"Monsieur," replied Saint-Aignan, "you are the incarnation of intelligence, delicacy, and loyalty of feeling united. I see the whole matter now clearly enough."
"So much the better," said Porthos.
"And," pursued Saint-Aignan, "you have made me comprehend it in the most ingenious and the most delicate manner possible. I beg you to accept my best thanks."
Porthos drew himself up, unable to resist the flattery of the remark.
"Only, now that I know everything, permit me to explain—"
Porthos shook his head as a man who does not wish to hear, but Saint-Aignan continued: "I am in despair, I assure you, at all that has happened; but how would you have acted in my place? Come, between ourselves, tell me what would you have done?"
Porthos drew himself up as he answered: "There is no question at all of what I should have done, young man; you have now been made acquainted with the three causes of complaint against you, I believe?"
"As for the first, my change of rooms, and I now address myself to you, as a man of honor and of great intelligence, could I, when the desire of so august a personage was so urgently expressed that I should move, ought I to have disobeyed?"
Porthos was about to speak, but Saint-Aignan did not give him time to answer. "Ah! my frankness, I see, convinces you," he said, interpreting the movement according to his own fancy. "You feel that I am right."
Porthos did not reply, and so Saint-Aignan continued: "I pass by that unfortunate trap-door," he said, placing his hand on Porthos' arm, "that trap-door, the occasion and the means of so much unhappiness, and which was constructed for—you know what. Well then, in plain truth, do you suppose that it was I who, of my own accord, in such a place, too, had that trap-door made?—Oh, no! you do not believe it; and here, again, you feel, you guess, you understand the influence of a will superior to my own. You can conceive the infatuation, the blind irresistible passion, which has been at work. But, thank Heaven! I am fortunate enough in speaking to a man who has so much sensitiveness of feeling; if it were not so, indeed, what an amount of misery and scandal would fall upon her, poor girl! and upon him—whom I will not name."