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 toward his old friend with open arms. This last endearment was
tender as in youth, as in times when the heart was warm, and 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 two
phantoms they seemed to be enlarged on departing 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 the
clouds.

Then Athos, with an oppressed heart, returned toward the house, saying
to Bragelonne, "Raoul, I don't know what it is that has just told me
that I have seen these two men 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 MM. de Valon and d'Herblay again."

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

Raoul shook his head sadly, and leaned upon the shoulder of the comte,
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 funereal disappearance of the two shadows of Aramis and
Porthos. Athos went toward the house; but he had hardly reached the
parterre, when the entrance gate appeared in a blaze; all the flambeaux
stopped and appeared to enflame the road. A cry was heard of "M. le Duc
de Beaufort"--and Athos