Part 25

This gesture no doubt concealed some emotion. Raoul rushed toward the count. But Athos had already swallowed his regret, for he reappeared in the light with a serene and impassive countenance.

— Well! said the duke, let us see! does he go or does he not go? If he goes, count, he shall be my aide-de-camp, my son.

— My lord! cried Raoul, bending his knee.

— My lord, cried the count, taking the duke's hand, Raoul shall do as he wishes.

— Oh! no, sir, as you wish, interrupted the young man.

— By God's thunder! said the prince in his turn, it is neither the count nor the viscount who shall have his way, it is I. I am taking him. The navy, my friend, is a splendid future.

Raoul smiled again so sadly that this time Athos felt his heart pierced, and answered him with a severe look.

Raoul understood everything; he regained his composure and watched himself so well that not another word escaped him.

The duke rose, seeing the hour was late, and said very quickly:

— I am in a hurry, myself; but if anyone tells me I have lost my time chatting with a friend, I shall answer that I have made a good recruit.

— Pardon, my lord duke, interrupted Raoul, do not say that to the king, for it is not the king I shall serve.

— Eh! my friend, whom then wilt thou serve? It is no longer the time when thou couldst have said: 'I am for Monsieur de Beaufort.' No, today we are all for the king, great and small. Which is why, if thou servest on my ships, no equivocation, my dear viscount, it is indeed the king thou wilt serve.

Athos awaited, with a sort of impatient joy, the answer that Raoul, the intractable enemy of the king, his rival, was about to make to this embarrassing question. The father hoped the obstacle would overturn the desire. He almost thanked Monsieur de Beaufort, whose lightness or generous reflection had just cast doubt upon the departure of a son, his only joy.

But Raoul, ever firm and tranquil:

— My lord duke, he replied, this objection you make to me, I have already resolved it in my mind. I shall serve on your ships, since you do me the grace of taking me with you; but there I shall serve a master more powerful than the king, I shall serve God.

— God! how so? said Athos and the prince at once.

— My intention is to take vows and become a knight of Malta, added Bragelonne, who let fall these words one by one, colder than the drops descending from black trees after winter storms.

At this last blow, Athos staggered and the prince himself was shaken.

Grimaud uttered a hollow groan and let the bottle fall, which broke upon the carpet without anyone paying it any heed.

Monsieur de Beaufort looked the young man full in the face, and read upon his features, though his eyes were lowered, the fire of a resolution before which all must yield.

As for Athos, he knew that tender and inflexible soul; he counted not upon turning it from the fatal path it had just chosen for itself. He pressed the hand the duke held out to him.

— Count, I leave in two days for Toulon, said Monsieur de Beaufort. Will you come find me in Paris so that I may know your decision?

— I shall have the honor of going to thank you there for all your kindnesses, my prince, replied the count.

— And bring me the viscount always, whether he follows me or not, added the duke; he has my word, and I ask only for yours.

Having thus poured a little balm upon the wound of that paternal heart, the duke tweaked the ear of old Grimaud, who was blinking more than is natural, and rejoined his escort in the parterre.

The horses, rested and fresh by that fair night, put the space between the castle and their master. Athos and Bragelonne found themselves alone face to face.

Eleven o'clock was striking.

Father and son kept, one before the other, a silence which any intelligent observer would have guessed to be full of cries and sobs.

But these two men were tempered in such a way that every emotion sank, lost forever, when they had resolved to compress it in their hearts.

They thus passed, silent and almost breathless, the hour that precedes midnight. The clock, in striking, alone indicated to them how many minutes this sorrowful voyage made by their souls had lasted, in the immensity of the memories of the past and the fears of the future.

Athos rose first, saying:

— It is late... Until tomorrow, Raoul!

Raoul rose in his turn and came to embrace his father.

The latter held him to his breast, and said to him in an altered voice:

— In two days, then, you will have left me, left me forever, Raoul?

