arrive in time?"

"I hope so. Monseigneur, who is hasty, as you know, monsieur, repeated
incessantly, 'Tonno Dieu! What can this mean? The Equinox? Never mind, a
fellow must be well mounted to arrive before I do.'"

"And you think Porthos will have arrived first, do you?" asked
D'Artagnan.

"I am sure of it. This Equinox, however rich he may be, has certainly no
horses so good as monseigneur's."

D'Artagnan repressed his inclination to laugh, because the brevity of
Aramis's letter gave rise to reflection. He followed Mousqueton, or
rather Mousqueton's chariot, to the castle. He sat down to a sumptuous
table, of which they did him the honors as to a king. But he could draw
nothing from Mousqueton,--the faithful servant seemed to shed tears at
will, but that was all.

D'Artagnan, after a night passed in an excellent bed, reflected much
upon the meaning of Aramis's letter; puzzled himself as to the relation
of the Equinox with the affairs of Porthos; and being unable to make
anything out unless it concerned some amour of the bishop's, for which
it was necessary that the days and nights should be equal, D'Artagnan
left Pierrefonds as he had left Melun, as he had left the chateau of the
Comte de la Fere. It was not, however, without a melancholy, which might
in good sooth pass for one of the most dismal of D'Artagnan's moods.
His head cast down, his eyes fixed, he suffered his legs to hang on each
side of his horse, and said to himself, in that vague sort of reverie
which ascends sometimes to the sublimest eloquence:

"No more friends! no more future! no more anything! My energies are
broken like the bonds of our ancient friendship. Oh, old age is coming,
cold and inexorable; it envelops in its funereal crape all that was
brilliant, all that was embalming in my youth; then it throws that sweet
burthen on its shoulders and carries it away with the rest into the
fathomless gulf of death."

A shudder crept through the heart of the Gascon, so brave and so strong
against all the misfortunes of life; and during some moments the clouds
appeared black to him, the earth slippery and full of pits as that of
cemeteries.

"Whither am I going?" said he to himself. "What am I going to do! Alone,
quite alone--without family, without friends! Bah!" cried he all at
once. And he clapped spurs to his horse, who, having found nothing
melancholy in the heavy oats of Pierrefonds profited by this permission
to show his gayety in a gallo