Part 2
— Well! he said, addressing himself at once to father and son, we are consoling the child, it would seem?
— And you, ever kind, said Athos, you come to help me in this difficult task.
And, as he spoke, Athos clasped d'Artagnan's hand between both of his. Raoul thought he noticed that this pressure had a particular meaning apart from that of the words.
— Yes, answered the musketeer, scratching his moustache with the hand Athos left him free, yes, I come too...
— You are welcome, chevalier, not for the consolation you bring, but for your own sake. I am consoled.
And he attempted a smile sadder than any of the tears d'Artagnan had ever seen shed.
— So much the better! said d'Artagnan.
— Only, continued Raoul, you arrived just as the count was about to give me the details of his interview with the king. You permit it, do you not, that the count continue?
And the young man's eyes seemed to wish to read to the very bottom of the musketeer's heart.
— His interview with the king? said d'Artagnan in so natural a tone that there was no means of doubting his astonishment. You have seen the king, then, Athos?
Athos smiled.
— Yes, he said, I have seen him.
— Ah! indeed, you were ignorant that the count had seen His Majesty? asked Raoul, half reassured.
— Upon my word, yes! entirely.
— Then I am easier, said Raoul.
— Easier, and about what? asked Athos.
— Monsieur, said Raoul, forgive me; but, knowing the friendship with which you honor me, I feared lest you had somewhat too vividly expressed to His Majesty my grief and your indignation, and that then the king...
— And that then the king? repeated d'Artagnan. Come, finish, Raoul.
— Forgive me in your turn, Monsieur d'Artagnan, said Raoul. For an instant I trembled, I confess, that you might not be coming here as Monsieur d'Artagnan, but as captain of the musketeers.
— You are mad, my poor Raoul, cried d'Artagnan with a burst of laughter in which a close observer might perhaps have wished for more frankness.
— So much the better! said Raoul.
— Yes, mad, and do you know what I advise you?
— Speak, monsieur; coming from you, the counsel must be good.
— Well! I advise you, after your journey, after your visit to Monsieur de Guiche, after your visit to Madame, after your visit to Porthos, after your journey to Vincennes, I advise you to take some rest; go to bed, sleep twelve hours, and, upon waking, tire out a good horse for me.
And, drawing him to him, he kissed him as he would have done his own child. Athos did likewise; only, it was visible that the kiss was tenderer and the pressure stronger still in the father than in the friend.
The young man looked again at those two men, applying all the forces of his intelligence to penetrate them. But his gaze was blunted upon the laughing countenance of the musketeer and upon the calm and gentle face of the Count de La Fère.
— And where are you going, Raoul? asked the latter, seeing that Bragelonne was preparing to leave.
— Home, monsieur, answered the latter in his soft and sad voice.
— It is there, then, that one will find you, vicomte, if one has something to tell you?
— Yes, monsieur. Do you foresee having something to tell me?
— What do I know! said Athos.
— Yes, fresh consolations, said d'Artagnan, gently pushing Raoul toward the door.
Raoul, seeing this serenity in every gesture of the two friends, went out from the count's house, carrying with him only the sole feeling of his own particular sorrow.
— God be praised, said he, I may then think of nothing but myself.
And, wrapping himself in his cloak so as to hide from passers-by his afflicted face, he went out to return to his own lodgings, as he had promised Porthos.
The two friends had seen the young man withdraw with a like sentiment of commiseration.
Only, each had expressed it in a different fashion.
— Poor Raoul! had said Athos, letting escape a sigh.
— Poor Raoul! had said d'Artagnan, shrugging his shoulders.
Chapter CXCIX — Heu! miser!
"Poor Raoul!" had said Athos. "Poor Raoul!" had said d'Artagnan. Indeed, pitied by those two such strong men, Raoul must have been a most unhappy man.
Also, when he found himself alone face to face with himself, leaving behind him the intrepid friend and the indulgent father, when he recalled the king's avowal of that tenderness which stole from him his beloved Louise de La Vallière, he felt his heart break, as each of us has felt it break at the first destroyed illusion, at the first betrayed love.
— Oh! he murmured, it is then all over! Nothing more in life! Nothing to await, nothing to hope! Guiche told me so, my father told me so, Monsieur d'Artagnan told me so. All is then a dream in this world! That future pursued for ten years was a dream! This union of our hearts was a dream! This life all of love and happiness was a dream!
Poor fool to dream thus aloud and publicly, before my friends and my enemies, so that my friends grieve at my pains and my enemies laugh at my sorrows!...
Thus, my misfortune will become a glaring disgrace, a public scandal. Thus, tomorrow, I shall be shamefully pointed at with the finger!
And, despite the calm promised to his father and to d'Artagnan, Raoul uttered some words of muffled threat.
