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The Three Musketeers
Twenty Years Later
The Vicomte De Bragelonne
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The Three Musketeers 63 at Prostate Health
so many things, my Lord. In short, I see you to
tell you that we must never see each other again."
"Speak on, madame, speak on, Queen," said Buckingham; "the
sweetness of your voice covers the harshness of your words. You
talk of sacrilege! Why, the sacrilege is the separation of two
hearts formed by God for each other."
"My Lord," cried the queen, "you forget that I have never said
that I love you."
"But you have never told me that you did not love me; and truly,
to speak such words to me would be, on the part of your Majesty,
too great an ingratitude. For tell me, where can you find a love
like mine--a love which neither time, nor absence, nor despair
can extinguish, a love which contents itself with a lost ribbon,
a stray look, or a chance word? It is now three years, madame,
since I saw you for the first time, and during those three years
I have loved you thus. Shall I tell you each ornament of your
toilet? Mark! I see you now. You were seated upon cushions in
the Spanish fashion; you wore a robe of green satin embroidered
with gold and silver, hanging sleeves knotted upon your beautiful
arms--those lovely arms--with large diamonds. You wore a close
ruff, a small cap upon your head of the same color as your robe,
and in that cap a herons feather. Hold! Hold! I shut my eyes,
and I can see you as you then were; I open them again, and I see
what you are now--a hundred time more beautiful!"
"What folly," murmured Anne of Austria, who had not the courage
to find fault with the duke for having so well preserved her
portrait in his heart, "what folly to feed a useless passion with
such remembrances!"
"And upon what then must I live? I have nothing but memory. It
is my happiness, my treasure, my hope. Every time I see you is a
fresh diamond which I enclose in the casket of my heart. This
is the fourth which you have let fall and I have picked up; for
in three years, madame, I have only seen you four times--the
first, which I have described to you; the second, at the mansion
of Madame de Chevreuse; the third, in the gardens of Amiens."
"Duke," said the queen, blushing, "never speak of that evening."
"Oh, let us speak of it; on the contrary, let us speak of it!
That is the most happy and brilliant evening of my life! You
remember what a beautiful night it was? How soft and perfumed
was the air; how lovely the blue heavens and star-enameled sky!
Ah, then, madame, I was able for one instant to be alone with
you. Then you were about to tell me all--the isolation of your
life, the griefs of your heart. You leaned upon my arm--upon
this, madame! I felt, in bending my head toward you, your
beautiful hair touch my cheek; and every time that it touched me
I trembled from head to foot. Oh, Queen! Queen! You do not
know what felicity from heaven, what joys from paradise, are
comprised in a moment like that. Take my wealth, my fortune, my
glory, all the days I have to live, for such an instant, for a
night like that. For that night, madame, that night you loved
me, I will swear it."
"My Lord, yes; it is possible that the influence of the place,
the charm of the beautiful evening, the fascination of your
look--the thousand circumstances, in short, which sometimes unite
to destroy a woman--were grouped around me on that fatal evening;
but, my Lord, you saw the queen come to the aid of the woman who
faltered. At the first word you dared to utter, at the first
freedom to which I had to reply, I called for help."
"Yes, yes, that is true. And any other love but mine would have
sunk beneath this ordeal; but my love came out from it more
ardent and more eternal. You believed that you would fly from me
by returning to Paris; you believed that I would not dare to quit
the treasure over which my master had charged me to watch. What
to me were all the treasures in the world, or all the kings of
the earth! Eight
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