“You particularly wish it?” asked he.

“I pray for it,” said d’Artagnan.

“Be it then as you desire. One of my friends — one of my friends, please to observe, not myself,” said Athos, interrupting himself with a melancholy smile, “one of the counts of my province — that is to say, of Berry — noble as a Dandolo or a Montmorency, at twenty-five years of age fell in love with a girl of sixteen, beautiful as fancy can paint. Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, not of the woman, but of the poet. She did not please; she intoxicated. She lived in a small town with her brother, who was a curate. Both had recently come into the country. They came nobody knew whence; but when seeing her so lovely and her brother