neither too old nor too young to remember this:

At the moment she spoke these words a rap on the ceiling made
her raise her head, and a voice which reached her through the
ceiling cried:

"Dear Madame Bonacieux, open the little passage door for me, and
I will come down to you."

Melodramatic? Certainly. Cheap? I'm not so sure--in fact, no! not to
any man whose heart is not far grayer than his beard. For then
commenced as pretty a race as ever was--_Athos_, _Porthos_, _Aramis_
and _D'Artagnan_ speeding from Paris to London, _D'Artagnan_ bearing a
letter; each in turn to take it as they are killed by the cardinal's
hirelings--all this to save the honor of _Anne of Austria_ by bringing
back the love token given by her to the _Duke of Buckingham_, who
keeps it in a tiny chapel draped with gold-worked tapestry of Persian
silk, on an altar beneath a portrait of the woman he loves.

_D'Artagnan's_ part in that adventure is the most gallant deed known
in all the literature of love tokens. There have been similar gifts
that were more tragic; what was the famous diamond necklace but a
hopeless, mad love token from the Cardinal de Rohan to Marie
Antoinette? And there have been those that were more sad; recall the
great Mirabeau, dying amid flowers that were themselves death,
drinking the hasheesh that was poison, placing on his forehead the
tiny handkerchief drenched with the tears of the one beautiful woman
that disinterestedly had loved him; the one that, forced from his last
bedside, had refused a casket filled with gold and had left behind
this final, mute and eloquent token of her love.

The poets, of course, ever have had a greater affection for love
tokens than have the novelists. With some this has been real; with
others "copy." Keats, who, through all his brief life, knew the
consummate luxury of sadness, had on his deathbed the melancholy
ecstasy of a letter from his love--and this he lacked the courage to
read, for it would have anguished him with a clearer knowledge of all
the exquisite happiness he was leaving on earth; his love, like his
art, having been beautiful in its immaturity. And so this last token
of love, unread, was placed at his own desire beside him in his
coffin.

Decidedly we are less touched by Tom Moore, who desired that, at his
death, his heart should be presented to his mistress:

Tell her it liv'd upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue while it lingered here.