— Sir, replied the young man, I had formed a plan, that of piercing my heart with my sword, but you would have found me cowardly; I renounced that plan, and then we had to part.

— You leave me in going away, Raoul.

— Listen to me yet, sir, I beseech you. If I do not go, I shall die here of grief and love. I know how much longer I have to live here. Send me away quickly, sir, or you will see me cowardly expire before your eyes, in your house; it is stronger than my will, stronger than my strength; you see well that, for a month, I have lived thirty years, and that I am at the end of my life.

— Then, said Athos coldly, you leave with the intention of getting yourself killed in Africa? oh! say so... do not lie.

Raoul grew pale and was silent for two seconds, which were for his father two hours of agony, then suddenly:

— Sir, said he, I have promised to give myself to God. In exchange for this sacrifice I make of my youth and my liberty, I shall ask Him but one thing: that He preserve me for you, because you are the only tie that still binds me to this world. God alone can give me the strength not to forget that I owe you all, and that nothing should be before you.

Athos tenderly embraced his son and said to him:

— You have just answered me like an honest man; in two days we shall be at Monsieur de Beaufort's, in Paris: and it is then you who shall do as you see fit. You are free, Raoul. Adieu!

And he slowly gained his bedchamber.

Raoul went down into the garden, where he passed the night in the lime-tree walk.

Chapter CCXXXIV — Preparations for Departure

Athos no longer lost time in combating this immutable resolution. He applied all his care, during the two days the duke had granted him, to having all Raoul's equipment prepared. This task fell to good Grimaud, who set about it at once, with the heart and intelligence known to him.

Athos gave order to this worthy servant to take the road to Paris when the equipments were ready, and, so as not to risk making the duke wait, or at least putting Raoul behind if the duke noticed his absence, he took, on the morrow of Monsieur de Beaufort's visit, the road to Paris with his son.

It was for the poor young man an emotion easy enough to understand, that of a return to Paris, amid all the people who had known him and who had loved him.

Each face recalled, to him who had suffered so much, a suffering, to him who had loved so much, a circumstance of his love. Raoul, as he drew near to Paris, felt himself dying. Once at Paris, he no longer truly existed. When he arrived at Monsieur de Guiche's, they explained to him that Monsieur de Guiche was with Monsieur.

Raoul took the road to the Luxembourg, and, once arrived, without suspecting he was going to a place where La Vallière had lived, he heard so much music and breathed so many perfumes, he heard so much joyful laughter and saw so many dancing shadows, that, but for a charitable woman who perceived him gloomy and pale beneath a portière, he would have remained there some moments, then would have departed never to return.

But as we have said, in the first antechambers he had halted his steps solely so as not to mingle with all those happy existences which he felt stirring in the neighboring rooms.

And, as a valet of Monsieur's, recognizing him, asked him if he meant to see Monsieur or Madame, Raoul had barely answered him and had fallen upon a bench near the velvet portière, looking at a clock which had stopped an hour before.

The valet had passed on; another then arrived, better informed still, and questioned Raoul to know if he wished Monsieur de Guiche to be told.

That name had not awakened the poor Raoul's attention.

The valet, insisting, began to relate that de Guiche had just invented a new lottery game, and was teaching it to the ladies.

Raoul, opening wide eyes like the absent-minded man of Theophrastus, answered no more; but his sadness increased thereby by two shades.

His head thrown back, his legs limp, his mouth half-open to let pass his sighs, Raoul remained thus forgotten in that antechamber, when suddenly a robe passed brushing the doors of a side salon which opened onto that gallery.

A young, pretty, laughing woman, scolding an officer on duty, arrived thereby and expressed herself with vivacity.

The officer answered with calm but firm phrases; it was rather a lovers' debate than a contention of courtiers, which ended with a kiss upon the lady's fingers.

Suddenly, catching sight of Raoul, the lady fell silent, and, pushing back the officer:

— Save yourself, Malicorne, said she; I did not think there was anyone here. I curse you if we have been heard or seen!

