The Vicomte de Bragelonne

by Alexandre Dumas

  CHAPTER CXXIV.

  THE DEATH OF A TITAN.

  At the moment when Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than allthese men coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if inthis night Aramis were not making him some signal, he felt his armgently touched, and a voice low as a breath murmured in his ear, "Come."

  "Oh!" said Porthos.

  "Hush!" said Aramis, if possible, still more softly.

  And amid the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance,amid the imprecations of the guards left alive, of the dying, rattlingtheir last sigh, Aramis and Porthos glided imperceptibly along thegranite walls of the cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but onecompartment, and showed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel ofpowder weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had justattached a match. "My friend," said he to Porthos, "you will take thisbarrel, the match of which I am going to set fire to, and throw it amidour enemies; can you do so?"

  "Parbleu!" replied Porthos; and he lifted the barrel with one hand."Light it!"

  "Stop," said Aramis, "till they are all massed together, and then, myJupiter, hurl your thunderbolt among-them."

  "Light it," repeated Porthos.

  "On my part," continued Aramis, "I will join our Bretons, and help themto get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch itstrongly, and hasten to us."

  "Light it," said Porthos a third time.

  "But do you understand me?"

  "Parbleu!" said Porthos again, with laughter that he did not evenattempt to restrain; "when a thing is explained to me I understand it;begone, and give me the light."

  Aramis gave the burning match to Porthos, who held out his arm to him,his hands being engaged. Aramis pressed the arm of Porthos with both hishands, and fell back to the outlet of the cavern where the three rowersawaited him.

  Porthos, left alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. Thespark--a feeble spark, first principle of a conflagration--shone in thedarkness like a fire-fly, then was deadened against the match which itinflamed. Porthos enlivened the flame with his breath. The smoke was alittle dispersed, and by the light of the sparkling match objects might,for two seconds, be distinguished. It was a short but a splendidspectacle, that of this giant, pale, bloody, his countenance lighted bythe fire of the match burning in surrounding darkness! The soldiers sawhim--they saw the barrel he held in his hand--they at once understoodwhat was going to happen. Then, these men, already filled with terror atthe sight of what had been accomplished--filled with terror at thinkingof what was going to be accomplished--threw forth together one shriek ofagony. Some endeavored to fly, but they encountered the third brigadewhich barred their passage; others mechanically took aim and attemptedto fire their discharged muskets; others fell upon their knees. Two orthree officers cried out to Porthos to promise him his liberty if hewould spare their lives. The lieutenant of the third brigade commandedhis men to fire; but the guards had before them their terrifiedcompanions, who served as a living rampart for Porthos. We have saidthat the light produced by the spark and the match did not last morethan two seconds; but during these two seconds this is what itillumined--in the first place, the giant, enlarged in the darkness;then, at ten paces from him, a heap of bleeding bodies, crushed,mutilated, in the midst of whom still lived some last struggle of agony,which lifted the mass as a last respiration raises the sides of ashapeless monster expiring in the night. Every breath of Porthos, whileenlivening the match, sent toward this heap of bodies a sulphureous huemingled with streaks of purple. In addition to this principal group,scattered about the grotto, as the chance of death or the surprise ofthe blow had stretched them, some isolated bodies seemed to threaten bytheir gaping wounds. Above the ground, soaked by pools of blood, rose,heavy and sparkling, the short, thick pillars of the cavern, of whichthe strongly marked shades threw out the luminous particles. And allthis was seen by the tremulous light of a match attached to a barrel ofpowder, that is to say, a torch which, while throwing a light upon thedead past, showed the death to come.

  As I have said, this spectacle did not last above two seconds. Duringthis short space of time, an officer of the third brigade got togethereight men armed with muskets, and, through an opening, ordered them tofire upon Porthos. But they who received the order to fire trembled sothat three guards fell by the discharge, and the five other balls wenthissing to splinter the vault, plow the ground, or indent the sides ofthe cavern.

  A burst of laughter replied to this volley; then the arm of the giantswung round; then was seen to pass through the air, like a falling star,the train of fire. The barrel, hurled a distance of thirty feet, clearedthe barricade of the dead bodies, and fell amid a group of shriekingsoldiers, who threw themselves on their faces. The officer had followedthe brilliant train in the air; he endeavored to precipitate himselfupon the barrel and tear out the match before it reached the powder itcontained. Useless devotedness! The air had made the flame attached tothe conductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnedfive minutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal workexploded. Furious vortices, hissings of sulphur and niter, devouringravages of the fire which caught to objects, the terrible thunder of theexplosion, this is what the second which followed the two seconds wehave described, disclosed in that cavern, equal in horrors to a cavernof demons. The rock split like planks of deal under the ax. A jet offire, smoke, and debris sprang up from the middle of the grotto,enlarging as it mounted. The large walls of silex tottered and fell uponthe sand, and the sand itself, an instrument of pain when launched fromits hardened bed, riddled the face with its myriads of cutting atoms.Cries, howlings, imprecations, and existences--all were extinguished inone immense crash.

