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 Madame 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 Madame 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’Estrées’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.