Malicorne fled indeed; the young lady advanced behind Raoul, and, lengthening her playful pout:

— Monsieur is a gentleman, said she, and, no doubt...

She broke off to utter a cry.

— Raoul! said she, blushing.

— Mademoiselle de Montalais! said Raoul, paler than death.

He rose stumbling and would have taken to his heels upon the slippery mosaic; but she understood that savage and cruel pain, she felt that, in Raoul's flight, there was an accusation or, at least, a suspicion of her. A woman ever vigilant, she did not think she ought to let pass the occasion of a justification; but Raoul, stopped by her in the middle of that gallery, seemed not to wish to yield without a struggle.

He took it up in a tone so cold and embarrassed that, had either been surprised thus, the whole Court would have had no further doubt as to Mlle de Montalais's proceeding.

— Ah! sir, said she with disdain, what you do is little worthy of a gentleman. My heart impels me to speak to you; you compromise me by an almost uncivil reception; you are wrong, sir, and you confound your friends with your enemies. Adieu!

Raoul had sworn never to speak of Louise, never to look upon those who might have seen Louise; he was passing into another world never to meet aught that Louise had seen, aught she had touched. But after the first shock of his pride, after having glimpsed Montalais, that companion of Louise, Montalais, who recalled to him the little turret of Blois and the joys of his youth, all his reason vanished.

— Pardon me, mademoiselle; it does not enter, it cannot enter my thought to be uncivil.

— You wish to speak to me? said she with the smile of former times. Well! come elsewhere; for here we might be surprised.

— Where? said he.

She looked at the clock with indecision; then, having consulted herself:

— To my rooms, she continued; we have an hour to ourselves.

And taking to her heels, lighter than a fairy, she went up to her chamber, and Raoul followed her.

There, closing the door, and placing in the hands of her chambermaid the mantle she had held beneath her arm until then:

— You seek Monsieur de Guiche? said she to Raoul.

— Yes, mademoiselle.

— I shall beg him to come up here presently, when I have spoken with you.

— Do so, mademoiselle.

— Are you angry with me?

Raoul looked at her a moment; then, lowering his eyes:

— Yes, said he.

— You believe I had a hand in that plot of your rupture?

— Rupture! said he with bitterness. Oh! mademoiselle, there is no rupture where there never was love.

— Error, replied Montalais; Louise loved you.

Raoul started.

— Not love, I know; but she loved you, and you should have married her before departing for London.

Raoul gave a sinister burst of laughter, which made Montalais shudder.

— You say that to me very much at your ease, mademoiselle!... Does one marry her whom one will? You forget then that the king already kept for himself his mistress, of whom we speak.

— Listen, resumed the young woman, pressing Raoul's cold hands in hers, you were entirely in the wrong; a man of your age ought not leave a woman of hers alone.

— There is no more faith in the world, then, said Raoul.

— No, viscount, replied Montalais tranquilly. However, I must tell you that if, instead of loving Louise coldly and philosophically, you had awakened her to love...

— Enough, I pray you, mademoiselle, said Raoul. I feel that you are all, and all of you, of another century than I. You know how to laugh and you rail agreeably. I, I loved Mlle de...

Raoul could not pronounce her name.

— I loved her; well! I believed in her; today, I am quit of it by loving her no more.

— Oh! viscount! said Montalais, showing him a mirror.

— I know what you would say, mademoiselle; I am much changed, am I not? Well! do you know for what reason? It is that my face is the mirror of my heart: the inside has changed as the outside.

— You are consoled? said Montalais bitterly.

— No, I shall never be consoled.

— They will not understand you, Monsieur de Bragelonne.

— I care little for it. I understand myself only too well, I.

— You have not even tried to speak to Louise?

— I! cried the young man with sparkling eyes, I! Truly, why do you not counsel me to marry her? Perhaps the king would consent to it today!

