st simple of heart
allied to the most crafty; strength of body guided by subtlety of mind;
and in the decisive moment, when vigor alone could save mind and body, a
stone, a rock, a vile and material weight, triumphed over vigor, and
falling upon the body, drove out the mind.

Worthy Porthos! born to help other men, always ready to sacrifice
himself for the safety of the weak, as if God had only given him
strength for that purpose: when dying he only thought he was carrying
out the conditions of his compact with Aramis, a compact, however, which
Aramis alone had drawn up, and which Porthos had only known to suffer by
its terrible solidarity. Noble Porthos! of what good are the chateaux
overflowing with sumptuous furniture, the forests overflowing with game,
the lakes overflowing with fish, the cellars overflowing with wealth! Of
what good are the lackeys in brilliant liveries, and in the midst of
them Mousqueton, proud of the power delegated by thee! Oh! noble
Porthos! careful heaper up of treasures, was it worth while to labor to
sweeten and gild life, to come upon a desert shore, to the cries of sea
birds, and lay thyself, with broken bones, beneath a cold stone! Was it
worth while, in short, noble Porthos, to heap so much gold, and not have
even the distich of a poor poet engraven upon thy monument! Valiant
Porthos! He still, without doubt, sleeps, lost, forgotten, beneath the
rock which the shepherds of the heath take for the gigantic abode of a
dolmen. And so many twining branches, so many mosses, caressed by the
bitter wind of the ocean, so many vivacious lichens have soldered the
sepulcher to the earth, that the passenger will never imagine that such
a block of granite can ever have been supported by the shoulders of one
man.

Aramis, still pale, still icy, his heart upon his lips, Aramis looked,
even till, with the last ray of daylight, the shore faded on the
horizon. Not a word escaped his lips, not a sigh rose from his deep
breast. The superstitious Bretons looked at him trembling. The silence
was not of a man, it was of a statue. In the meantime, with the first
gray lines that descended from the heavens, the canoe had hoisted its
little sail, which swelling with the kisses of the breeze, and carrying
them rapidly from the coast, made brave way with its head toward Spain,
across the terrible gulf of Gascony, so rife with tempests. But scarcely
half an hour after the sail had been hoisted, the rowers became
in