Ten minutes after the two friends had passed the threshold of the palace, Aramis returned like a triumphant conqueror; the soldiers presented arms to him as to a superior; the citizens bowed to him as to a friend and a patron, rather than as a head of the Church.  There was something in Aramis resembling those Roman senators who had their doors always surrounded by clients.  At the foot of the steps, he had a conference of half a minute with a Jesuit, who, in order to speak to him more secretly, passed his head under the dais.  He then re-entered his palace; the doors closed slowly, and the crowd melted away, whilst chants and prayers were still resounding abroad.  It was a magnificent day.  Earthly perfumes were mingled with the perfumes of the air and the sea.  The city breathed happiness, joy, and strength.  D’Artagnan felt something like the presence of an invisible hand which had, all-powerfully, created this strength, this joy, this happiness, and spread everywhere these perfumes.

“Oh! oh!” said he, “Porthos has got fat; but Aramis is grown taller.”

Chapter LXXII:  The Grandeur of the Bishop of Vannes.

Porthos and D’Artagnan had entered the bishop’s residence by a private door, as his personal friends.  Of course, Porthos served D’Artagnan as guide.  The worthy baron comported himself everywhere rather as if he were at home.  Nevertheless, whether it was a tacit acknowledgement of the sanctity of the personage of Aramis and his character, or the habit of respecting him who imposed upon him morally, a worthy habit which had always made Porthos a model soldier and an excellent companion; for all these reasons, say we, Porthos preserved in the palace of His Greatness the Bishop of Vannes a sort of reserve which D’Artagnan remarked at once, in the attitude he took with respect to the valets and officers.  And yet this reserve did not go so far as to prevent his asking questions.  Porthos questioned.  They learned that His Greatness had just returned to his apartment and was preparing to appear in familiar intimacy, less majestic than he had appeared with his flock.  After a quarter of an hour, which D’Artagnan and Porthos passed in looking mutually at each other with the white of their eyes, and turning their thumbs in all the different evolutions which go from north to south, a door of the chamber opened and His Greatness appeared, dressed in the undress, complete, of a prelate.  Aramis carried his head high, like a man accustomed to command:  his violet robe was tucked up on one side, and his white hand was on his hip.  He had retained the fine mustache, and the lengthened royale of the time of Louis XIII.  He exhaled, on entering, that delicate perfume which, among elegant men and women of high fashion, never changes, and appears to be incorporated in the person, of whom it has become the natural emanation.  In this case only, the perfume had retained something of the religious sublimity