And he rose full of anger.

— I see, said Montalais, that you are not cured, and that Louise has one enemy more.

— One enemy more?

— Yes, favorites are ill beloved at the court of France.

— Oh! so long as she has her lover left to defend her, is it not enough? She chose him of such quality that enemies shall not prevail against him.

But, stopping suddenly:

— And then she has you for a friend, mademoiselle, he added with a shade of irony which did not glide off the cuirass.

— I? oh! no: I am no longer of those whom Mlle de La Vallière deigns to regard; but...

That but, so big with threats and storms, that but which made Raoul's heart beat, so much did it presage of pains for her whom once he had so loved, that terrible but, significant in a woman like Montalais, was interrupted by a fairly loud noise which the two speakers heard in the alcove, behind the wainscot.

Montalais pricked up her ear and Raoul was already rising, when a woman entered, quite tranquil, by that secret door, which she closed behind her.

— Madame! cried Raoul, recognizing the king's sister-in-law.

— Oh! unhappy woman! murmured Montalais, throwing herself, but too late, before the princess. I mistook by an hour.

She had however time to warn Madame, who was advancing upon Raoul.

— Monsieur de Bragelonne, madame.

And, at these words, the princess recoiled, uttering a cry in her turn.

— Your Royal Highness, said Montalais with volubility, is then so good as to think of this lottery, and...

The princess began to lose her composure.

Raoul hastened his exit without yet guessing all, and he felt nevertheless that he was in the way.

Madame was preparing a word of transition to recover herself, when a wardrobe opened facing the alcove and Monsieur de Guiche issued, radiant also, from that closet. The palest of the four, it must be said, was still Raoul. However, the princess nearly fainted and leaned upon the bed-foot.

None dared support her. This scene occupied some minutes in a terrible silence.

Raoul broke it; he went to the count, whose inexpressible emotion made his knees tremble, and, taking his hand:

— Dear count, said he, tell Madame well that I am too unhappy not to merit my pardon; tell her well also that I have loved in my life, and that the horror of the betrayal done me renders me inexorable for any other betrayal that might be committed about me. That is why, mademoiselle, said he, smiling at Montalais, I shall never divulge the secret of my friend's visits to you. Obtain from Madame, Madame who is so clement and so generous, obtain that she pardon you also for them, she who surprised you just now. You are free, both of you, love one another, be happy!

The princess made a movement of despair which cannot be translated; it repugned her, despite the exquisite delicacy Raoul had just shown, to feel herself at the mercy of an indiscretion.

It repugned her equally to accept the loophole offered by that delicate subterfuge. Lively, nervous, she struggled against the double bite of those two griefs.

Raoul understood her and came once more to her aid. Bending the knee before her:

— Madame, said he to her very low, in two days I shall be far from Paris, and in fifteen days far from France, and never more shall I be seen again.

— You depart? she thought, joyfully.

— With Monsieur de Beaufort.

— In Africa! cried de Guiche in his turn. You, Raoul? oh! my friend, in Africa where one dies!

And, forgetting all, forgetting that his very forgetfulness compromised the princess more eloquently than his presence: Ingrate, said he, you have not even consulted me!

And he embraced him.

During this time, Montalais had made Madame disappear, she had disappeared herself.

Raoul passed a hand over his brow and said, smiling:

— I have dreamed!

Then, quickly to de Guiche, who was by degrees absorbing him:

— Friend, said he, I hide not from you, who are the chosen of my heart: I am going to die yonder, your secret will not outlast the year.

— Oh! Raoul! a man!

— Know you my thought, de Guiche? Here it is: that I shall live more, lying under the earth, than I have lived for a month. One is a Christian, my friend, and, if such suffering continued, I should answer no more for my soul.

De Guiche would have made his objections.

— Not another word of me, said Raoul, a counsel to you, dear friend; it is of far other importance, what I am about to tell you.

— How so?

— Doubtless, you risk far more than I, you, since you are loved.

