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134 "You are a most valuable fellow, Baisemeaux," said Aramis; "and now set Seldon free."

"Oh, yes! I was going to forget that. I will go and give orders at once."

"Bah! to-morrow will be time enough."

"'To-morrow!' oh, no! This very minute."

"Well, go off to your affairs, I shall go away to mine. But it is quite understood, is it not?"

"What 'is quite understood?'"

"That no one is to enter the prisoner's cell, except wifch an order from the king—an order which I will myself bring."

"Quite so. Adieu, monseigneur."

Aramis returned to his companion.

"Now, Porthos, my good fellow, back again to Vaux, and as fast as possible."

"A man is light and easy enough when he has faithfully served his king, and, in serving him, saved his country," said Porthos. "The horses will be as light as if they had nothing at all behind them. So let us be off."

And the carriage, lightened of a prisoner, who might well be—as he in fact was—very heavy for Aramis, passed across the drawbridge of the Bastile, which was raised again immediately behind it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A NIGHT AT THE BASTILE.

Pain, anguish, and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which He afflicts him; such, indeed, would not be exact, since Heaven permits the existence of death, which is sometimes the only refuge open to those who are too closely pressed—too bitterly afflicted, as far as the body is concerned. Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded to a person; in other words, the weak suffer more, where the trial is the same, than the strong. And what are the elementary principles, we may ask, which compose human strength? Is it not—more than anything else—exercise, habit, experience? We shall not even take the trouble to demonstrate that, for it is an axiom in morals, as in physics. When the young king, stupefied and crushed