carry on this game, let us break off. I am here to tell you many things,
'tis true; but you must allow me to see that, on your side, you have a
desire to know them. Before revealing the important matters I still
withhold, be assured I am in need of some encouragement, if not candor; a
little sympathy, if not confidence. But you keep yourself intrenched in
a pretended which paralyzes me. Oh, not for the reason you think; for,
ignorant as you may be, or indifferent as you feign to be, you are none
the less what you are, monseigneur, and there is nothing - nothing, mark
me! which can cause you not to be so."

"I promise you," replied the prisoner, "to hear you without impatience.
Only it appears to me that I have a right to repeat the question I have
already asked, 'Who _are_ you?'"

"Do you remember, fifteen or eighteen years ago, seeing at Noisy-le-Sec a
cavalier, accompanied by a lady in black silk, with flame-colored ribbons
in her hair?"

"Yes," said the young man; "I once asked the name of this cavalier, and
they told me that he called himself the Abbe d'Herblay. I was astonished
that the abbe had 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