“And I will do so,” said Aramis, bowing; “for it is my duty, Monseigneur.”
“Well, then, begin by telling me who was my tutor.”
“A worthy and above all an honorable gentleman, Monseigneur; fit guide both for body and soul. Had you ever any reason to complain of him?”
“Oh, no; quite the contrary. But this gentleman of yours often used to tell me that my father and mother were dead. Did he deceive me, or did he speak the truth?”
“He was compelled to comply with the orders given him.”
“Then he lied?”
“In one respect. Your father is dead.”
“And my mother?”
“She is dead for you.”
“But then she lives for others, does she not?”
“Yes.”
“And I- and I, then [the young man looked sharply at Aramis], am compelled to live in the obscurity of a prison?”
“Alas! I fear so.”
“And that because my presence in the world would lead to the revelation of a great secret?”
“Certainly, a very great secret.”
“My enemy must indeed be powerful, to be able to shut up in the Bastille a child such as I then was.”
“He is.”
“More powerful than my mother, then?”
“And why do you ask that?”
“Because my mother would have taken my part.”
Aramis hesitated. “Yes, Monseigneur; more powerful than your mother.”
“Seeing, then, that my nurse and preceptor were carried off, and that I also was separated from them,- either they were, or I am, very dangerous to my enemy?”
“Yes; a peril from which he freed himself by causing the nurse and preceptor to disappear,” answered Aramis, quietly.
“Disappear!” cried the prisoner; “but how did they disappear?”
“In the surest possible way,” answered Aramis: “they are dead.”
The young man turned visibly pale, and passed his hand tremblingly over his face. “From poison?” he asked.
“From poison.”
The prisoner reflected a moment. “My enemy must indeed have been very cruel, or hard beset by necessity, to assassinate those two innocent persons, my sole support; for that worthy gentleman and that poor woman had never harmed a living being.”
“In your family, Monseigneur, necessity is stern. And so it is necessity which compels me, to my great regret, to tell you that this gentleman and the unhappy lady were assassinated.”
“Oh, you tell me nothing I am not aware of!” said the prisoner, knitting his brows.
“How?”
“I suspected it.”
“Why?”
“I will tell you.”
At this moment the young man, supporting himself on his elbows, drew close to Aramis’s face, with such an expression of dignity, of self-command, and of defiance even, that the bishop felt the electricity of enthusiasm strike in devouring flashes from that seared heart of his into his brain of adamant.
“Speak, Monseigneur! I have already told you that by conversing with you I endanger my life. Little value as it has, I implore you to accept it as the ransom of your own.”
“Well,” resumed the young man, “this is why I suspected that they had killed my nurse and my preceptor-”
“Whom you used to call your father.”
“Yes; whom I called my father, but whose son I well knew I was not.”
“Who caused you to suppose so?”
“Just as you, Monsieur, are too respectful for a friend, he was also too respectful for a father.”
“I, however,” said Aramis, “have no intention to disguise myself.”
The young man nodded assent, and continued: “Undoubtedly, I was not destined to perpetual seclusion,” said the prisoner; “and that which makes me believe so now, above all, is the care that was taken to render me as accomplished a cavalier as possible. The gentleman attached to my person taught me everything he knew himself- mathematics, a little geometry, astronomy, fencing, and riding. Every morning I went through military exercises, and practised on horseback. Well, one morning during summer, it being very hot, I went to sleep in the hall. Nothing up to that period, except the respect paid me by my tutor, had enlightened me, or even roused my suspicions. I lived as children, as birds, as plants, as the air and the sun do. I had just turned my fifteenth year-”
“This, then, was eight years ago?”