and that you would not
communicate it to me."

"Yes, my dear D'Artagnan."

The Gascon sighed. "There was a time," said he, "when you would have
placed that order open upon the table, saying, 'D'Artagnan, read this
scrawl to Porthos, Aramis, and to me.'"

"That is true. Oh! that was the time of youth, confidence, the generous
season when the blood commands, when it is warmed by feeling!"

"Well! Athos, will you allow me to tell you?"

"Speak, my friend!"

"That delightful time, that generous season, that ruling by warm blood,
were all very fine things, no doubt: but I do not regret them at all.
It is absolutely like the period of studies. I have constantly met with
fools who would boast of the days of pensums, ferules, and crusts of dry
bread. It is singular, but I never loved all that; for my part, however
active and sober I might be (you know if I was so, Athos), however
simple I might appear in my clothes, I would not the less have preferred
the braveries and embroideries of Porthos to my little perforated
cassock, which gave passage to the wind in winter and the sun in summer.
I should always, my friend, mistrust him who would pretend to prefer
evil to good. Now, in times past all went wrong with me, and every month
found a fresh hole in my cassock and in my skin, a gold crown less in my
poor purse; of that execrable time of small beer and see-saw, I regret
absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing save our friendship; for within me
I have a heart, and it is a miracle that heart has not been dried up by
the wind of poverty which passed through all the holes of my cloak, or
pierced by the swords of all shapes which passed through the holes in my
poor flesh."

"Do not regret our friendship," said Athos, "that will only die with
ourselves. Friendship is composed, above all things, of memories and
habits, and if you have just now made a little satire upon mine, because
I hesitate to tell you the nature of my mission into France--"

"Who! I?--Oh! heavens! if you knew, my dear friend, how indifferent all
the missions of the world will henceforth become to me!" And he laid his
hand upon the parchment in his vest pocket.

Athos rose from the table and called the host in order to pay the
reckoning.

"Since I have known you, my friend," said D'Artagnan, "I have never
discharged the reckoning. Porthos often did, Aramis sometimes, and you,
you almost always drew out your purse with the dessert. I am now rich,
and should