  The three first compartments became a gulf into which fell back again,according to its weight, every vegetable, mineral, or human fragment.Then the lighter sand and ashes fell in their turns, stretching like agray winding-sheet and smoking over these dismal funerals. And now seekin this burning tomb, in this subterraneous volcano, seek for the king'sguards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek for the officersbrilliant in gold; seek for the arms upon which they depended for theirdefense; seek for the stones that have killed them, the ground that hasborne them. One single man has made of all this a chaos more confused,more shapeless, more terrible than the chaos which existed an hourbefore God had created the world. There remained nothing of the threecompartments--nothing by which God could have known His own work. As toPorthos, after having hurled the barrel of powder amid his enemies, hehad fled as Aramis had directed him to do, and had gained the lastapartment, into which air, light, and sunshine penetrated through theopening. Therefore, scarcely had he turned the angle which separated thethird compartment from the fourth, than he perceived at a hundred pacesfrom him the bark dancing on the waves; there were his friends, therewas liberty, there was life after victory. Six more of his formidablestrides, and he would be out of the vault; out of the vault! two orthree vigorous springs, and he would reach the canoe. Suddenly he felthis knees give way; his knees appeared powerless, his legs to yieldunder him.

  "Oh! oh!" murmured he, "there is my fatigue seizing me again! I can walkno further! What is this!"

  Aramis perceived him through the opening, and unable to conceive whatcould induce him to stop thus, "Come on, Porthos! come on," cried he;"come quickly!"

  "Oh!" replied the giant, making an effort which acted upon every muscleof his body, "oh! but I cannot!" While saying these words he fell uponhis knees, but with his robust hands he clung to the rocks, and raisedhimself up again.

  "Quick! quick!" repeated Aramis, bending forward toward the shore, as ifto draw Porthos toward him with his arms.

  "Here I am," stammered Porthos, collecting all his strength to make onestep more.

  "In the name of Heaven, Porthos, make haste! the barrel will blow up!"

  "Make haste, monseigneur!" shouted the Bretons to Porthos, who wasfloundering as in a dream.

  But there was
no longer time; the explosion resounded, the earth gaped,the smoke which rushed through the large fissures obscured the sky; thesea flowed back as if driven by the blast of fire which darted from thegrotto as if from the jaws of a gigantic chimera; the reflux carried thebark out twenty toises; the rocks cracked to their base, and separatedlike blocks beneath the operation of wedges; a portion of the vault wascarried up toward heaven, as if by rapid currents; the rose-colored andgreen fire of the sulphur, the black lava of the argillaceousliquefactions clashed and combated for an instant beneath a majesticdome of smoke; then, at first oscillated, then declined, then fellsuccessively the long angles of rock which the violence of the explosionhad not been able to uproot from their bed of ages; they bowed to eachother like grave and slow old men, then prostrating themselves, embeddedforever in their dusty tomb.

  This frightful shock seemed to restore to Porthos the strength he hadlost: he arose, himself a giant among these giants. But at the moment hewas flying between the double hedge of granite phantoms, these latter,which were no longer supported by the corresponding links, began to rollwith a crash around this Titan, who looked as if precipitated fromheaven amid rocks which he had just been launching at it. Porthos feltthe earth beneath his feet shaken by this long rending. He extended hisvast hands to the right and left to repulse the falling rocks. Agigantic block was held back by each of his extended hands; he bent hishead, and a third granite mass sank between his two shoulders. For aninstant the arms of Porthos had given way, but the Hercules united allhis forces, and the two walls of the prison in which he was buried fellback slowly and gave him place. For an instant he appeared in this frameof granite like the ancient angel of chaos, but in pushing back thelateral rocks, he lost his point of support for the monolith whichweighed upon his strong shoulders, and the monolith, lying upon him withall its weight, brought the giant down upon his knees. The lateralrocks, for an instant pushed back, drew together again, and added theirweight to the primitive weight which would have been sufficient to crushten men. The giant fell without crying for help; he fell while answeringAramis with words of encouragement and hope, for, thanks to the powerfularch of his hands, for an instant, he might believe that, likeEnceladus, he should shake off the triple load. But, by degrees, Aramissaw the block sink: the hands strung for an instant, the arms stiffenedfor a last effort, gave way, the extended shoulders sank wounded andtorn, and the rock continued to lower gradually.

  "Porthos! Porthos!" cried Aramis, tearing his hair. "Porthos! where areyou? Speak!"

  "There, there!" murmured Porthos, with a voice growing evidently weaker,"patience! patience!"

  Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when the impulse of the fallaugmented the weight; the enormous rock sank down, pressed by the twoothers which sank in from the sides, and, as it were, swallowed upPorthos in a sepulcher of broken stones. On hearing the dying voice ofhis friend, Aramis had sprung to land. Two of the Bretons followed him,with each a lever in his hand--one being sufficient to take care of thebark. The last rattles of the valiant struggler guided them amid theruins. Aramis, animated, active, and young as at twenty, sprang towardthe triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those of a woman,raised by a miracle of vigor a corner of the immense sepulcher ofgranite. Then he caught a glimpse, in the darkness of that grave, of thestill brilliant eye of his friend, to whom the momentary lifting of themass restored that moment of respiration. The two men came rushing up,grasped their iron levers, united their triple strength, not merely toraise it, but to sustain it. All was useless. The three men slowly gaveway with cries of grief, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeing themexhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in a jeering tonethose supreme words which came to his lips with the last respiration,"Too heavy!"

  After which the eye darkened and closed, the face became pale, the handwhitened, and the Titan sank quite down, breathing his last sigh. Withhim sank the rock, which, even in his agony, he had still held up. Thethree men dropped the levers, which rolled upon the tumulary stone.Then, breathless, pale, his brow covered with sweat, Aramis listened,his breast oppressed, his heart ready to break.

  Nothing more! The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulcher whichGod had made to his measure.