r head and face, and then immediately
departed. D'Artagnan could hold out no longer; he ran to the window
which looked out on the Rue de Lyon, and saw Aramis entering the inn.
The lady was proceeding in quite an opposite direction, and seemed, in
fact, to be about to rejoin an equipage, consisting of two led horses
and a carriage, which he could see standing close to the borders of
the forest. She was walking slowly, her head bent down, absorbed in the
deepest meditation.

"_Mordioux! Mordioux!_ I must and will learn who that woman is," said
the musketeer again; and then, without further deliberation, he set off
in pursuit of her. As he was going along, he tried to think how he could
possibly contrive to make her raise her veil. "She is not young," he
said, "and is a woman of high rank in society. I ought to know that
figure and peculiar style of walk." As he ran, the sound of his spurs
and of his boots upon the hard ground of the street made a strange
jingling noise; a fortunate circumstance in itself, which he was far
from reckoning upon. The noise disturbed the lady; she seemed to fancy
she was being either followed or pursued, which was indeed the case, and
turned round. D'Artagnan started as if he had received a charge of small
shot in his legs, and then turning suddenly round as if he were going
back the same way he had come, he murmured, "Madame de Chevreuse!"
D'Artagnan would not go home until he had learnt everything. He asked
Celestin to inquire of the grave-digger whose body it was they had
buried that morning.

"A poor Franciscan mendicant friar," replied the latter, "who had not
even a dog to love him in this world, and to accompany him to his last
resting-place."

"If that were really the case," thought D'Artagnan, "we should not
have found Aramis present at his funeral. The bishop of Vannes is not
precisely a dog as far as devotion goes: his scent, however, is quite as
keen, I admit."

Chapter VII. How Porthos, Truchen, and Planchet Parted with Each Other
on Friendly Terms, Thanks to D'Artagnan.

There was good living in Planchet's house. Porthos broke a ladder and
two cherry-trees, stripped the raspberry-bushes, and was only unable to
succeed in reaching the strawberry-beds on account, as he said, of his
belt. Truchen, who had become quite sociable with the giant, said that
it was not the belt so much as his corporation; and Porthos, in a state
of the highest delight, embraced Truchen, who gath