The doctor knew the temper of that mind; he appreciated the strength of that body; he reflected for a moment, told himself that words were useless, remedies absurd, and he left the chateau, exhorting Athos’s servants not to leave him for a moment.
The doctor being gone, Athos evinced neither anger nor vexation at having been disturbed. He did not even desire that all letters that came should be brought to him directly. He knew very well that every distraction which should arrive would be a joy, a hope, which his servants would have paid with their blood to procure him. Sleep had become rare. By intense thinking, Athos forgot himself, for a few hours at most, in a reverie more profound, more obscure than other people would have called a dream. This momentary repose which this forgetfulness afforded the body, fatigued the soul, for Athos lived a double life during these wanderings of his understanding. One night, he dreamt that Raoul was dressing himself in a tent, to go upon an expedition commanded by M. de Beaufort in person. The young man was sad; he clasped his cuirass slowly, and slowly he girded on his sword.
“What is the matter?” asked his father tenderly.
“What afflicts me is the death of Porthos, ever so dear a friend,” replied Raoul. “I suffer here of the grief you will feel at home.”
And the vision disappeared with the slumber of Athos. At daybreak one of his servants entered his master’s apartment, and gave him a letter which came from Spain.
“The writing of Aramis,” thought the Comte; and he read.
“Porthos is dead!” cried he, after the first lines. “Oh! Raoul, Raoul! thanks! thou keepest thy promise; thou warnest me!”
And Athos, seized with a mortal sweat, fainted in his bed, without any other cause than his weakness.
85
The Vision of Athos
WHEN THIS FAINTING OF Athos had ceased, the Comte, almost ashamed of having given way before this super-natural event, dressed himself and ordered his horse, determined to ride to Blois, to open more certain correspondence with either Africa, d‘Artagnan, or Aramis. In fact, this letter from Aramis informed the Comte de la Fère of the bad success of the expedition of Belle-Isle. It gave him sufficient details of the death of Porthos to move the tender and devoted heart of Athos to its last fibres. Athos wished to go and pay his friend Porthos a last visit. To render this honour to his companion in arms, he meant to send to d’Artagnan, to prevail upon him to recommence the painful voyage to Belle-Isle, to accomplish in his company that sad pilgrimage to the tomb of the giant he had so much loved, then to return to his dwelling to obey that secret influence which was conducting him to eternity by a mysterious road. But scarcely had his joyous servants dressed their master, whom they saw with pleasure preparing himself for a journey which might dissipate his melancholy; scarcely had the Comte’s gentlest horse been saddled and brought to the door, than the father of Raoul felt his head become confused, his legs give way, and he clearly perceived the impossibility of going one step farther. He ordered himself to be carried into the sun; they laid him upon his bed of moss, where he passed a full hour before he could recover his spirits. Nothing could be more natural than this weakness after the inert repose of the latter days. Athos took a basin of soup to give him strength, and bathed his dried lips in a glassful of wine he loved the best—that old Anjou wine mentioned by Porthos in his admirable will. Then, refreshed, free in mind, he had his horse brought again; but it required the aid of his servants to mount painfully into the saddle. He did not go a hundred paces; a shivering seized him again at the turning of the road.
“This is very strange!” said he to his valet-de-chambre, who accompanied him.
“Let us stop, monsieur—I conjure you!” replied the faithful servant; “how pale you are getting!”
“That will not prevent my pursuing my route, now I have once started,” replied the Comte. And he gave his horse his head again. But suddenly, the animal, instead of obeying the thought of his master, stopped. A movement, of which Athos was unconscious, had checked the bit.
“Something,” said Athos, “wills that I should go no farther. Support me,” added he, stretching out his arms; “quick! come closer! I feel all my muscles relax, and I shall fall from my horse.”
