on his violet lips. He shuddered at
seeing the father and son, those two departed souls, represented on
earth by two silent, melancholy bodies, incapable of touching each
other, however close they might be.

"Raoul here!" murmured he. "Oh! Grimaud, why did you not tell me this?"

Grimaud shook his head, and made no reply; but taking D'Artagnan by the
hand, he led him to the coffin, and showed him, under the thin
winding-sheet, the black wounds by which life had escaped. The captain
turned away his eyes, and, judging it useless to question Grimaud, who
would not answer, he recollected that M. de Beaufort's secretary had
written more than he, D'Artagnan, had had the courage to read. Taking up
the recital of the affair which had cost Raoul his life, he found these
words, which terminated the last paragraph of the letter:

"Monsieur le Duc has ordered that the body of Monsieur le Vicomte should
be embalmed, after the manner practiced by the Arabs when they wish
their bodies to be carried to their native land; and Monsieur le Duc has
appointed relays, so that a confidential servant who brought up the
young man might take back his remains to M. le Comte de la Fere."

"And so," thought D'Artagnan, "I shall follow thy funeral, my dear
boy--I, already old--I, who am of no value on earth--and I shall
scatter the dust upon that brow which I kissed but two months since. God
has willed it to be so. Thou hast willed it to be so, thyself. I have no
longer the right even to weep. Thou hast chosen death; it hath seemed to
thee preferable to life."

At length arrived the moment when the cold remains of these two
gentlemen were to be returned to the earth. There was such an affluence
of military and other people that up to the place of sepulture, which
was a chapel in the plain, the road from the city was filled with
horsemen and pedestrians in mourning habits. Athos had chosen for his
resting-place the little inclosure of a chapel erected by himself near
the boundary of his estates. He had had the stones, cut in 1550, brought
from an old Gothic manor house in Berry, which had sheltered his early
youth. The chapel, thus re-edified, thus transported, was pleasant
beneath its wood of poplars and sycamores. It was administered every
Sunday, by the cure of the neighboring bourg, to whom Athos paid an
allowance of two hundred francs for this service; and all the vassals of
his domain, to the number of about forty, the laborers, and the fa