d I am in need of some encouragement, if not candor; a little
sympathy, if no confidence. But you keep yourself intrenched in a
pretended ignorance which paralyzes me. Oh, not for the reason you
think; for, ignorant as you may be, or indifferent as you feign to be,
you are none the less what you are, monseigneur, and there is
nothing--nothing, mark me! which can cause you not to be so."

"I promise you," replied the prisoner, "to hear you without impatience.
Only it appears to me that I have a right to repeat the question I have
already asked--'Who _are_ you?'"

"Do you remember, fifteen or eighteen years ago, seeing at Noisy-le-Sec
a cavalier, accompanied by a lady in black silk, with flame-colored
ribbons in her hair?"

"Yes," said the young man; "I once asked the name of this cavalier, and
they told me he called himself the Abbe d'Herblay. I was astonished that
the abbe had so warlike an air, and they replied that there was nothing
singular in that, seeing that he was one of Louis XIII.'s musketeers."

"Well," said Aramis, "that musketeer and abbe, afterward bishop of
Vannes, is your confessor now."

"I know it; I recognized you."

"Then, monseigneur, if you know that, I must further add a fact of which
you are ignorant--that if the king were to know this evening of the
presence of this musketeer, this abbe, this bishop, this confessor,
_here_--he, who has risked everything to visit you, would to-morrow see
glitter the executioner's ax at the bottom of a dungeon more gloomy and
more obscure than yours."

While hearing these words, delivered with emphasis, the young man had
raised himself on his couch and gazed more and more eagerly at Aramis.

The result of this scrutiny was that he appeared to derive some
confidence from, it. "Yes," he murmured, "I remember perfectly. The
woman of whom you speak came once with you, and twice afterward with
another." He hesitated.

"With another woman, who came to see you every month--is it not so,
monseigneur?"--"Yes."

"Do you know who this lady was?"

The light seemed ready to flash from the prisoner's eyes. "I am aware
that she was one of the ladies of the court," he said.

"You remember that lady well, do you not?"

"Oh, my recollection can hardly be very confused on this head," said the
young prisoner. "I saw that lady once with a gentleman about forty-five
years old. I saw her once with you, and with the lady dressed in black.
I have seen her twice since with t