The Three Musketeers

The abbess, who was the daughter of a noble house, took particular delight in stories of the court, which so seldom travel to the extremities of the kingdom, and which, above all, have so much difficulty in penetrating the walls of convents, at whose threshold the noise of the world dies away.

Milady was handsome enough not to find much resistance on the part of the flesh, and she was sufficiently skillful to prevail over all the obstacles of the mind.

What hatred she distills! Motionless, with her burning and fixed glances, in her solitary apartment, how well the outbursts of passion which at times escape from the depths of her chest with her respiration, accompany the sound of the surf which rises, growls, roars, and breaks itself like an eternal and powerless despair against the rocks on which

Athos, emptying a glass of excellent Bordeaux wine which, without having at that period the reputation it now enjoys, merited it no less,

de la Fere—" All eyes were turned towards Athos, whose real name that was,

"The duke is in love to madness, or rather to folly,"

But Athos might be said to bear a charmed life. The balls passed and whistled all around him; not one struck him.

The watchword is, 'King and Re.'"

Athos, who was an optimist when things were concerned, and a pessimist when men were in question.