“Love—Fate wills that we should be still for some time separated; but the delightful days of youth are not lost beyond return. Perform your duty in camp; I will do mine elsewhere. Accept what the bearer brings you; take part in the campaign like a true gentleman, and think of me, who tenderly kiss your black eyes!

“Adieu! or, rather, au revoir!”

The mendicant kept ripping. He drew one by one from out his rags a hundred and fifty Spanish double pistoles, and laid them down on the table. The he opened the door, bowed, and went out before the young man, stupefied, had a chance to address a word to him.

Aramis then re-read the letter, and perceived there was a postscript.

“P.S.—You may welcome the bearer, who is a count and a grandee of Spain.”

And he passionately kissed the letter, without even looking at the gold sparkling on the table.

Bazin was dazed at the sight of the gold, and forgot that he was coming to announce D’Artagnan, who, curious to know who the mendicant was, came to Aramis’s residence on leaving Athos’s.

Now, as D’Artagnan used no ceremony with Aramis, when he saw that Bazin forgot to announce him, he announced himself.

“The devil! my dear Aramis,” said D’Artagnan, “if these are the prunes that are sent to you from Tours, you will make my compliments to the gardener who gathers them.”

“You are mistaken, my dear,” said Aramis, who was always discreet; “my bookseller has just sent me the price of that poem in one-syllable verse which I began yonder.”

And having put two or three double pistoles into his pocket to answer the needs of the moment, he locked the others in the ebony box inlaid with mother-of-pearl, where he kept the famous handkerchief which served him as a talisman.