Before revealing the important matters I still withhold, be assured I am in need of some encouragement, if not candor; a little sympathy, if not confidence.

But you keep yourself intrenched in a pretended which paralyzes me.

Oh, not for the reason you think; for, ignorant as you may be, or indifferent as you feign to be, you are none the less what you are, monseigneur, and there is nothing--nothing, mark me! which can cause you not to be so." "I promise you," replied the prisoner, "to hear you without impatience.
Only it appears to me that I have a right to repeat the question I have already asked, 'Who _are_ you ?'" "Do you remember, fifteen or eighteen years ago, seeing at Noisy-le-Sec a cavalier, accompanied by a lady in black silk, with flame-colored ribbons in her hair ?" "Yes," said the young man; "I once asked the name of this cavalier, and they told me that he called himself the Abbe d'Herblay.

I was astonished that the abbe had so warlike an air, and they replied that there was nothing singular in that, seeing that he was one of Louis XIII.'s musketeers." "Well," said Aramis, "that musketeer and abbe, afterwards bishop of Vannes, is your confessor now." "I know it; I recognized you." "Then, monseigneur, if you know that, I must further add a fact of which you are ignorant--that if the king were to know this evening of the presence of this musketeer, this abbe, this bishop, this confessor, _here_--he, who has risked everything to visit you, to-morrow would behold the steely glitter of the executioner's axe in a dungeon more gloomy, more obscure than yours." While listening to these words, delivered with emphasis, the young man had raised himself on his couch, and was now gazing more and more eagerly at Aramis.
The result of his scrutiny was that he appeared to derive some confidence from it.

"Yes," he murmured, "I remember perfectly.