— And yet, continued he, if I were called de Wardes, and had at once the suppleness and the vigor of Monsieur d'Artagnan, I would laugh with my lips, I would convince women that this perfidious one, honored by my love, leaves me but one regret, that of having been deceived by her semblances of honesty; some flatterers would jest at the king at my expense; I would lie in wait on the path of the jesters, I would chastise some of them. Men would fear me and, at the third whom I had laid at my feet, I would be adored by women.
Yes, that is a course to take, and the Count de La Fère himself would not shrink from it. Has he not been tried, he too, in the midst of his youth, as I have just been? Has he not replaced love by intoxication? He has often told me so. Why should not I, in my turn, replace love by pleasure?
He suffered as much as I suffer, perhaps more! Is the history of one man then the history of all men? a trial more or less long, more or less painful? The voice of all humanity is but a long cry.
But what matters the pain of others to him who suffers? Does the wound opened in another breast soften the gaping wound upon our own? Does the blood flowing beside us staunch our blood? Does this universal anguish diminish the particular anguish? No, each suffers for himself, each struggles with his sorrow, each weeps his own tears.
And, besides, what has life been for me up to now? A cold and sterile arena where I have fought for others always, for myself never.
Now for a king, now for a woman.
The king betrayed me, the woman disdained me.
Oh! unhappy one!... Women! Could I not then make all of them expiate the crime of one of them?
What is needed for that?... To have no more heart, or to forget that one has one; to be strong, even against weakness; to lean always, even when one feels oneself breaking.
What is needed to arrive there? To be young, handsome, strong, valiant, rich. I am, or shall be, all that.
But honor? What is honor? A theory that each understands in his own fashion. My father said to me: "Honor is the respect of what one owes to others, and above all of what one owes to oneself." But de Guiche, but Manicamp, but de Saint-Aignan above all would say to me: "Honor consists in serving the passions and pleasures of one's king." That honor is easy and profitable. With that honor, I may keep my post at Court, become gentleman of the Chamber, have a fine and good regiment of my own. With that honor, I may be duke and peer.
The stain this woman has just imprinted on me, this sorrow with which she has just broken my heart, I, Raoul, her childhood friend, touches in nothing Monsieur de Bragelonne, good officer, brave captain who will cover himself with glory at the first encounter, and who will become a hundred times more than Mademoiselle de La Vallière is today, the king's mistress; for the king will not marry Mademoiselle de La Vallière, and the more he publicly declares her his mistress, the more he will thicken the band of shame he casts upon her brow in place of a crown, and, as men despise her as I despise her, I shall glory in it.
Alas! we had walked together, she and I, during the first, during the fairest third of our life, holding each other by the hand along the charming and flower-filled path of youth, and behold we arrive at a crossroads where she parts from me, where we are to follow a different road that will ever further separate us one from the other; and, to reach the end of that path, Lord, I am alone, I am in despair, I am annihilated!
O unhappy one!...
Raoul was at this point in his gloomy reflections, when his foot mechanically rested upon the threshold of his house. He had arrived there without seeing the streets through which he passed, without knowing how he had come; he pushed the door, continued to advance and climbed the stairs.
As in most houses of that epoch, the staircase was dark and the landings obscure. Raoul lodged on the first floor; he stopped to ring. Olivain appeared, took from his hands the sword and the cloak. Raoul himself opened the door which, from the antechamber, gave into a small salon rather richly furnished for a young man's salon, and all adorned with flowers by Olivain, who, knowing his master's tastes, had hastened to satisfy them, without troubling whether he noticed or did not notice this attention.
There was in the salon a portrait of La Vallière that La Vallière herself had drawn and had given to Raoul. This portrait, hung above a large chaise longue covered with dark-colored damask, was the first point toward which Raoul directed himself, the first object upon which he fixed his eyes. For the rest, Raoul yielded to his habit; it was, each time he returned home, this portrait which, before all else, attracted his eyes. This time, as always, he therefore went straight to the portrait, placed his knees upon the chaise longue, and stopped to regard it sadly.
He had his arms crossed upon his chest, his head gently raised, his eye calm and veiled, his mouth wrinkled by a bitter smile.
He looked at the adored image; then all that he had said passed again in his spirit, all that he had suffered assailed his heart, and, after a long silence:
— O unhappy one, said he for the third time.
Scarcely had he pronounced these two words, than a sigh and a plaint were heard behind him.
He turned quickly, and, in the corner of the salon, he perceived, standing, bent, veiled, a woman whom upon entering he had hidden behind the swinging of the door, and whom since he had not seen, having not turned around.
He advanced toward this woman, of whose presence no one had informed him, saluting and inquiring at once, when suddenly the lowered head rose, the drawn-aside veil revealed the face, and a white and sad countenance appeared to him.
Raoul drew back, as he would have done before a phantom.
