The Man in the Iron Mask
Page 57
Chapter LVII. Athos's Vision.
When this fainting of Athos had ceased, the comte, almost ashamed ofhaving given way before this superior natural event, dressed himselfand ordered his horse, determined to ride to Blois, to open more certaincorrespondences with either Africa, D'Artagnan, or Aramis. In fact, thisletter from Aramis informed the Comte de la Fere of the bad successof the expedition of Belle-Isle. It gave him sufficient details of thedeath of Porthos to move the tender and devoted heart of Athos to itsinnermost fibers. Athos wished to go and pay his friend Porthos a lastvisit. To render this honor to his companion in arms, he meant to sendto D'Artagnan, to prevail upon him to recommence the painful voyage toBelle-Isle, to accomplish in his company that sad pilgrimage to the tombof the giant he had so much loved, then to return to his dwelling toobey that secret influence which was conducting him to eternity by amysterious road. But scarcely had his joyous servants dressed theirmaster, whom they saw with pleasure preparing for a journey which mightdissipate his melancholy; scarcely had the comte's gentlest horse beensaddled and brought to the door, when the father of Raoul felt hishead become confused, his legs give way, and he clearly perceivedthe impossibility of going one step further. He ordered himself to becarried into the sun; they laid him upon his bed of moss where he passeda full hour before he could recover his spirits. Nothing could be morenatural than this weakness after then inert repose of the latter days.Athos took a _bouillon_, to give him strength, and bathed his driedlips in a glassful of the wine he loved the best--that old Anjou winementioned by Porthos in his admirable will. Then, refreshed, free inmind, he had his horse brought again; but only with the aid of hisservants was he able painfully to climb into the saddle. He did not go ahundred paces; a shivering seized him again at the turning of the road.
"This is very strange!" said he to his _valet de chambre_, whoaccompanied 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. Amovement, of which Athos was unconscious, had checked the bit.
"Something," said Athos, "wills that I should go no further. Supportme," added he, stretching out his arms; "quick! come closer! I feel mymuscles relax--I shall fall from my horse."
The valet had seen the movement made by his master at the moment hereceived the order. He went up to him quickly, received the comte in hisarms, and as they were not yet sufficiently distant from the housefor the servants, who had remained at the door to watch their master'sdeparture, not to perceive the disorder in the usually regularproceeding of the comte, the valet called his comrades by gestures andvoice, and all hastened to his assistance. Athos had gone but a fewsteps on his return, when he felt himself better again. His strengthseemed to revive and with it the desire to go to Blois. He made hishorse turn round: but, at the animal's first steps, he sunk again into astate 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, andcarried him as quickly as possible into the house. Everything wasprepared 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 goneon horseback, to gain an hour over the courier of Blois," replied his_valet de chambre_.
"Thank you," replied Athos, with his placid smile.
The comte fell asleep, but his disturbed slumber resembled torturerather than repose. The servant who watched him saw several times theexpression of internal suffering shadowed on his features. Perhaps Athoswas dreaming.
The day passed away. Blaisois's son returned; the courier had broughtno news. The comte reckoned the minutes with despair; he shuddered whenthose minutes made an hour. The idea that he was forgotten seized himonce, and brought on a fearful pang of the heart. Everybody in the househad given up all hopes of the courier--his hour had long passed. Fourtimes the express sent to Blois had repeated his journey, and there wasnothing to the address of the comte. Athos knew that the courier onlyarrived once a week. Here, then, was a delay of eight mortal days to beendured. He commenced the night in this painful persuasion. All that asick man, irritated by suffering, can add of melancholy suppositions toprobabilities already gloomy, Athos heaped up during the early hours ofthis dismal night. The fever rose: it invaded the chest, where the firesoon caught, according to the expression of the physician, who had beenbrought back from Blois by Blaisois at his last journey. Soon it gainedthe head. The physician made two successive bleedings, which dislodgedit for the time, but left the patient very weak, and without power ofaction in anything but his brain. And yet this redoubtable fever hadceased. It besieged with its last palpitations the tense extremities; itended by yielding as midnight struck.
The physician, seeing the incontestable improvement, returned to Blois,after having ordered some prescriptions, and declared that the comte wassaved. Then commenced for Athos a strange, indefinable state. Free tothink, his mind turned towards Raoul, that beloved son. His imaginationpenetrated the fields of Africa in the environs of Gigelli, where M. deBeaufort must have landed with his army. A waste of gray rocks, renderedgreen in certain parts by the waters of the sea, when it lashed theshore in storms and tempest. Beyond, the shore, strewed over with theserocks like gravestones, ascended, in form of an amphitheater amongmastic-trees and cactus, a sort of small town, full of smoke, confusednoises, and terrified movements. All of a sudden, from the bosom ofthis smoke arose a flame, which succeeded, creeping along the houses,in covering the entire surface of the town, and increased by degrees,uniting in its red and angry vortices tears, screams, and supplicatingarms outstretched to Heaven.
