nce to your disappointed affection, and--to your ideas of
vengeance."

"Oh, monsieur, with regard to my affection, I shall, perhaps, some day
or other, succeed in tearing it from my heart; I trust I shall do so,
aided by Heaven's merciful help, and your wise exhortations. As far as
vengeance is concerned, it occurred to me only when under the influence
of an evil thought, for I could not revenge myself upon the one who is
actually guilty; I have, therefore, already renounced every idea of
revenge."

"And so you no longer think of seeking a quarrel with M. de
Saint-Aignan?"

"No, monsieur; I sent him a challenge; if M. de Saint-Aignan accepts
it, I will maintain it; if he does not take it up, I will leave it where
it is."

"And La Valliere?"

"You cannot, I know, have seriously thought that I should dream of
revenging myself upon a woman?" replied Raoul, with a smile so sad that
a tear started even to the eyes of his father, who had so many times in
the course of his life been bowed beneath his own sorrows and those of
others.

He held out his hand to Raoul, which the latter seized most eagerly.

"And so, Monsieur le Comte, you are quite satisfied that the misfortune
is without a remedy?" inquired the young man.

"Poor boy!" he murmured.

"You think that I still live in hope," said Raoul, "and you pity me. Oh,
it is indeed a horrible suffering for me to despise, as I ought to do,
the one I have loved so devotedly. If I only had but some real cause of
complaint against her, I should be happy, and should be able to forgive
her."

Athos looked at his son with a sorrowful air, for the latter words which
Raoul had just pronounced, seemed to have issued out of his own heart.
At this moment the servant announced M. d'Artagnan. This name sounded
very differently to the ears of Athos and of Raoul. The musketeer
entered the room with a vague smile upon his lips. Raoul paused. Athos
walked toward his friend with an expression of face which did not escape
Bragelonne. D'Artagnan answered Athos' look by an imperceptible movement
of the eyelid; and then, advancing toward Raoul, whom he took by the
hand, he said, addressing both father and son, "Well, you are trying to
console this poor boy, it seems."

"And you, kind and good as usual, are come to help me in my difficult
task."

As he said this, Athos pressed D'Artagnan's hand between both his own;
Raoul fancied he observed in this pressure something beyond the sense