" And as she appeared to abandon herself entirety to her grief,
as she threw herself down almost fainting, amid complaints and prayers,
D'Artagnan, touched by his love for his so much regretted friends, made
a few steps toward the grave, in order to interrupt the melancholy
colloquy of the penitent with the dead. But as soon as his step sounded
on the gravel the unknown raised her head, revealing to D'Artagnan a
face inundated with tears, but a well-known face. It was Mademoiselle de
la Valliere! "Monsieur d'Artagnan!" murmured she.

"You!" replied the captain, in a stern voice--"you here!--oh! madame, I
should better have liked to see you decked with flowers in the mansion
of the Comte de la Fere. You would have wept less--they too--I too!"

"Monsieur!" she said, sobbing.

"For it is you," added this pitiless friend of the dead--"it is you who
have laid these two men in the grave."

"Oh! spare me!"

"God forbid, madame, that I should offend a woman, or that I should make
her weep in vain; but I must say that the place of the murderer is not
upon the grave of her victims."

She wished to reply.

"What I now tell you," added he, coldly, "I told the king."

She clasped her hands. "I know," said she, "I have caused the death of
the Vicomte de Bragelonne."

"Ah! you know it?"

"The news arrived at court yesterday. I have traveled during the night
forty leagues to come and ask pardon of the comte, whom I supposed to be
still living, and to supplicate God, upon the tomb of Raoul, that He
would send me all the misfortunes I have merited, except a single one.
Now, monsieur, I know that the death of the son has killed the father; I
have two crimes to reproach myself with; I have two punishments to look
for from God."

"I will repeat to you, mademoiselle," said D'Artagnan, "what M. de
Bragelonne said of you at Antibes, when he already meditated death: 'If
pride and coquetry have misled her, I pardon her while despising her. If
love has produced her error, I pardon her, swearing that no one could
have loved her as I have done.'"

"You know," interrupted Louise, "that for my love I was about to
sacrifice myself; you know whether I suffered when you met me lost,
dying, abandoned. Well! never have I suffered so much as now; because
then I hoped, I desired--now I have nothing to wish for; because this
death drags away all my joy into the tomb; because I can no longer dare
to love without remorse, and I feel that he whom