e, who had remained a young man to his sixty-second year;
the warrior who had preserved his strength in spite of fatigue; his
freshness of mind in spite of misfortune, his mild serenity of soul and
body in spite of Milady, in spite of Mazarin, in spite of La Valliere;
Athos had become an old man in a week, from the moment at which he lost
the comfort of his later youth. Still handsome, though bent, noble, but
sad, he sought, since his solitude, the deeper glades where sunshine
scarcely penetrated. He discontinued all the mighty exercises he had
enjoyed through life, when Raoul was no longer with him. The servants,
accustomed to see him stirring with the dawn at all seasons, were
astonished to hear seven o'clock strike before their master quitted his
bed. Athos remained in bed with a book under his pillow--but he did not
sleep, neither did he read. Remaining in bed that he might no longer
have to carry his body, he allowed his soul and spirit to wander from
their envelope and return to his son, or to God. [6]

His people were sometimes terrified to see him, for hours together,
absorbed in silent reverie, mute and insensible; he no longer heard the
timid step of the servant who came to the door of his chamber to watch
the sleeping or waking of his master. It often occurred that he forgot
the day had half passed away, that the hours for the two first meals
were gone by. Then he was awakened. He rose, descended to his shady
walk, then came out a little into the sun, as though to partake of its
warmth for a minute in memory of his absent child. And then the dismal
monotonous walk recommenced, until, exhausted, he regained the chamber
and his bed, his domicile by choice. For several days the comte did not
speak a single word. He refused to receive the visits that were paid
him, and during the night he was seen to relight his lamp and pass long
hours in writing, or examining parchments.

Athos wrote one of these letters to Vannes, another to Fontainebleau;
they remained without answers. We know why: Aramis had quitted France,
and D'Artagnan was traveling from Nantes to Paris, from Paris to
Pierrefonds. His _valet de chambre_ observed that he shortened his walk
every day by several turns. The great alley of limes soon became too
long for feet that used to traverse it formerly a hundred times a day.
The comte walked feebly as far as the middle trees, seated himself upon
a mossy bank that sloped towards a sidewalk, and there wait