great regret, to tell you that this gentleman
and the unhappy lady have been 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 two 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 great 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 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, above all, now, 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 practiced on horseback. Well, one morning during
the summer, it being very hot, I went to sleep in the hall. Nothing, up
to that period, except the respect paid me, 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, is eight years ago?"

"Yes, nearly; but I have ceased to reckon time."

"Excuse me; but what did your tutor tell you, to encourage you to work?"

"He used to say that a man was bound to make for himself, in the world,
that fortune which Heaven had refused him at his birth. He added that,
being a poor, obscure orphan, I had no one but myself to look to; and
that nobody either did, or ever would, take any interest in me. I
was, then, in the hall I have spoken of, asleep from fatigue with long
fencing. My preceptor was in his room