mpt you?"

"On the contrary, it would tempt me were I any other man," rejoined
Aramis; "but I repeat, I am made up of contradictions. What I hate
to-day I adore to-morrow, and vice versa. You see that I cannot, like
you, for instance, settle on any fixed plan."

"Thou liest, subtile one," said D'Artagnan to himself. "Thou alone,
on the contrary, knowest how to choose thy object and to gain it
stealthily."

The friends embraced. They descended into the plain by the ladder.
Planchet met them hard by the shed. D'Artagnan jumped into the saddle,
then the old companions in arms again shook hands. D'Artagnan and
Planchet spurred their steeds and took the road to Paris.

But after he had gone about two hundred steps D'Artagnan stopped short,
alighted, threw the bridle of his horse over the arm of Planchet and
took the pistols from his saddle-bow to fasten them to his girdle.

"What's the matter?" asked Planchet.

"This is the matter: be he ever so cunning he shall never say I was his
dupe. Stand here, don't stir, turn your back to the road and wait for
me."

Having thus spoken, D'Artagnan cleared the ditch by the roadside and
crossed the plain so as to wind around the village. He had observed
between the house that Madame de Longueville inhabited and the convent
of the Jesuits, an open space surrounded by a hedge.

The moon had now risen and he could see well enough to retrace his road.

He reached the hedge and hid himself behind it; in passing by the house
where the scene which we have related took place, he remarked that the
window was again lighted up and he was convinced that Aramis had not
yet returned to his own apartment and that when he did it would not be
alone.

In truth, in a few minutes he heard steps approaching and low whispers.

Close to the hedge the steps stopped.

D'Artagnan knelt down near the thickest part of the hedge.

Two men, to the astonishment of D'Artagnan, appeared shortly; soon,
however, his surprise vanished, for he heard the murmurs of a soft,
harmonious voice; one of these two men was a woman disguised as a
cavalier.

"Calm yourself, dear Rene," said the soft voice, "the same thing will
never happen again. I have discovered a sort of subterranean passage
which runs beneath the street and we shall only have to raise one of the
marble slabs before the door to open you an entrance and an outlet."

"Oh!" answered another voice, which D'Artagnan instantly recognized as
that of Ara