“Oh! try, try.”

“I go far. Even if I were unfortunate enough to know something, and foolish enough to communicate it to you — You are my friend, you say?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“Very good.

I should quarrel with you. You would never forgive me for having destroyed your illusion, as people say in love affairs.”

“Monsieur d’Artagnan, you know all; and yet you plunge me in perplexity and despair, in death itself.”

“There, there now.”

“I never complain, as you know; but as Heaven and my father would never forgive me for blowing out my brains, I will go and get the first person I meet to give me the information which you withhold; I will tell him he lies, and —