him. But pardon me, are you free? I mean to ask if you are
married?”
“Ah! as to that, no,” replied Athos, laughing.
“Because that young man, so handsome, so elegant, so
polished —- ”
“Is a child I have adopted and who does not even know who
was his father.”
“Very well; you are always the same, Athos, great and
generous. Are you still friends with Monsieur Porthos and
Monsieur Aramis?”
“Add Monsieur d’Artagnan, my lord. We still remain four
friends devoted to each other; but when it becomes a
question of serving the cardinal or of fighting him, of
being Mazarinists or Frondists, then we are only two.”
“Is Monsieur Aramis with D’Artagnan?” asked Lord de Winter.
“No,” said Athos; “Monsieur Aramis does me the honor to
share my opinions.”
“Could you put me in communication with your witty and
agreeable friend? Is he much changed?”
“He has become an abbe, that is all.”
“You alarm me; his profession must have made him renounce
any great undertakings.”
“On the contrary,” said Athos, smiling, “he has never been
so much a musketeer as since he became an abbe, and you will
find him a veritable soldier.”
“Could you engage to bring him to me to-morrow morning at
ten o’clock, on the Pont du Louvre?”
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed Athos, smiling, “you have a duel in
prospect.”
“Yes, count, and a splendid duel, too; a duel in which I
hope you will take your part.”
“Where are we to go, my lord?”
“To Her Majesty the Queen of England, who has desired me to
present you to her.”
“This is an enigma,” said Athos, “but it matters not; since
you know the solution of it I ask no further. Will your
lordship do me the honor to sup with me?”
“Thanks, count, no,” replied De Winter. “I own to you that
that young man’s visit has subdued my appetite and probably
will rob me of my sleep. What undertaking can have brought
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him to Paris? It was not to meet me that he came, for he was
ignorant of my journey. This young man terrifies me, my
lord; there lies in him a sanguinary predisposition.”
“What occupies him in England?”
“He is one of Cromwell’s most enthusiastic disciples.”
“But what attached him to the cause? His father and mother
were Catholics, I believe?”
“His hatred of the king, who deprived him of his estates and
forbade him to bear the name of De Winter.”
“And what name does he now bear?”
“Mordaunt.”
“A Puritan, yet disguised as a monk he travels alone in
France.”
“Do you say as a monk?”
“It was thus, and by mere accident — may God pardon me if I
blaspheme — that he heard the confession of the executioner
of Bethune.”
“Then I understand it all! he has been sent by Cromwell to
Mazarin, and the queen guessed rightly; we have been
forestalled. Everything is clear to me now. Adieu, count,
till to-morrow.”