Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Alexandre Dumas

  “Tell me what.”

  “These people are coming down into the grotto.”

  “Yes.”

  “We could kill about fifteen of them, but not more.”

  “How many are there in all?” asked Porthos.

  “They have received a reinforcement of seventy-five men.”

  “Seventy-five and five, eighty. Ah! ah!” said Porthos.

  “If they fire all at once they will riddle us with balls.”

  “Certainly they will.”

  “Without reckoning,” added Aramis, “that the detonations might occasion fallings in of the cavern.”

  “Ay,” said Porthos, “a piece of falling rock just now grazed my shoulder a little.”

  “You see, then!”

  “Oh! it’s nothing.”

  “We must determine upon something quickly. Our Bretons are going to continue to roll the canoe towards the sea.”

  “Very well.”

  “We two will keep the powder, the balls, and the muskets here.”

  “But only two, my dear Aramis—we shall never fire three shots together,” said Porthos innocently, “the defence by musketry is a bad one.”

  “Find a better, then.”

  “I have found one,” said the giant eagerly; “I will place myself in ambuscade behind the pillar with this iron bar, and invisible, unattackable if they come on in floods, I can let my bar fall upon their skulls, thirty times in a minute. Hein! what do you think of the project? You smile!”

  “Excellent, dear friend, perfect! I approve it greatly; only you will frighten them, and half of them will remain outside to take us by famine. What we want, my good friend, is the entire destruction of the troop; a single man left standing ruins us.”

  “You are right, my friend, but how can we attract them, pray?”

  “By not stirring, my good Porthos.”

  “Well! we won’t stir, then; but when they shall be all together—”

  “Then leave it to me! I have an idea.”

  “If it is thus, and your idea be a good one—and your idea is most likely to be good—I am satisfied.”

  “To your ambuscade, Porthos, and count how many enter.”

  “But you, what will you do?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself about me; I have a task to perform.”

  “I think I can hear cries.”

  “It is they. To your post. Keep within reach of my voice and hand.”

  Porthos took refuge in the second compartment, which was absolutely black with darkness. Aramis glided into the third; the giant held in his hand an iron bar of about fifty pounds weight. Porthos handled this lever, which had been used in rolling the barque, with marvellous facility. During this time, the Bretons had pushed the barque to the beach. In the enlightened compartment, Aramis, stooping and concealed, was busied in some mysterious manoeuvre. A command was given in a loud voice. It was the last order of the captain commandant. Twenty-five men jumped from the upper rocks into the first compartment of the grotto, and having taken their ground, began to fire. The echoes growled, the hissing of the balls cut the air, an opaque smoke filled the vault.

  “To the left! to the left!” cried Biscarrat, who, in his first assault, had seen the passage to the second chamber, and who, animated by the smell of powder, wished to guide his soldiers in that direction. The troop accordingly precipitated themselves to the left—the passage gradually growing narrower. Biscarrat, with his hands stretched forward, devoted to death, marched in advance of the muskets. “Come on! come on!” exclaimed he, “I see daylight!”

  “Strike, Porthos! ” cried the sepulchral voice of Aramis.

  Porthos heaved a heavy sigh—but he obeyed. The iron bar fell full and direct upon the head of Biscarrat, who was dead before he had ended his cry. Then the formidable lever rose ten times in ten seconds, and made ten corpses. The soldiers could see nothing; they heard sighs and groans; they stumbled over dead bodies, but as they had no conception of the cause of all this, they came forward jostling each other. The implacable bar, still falling, annihilated the first platoon, without a single sound having warned the second which was quietly advancing, only this second platoon, commanded by the captain, had broken a thin fir, growing on the shore, and, with its resinous branches twisted together, the captain had made a flambeau. On arriving at the compartment where Porthos, like the exterminating angel, had destroyed all he touched, the first rank drew back in terror. No firing had replied to that of the guards, and yet their way was stopped by a heap of dead bodies—they literally walked in blood. Porthos was still behind his pillar. The captain, on enlightening with the trembling flame of the fir this frightful carnage, of which he in vain sought the cause, drew back towards the pillar, behind which Porthos was concealed. Then a gigantic hand issued from the shade, and fastened on the throat of the captain, who uttered a stifled rattle; his outstretched arms beating the air, the torch fell and was extinguished in blood. A second after the corpse of the captain fell close to the extinguished torch, and added another body to the heap of dead which blocked up the passage. All this was effected as mysteriously as if by magic. At hearing the rattling in the throat of the captain, the soldiers who accompanied him had turned round; they had caught a glimpse of his extended arms, his eyes starting from their sockets, and then the torch fell and they were left in darkness. From an unreflective, instinctive, mechanical feeling, the lieutenant cried,—“Fire!”

