Vanitas vanitatum! According to your idea, then, my brain is turned. And for whom—for some grisette, some chambermaid with whom I have trifled in some garrison? Fie!”
“Pardon, my dear Aramis, but I thought you carried your eyes higher.”
“Higher? And who am I, to nourish such ambition? A poor musketeer, a beggar, an unknown—who hates slavery, and finds himself ill-placed in the world.”
“Aramis, Aramis!” cried d’Artagnan, looking at his friend with an air of doubt.
“Dust I am, and to dust I return. Life is full of humiliations and sorrows,” continued he, becoming still more melancholy; “all the ties which attach him to life break in the hand of man, particularly the golden ties. Oh, my dear d’Artagnan,” resumed Aramis, giving to his voice a slight tone of bitterness, “trust me! Conceal your wounds when you have any; silence is the last joy of the unhappy. Beware of giving anyone the clue to your griefs; the curious suck our tears as flies suck the blood of a wounded hart.”
“Alas, my dear Aramis,” said d’Artagnan, in his turn heaving a profound sigh, “that is my story you are relating!”
“How?”
“Yes; a woman whom I love, whom I adore, has just been torn from me by force. I do not know where she is or whither they have conducted her. She is perhaps a prisoner; she is perhaps dead!”
“Yes, but you have at least this consolation, that you can say to yourself she has not quit you voluntarily, that if you learn no news of her, it is because all communication with you is interdicted; while I—”