him or that he had made for himself. If a question in heraldry
were started, Athos knew all the noble families of the kingdom, their
genealogy, their alliances, their coats of arms, and the origin of them.
Etiquette had no minutiae unknown to him. He knew what were the rights
of the great land owners. He was profoundly versed in hunting and
falconry, and had one day when conversing on this great art astonished
even Louis XIII himself, who took a pride in being considered a past
master therein.

Like all the great nobles of that period, Athos rode and fenced
to perfection. But still further, his education had been so little
neglected, even with respect to scholastic studies, so rare at this
time among gentlemen, that he smiled at the scraps of Latin which Aramis
sported and which Porthos pretended to understand. Two or three times,
even, to the great astonishment of his friends, he had, when Aramis
allowed some rudimental error to escape him, replaced a verb in
its right tense and a noun in its case. Besides, his probity was
irreproachable, in an age in which soldiers compromised so easily with
their religion and their consciences, lovers with the rigorous delicacy
of our era, and the poor with God's Seventh Commandment. This Athos,
then, was a very extraordinary man.

And yet this nature so distinguished, this creature so beautiful, this
essence so fine, was seen to turn insensibly toward material life, as
old men turn toward physical and moral imbecility. Athos, in his hours
of gloom--and these hours were frequent--was extinguished as to the
whole of the luminous portion of him, and his brilliant side disappeared
as into profound darkness.

Then the demigod vanished; he remained scarcely a man. His head hanging
down, his eye dull, his speech slow and painful, Athos would look for
hours together at his bottle, his glass, or at Grimaud, who, accustomed
to obey him by signs, read in the faint glance of his master his least
desire, and satisfied it immediately. If the four friends were assembled
at one of these moments, a word, thrown forth occasionally with a
violent effort, was the share Athos furnished to the conversation.
In exchange for his silence Athos drank enough for four, and without
appearing to be otherwise affected by wine than by a more marked
constriction of the brow and by a deeper sadness.

D'Artagnan, whose inquiring disposition we are acquainted with, had
not--whatever interest he had in satisfying