  Immediately a volley of musketry flamed, thundered, roared in the cavern, bringing down enormous fragments from the vaults. The cavern was lighted for an instant by this discharge, and then immediately returned to a darkness rendered still thicker by the smoke. To this succeeded a profound silence, broken only by the steps of the third brigade, now entering the cavern.

  78

  The Death of a Titan

  AT THE MOMENT WHEN Porthos, more accustomed to the darkness than all these men coming from open daylight, was looking round him to see if in this night Aramis were not making him some signal, he felt his arm gently 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 amidst the noise of the third brigade, which continued to advance, amidst the imprecations of the guards left alive, of the dying, rattling their last sigh, Aramis and Porthos glided imperceptibly along the granite walls of the cavern. Aramis led Porthos into the last but one compartment, and showed him, in a hollow of the rocky wall, a barrel of powder weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to which he had just attached a match. “My friend,” said he to Porthos, “you will take this barrel, the match of which I am going to set fire to, and throw it amidst our 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, my Jupiter, hurl your thunder-bolt among them.”

  “Light it,” repeated Porthos.

  “On my part,” continued Aramis, “I will join our Bretons, and help them to get the canoe to the sea. I will wait for you on the shore; launch it strongly, 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 even attempt 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 his hands, and fell back to the outlet of the cavern where the three rowers awaited him.

  Porthos, left alone, applied the spark bravely to the match. The spark,—a feeble spark, first principle of a conflagration—shone in the darkness like a fire-fly, then was deadened against the match which it enflamed, Porthos enlivening the flame with his breath. The smoke was a little dispersed, and by the li
ght of the sparkling match, objects might, for two seconds, be distinguished. It was a short but a splendid spectacle, that of this giant, pale, bloody, his countenance lighted by the fire of the match burning in surrounding darkness! The soldiers saw him—they saw the barrel he held in his hand—they at once understood what was going to happen. Then, these men, already filled with terror at the sight of what had been accomplished—filled with terror at thinking of what was going to be accomplished, threw forth together one shriek of agony. Some endeavoured to fly, but they encountered the third brigade, which barred their passage; others mechanically took aim, and attempted to fire their discharged muskets; others fell upon their knees. Two or three officers cried out to Porthos to promise him his liberty if he would spare their lives. The lieutenant of the third brigade commanded his men to fire; but the guards had before them their terrified companions, who served as a living rampart for Porthos. We have said that the light produced by the spark and the match did not last more than two seconds; but during these two seconds this is what it illuminated—in the first place, the giant, enlarging 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 a shapeless monster expiring in the night. Every breath of Porthos, whilst enlivening the match, sent towards this heap of bodies a sulphurous hue mingled with streaks of purple. In addition to this principal group, scattered about the grotto, as the chance of death or the surprise of the blow had stretched them, some isolated bodies seemed to threaten by their gaping wounds. Above the ground, soaked by pools of blood, rose heavy and sparkling, the short, thick pillars of the cavern, of which the strongly marked shades threw out the luminous particles. And all this was seen by the tremulous light of a match attached to a barrel of powder; that is to say, a torch which, whilst throwing a light upon the dead past, showed the death to come.

  As I have said, this spectacle did not last above two seconds. During this short space of time an officer of the third brigade got together eight men armed with muskets, and, through an opening, ordered them to fire upon Porthos. But they who received the order to fire trembled so, that three guards fell by the discharge, and the five other balls went hissing to splinter the vault, plough the ground, or indent the sides of the cavern.

  A burst of laughter replied to this volley; then the arm of the giant swung 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, cleared the barricade of dead bodies, and fell amidst a group of shrieking soldiers, who threw themselves on their faces. The officer had followed the brilliant train in the air; he endeavoured to precipitate himself upon the barrel and tear out the match before it reached the powder it contained. Useless devotedness! the air had made the flame attached to the conductor more active; the match, which at rest might have burnt five minutes, was consumed in thirty seconds, and the infernal work exploded. Furious vortices, hissings of sulphur and nitre, devouring ravages of the fire which caught to objects, the terrible thunder of the explosion, this is what the second which followed the two seconds we have described, disclosed in that cavern, equal in horrors to a cavern of demons. The rock split like planks of deal under the axe. A jet of fire, smoke, and debris sprang up from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as it mounted. The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, and the sand itself, an instrument of pain when launched from its hardened bed, riddled the face with its myriads of cutting atoms. Cries, howlings, imprecations, and existences—all were extinguished in one 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 a grey winding sheet and smoking over these dismal funerals. And now, seek in this burning tomb, in this subterraneous volcano, seek for the King’s guards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek for the officers brilliant in gold; seek for the arms upon which they depended for their defence; seek for the stones that have killed them, the ground that has borne them. One single man has made of all this a chaos more confused, more shapeless, more terrible than the chaos which existed an hour before God had created the world. There remained nothing of the three compartments—nothing by which God could have known His own work. As to Porthos, after having hurled the barrel of powder amidst his enemies, he had fled as Aramis had directed him to do, and had gained the last compartment, into which air, light, and sunshine penetrated through the opening. Therefore, scarcely had he turned the angle which separated the third compartment from the fourth when he perceived at a hundred paces from him the barque dancing on the waves; there were his friends, there was liberty, there was life after victory. Six more of his formidable strides, and he would be out of the vault; out of the vault! two or three vigorous springs and he would reach the canoe. Suddenly he felt his knees give way; his knees appeared powerless, his legs to yield under him.

