“My enemy must indeed be powerful, to be able to shut up in the Bastile a child such as I then was.”
“He is.”
“More powerful than my mother, then?”
“And why do you ask that?”
“Because my mother would have taken my part.”
Aramis hesitated. “Yes, monseigneur; more powerful than your mother.”
“Seeing, then, that my nurse and preceptor were carried off, and that I, also, was separated from them—either they were, or I am, very dangerous to my enemy?”
“Yes; but you are alluding to a peril from which he freed himself, by causing the nurse and preceptor to disappear,” answered Aramis, quietly.
“Disappear!” cried the prisoner, “how did they disappear?”
“In a very sure way,” answered Aramis—“they are dead.”