The valet had seen the movement made by his master at the moment he received the order. He went up to him quickly, received the Comte in his arms, and as they were not yet sufficiently distant from the house for the servants, who had remained at the door to watch their master’s departure, not to perceive the disorder in the usually regular proceeding of the Comte, the valet called his comrades by gestures and voice, and all hastened to his assistance. Athos had gone but a few steps on his return, when he felt himself better again. His strength seemed to revive, and with it the desire to go to Blois. He made his horse turn round; but, at the animal’s first steps, he sank again into a state of torpor and anguish.
“Well! decidedly,” said he, “it is WILLED that I should stay at home.” His people flocked around him; they lifted him from his horse, and carried him as quickly as possible into the house. Everything was soon prepared in his chamber, and they put him to bed.
“You will be sure to remember,” said he, disposing himself to sleep, “that I expect letters from Africa this very day.”
“Monsieur will no doubt hear with pleasure that Blaisois’s son is gone on horseback, to gain an hour over the courier of Blois,” replied his valet-de-chambre.
“Thank you,” said Athos, with his bland smile.
The Comte fell asleep, but his disturbed slumber resembled suffering more than repose. The servant who watched him saw several times the expression of interior torture thrown out upon his features. Perhaps Athos was dreaming. The day passed away. Blaisois’s son returned: the courier had brought no news. The Comte reckoned the minutes with despair; he shuddered when those minutes had formed an hour. The idea that he was forgotten seized him once, and brought on a fearful pang of the heart. Everybody in the house had given up all hopes of the courier—his hour had long passed. Four times the express sent to Blois had reiterated his journey, and there was nothing to the address of the Comte. Athos knew that the courier only arrived once a week. Here, then, was a delay of eight mortal days to be endured. He commenced the night in this painful persuasion. All that a sick man, irritated by suffering, can add of melancholy suppositions to probabilities always sad, Athos heaped up during the early hours of this dismal night. The fever rose; it invaded the chest, where the fire soon caught, according to the expression of the physician, who had been brought back from Blois by Blaisois at his last journey. It soon gained the head. The physician made two successive bleedings, which unlodged it, but left the patient very weak, and without power of action in anything but his brain. And yet this redoubtable fever had ceased. It besieged with its last palpitations the stiffened extremities; it ended by yielding as midnight struck.
The physician, seeing the incontestable improvement, returned to Blois, after having ordered some prescriptions, and declared that the Comte was saved. Then commenced for Athos a strange, indefinable state. Free to think, his mind turned towards Raoul, that beloved son. His imagination painted the fields of Africa in the environs of Gigelli, where M. de Beaufort must have landed his army. There were grey rocks, rendered green in certain parts by the waters of the sea, when it lashed the shore in storms and tempests. Beyond, the shore, strewn over with these rocks like tombs, ascended, in form of an amphitheatre, among mastic-trees and cacti, a sort of small town, full of smoke, confused noises and terrified movements. All on a sudden, from the bosom of this smoke arose a flame, which succeeded, by creeping along the houses, in covering the whole surface of the town, and which increased by degrees, uniting in its red vortices tears, cries, arms extended towards heaven.
There was, for a moment, a frightful confusion of houses falling to pieces, of swords broken, of stones calcined, of trees burnt and disappearing. It was a strange thing that in this chaos, in which Athos distinguished raised arms, in which he heard cries,
sobs and groans, he did not see one human figure. The cannon thundered at a distance, musketry cracked, the sea moaned, flocks made their escape, bounding over the verdant slope. But not a soldier to apply the match to the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in manoeuvring the fleet, not a shepherd for the flocks. After the ruin of the village, and the destruction of the forts which dominated it—a ruin and a destruction operated magically, without the cooperation of a single human being—the flame was extinguished, the smoke began to descend, then diminished in intensity, paled, and disappeared entirely. Night then came over the scene; a night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament. The large, blazing stars which sparkled in the African sky shone without lighting anything even around them.
