"

"Raoul, Raoul!"

"As a brother! Oh, Louise! I loved you so deeply, that I would have shed
my blood for you, drop by drop; I would, oh! how willingly, have
suffered myself to be torn in pieces for your sake, have sacrificed my
very future for you. I loved you so deeply, Louise, that my heart feels
crushed and dead within me--that my faith in human nature is gone--that
my eyes seem to have lost their light; I loved you so deeply, that I now
no longer see, think of, care for, anything, either in this world or in
the next."

"Raoul--dear Raoul! spare me, I implore you!" cried La Valliere. "Oh! if
I had but known."

"It is too late, Louise; you love, you are happy in your affection; I
read your happiness through your tears--behind the tears which the
loyalty of your nature makes you shed; I feel the sighs which your
affection breathes forth. Louise, Louise, you have made me the most
abjectly wretched man living; leave me, I entreat you. Adieu! Adieu!"

"Forgive me! oh, forgive me, Raoul, for what I have done."

"Have I not done more? Have I not told you that I loved you still?" She
buried her face in her hands.

"And to tell you that--do you hear me, Louise?--to tell you that, at
such a moment as this, to tell you that, as I have told you, is to
pronounce my own sentence of death. Adieu!" La Valliere wished to hold
out her hands to him.

"We ought not to see each other again in this world," he said; and as
she was on the point of calling out in bitter agony at this remark, he
placed his hand on her mouth to stifle the exclamation. She pressed her
lips upon it and fell fainting to the ground. "Olivain," said Raoul,
"take this young lady and bear her to the carriage which is waiting for
her at the door." As Olivain lifted her up, Raoul made a movement as if
to dart toward La Valliere, in order to give her a first and last kiss,
but, stopping abruptly, he said, "No! she is not mine. I am not a thief,
like the king of France." And he returned to his room, while the lackey
carried La Valliere, still fainting, to the carriage.

CHAPTER LXIX.

WHAT RAOUL HAD GUESSED.

As soon as Raoul had quitted Athos and D'Artagnan, and as soon as the
two exclamations which had followed his departure had escaped their
lips, they found themselves face to face alone. Athos immediately
resumed the earnest air that he had assumed at D'Artagnan's arrival.

"Well," he said, "what have you come to announce to me, my friend?"