The musketeers are middle-aged, the young king is falling in love with Louise de La Vallière, and Fouquet is spending money in a way Colbert intends him to regret. Dumas's long middle volume of the last d'Artagnan cycle is court intrigue rather than swordplay — Vaux-le-Vicomte, the fête that ruined its owner, and the machinery being wound for the man in the iron mask.