There was, for a moment, a frightful _pele-mele_ of timbers fallingto pieces, of swords broken, of stones calcined, trees burnt anddisappearing. It was a strange thing that in this chaos, in which Athosdistinguished raised arms, in which he heard cries, sobs, and groans,he did not see one human figure. The cannon thundered at a distance,musketry madly barked, the sea moaned, flocks made their escape,bounding over the verdant slope. But not a soldier to apply the matchto the batteries of cannon, not a sailor to assist in maneuvering thefleet, not a shepherd in charge of the flocks. After the ruin of thevillage, the destruction of the forts which dominated it, a ruin anddestruction magically wrought without the co-operation of a single humanbeing, the flames were extinguished, the smoke began to subside, thendiminished in intensity, paled and disappeared entirely. Night then cameover the scene; night dark upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament.The large blazing stars which spangled the African sky glittered andgleamed without illuminating anything.
A long silence ensued, which gave, for a moment, repose to the troubledimagination of Athos; and as he felt that that which he saw was notterminated, he applied more attentively the eyes of his understandingon the strange spectacle which his imagination had presented. Thisspectacle was soon continued for him. A mild pale moon rose behind thedeclivities of the coast, streaking at first the undulating ripples ofthe sea, which appeared to have calmed after the roaring it had sentforth during the vision of Athos--the moon, we say, shed its diamondsand opals upon the briers and bushes of the hills. The gray rocks, somany silent and attentive phantoms, appeared to raise their heads toexamine likewise the field of battle by the light of the moon, and Athosperceived that the field, empty during the combat, was now strewn withfallen bodies.
An inexpressible shudder of fear and horror seized his soul as herecognized the white and blue uniforms of the soldiers of Picardy,with their long pikes and blue handles, and muskets marked with the_fleur-de-lis_ on the butts. When he saw all the gaping wounds, lookingup to the bright heavens as if to demand back of them the souls to whichthey ha
d opened a passage,--when he saw the slaughtered horses, stiff,their tongues hanging out at one side of their mouths, sleeping in theshiny blood congealed around them, staining their furniture and theirmanes,--when he saw the white horse of M. de Beaufort, with his headbeaten to pieces, in the first ranks of the dead, Athos passed a coldhand over his brow, which he was astonished not to find burning. He wasconvinced by this touch that he was present, as a spectator, withoutdelirium's dreadful aid, the day after the battle fought upon the shoresof Gigelli by the army of the expedition, which he had seen leave thecoast of France and disappear upon the dim horizon, and of which he hadsaluted with thought and gesture the last cannon-shot fired by the dukeas a signal of farewell to his country.
Who can paint the mortal agony with which his soul followed, like avigilant eye, these effigies of clay-cold soldiers, and examined them,one after the other, to see if Raoul slept among them? Who can expressthe intoxication of joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thankedHim for not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead?In fact, fallen in their ranks, stiff, icy, the dead, still recognizablewith ease, seemed to turn with complacency towards the Comte de la Fere,to be the better seen by him, during his sad review. But yet, hewas astonished, while viewing all these bodies, not to perceive thesurvivors. To such a point did the illusion extend, that this visionwas for him a real voyage made by the father into Africa, to obtain moreexact information respecting his son.
Fatigued, therefore, with having traversed seas and continents, hesought repose under one of the tents sheltered behind a rock, on thetop of which floated the white _fleur-de-lised_ pennon. He looked fora soldier to conduct him to the tent of M. de Beaufort. Then, while hiseye was wandering over the plain, turning on all sides, he saw a whiteform appear behind the scented myrtles. This figure was clothed in thecostume of an officer; it held in its hand a broken sword; it advancedslowly towards Athos, who, stopping short and fixing his eyes upon it,neither spoke nor moved, but wished to open his arms, because in thissilent officer he had already recognized Raoul. The comte attempted toutter a cry, but it was stifled in his throat. Raoul, with a gesture,directed him to be silent, placing his finger on his lips and drawingback by degrees, without Athos being able to see his legs move. Thecomte, still paler than Raoul, followed his son, painfully traversingbriers and bushes, stones and ditches, Raoul not appearing to touch theearth, no obstacle seeming to impede the lightness of his march.The comte, whom the inequalities of the path fatigued, soon stopped,exhausted. Raoul still continued to beckon him to follow him. The tenderfather, to whom love restored strength, made a last effort, and climbedthe mountain after the young man, who attracted him by gesture and bysmile.
At length he gained the crest of the hill, and saw, thrown out in black,upon the horizon whitened by the moon, the aerial form of Raoul.Athos reached forth his hand to get closer to his beloved son upon theplateau, and the latter also stretched out his; but suddenly, as if theyoung man had been drawn away in his own despite, still retreating, heleft the earth, and Athos saw the clear blue sky shine between the feetof his child and the ground of the hill. Raoul rose insensibly into thevoid, smiling, still calling with gesture:--he departed towards heaven.Athos uttered a cry of tenderness and terror. He looked below again. Hesaw a camp destroyed, and all those white bodies of the royal army, likeso many motionless atoms. And, then, raising his head, he saw the figureof his son still beckoning him to climb the mystic void.