— Louise! he cried with so despairing an accent, that one would not have thought the human voice could cast such a cry without all the fibers of the heart breaking.
— Will you do me the grace to seat yourself and to listen to me? said Louise, interrupting him with her gentlest voice.
Bragelonne looked at her an instant; then, sadly shaking his head, he seated himself or rather fell upon a chair.
— Speak, said he.
She cast a furtive glance around her. That glance was a prayer and asked far better for secrecy than, a moment before, her words had done.
Raoul rose, and, going to the door which he opened:
— Olivain, said he, I am at home to no one.
Then, turning back toward La Vallière:
— Is that what you desire? said he.
Nothing can render the effect that this word produced upon Louise, which signified: "You see that I still understand you, I."
She passed her handkerchief over her eyes to dry a rebellious tear; then, having collected herself an instant:
— Raoul, said she, turn not from me your gaze so good and so frank; you are not one of those men who despise a woman because she has given her heart, though that love make their unhappiness or wound them in their pride.
Raoul answered not.
— Alas! continued La Vallière, it is but too true; my cause is bad, and I know not with what phrase to begin. See here, I shall do better, I believe, to tell you quite simply what befalls me. As I shall speak the truth, I shall always find my right path, in the darkness, in the hesitation, in the obstacles I have to brave, to relieve my overflowing heart which wishes to pour itself at your feet.
Raoul continued to keep silence.
La Vallière looked at him with an air that meant: "Encourage me! for pity's sake, a word!"
But Raoul was silent and the young girl must continue.
Chapter CC — Wounds upon Wounds
Mademoiselle de La Vallière, for it was indeed she, made a step forward.
— Yes, Louise, she murmured.
But in that interval, short though it was, Raoul had had time to recover himself.
— You, mademoiselle? said he.
Then, with an indefinable accent:
— You here? added he.
— Yes, Raoul, repeated the young girl; yes, I, who was awaiting you.
— Pardon; when I came in, I knew not...
— Yes, and I had recommended Olivain to let you remain ignorant...
She hesitated; and, as Raoul was not in haste to answer her, there fell a silence of an instant, a silence during which one might have heard the beating of those two hearts, no longer in unison one with the other, but as violently the one as the other.
It was for Louise to speak. She made an effort.
— I had to speak with you, said she; it was absolutely necessary that I should see you... myself... alone... I have not shrunk before a step which must remain secret; for no one, except you, would understand it, Monsieur de Bragelonne.
— Indeed, mademoiselle, stammered Raoul, all bewildered, all breathless, and I myself, despite the good opinion you have of me, I confess...
— A little while ago, said she, Monsieur de Saint-Aignan came to me from the king.
She lowered her eyes.
For his part, Raoul turned away his, that he might see nothing.
— Monsieur de Saint-Aignan came to me from the king, she repeated, and he told me that you knew all.
And she tried to look full at him who received this wound after so many other wounds; but it was impossible for her to meet Raoul's eyes.
— He told me that you had conceived against me a legitimate anger.
This time, Raoul looked at the young girl, and a disdainful smile curled his lips.
— Oh! continued she, I beseech you, say not that you felt toward me aught but anger. Raoul, wait until I have told you all, wait until I have spoken to you to the end.
Raoul's brow cleared by the force of his will; the line of his mouth vanished.
— And first, said La Vallière, first, hands joined, brow bent, I ask your pardon as of the most generous, as of the noblest of men. If I let you remain ignorant of what passed within me, never at least would I have consented to deceive you. Oh! I beseech you, Raoul, I ask you on my knees, answer me, were it an injury. I had rather an injury from your lips than a suspicion from your heart.
— I admire your sublimity, mademoiselle, said Raoul, making an effort upon himself to remain calm. To let one remain ignorant that one deceives is loyal; but to deceive, it appears that would be wrong, and you would not do it.
— Monsieur, long I believed that I loved you before all things, and, so long as I believed in my love for you, I told you that I loved you. At Blois, I loved you. The king passed through Blois; I believed I still loved you. I would have sworn it upon an altar; but a day came which undeceived me.
— Well! that day, mademoiselle, seeing that I still loved you, me, loyalty should have commanded you to tell me that you no longer loved me.
— That day, Raoul, the day when I read to the bottom of my heart, the day when I avowed to myself that you filled not all my thought, the day when I saw another future than that of being your friend, your mistress, your wife, that day, Raoul, alas! you were no longer near me.
— You knew where I was, mademoiselle; you should have written.
— Raoul, I dared not. Raoul, I was cowardly. What would you have, Raoul! I knew you so well, I knew so well that you loved me, that I trembled at the sole idea of the grief I was about to cause you; and so true is this, Raoul, that at this moment wherein I speak to you, bent before you, my heart tight, sighs filling my voice, tears filling my eyes, as true as I have no other defense than my frankness, I have no other sorrow either than that which I read in your eyes.