  “Oh! oh!” murmured he, “there is my fatigue seizing me again! I can walk no farther! What is this?”

  Aramis perceived him through the opening, and unable to conceive what could 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 muscle of his body—“oh, but I cannot.” While saying these words he fell upon his knees, but with his robust hands he clung to the rocks, and raised himself up again.

  “Quick! quick!” repeated Aramis, bending forward towards the shore, as if to draw Porthos towards him with his arms.

  “Here I am,” stammered Porthos, collecting all his strength to make one step more.

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

  “Make haste, monseigneur!” shouted the Bretons to Porthos, who was floundering 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; the sea flowed back as if driven by the blast of fire which darted from the grotto as if from the jaws of a gigantic chimera; the reflux carried the barque out twenty yards; the rocks cracked to their base, and separated like blocks beneath the operation of wedges; a portion of the vault was carried up towards heaven, as if by rapid currents; the rose-coloured and green fire of the sulphur, the black lava of the argillaceous liquefactions clashed and combated for an instant beneath a majestic dome of smoke; then, at first oscillated, then declined, then fell successively the long angles of rock which the violence of the explosion had not been able to uproot from their bed of ages; they bowed to each other like grave and slow old men, then prostrated themselves, embedded for ever in their dusty tomb.

  This frightful shock seemed to restore to Porthos the strength he had lost; he arose, himself a giant among these giants. But at the moment he was flying between the double hedge of granite phantoms, these latter, which were no longer supported by the corresponding links, began to roll with a crash around this Titan, who looked as if precipitated from heaven amidst rocks which he had just been launching at it. Porthos felt the earth beneath his feet shaken by this long rending. He extended his vast hands to the right and left to repulse the falling rocks. A gigantic block was held back by each of his extended hands; he bent his head and a third granite mass sank between his two shoulders. For an instant the arms of Porthos had given way, but the Hercules united all his forces, and the two walls of the prison in which he was buried fell back slowly and gave him place. For an instant he appeared in this frame of granite like the ancient angel of chaos, but in pushing back the lateral rocks, he lost his point of support for the monolith, which weighed upon his strong shoulders, and the monolith, weighing upon him with all its weight, brought the giant down upon his knees. The lateral rocks, for an instant pushed back, drew together again, and added their weight to the primitive weight w
hich would have been sufficient to crush ten men. The giant fell without crying for help; he fell while answering Aramis with words of encouragement and hope, and, thanks to the powerful arch of his hands, for an instant, he might believe that, like Enceladus, he should shake off the triple load. But, by degrees, Aramis saw the block sink; the hands strung for an instant, the arms stiffened for a last effort, gave way, the extended shoulders sank wounded and torn, and the rock continued to lower gradually.

  “Porthos! Porthos!” cried Aramis, tearing his hair. “Porthos! where are you? Speak!”

  “There, there!” murmured Porthos, with a voice growing evidently weaker, “Patience! patience!”

  Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when the impulse of the fall augmented the weight; the enormous rock sat down, pressed by the two others which sank in from the sides, and, as it were, swallowed up Porthos in a sepulchre of broken stones. On hearing the dying voice of his 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 the barque. The last rattles of the valiant struggler guided them amidst the ruins. Aramis, animated, active, and young as at twenty, sprang towards the triple mass, and with his hands, delicate as those of a woman, raised by a miracle of vigour a corner of the immense sepulchre of granite. Then he caught a glimpse, in the darkness of that grave, of the still brilliant eye of his friend, to whom the momentary lifting of the mass restored that moment of respiration. The two men came rushing in, grasped their iron levers, united their triple strength, not merely to raise it, but to sustain it. All was useless. The three men slowly gave way with cries of grief, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeing them exhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in a jeering tone those 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 hand whitened, and the Titan sank quite down, breathing his last sigh. With him sank the rock, which, even in his agony, he had still held up. The three 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.