— Oh!...

— It is so sweet a joy to be able to speak to you thus! Well! de Guiche, distrust Montalais.

— She is a good friend.

— She was friend of... her you know... she lost her by pride.

— You are mistaken.

— And today that she has lost her, she would wrest from her the only thing that renders that woman excusable in my eyes.

— Which?

— Her love.

— What would you say?

— I would say that there is a plot formed against her who is the king's mistress, a plot formed in the very house of Madame.

— Can you believe it?

— I am certain of it.

— By Montalais?

— Take her as the least dangerous of the enemies I dread for... the other!

— Explain yourself well, my friend, and, if I may understand you...

— In two words: Madame has been jealous of the king.

— I know it...

— Oh! fear nothing, you are loved, you are loved, de Guiche; feel you all the worth of those two words? They signify that you may lift your brow, that you may sleep tranquil, that you may thank God each minute of your life! you are loved, that signifies that you may hear all, even the counsel of a friend who would spare you your happiness. You are loved, de Guiche, you are loved! You shall not pass those atrocious nights, those endless nights traversed, eye arid and heart devoured, by other folk destined to die. You shall live long, if you do as the miser who, strand by strand, crumb by crumb, caresses and heaps diamonds and gold. You are loved! permit me to tell you what must be done that you be loved always.

De Guiche looked for some time upon that unhappy young man, half mad with despair, and there passed into his soul something like a remorse of his happiness.

Raoul was recovering from his feverish exaltation to take the voice and countenance of an impassive man.

— They will make suffer, said he, her whose name I would still fain be able to utter. Swear to me, not only that you will in naught aid therein, but further that you will defend her when it may be, as I myself should have done.

— I swear it! replied de Guiche.

— And, said Raoul, one day when you shall have rendered her some great service, one day that she thanks you, promise me to say her these words: 'I have done you this good, madame, upon the recommendation of Monsieur de Bragelonne, to whom you have done so much evil.'

— I swear it! murmured de Guiche, touched.

— That is all. Adieu! I leave tomorrow or the day after for Toulon. If you have some hours, give them me.

— All! all! cried the young man.

— Thanks!

— And what are you going to do with this step?

— I go to rejoin the count at Planchet's, where we hope to find Monsieur d'Artagnan.

— Monsieur d'Artagnan?

— I wish to embrace him before my departure. He is a brave man who loved me. Adieu, dear friend; you are no doubt expected, you will find me again, when it pleases you, at the count's lodging. Adieu!

The two young men embraced. Those who had seen them thus, one and the other, would not have failed to say, pointing to Raoul: 'That is the happy man.'

Chapter CCXXXV — Planchet's Inventory

Athos, during Raoul's visit to the Luxembourg, had gone, in fact, to Planchet's to have news of d'Artagnan.

The gentleman, on arriving in the rue des Lombards, found the grocer's shop much encumbered; but it was not the encumbrance of a thriving sale nor that of an arrival of goods.

Planchet was not throned as usual upon the sacks and barrels. No. A clerk, pen behind ear, another, notebook in hand, inscribed mighty figures, while a third counted and weighed.

It was a matter of an inventory. Athos, who was no tradesman, felt somewhat embarrassed by the material obstacles and the majesty of those who thus performed their functions.

He saw several customers sent away and wondered if he, who came to buy nothing, would not be yet more importunate.

He therefore asked the clerks very politely how one might speak to Monsieur Planchet.

The answer, rather negligent, was that Monsieur Planchet was finishing his trunks.

These words made Athos prick up his ear.

— How, his trunks? said he; does Monsieur Planchet depart?

— Yes, sir, this very hour.

— Then, gentlemen, be so good as to let Monsieur Planchet know that the Count de La Fère desires to speak with him a moment.

At the name of the Count de La Fère, one of the clerks, accustomed no doubt to hearing that name pronounced only with respect, detached himself to go warn Planchet.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”