s the grave, in order to interrupt the melancholy
colloquy of the penitent with the dead. But as soon as his step sounded
on the gravel, the unknown raised her head, revealing to D'Artagnan a
face aflood with tears, a well-known face. It was Mademoiselle de la
Valliere! "Monsieur d'Artagnan!" murmured she.

"You!" replied the captain, in a stern voice, "you here!--oh! madame, I
should better have liked to see you decked with flowers in the mansion
of the Comte de la Fere. You would have wept less--and they too--and I!"

"Monsieur!" said she, sobbing.

"For it was you," added this pitiless friend of the dead,--"it was you
who sped these two men to the grave."

"Oh! spare me!"

"God forbid, madame, that I should offend a woman, or that I should make
her weep in vain; but I must say that the place of the murderer is not
upon the grave of her victims." She wished to reply.

"What I now tell you," added he, coldly, "I have already told the king."

She clasped her hands. "I know," said she, "I have caused the death of
the Vicomte de Bragelonne."

"Ah! you know it?"

"The news arrived at court yesterday. I have traveled during the night
forty leagues to come and ask pardon of the comte, whom I supposed to be
still living, and to pray God, on the tomb of Raoul, that he would
send me all the misfortunes I have merited, except a single one. Now,
monsieur, I know that the death of the son has killed the father; I have
two crimes to reproach myself with; I have two punishments to expect
from Heaven."

"I will repeat to you, mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what M. de
Bragelonne said of you, at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If
pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If
love has produced her error, I pardon her, but I swear that no one could
have loved her as I have done.'"

"You know," interrupted Louise, "that of my love I was about to
sacrifice myself; you know whether I suffered when you met me lost,
dying, abandoned. Well! never have I suffered so much as now; because
then I hoped, desired,--now I have no longer anything to wish for;
because this death drags all my joy into the tomb; because I can no
longer dare to love without remorse, and I feel that he whom I love--oh!
it is but just!--will repay me with the tortures I have made others
undergo."

D'Artagnan made no reply; he was too well convinced that she was not
mistaken.

"Well, then," added she, "dear Monsieur d'