“Yes, it is I,” said d’Artagnan, “it is I, whom God has sent to watch over you.”
“Was it with that intention you followed me?” asked the young woman, with a coquettish smile, whose somewhat bantering character resumed its influence, and with whom all fear had disappeared from the moment in which she recognized a friend in one she had taken for an enemy.
“No,” said d’Artagnan; “no, I confess it. It was chance that threw me in your way; I saw a woman knocking at the window of one of my friends.”
“One of your friends?” interrupted Madame Bonacieux.
“Without doubt; Aramis is one of my best friends.”
“Aramis! Who is he?”
“Come, come, you won’t tell me you don’t know Aramis?”
“This is the first time I ever heard his name pronounced.”
“It is the first time, then, that you ever went to that house?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And you did not know that it was inhabited by a young man?”
“No.”
“By a musketeer?”
“No, indeed!”