I, also — I, here present — incontestably, I — am going to write an order to which I am certain you will give credence, incredulous as you are!”

Baisemeaux turned pale at this icy assurance of manner. It seemed to him that the voice of the bishop’s, but just now so playful and gay, had become funereal and sad; that the wax lights changed into the tapers of a mortuary chapel, the very glasses of wine into chalices of blood.

Aramis took a pen and wrote. Baisemeaux, in terror, read over his shoulder.

“A. M. D. G.,” wrote the bishop; and he drew a cross under these four letters, which signify ad majorem Dei gloriam, “to the greater glory of God;” and thus he continued: “It is our pleasure that the order brought to M.