A long silence ensued, which gave, for a moment, repose to the troubled imagination of Athos; and, as he felt that that which he saw was not terminated, he applied more attentively the looks of his understanding upon the strange spectacle which his imagination had presented. This spectacle was soon continued for him. A mild and pale moon arose behind the declivities of the coast, and streaking at first the undulating ripples of the sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roarings it had sent forth during the vision of Athos—the moon, say we, shed its diamonds and opals upon the briers and bushes of the hills. The grey rocks, like so many silent and attentive phantoms, appeared to raise their verdant heads to examine likewise the field of battle by the light of the moon, and Athos perceived that the field, entirely void during the combat, was now strewed over with fallen bodies.
An inexpressible shudder of fear and horror seized his soul when he recognised the white and blue uniform of the soldiers of Picardy, with their long pikes and blue handles, and their muskets marked with the fleur-de-lis on the butts. When he saw all the gaping, cold wounds, looking up to the azure heavens as if to demand back of them the souls to which they had opened a passage,—when he saw the slaughtered horses, stiff, with their tongues hanging out at one side of their mouths, sleeping in the icy blood pooled around them, staining their furniture and their manes,—when he saw the white horse of M. de Beaufort, with his head beaten to pieces, in the first ranks of the dead, Athos passed a cold hand over his brow, which he was astonished not to find burning. He was convinced by this touch that he was present, as a spectator, without fever, at the day after a battle fought upon the shores of Gigelli by the army of the expedition, which he had seen leave the coasts of France and disappear in the horizon, and of which he had saluted with thought and gesture the last cannon-shot fired by the Duc as a signal of farewell to his country.
Who can paint the mortal agony with which his soul followed, like a vigilant eye, the trace of those dead bodies, and examined them, one after another, to see if Raoul slept among them? Who can express the intoxication of joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thanked Him for not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead? In fact, fallen dead in their ranks, stiff, icy, all these dead, easy to be recognised, seemed to turn with complacency towards the Comte de la Fère, to be the better seen by him during his funeral inspection. But yet, he was astonished, while viewing all these bodies, not to perceive the survivors. To such a point did the illusion extend, that this vision was for him a real voyage made by the father into Africa, to obtain more exact information respecting his son.
Fatigued, therefore, with having traversed seas and continents, he sought repose under one of the tents sheltered behind a rock, on the top of which floated the white fleur-de-lised pennon. He looked for a soldier to conduct him to the tent of M. de Beaufort. Then, while his eye was wandering over the plain, turning on all sides, he saw a white form appear behind the resinous myrtles. This figure was clothed in the costume of an officer: it held in its hand a broken sword: it advanced slowly towards Athos, who, stopping short and fixing his eyes upon it, neither spoke nor moved, but wished to open his arms, because, in this silent and pale officer, he had just recognised Raoul. The Comte attempted to utter a cry, but it remained stifled in his throat. Raoul, with a gesture, directed him to be silent, placing his finger on his lips and drawing back by degrees, without Athos being able to see his legs move. The Comte, more pale than Raoul, more trembling, followed his son, traversing painfully briers and bushes, stones and ditches, Raoul not appearing to touch the earth, and no obstacle impeding the lightness of his march. The Comte, whom the unevenness of the path fatigued, soon stopped, exhausted. Raoul still continued to beckon him to follow him. The tender father, to whom love restored strength, made a last effort, and climbed the mountain after the young man, who attracted him by his gesture and his smile.
At length he gained the crest of the hill, and saw, thrown out in black, upon the horizon whitened by the moon, the elongated aerial form of Raoul. Athos stretched out his hand to get closer to his beloved son upon the plateau, and the latter also stretched out his; but suddenly, as if the young man had been drawn away in spite of himself, still retreating, he left the earth, and Athos saw the clear blue sky shine between the feet of his child and the ground of the hill. Raoul rose insensibly into the void, still smiling, still calling with a gesture:—he departed towards heaven. Athos uttered a cry of terrified tenderness. He looked below again. He saw a camp destroyed, and all those white bodies of the royal army, like so many motionless atoms. And, then, when raising his head, he saw still, still, his son beckoning him to ascend with him.
