“Oh! that is the college of the Jesuits. Pardieu! you have an apt hand. Do you see, close to the college, a large house with steeples, turrets, built in a handsome Gothic style, as that fool, M. Getard, says?”
“Yes, that is plainly to be seen. Well?”
“Well, that is where Aramis resides.”
“What! does he not reside at the episcopal palace?”
“No, that is in ruins. The palace likewise is in the city, and Aramis prefers the faubourgs. That is why, as I told you, he is partial to Saint-Paterne; Saint-Paterne is in the faubourg. Besides, there are in this faubourg a mall, a tennis-court, and a house of Dominicans. Look, that where the handsome steeple rises to the heavens.”
“Well?”
“Next, you see the faubourg is like a separate city, it has its walls, its towers, its ditches; the quay is upon it likewise, and the boats land at the quay. If our little corsair did not draw eight feet of water, we could have come full sail up to Aramis’s windows.”
“Porthos, Porthos,” cried D’Artagnan, “you are a well of knowledge, a spring of ingenious and profound reflections. Porthos, you no longer surprise me, you confound me.”
“Here we are,” said Porthos, turning the conversation with his usual modesty.
“And high time we were,” thought D’Artagnan, “for Aramis’s horse is melting away like a steed of ice.”