r own interests and their own pleasures than they were in our times.
You have sought a secluded life; that is a great happiness, but you have
lost your strength in it. We four, more weaned from these delicate
abstractions which constitute your joy, we furnished much more
resistance when misfortune presented itself."

"I have not interrupted you, monsieur, to tell you that I had a friend,
and that that friend is M. Guiche. Certes, he is good and generous, and,
moreover, he loves me. But I have lived under the guardianship of
another friendship, monsieur, as precious and as strong as that of which
you speak, since that is yours."

"I have not been a friend for you, Raoul," said Athos.

"Eh! monsieur, and in what respect not?"

"Because I have given you reason to think that life has but one face,
because, sad and severe, alas! I have always cut off for you, without,
God knows, wishing to do so, the joyous buds which incessantly spring
from the tree of youth; so that at this moment I repent of not having
made of you a more expansive, dissipated, animated man."

"I know why you say that, monsieur. No, it is not you who have made me
what I am; it was love which took me at the time when children have only
inclinations; it is the constancy natural to my character, which with
other creatures is but a habit. I believed that I should always be as I
was; I thought God had cast me in a path quite cleared, quite straight,
bordered with fruits and flowers. I had watching over me your vigilance
and your strength. I believed myself to be vigilant and strong. Nothing
prepared me; I fell once, and that once deprived me of courage for the
whole of my life. It is quite true that I wrecked myself. Oh, no,
monsieur! you are nothing in my past but a happiness--you are nothing in
my future but a hope! No, I have no reproach to make against life, such
as you made it for me; I bless you, and I love you ardently."

"My dear Raoul, your words do me good. They prove to me that you will
act a little for me in the time to come."

"I shall only act for you, monsieur."

"Raoul, what I have never hitherto done with respect to you, I will
henceforward do. I will be your friend, not your father. We will live in
expanding ourselves, instead of living and holding ourselves prisoners,
when you come back. And that will be soon, will it not?"

"Certainly, monsieur, for such an expedition cannot be long."

"Soon then, Raoul, soon, instead of living mod