“Have you not mentioned that name to me?”

As for De Winter he could scarcely believe that he had heard aright.

“The Comte de la Fere!” he cried in his turn. “Oh, sir, reply, I entreat you — is not the Comte de la Fere a noble whom I remember, handsome and brave, a musketeer under Louis XIII., who must be now about forty-seven or forty-eight years of age?”

“Yes, sir, you are right in every particular!”

“And who served under an assumed name?”

“Under the name of Athos. Latterly I heard his friend, Monsieur d’Artagnan, give him that name.”

“That is it, madame, that is the same. God be praised! And he is in Paris?”