people, with my master, and old Perronnette, my jailer, and the governor of the prison, are the only persons with whom I have ever spoken, and, indeed, almost the only persons I have ever seen.”
“Then you were in prison?”
“If I am a prisoner here, then I was comparatively free, although in a very narrow sense—a house I never quitted, a garden surrounded with walls I could not climb, these constituted my residence, but you know it, as you have been there. In a word, being accustomed to live within these bounds, I never cared to leave them. And so you will understand, monsieur, that having never seen anything of the world, I have nothing left to care for; and therefore, if you relate anything, you will be obliged to explain each item to me as you go along.”
“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 for both 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; but you are alluding to a peril from which he freed himself, by causing the nurse and preceptor to disappear,” answered Aramis, quietly.
“Disappear!” cried the prisoner, “how did they disappear?”
“In a very sure way,” answered Aramis—“they are dead.”
The young man turned pale, and passed his hand tremblingly over his face. “Poison?” he asked.
“Poison.”
The prisoner reflected a moment. “My enemy must indeed have been very cruel, or hard beset by necessity, to assassinate those two innocent people, my sole support; for the worthy gentleman and the poor nurse 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 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 on the first floor, just over me. Suddenly I heard him exclaim, and then he called: ‘Perronnette! Perronnette!’ It was my nurse whom he called.”
“Yes, I know it,” said Aramis. “Continue, monseigneur.”
“Very likely she was in the garden; for my preceptor came hastily downstairs. I rose, anxious at seeing him anxious. He opened the garden-door, still crying out, ‘Perronnette! Perronnette!’ The windows of the hall looked into the court; the shutters were closed; but through a chink in them I saw my tutor draw near a large well, which was almost directly under the windows of his study. He stooped over the brim, looked into the
