I not?" murmured the latter, transported with
happiness, as he folded his cloak round him.

"Come, my dear friend," said Aramis.

Raoul had gone out to give orders for the saddling of the horses. The
group was already divided. Athos saw his two friends on the point of
departure, and something like a mist passed before his eyes and weighed
upon his heart.

"It is strange," thought he, "whence comes the inclination I feel to
embrace Porthos once more?" At that moment Porthos turned round, and
he came towards his old friend with open arms. This last endearment was
tender as in youth, as in times when hearts were warm--life happy. And
then Porthos mounted his horse. Aramis came back once more to throw
his arms round the neck of Athos. The latter watched them along the
high-road, elongated by the shade, in their white cloaks. Like phantoms
they seemed to enlarge on their departure from the earth, and it was not
in the mist, but in the declivity of the ground that they disappeared.
At the end of the perspective, both seemed to have given a spring with
their feet, which made them vanish as if evaporated into cloud-land.

Then Athos, with a very heavy heart, returned towards the house, saying
to Bragelonne, "Raoul, I don't know what it is that has just told me
that I have seen those two for the last time."

"It does not astonish me, monsieur, that you should have such a
thought," replied the young man, "for I have at this moment the same,
and think also that I shall never see Messieurs du Vallon and d'Herblay
again."

"Oh! you," replied the count, "you speak like a man rendered sad by a
different cause; you see everything in black; you are young, and if you
chance never to see those old friends again, it will because they no
longer exist in the world in which you have yet many years to pass. But
I--"

Raoul shook his head sadly, and leaned upon the shoulder of the count,
without either of them finding another word in their hearts, which were
ready to overflow.

All at once a noise of horses and voices, from the extremity of the road
to Blois, attracted their attention that way. Flambeaux-bearers shook
their torches merrily among the trees of their route, and turned round,
from time to time, to avoid distancing the horsemen who followed them.
These flames, this noise, this dust of a dozen richly caparisoned
horses, formed a strange contrast in the middle of the night with the
melancholy and almost funereal disappearanc