He supped that evening, in very good humor, with his friend Athos; he said nothing to him about the expected donation, but he could not forbear questioning his friend, while eating, about country produce, sowing, and planting.  Athos replied complacently, as he always did.  His idea was that D’Artagnan wished to become a land-owner, only he could not help regretting, more than once, the absence of the lively humor and amusing sallies of the cheerful companion of former days.  In fact, D’Artagnan was so absorbed, that, with his knife, he took advantage of the grease left at the bottom of his plate, to trace ciphers and make additions of surprising rotundity.

The order, or rather license, for their embarkation, arrived at Athos’s lodgings that evening.  While this paper was remitted to the comte, another messenger brought to D’Artagnan a little bundle of parchments, adorned with all the seals employed in setting off property deeds in England.  Athos surprised him turning over the leaves of these different acts which established the transmission of property.  The prudent Monk — others would say the generous Monk — had commuted the donation into a sale, and acknowledged the receipt of the sum of fifteen thousand crowns as the price of the property ceded.  The messenger was gone.  D’Artagnan still continued reading, Athos watched him with a smile.  D’Artagnan, surprising one of those smiles over his shoulder, put the bundle in its wrapper.

“I beg your pardon,” said Athos.

“Oh! not at all, my friend,” replied the lieutenant, “I shall tell you — "

“No, don’t tell me anything, I beg you; orders are things so sacred, that to one’s brother, one’s father, the person charged with such orders should never open his mouth.  Thus I, who speak to you, and love you more tenderly than brother, father, or all the world — "

“Except your Raoul?”

“I shall love Raoul still better when he shall be a man, and I shall have seen him develop himself in all the phases of his character and his actions — as I have seen you, my friend.”

“You said, then, that you had an order likewise, and that you would not communicate it to me.”

“Yes, my dear D’Artagnan.”

The Gascon sighed.  “There was a time,” said he, “when you would have placed that order open upon the table, saying, ’D’Artagnan, read this scrawl to Porthos, Aramis, and to me.’”

“That is true.  Oh! that was the time of youth, confidence, the generous season when the blood commands, when it is warmed by feeling!”

“Well!  Athos, will you allow me to tell you?”

“Speak, my friend!”