“Au revoir! I should rather say, for why can you not come and live with me at Blois?  You are free, you are rich, I shall purchase for you, if you like, a handsome estate in the vicinity of Cheverny or of Bracieux.  On the one side you will have the finest woods in the world, which join those of Chambord; on the other, admirable marshes.  You who love sporting, and who, whether you admit it or not, are a poet, my dear friend, you will find pheasants, rail and teal, without counting sunsets and excursions on the water, to make you fancy yourself Nimrod and Apollo themselves.  While awaiting the purchase, you can live at La Fere, and we shall go together to fly our hawks among the vines, as Louis XIII. used to do.  That is a quiet amusement for old fellows like us.”

D’Artagnan took the hands of Athos in his own.  “Dear count,” said he, “I shall say neither ‘Yes’ nor ‘No.’  Let me pass in Paris the time necessary for the regulation of my affairs, and accustom myself, by degrees, to the heavy and glittering idea which is beating in my brain and dazzles me.  I am rich, you see, and from this moment until the time when I shall have acquired the habit of being rich, I know myself, and I shall be an insupportable animal.  Now, I am not enough of a fool to wish to appear to have lost my wits before a friend like you, Athos.  The cloak is handsome, the cloak is richly gilded, but it is new, and does not seem to fit me.”

Athos smiled.  “So be it,” said he.  “But a propos of this cloak, dear D’Artagnan, will you allow me to offer you a little advice?”

“Yes, willingly.”

“You will not be angry?”

“Proceed.”

“When wealth comes to a man late in life or all at once, that man, in order not to change, must most likely become a miser — that is to say, not spend much more money than he had done before; or else become a prodigal, and contract so many debts as to become poor again.”

“Oh! but what you say looks very much like a sophism, my dear philosophic friend.”

“I do not think so.  Will you become a miser?”

“No, pardieu! I was one already, having nothing.  Let us change.”

“Then be prodigal.”

“Still less, Mordioux! Debts terrify me.  Creditors appear to me, by anticipation, like those devils who turn the damned upon the gridirons, and as patience is not my dominant virtue, I am always tempted to thrash those devils.”

“You are the wisest man I know, and stand in no need of advice from any one.  Great fools must they be who think they have anything to teach you.  But are we not at the Rue Saint Honore?”

“Yes, dear Athos.”

“Look yonder, on the left, that small, long white house is the hotel where I lodge.  You may observe that it has but two stories; I occupy the first; the other is let to an officer whose duties oblige him to be absent eight or nine months in the year, — so I am in that house as in my own home, without the expense.”