his curiosity on this
subject--been able to assign any cause for these fits of for the periods
of their recurrence. Athos never received any letters; Athos never had
concerns which all his friends did not know.

It could not be said that it was wine which produced this sadness; for
in truth he only drank to combat this sadness, which wine however, as we
have said, rendered still darker. This excess of bilious humor could
not be attributed to play; for unlike Porthos, who accompanied the
variations of chance with songs or oaths, Athos when he won remained
as unmoved as when he lost. He had been known, in the circle of the
Musketeers, to win in one night three thousand pistoles; to lose them
even to the gold-embroidered belt for gala days, win all this again with
the addition of a hundred louis, without his beautiful eyebrow being
heightened or lowered half a line, without his hands losing their pearly
hue, without his conversation, which was cheerful that evening, ceasing
to be calm and agreeable.

Neither was it, as with our neighbors, the English, an atmospheric
influence which darkened his countenance; for the sadness generally
became more intense toward the fine season of the year. June and July
were the terrible months with Athos.

For the present he had no anxiety. He shrugged his shoulders when people
spoke of the future. His secret, then, was in the past, as had often
been vaguely said to d'Artagnan.

This mysterious shade, spread over his whole person, rendered still
more interesting the man whose eyes or mouth, even in the most complete
intoxication, had never revealed anything, however skillfully questions
had been put to him.

"Well," thought d'Artagnan, "poor Athos is perhaps at this moment dead,
and dead by my fault--for it was I who dragged him into this affair, of
which he did not know the origin, of which he is ignorant of the result,
and from which he can derive no advantage."

"Without reckoning, monsieur," added Planchet to his master's audibly
expressed reflections, "that we perhaps owe our lives to him. Do you
remember how he cried, 'On, d'Artagnan, on, I am taken'? And when he
had discharged his two pistols, what a terrible noise he made with his
sword! One might have said that twenty men, or rather twenty mad devils,
were fighting."

These words redoubled the eagerness of d'Artagnan, who urged his horse,
though he stood in need of no incitement, and they proceeded at a rapid
pace. About e