-that the ground, trampled here and
hoofmarked there, presented confused traces of men and horses. Besides,
the wheels of a carriage, which appeared to have come from Paris, had
made a deep impression in the soft earth, which did not extend beyond
the pavilion, but turned again toward Paris.

At length d'Artagnan, in pursuing his researches, found near the wall
a woman's torn glove. This glove, wherever it had not touched the muddy
ground, was of irreproachable odor. It was one of those perfumed gloves
that lovers like to snatch from a pretty hand.

As d'Artagnan pursued his investigations, a more abundant and more icy
sweat rolled in large drops from his forehead; his heart was oppressed
by a horrible anguish; his respiration was broken and short. And yet
he said, to reassure himself, that this pavilion perhaps had nothing in
common with Mme. Bonacieux; that the young woman had made an appointment
with him before the pavilion, and not in the pavilion; that she might
have been detained in Paris by her duties, or perhaps by the jealousy of
her husband.

But all these reasons were combated, destroyed, overthrown, by that
feeling of intimate pain which, on certain occasions, takes possession
of our being, and cries to us so as to be understood unmistakably that
some great misfortune is hanging over us.

Then d'Artagnan became almost wild. He ran along the high road, took
the path he had before taken, and reaching the ferry, interrogated the
boatman.

About seven o'clock in the evening, the boatman had taken over a young
woman, wrapped in a black mantle, who appeared to be very anxious not to
be recognized; but entirely on account of her precautions, the boatman
had paid more attention to her and discovered that she was young and
pretty.

There were then, as now, a crowd of young and pretty women who came to
St. Cloud, and who had reasons for not being seen, and yet d'Artagnan
did not for an instant doubt that it was Mme. Bonacieux whom the boatman
had noticed.

D'Artagnan took advantage of the lamp which burned in the cabin of the
ferryman to read the billet of Mme. Bonacieux once again, and satisfy
himself that he had not been mistaken, that the appointment was at St.
Cloud and not elsewhere, before the D'Estrees's pavilion and not in
another street. Everything conspired to prove to d'Artagnan that his
presentiments had not deceived him, and that a great misfortune had
happened.

He again ran back to the chatea