e light of his own life,
seeing it too well, and clinging the more to what was left. Honour can
survive a wound; it can live and thrive without a member. The man
rebounds from his disgrace; he begins fresh foundations on the ruins of
the old; and when his sword is broken, he will do valiantly with his
dagger. So it is with Fouquet in the book; so it was with Dumas on the
battlefield of life.

To cling to what is left of any damaged quality is virtue in the man;
but perhaps to sing its praises is scarcely to be called morality in the
writer. And it is elsewhere, it is in the character of d'Artagnan, that
we must look for that spirit of morality, which is one of the chief
merits of the book, makes one of the main joys of its perusal, and sets
it high above more popular rivals. Athos, with the coming of years, has
declined too much into the preacher, and the preacher of a sapless
creed; but d'Artagnan has mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind, and
upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the
copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine,
natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district
visitor--no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all
refinement whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a
good sovereign. Readers who have approached the "Vicomte," not across
country, but by the legitimate, five-volumed avenue of the
"Mousquetaires" and "Vingt Ans Apres," will not have forgotten
d'Artagnan's ungentlemanly and perfectly improbable trick upon Milady.
What a pleasure it is, then, what a reward, and how agreeable a lesson,
to see the old captain humble himself to the son of the man whom he had
personated! Here, and throughout, if I am to choose virtues for myself
or my friends, let me choose the virtues of d'Artagnan. I do not say
there is no character as well drawn in Shakespeare; I do say there is
none that I love so wholly. There are many spiritual eyes that seem to
spy upon our actions--eyes of the dead and the absent, whom we imagine
to behold us in our most private hours, and whom we fear and scruple to
offend: our witnesses and judges. And among these, even if you should
think me childish, I must count my d'Artagnan--not d'Artagnan of the
memoirs whom Thackeray pretended to prefer--a preference, I take the
freedom of saying, in which he stands alone; not the d'Artagnan of flesh
and blood, but him of the ink and paper; not Natu