“That is because love has come suddenly upon me, and for the first time, and because I am not twenty years old.”

“Sir,” said the young woman, supplicating him and clasping her hands together—“sir, in the name of Heaven, by a soldier’s honour, by the courtesy of a gentleman, depart! There! hear midnight striking; that is the hour at which I am expected.”

“Madame,” said the young man, bowing, “I can refuse nothing asked of me thus. Be satisfied; I will go.”

And as if he felt that only a violent effort would give him the strength to detach himself from the hand he held, he sprang away, running; while Madame Bonacieux knocked, as she had done at the shutter, three slow regular taps. Then, when he had gained the corner of the street, he looked around. The door had been opened and shut again; the mercer’s pretty wife had disappeared.

D’Artagnan pursued his way. He had given his word not to watch Madame Bonacieux, and if his life had depended upon the place to which she was going, or the person who should accompany her, D’Artagnan would still have returned home, since he had promised that he would do so. In five minutes he was in the Rue des Fossoyeurs.

“Poor Athos!” said he; “he will never guess what all this means. He must have fallen asleep waiting for me, or else he must have returned home, where he will have learned that a woman had been there. A woman at Athos’s house! After all,” continued D’Artagnan, “there was certainly one in Aramis’s house. All this is very strange; I should like to know how it will all end.”

“Badly, sir, badly!” replied a voice, which the young man recognized as Planchet’s; for, soliloquizing aloud, as very preoccupied people do, he had entered the alley, at the end of which were the stairs which led to his chamber.

“How badly? What do you mean by that, you stupid fellow?” asked D’Artagnan. “What has happened, then?”

“All sorts of misfortunes.”

“What?”

“In the first place, M. Athos is arrested.”

“Arrested! Athos arrested! What for?”

“He was found in your lodging; they took him for you.”

“And who arrested him?”

“The guard brought by the men in black whom you put to flight.”

“Why did he not tell them his name? Why did he not tell them he knew nothing about this affair?”

“He took care not to do so, sir. On the contrary, he came up to me, and said, ‘It is your master who needs his liberty at this moment, and not I, since he knows everything and I know nothing. They will believe he is arrested, and that will give him time. In three days I will tell them who I am, and they cannot fail to set me at liberty again.”

“Bravo, Athos! noble heart!” murmured D’Artagnan.

And his legs, already a little fatigued with running about during the day, carried D’Artagnan as fast as they could towards the Rue du Colombier.