She was a charming woman, of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, with dark hair, blue eyes, a slightly turned-up nose, admirable teeth, and a pink and opal complexion. There, however, the signs stopped which might have confounded her with a lady of rank. Her hands were white, but pudgy; her feet did not bespeak the woman of quality. Fortunately, D’Artagnan had not yet reached the point of minding these details.

While D’Artagnan was examining Madame Bonacieux, and was, as we have said, close to her, he saw on the ground a fine cambric handkerchief, which he naturally picked up, and on the corner of which he recognized the same cipher that he had seen on the handkerchief which had nearly caused him and Aramis to cut each other’s throats.

From that time D’Artagnan had been cautious with respect to handkerchiefs having arms on them, and he therefore, without a remark, placed the one he had just picked up in Madame Bonacieux’s pocket.

At that moment Madame Bonacieux recovered her senses. She opened her eyes, looked around her with terror, saw that the apartment was empty, and that she was alone with her liberator. She immediately held out her hands to him with a smile. Madame Bonacieux had the sweetest smile in the world.

“Ah, sir!” said she, “you have saved me. Allow me to thank you.”

“Madame,” said D’Artagnan, “I have only done what every gentleman would have done in my place. You owe me, then, no thanks.”

“Yes I do, sir, yes I do; and I hope to prove to you that you have not aided an ungrateful person. But what could these men, whom I at first took for robbers, want of me, and why is M. Bonacieux not here?”

“Madame, those men were much more dangerous than any robbers could have been, for they are the agents of the cardinal; and as to your husband, M. Bonacieux, he is not here, because he was yesterday evening taken away to the Bastille.”

“My husband in the Bastille!” cried Madame Bonacieux. “Oh, my God, what can he have done? Poor, dear man—he is innocence itself!”

And something like a faint smile glided over the still terrified features of the young woman.

“What has he done, madame?” said D’Artagnan. “I believe that his only crime is to have at the same time the good fortune and the misfortune to be your husband.”

“But, sir, you know then—”

“I know that you have been carried off, madame. But how did you escape?”

“I took advantage of a moment when they left me alone; and as I had known since morning what to think of my abduction, with the help of my sheets I let myself down from the window; then, as I thought my husband would be at home, I hastened here.”

“To place yourself under his protection?”

“Oh no, poor, dear man! I knew very well that he was incapable of defending me; but as he could be otherwise useful to us, I wished to inform him.”

“Of what?”

“Oh, that is not my secret; I therefore cannot tell you.”