s Monk--had commuted the donation
into a sale, and acknowledged the receipt of the sum of fifteen thousand
crowns as the price of the property ceded. The messenger was gone.
D'Artagnan still continued reading, Athos watched him with a smile.
D'Artagnan, surprising one of those smiles over his shoulder, put the
bundle in its wrapper.

"I beg your pardon," said Athos.

"Oh! not at all, my friend," replied the lieutenant, "I shall tell
you----"

"No, don't tell me anything, I beg you; orders are things so sacred,
that to one's brother, one's father, the person charged with such orders
should never open his mouth. Thus I, who speak to you, and love you more
tenderly than brother, father, or all the world----"

"Except your Raoul?"

"I shall love Raoul still better when he shall be a man, and I shall
have seen him develop himself in all the phases of his character and his
actions--as I have seen you, my friend."

"You said, then, that you had an order likewise, and that you would not
communicate it to me."

"Yes, my dear D'Artagnan."

The Gascon sighed. "There was a time," said he, "when you would have
placed that order open upon the table, saying, 'D'Artagnan, read this
scrawl to Porthos, Aramis, and to me.'"

"That is true. Oh! that was the time of youth, confidence, the generous
season when the blood commands, when it is warmed by feeling!"

"Well! Athos, will you allow me to tell you?"

"Speak, my friend!"

"That delightful time, that generous season, that ruling by warm blood,
were all very fine things, no doubt; but I do not regret them at all.
It is absolutely like the period of studies. I have constantly met with
fools who would boast of the days of pensums, ferules and crusts of dry
bread. It is singular, but I never loved all that; for my part, however
active and sober I might be (you know if I was so, Athos), however
simple I might appear in my clothes, I would not the less have preferred
the braveries and embroideries of Porthos to my little perforated
cassock, which gave passage to the wind in winter and the sun in summer.
I should always, my friend, mistrust him who would pretend to prefer
evil to good. Now, in times past all went wrong with me, and every month
found a fresh hole in my cassock and in my skin, a gold crown less in my
poor purse; of that execrable time of small beer and see-saw, I regret
absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing save our friendship; for within me
I have a heart, and it