86
The Angel of Death
ATHOS WAS AT THIS part of his marvellous vision, when the charm was suddenly broken by a great noise rising from the outward gates of the house. A horse was heard galloping over the hard gravel of the great alley, and the sound of most noisy and animated conversations ascended to the chamber in which the Comte was dreaming. Athos did not stir from the place he occupied; he scarcely turned his head towards the door to ascertain the sooner what these noises could be. A heavy step ascended the stairs; the horse which had recently galloped, departed slowly towards the stables. Great hesitation appeared in the steps, which by degrees approached the chamber of Athos. A door then was opened, and Athos, turning a little towards the part of the room the noise came from, cried in a weak voice:—
“It is a courier from Africa, is it not?”
“No, Monsieur le Comte,” replied a voice which made the father of Raoul start upright in his bed.
“Grimaud!” murmured he. And the sweat began to pour down his cheeks. Grimaud appeared in the door-way. It was no longer the Grimaud we have seen, still young with courage and devotion, when he jumped the first into the boat destined to convey Raoul de Bragelonne to the vessels of the royal fleet. He was a stern and pale old man, his clothes covered with dust, with a few scattered hairs whitened by old age. He trembled whilst leaning against the door-frame, and was near falling on seeing, by the light of the lamps, the countenance of his master. These two men, who had lived so long together in a community of intelligence, and whose eyes, accustomed to economise expressions, knew how to say so many things silently—these two old friends, one as noble as the other in heart, if they were unequal in fortune and birth, remained interdicted whilst looking at each other. By the exchange of a single glance, they had just read to the bottom of each other’s hearts. Grimaud bore upon his countenance the impression of a grief already old, of a dismal familiarity with it. He appeared to have no longer in use but one single version of his thoughts. As formerly he was accustomed not to speak much, he was now accustomed not to smile at all. Athos read at a glance all these shades upon the visage of his faithful servant, and in the same tone he would have employed to speak to Raoul in his dream,—
“Grimaud,” said he, “Raoul is dead, is he not?”
Behind Grimaud, the other servants listened breathlessly with their eyes fixed upon the bed of their sick master. They heard the terrible question, and an awful silence ensued.
“Yes,” replied the old man, heaving up the monosyllable from his chest with a hoarse, broken sigh.
Then arose voices of la
mentation, which groaned without measure, and filled with regrets and prayers the chamber where the agonised father sought with his eyes for the portrait of his son. This was for Athos like the transition which led to his dream. Without uttering a cry, without shedding a tear, patient, mild, resigned as a martyr, he raised his eyes towards heaven, in order to there see again, rising above the mountain of Gigelli, the beloved shade which was leaving him at the moment of Grimaud’s arrival. Without doubt, while looking towards the heavens, when resuming his marvellous dream, he repassed by the same road by which the vision, at once so terrible and so sweet, had led him before, for, after having gently closed his eyes, he reopened them and began to smile; he had just seen Raoul, who had smiled upon him. With his hands joined upon his breast, his face turned towards the window, bathed by the fresh air of night, which brought to his pillow the aroma of the flowers and the woods, Athos entered, never again to come out of it, into the contemplation of that paradise which the living never see. God willed, no doubt, to open to this elect the treasures of eternal beatitude, at the hour when other men tremble with the idea of being severely received by the Lord, and cling to this life they know, in the dread of the other life of which they get a glimpse by the dismal, murky torches of death. Athos was guided by the pure and serene soul of his son, which aspired to be like the paternal soul. Everything for this just man was melody and perfume in the rough road which souls take to return to the celestial country. After an hour of this ecstasy, Athos softly raised his hands, as white as wax; the smile did not quit his lips, and he murmured low, so low as scarcely to be audible, these three words addressed to God or to Raoul:
Man in the Iron Mask (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 75