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, afterwards 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, to-morrow would behold the steely glitter of the executioner’s axe in a dungeon more gloomy, more obscure than yours.”