Raoul tried to smile.
— No, said the young girl with profound conviction, no, you shall not do me the injury of dissembling before me. You loved, you; you were sure of loving me; you did not deceive yourself, you lied not to your own heart, while I, I!...
And all pale, her arms stretched above her head, she let herself fall upon her knees.
— While you, said Raoul, you told me that you loved me, and you loved another!
— Alas! yes, cried the poor child; alas! yes, I love another; and that other... my God! let me say it, for it is my only excuse, Raoul; that other, I love him more than I love my life, more than I love God. Forgive my fault or punish my treason, Raoul. I am come hither, not to defend myself, but to tell you: You know what it is to love? Well, I love! I love to give my life, to give my soul to him whom I love! If he ever cease to love me, I shall die of grief, unless God succor me, unless the Lord take me in mercy. Raoul, I am here to undergo your will, whatsoever it be; to die if you wish me to die. Kill me then, Raoul, if, in your heart, you believe that I merit death.
— Beware, mademoiselle, said Raoul, the woman who asks for death is she who can no longer give but her blood to the betrayed lover.
— You are right, said she.
Raoul uttered a deep sigh.
— And you love without being able to forget? cried Raoul.
— I love without wishing to forget, without desire to love ever elsewhere, answered La Vallière.
— Good! said Raoul. You have told me, indeed, all that you had to tell me, all that I could desire to know. And now, mademoiselle, it is I who ask your pardon, it is I who well-nigh was an obstacle in your life, it is I who was in the wrong, it is I who, by deceiving myself, helped you to deceive yourself.
— Oh! said La Vallière, I ask not so much, Raoul.
— All that is my fault, mademoiselle, continued Raoul; more instructed than you in the difficulties of life, it was for me to enlighten you; I should not have rested upon the uncertain, I should have made your heart speak, while I scarce made your mouth speak. I repeat to you, mademoiselle, I ask your pardon.
— It is impossible, it is impossible! she cried. You are railing at me!
— How, impossible?
— Yes, it is impossible to be good, to be excellent, to be perfect to that degree.
— Beware! said Raoul with a bitter smile; for presently you will perhaps say that I did not love you.
— Oh! you love me like a tender brother; let me hope that, Raoul.
— Like a tender brother? Undeceive yourself, Louise. I loved you as a lover, as a husband, as the tenderest of men who love you.
— Raoul! Raoul!
— Like a brother? Oh! Louise, I loved you to the giving for you all my blood drop by drop, all my flesh shred by shred, all my eternity hour by hour.
— Raoul, Raoul, for pity's sake!
— I loved you so, Louise, that my heart is dead, that my faith wavers, that my eyes grow dim; I loved you so, that I see nothing more, neither on earth, nor in heaven.
— Raoul, Raoul, my friend, I conjure you, spare me! cried La Vallière. Oh! if I had known!...
— It is too late, Louise; you love, you are happy; I read your joy through your tears; behind the tears your loyalty sheds, I feel the sighs your love exhales. Louise, Louise, you have made of me the last of men: withdraw, I beseech you. Farewell! farewell!
— Forgive me, I beseech you!
— Eh! have I not done more? Have I not told you that I still love you?
She hid her face between her hands.
— And to tell you that, understand you, Louise? to tell you it in such a moment, to tell you it as I tell you, is to tell you my sentence of death. Farewell!
La Vallière would have stretched her hands toward him.
— We must see each other no more in this world, said he.
She would have cried out: he closed her mouth with his hand. She kissed that hand and fainted.
— Olivain, said Raoul, take this young lady and carry her to her chair, which waits at the door.
Olivain lifted her. Raoul made a motion to precipitate himself toward La Vallière, to give her the first and the last kiss; then, stopping suddenly:
— No, said he, that good is not mine. I am not the King of France, to steal!
And he re-entered his chamber, while the lackey bore away La Vallière still fainting.
Chapter CCI — What Raoul Had Guessed
Raoul gone, the two exclamations that had followed him exhaled, Athos and d'Artagnan found themselves alone, face to face with each other.
Athos at once resumed the eager air he had worn at d'Artagnan's arrival.
— Well! said he, dear friend, what came you to announce to me?
— I? asked d'Artagnan.
— Doubtless, you. One is not sent thus without cause?
Athos smiled.
— Why, said d'Artagnan.
— I am going to put you at your ease, dear friend. The king is furious, is he not?
— But I must confess to you that he is not pleased.
— And you come?...
— From him, yes.
— To arrest me, then?
— You have put your finger on the thing, dear friend.
— I expected it. Come!
— Oh! oh! what the devil! said d'Artagnan, how pressed you are, you!
— I fear to put you behind time, said Athos, smiling.
— I have time. Besides, are you not curious to know how things passed between the king and me?
“Stories of the world, in your language.”