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All the rest of the furnishings indicated that the owner of the house was occupied with the natural sciences: there were bottles filled with snakes, labeled according to species; dried lizards gleamed like cut emeralds in big frames of black wood; finally, bunches of wild herbs, fragrant and no doubt endowed with virtues unknown to the common run of men, were tied to the ceiling and hung down in the corners of the room.

Moreover, no family, no servants; the tall man lived alone in this house.

Athos cast a cold and indifferent eye on all these objects we have just described, and, at the invitation of the man he had come to seek, sat down near him.

Then he explained to him the reason for his visit and the service he required of him. But he had hardly stated his request when the unknown man, who had remained standing in front of the musketeer, drew back in terror and refused. Then Athos took from his pocket a small paper on which two lines were written, accompanied by a signature and a seal, and presented it to the man, who had shown signs of repugnance too prematurely. The tall man had hardly read those two lines, seen the signature, and recognized the seal, when he nodded as a sign that he had no further objections and was ready to obey.

Athos asked for nothing more. He got up, bowed, left, took the same road back that he had taken in coming, returned to the hôtel, and shut himself up in his room.

At daybreak, d’Artagnan came in and asked what he was going to do.

“Wait,” replied Athos.

A few moments later, the mother superior sent to inform the musketeers that the burial of Milady’s victim would take place at noon. As for the poisoner, there was no news of her; only she must have escaped through the garden: her footprints had been recognized in the sandy path, and the gate was found locked again. As for the key, it had disappeared.

At the appointed hour, Lord de Winter and the four friends went to the convent. The bells were ringing loudly, the chapel was open, the grille of the choir was closed. In the middle of the choir, the body of the victim, dressed in her novice’s habit, was on view. On either side of the choir and behind the gates opening onto the convent, the entire community of the Carmelites was gathered, listening to the divine service and mingling their own singing with the chanting of the priests, without seeing the laymen or being seen by them.

At the door to the chapel, d’Artagnan felt his courage abandoning him again. He turned to look for Athos, but Athos had disappeared.

Faithful to his mission of vengeance, Athos had asked to be taken to the garden, and there, in the sand, following the light steps of this woman who had left a bloody trail wherever she had passed, he advanced as far as the gate that gave onto the wood, and penetrated into the forest.

Then all his suspicions were confirmed. The road down which the carriage had disappeared skirted the forest. Athos followed the road for a while, his eyes fixed on the ground; slight stains of blood, which came from a wound inflicted either on the man who accompanied the carriage or on one of the horses, marked out the way. After about three-quarters of a league, fifty paces from Festubert, a larger bloodstain appeared. The ground was trampled by horses. Between the forest and this telltale place, a little beyond the churned-up ground, he found again the same small footprints as in the garden. The carriage had stopped.

Here Milady had left the wood and climbed into the carriage.

Satisfied with this discovery, which confirmed all his suspicions, Athos went back to the hôtel and found Planchet there, waiting impatiently.

Everything was as Athos had foreseen.

Planchet had followed that road. Like Athos, he had noticed the bloodstains; like Athos, he had recognized the place where the horses had stopped; but he had pushed on further than Athos, and in the village of Festubert, while drinking in a tavern, had learned, without needing to ask questions, that the night before, at half-past eight, a wounded man,