“Oh!  God forbid!”

“Then let us be as we used to be; let us be open with each other.  You are surprised at what you see here?”

“Extremely.”

“But above all things, I am a marvel to you?”

“I confess it.”

“I am still young, am I not?  Should you not have known me again, in spite of my eight-and-forty years of age?”

“On the contrary, I do not find you the same person at all.”

“I understand,” cried Athos, with a gentle blush.  “Everything, D’Artagnan, even folly, has its limit.”

“Then your means, it appears, are improved; you have a capital house —­ your own, I presume?  You have a park, and horses, servants.”

Athos smiled.

“Yes, I inherited this little property when I quitted the army, as I told you.  The park is twenty acres —­ twenty, comprising kitchen-gardens and a common.  I have two horses, —­ I do not count my servant’s bobtailed nag.  My sporting dogs consist of two pointers, two harriers and two setters.  But then all this extravagance is not for myself,” added Athos, laughing.

“Yes, I see, for the young man Raoul,” said D’Artagnan.

“You guess aright, my friend; this youth is an orphan, deserted by his mother, who left him in the house of a poor country priest.  I have brought him up.  It is Raoul who has worked in me the change you see; I was dried up like a miserable tree, isolated, attached to nothing on earth; it was only a deep affection that could make me take root again and drag me back to life.  This child has caused me to recover what I had lost.  I had no longer any wish to live for myself, I have lived for him.  I have corrected the vices that I had; I have assumed the virtues that I had not.  Precept something, but example more.  I may be mistaken, but I believe that Raoul will be as accomplished a gentleman as our degenerate age could display.”

The remembrance of Milady recurred to D’Artagnan.

“And you are happy?” he said to his friend.

“As happy as it is allowed to one of God’s creatures to be on this earth; but say out all you think, D’Artagnan, for you have not yet done so.”

“You are too bad, Athos; one can hide nothing from you,” answered D’Artagnan.  “I wished to ask you if you ever feel any emotions of terror resembling ——­ "

“Remorse!  I finish your phrase.  Yes and no.  I do not feel remorse, because that woman, I profoundly hold, deserved her punishment.  Had she one redeeming trait?  I doubt it.  I do not feel remorse, because had we allowed her to live she would have persisted in her work of destruction.  But I do not mean, my friend that we were right in what we did.  Perhaps all blood demands some expiation.  Hers had been accomplished; it remains, possibly, for us to accomplish ours.”

“I have sometimes thought as you do, Athos.”

“She had a son, that unhappy woman?”

“Yes.”