“I do not clearly understand the question you have put,” said Louise, much agitated. “Hum! and yet, on the contrary, you seem to understand me very well. However, I will put my questions in a more precise manner, in order that you may not be able, in the slightest degree, to evade them. Listen to me: _Do you love M. de Bragelonne?_ That is plain enough, is it not?” At this question, which fell like the first bombshell of a besieging army into a doomed town, Louise started. “You ask me,” she exclaimed, “if I love Raoul, the friend of my childhood,--my brother almost?” “No, no, no! Again you evade me, or rather, you wish to escape me. I do not ask if you love Raoul, your childhood’s friend,--your brother; but I ask if you love the Vicomte de Bragelonne, your affianced husband?” “Good heavens! dear Montalais,” said Louise, “how severe your tone is!” “You deserve no indulgence,--I am neither more nor less severe than usual. I put a question to you, so answer it.” “You certainly do not,” said Louise, in a choking voice, “speak to me like a friend; but I will answer you as a true friend.” “Well, do so.” “Very well; my heart is full of scruples and silly feelings of pride, with respect to everything that a woman ought to keep secret, and in this respect no one has ever read into the bottom of my soul.” “That I know very well. If I had read it, I should not interrogate you as I have done; I should simply say,--‘My good Louise, you have the happiness of an acquaintance with M. de Bragelonne, who is an excellent young man, and an advantageous match for a girl without fortune. M. de la Fere will leave something like fifteen thousand livres a year to his son. At a future day, then, you, as this son’s wife, will have fifteen thousand livres a year; which is not bad. Turn, then, neither to the right hand nor to the left, but go frankly to M. de Bragelonne; that is to say, to the altar to which he will lead you. Afterwards, why-- afterwards, according to his disposition, you will be emancipated or enslaved; in other words, you will have a right to commit any piece of folly people commit who have either too much liberty or too little.’ That is, my dear Louise, what I should have told you at first, if I had been able to read your heart.” “And I should have thanked you,” stammered out Louise, “although the advice does not appear to me to be altogether sound.”