our eyes, a certain
superiority over him. I have allowed to escape, in the candid credulity
of my heart, the treasure I possessed. Many people tell me that you
loved me enough to lead me to hope you would have loved me much. That
idea takes from my mind all bitterness, and leads me only to blame
myself. You will accept this last farewell, and you will bless me
for having taken refuge in the inviolable asylum where hatred is
extinguished, and where all love endures forever. Adieu, mademoiselle.
If your happiness could be purchased by the last drop of my blood, I
would shed that drop. I willingly make the sacrifice of it to my misery!

"RAOUL, VICOTME DE BRAGELONNE."

"The letter reads very well," said the captain. "I have only one fault
to find with it."

"Tell me what that is!" said Raoul.

"Why, it is that it tells everything, except the thing which exhales,
like a mortal poison from your eyes and from your heart; except the
senseless love which still consumes you." Raoul grew paler, but remained
silent.

"Why did you not write simply these words:

"'MADEMOISELLE,--Instead of cursing you, I love you and I die.'"

"That is true," exclaimed Raoul, with a sinister kind of joy.

And tearing the letter he had just taken back, he wrote the following
words upon a leaf of his tablets:

"To procure the happiness of once more telling you I love you, I commit
the baseness of writing to you; and to punish myself for that baseness,
I die." And he signed it.

"You will give her these tablets, captain, will you not?"

"When?" asked the latter.

"On the day," said Bragelonne, pointing to the last sentence, "on the
day when you can place a date under these words." And he sprang away
quickly to join Athos, who was returning with slow steps.

As they re-entered the fort, the sea rose with that rapid, gusty
vehemence which characterizes the Mediterranean; the ill-humor of
the element became a tempest. Something shapeless, and tossed about
violently by the waves, appeared just off the coast.

"What is that?" said Athos,--"a wrecked boat?"

"No, it is not a boat," said D'Artagnan.

"Pardon me," said Raoul, "there is a bark gaining the port rapidly."

"Yes, there is a bark in the creek, which is prudently seeking shelter
here; but that which Athos points to in the sand is not a boat at
all--it has run aground."

"Yes, yes, I see it."

"It is the carriage, which I threw into the sea after landing the
prisoner."

"