VAUGIRARD] Both sides of the river, and, indeed, the Cité itself, are alive with the association of the King's Musketeers and the Cardinal's Guards; so much so that one, with even a most superficial knowledge of Paris and the D'Artagnan romances, cannot fail to follow the shifting of the scenes from the neighbourhood of the Palais du Luxembourg, in "Les Trois Mousquetaires," to the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, in "Vingt Ans Après" and the "Vicomte de Bragelonne." In "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne," the fraternal _mousquetaires_ take somewhat varying paths from those which they pursued in the first two volumes of the series. Porthos and Athos had arrived at distinction and wealth, and surrounded themselves accordingly; though, when they came to Paris, they were doubtless frequenters--at times--of their old haunts, but they had perforce to live up to their exalted stations. With D'Artagnan and Aramis this was not so true. D'Artagnan, it would seem, could not leave his beloved Palais Royal quarter, though his lodgings in the hôtel in the Rue Tiquetonne could have been in no way luxurious, judging from present-day appearances. In the Université quarter, running squarely up from the Seine is a short, unpretentious, though not unlovely, street--the Rue Guenegard. It runs by the Hôtel de la Monnaie, and embouches on the Quai Conti, but if you ask for it from the average stroller on the quais, he will reply that he never heard of it. It was here, however, at "Au Grand Roi Charlemagne," "a respectable inn," that Athos lived during his later years. In the course of three hundred years this inn has disappeared,--if it ever existed,--though there are two hôtels, now somewhat decrepit, on the short length of the street. Perhaps it was one of these,--the present Hôtel de France, for instance,--but there are no existing records to tell us beyond doubt that this is so. There is another inn which Dumas mentions in "The Forty-Five Guardsmen," not so famous, and not traceable to-day, but his description of it is highly interesting and amusing.