Part 28

— Will you return to France some day?

— I hope so.

— Must I write to Mlle de La Vallière?

— No, you must not.

— I have so many things to tell her!

— Then come and tell them to her in person.

— Never!

— Well then! what virtue do you attribute to a letter that your spoken word would not have?

— You are right.

— She loves the king, said d'Artagnan brutally; she is an honest girl.

Raoul trembled.

— And you, whom she is abandoning, she loves you more than the king perhaps, but in another way.

— D'Artagnan, do you truly believe she loves the king?

— She loves him to idolatry. Hers is a heart inaccessible to any other feeling. You could go on living near her, and you would be her best friend.

— Ah! said Raoul with a passionate surge toward that painful hope.

— Do you wish to?

— That would be cowardly.

— There is an absurd word, and one that would lead me to despise your mind. Raoul, it is never cowardly, do you hear me, to do what is imposed by overwhelming force. If your heart says to you: 'Go there, or die'; then go there, Raoul. Was she cowardly or brave, she who loved you, in preferring to you the king, whom her heart imperiously commanded her to prefer? No, she was the bravest of all women. Do then as she did, obey yourself. Do you know something of which I am certain, Raoul?

— What?

— It is that, by seeing her close at hand with the eyes of a jealous man...

— Well?

— Well! you will cease to love her.

— You decide me, my dear d'Artagnan.

— To set out to see her again?

— No, to set out never to see her again. I wish to love her always.

— Frankly, resumed the musketeer, that is a conclusion I was far from expecting.

— See here, my friend, you will go to see her again, you will give her this letter, which, if you judge it fitting, will explain to her as to you what is passing in my heart. Read it; I prepared it last night. Something told me I would see you today.

He handed the letter to d'Artagnan, who read it:

'Mademoiselle, you are not wrong in my eyes in not loving me. You are guilty of but one fault, that of having let me believe you loved me. That error will cost me my life. I forgive you, but I do not forgive myself. They say happy lovers are deaf to the complaints of scorned lovers. It shall not be thus with you, who did not love me, save with anxiety. I am sure that, had I insisted with you to change that friendship into love, you would have yielded for fear of causing my death or diminishing the esteem I had for you. It is very sweet to me to die knowing you are free and satisfied.

'Also, how you will love me when you no longer fear my gaze or my reproach! You will love me, because, however charming a new love may seem to you, God has made me in no way inferior to him whom you have chosen, and my devotion, my sacrifice, my sorrowful end assure me in your eyes of a certain superiority over him. I let slip, in the naive credulity of my heart, the treasure I held. Many tell me you had loved me enough to come to love me greatly. That thought removes all bitterness from me and leads me to regard as my only enemy myself.

'You will accept this last farewell, and you will bless me for having taken refuge in the inviolable asylum where all hatred is extinguished, where all love endures.

'Farewell, mademoiselle. If I had to buy your happiness with all my blood, I would give all my blood. I do indeed sacrifice it to my wretchedness!

'Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne.'

— The letter is good, said the captain. I have but one thing to reproach it with.

— Tell me which, cried Raoul.

— It is that it says everything, except the thing that exhales like a deadly poison from your eyes, from your heart; except the insane love that still burns you.

Raoul grew pale and was silent.

— Why did you not write only these words:

'Mademoiselle,

'Instead of cursing you, I love you and I die.'

— That is true, said Raoul with a sinister joy.

And, tearing the letter he had just taken back, he wrote these words on a leaf of his notebook:

'To have the happiness of telling you once more that I love you, I commit the cowardice of writing to you, and, to punish myself for that cowardice, I die.'

And he signed.

— You will give her this notebook, will you not, captain? he said to d'Artagnan.

— When? replied the latter.

— The day, said Bragelonne, showing the last phrase, the day you write the date beneath those words.

And he suddenly slipped away and ran to join Athos, who was returning with slow steps.

As they went back in, the sea swelled, and, with the rapid vehemence of the squalls that trouble the Mediterranean, the ill humor of the element became a tempest.

Something shapeless and tormented appeared to their eyes on the edge of the coast.

— What is that? said Athos. A broken boat?

— It is not a boat, said d'Artagnan.

— Pardon me, said Raoul, it is a boat rapidly making for the port.

— There is, indeed, a boat in the cove, a boat that does well to take shelter here; but what Athos is showing there in the sand... stranded...

— Yes, yes, I see.

— It is the carriage I threw into the sea on landing with the prisoner.

— Well! said Athos, if you take my advice, d'Artagnan, you will burn the carriage, so that no trace of it remains; otherwise, the fishermen of Antibes, who believed they had to do with the devil, will seek to prove that your prisoner was only a man.

— I praise your counsel, Athos, and I shall have it carried out tonight, or rather carry it out myself. But let us go in, for the rain is about to fall and the lightning is frightful.

As they passed on the rampart in a gallery of which d'Artagnan had the key, they saw M. de Saint-Mars heading toward the chamber occupied by the prisoner.

They hid in the angle of the staircase at a sign from d'Artagnan.

— What is it? said Athos.

— You are going to see. Look. The prisoner is returning from the chapel.

And they saw, by the light of the red lightning, in the violet mist the wind was blurring against the sky's background, they saw pass gravely, six paces behind the governor, a man dressed in black and masked by a visor of burnished steel, welded to a helmet of the same material, which enveloped his whole head. The fire of heaven cast tawny reflections on that polished surface, and those reflections, flitting capriciously, seemed to be the angry glances that unhappy man launched for want of curses.

In the middle of the gallery, the prisoner stopped a moment to contemplate the infinite horizon, to breathe the sulfurous perfumes of the tempest, to drink avidly the warm rain, and he uttered a sigh like a roar.

— Come, sir, said Saint-Mars abruptly to the prisoner, for he was already uneasy at seeing him gaze long beyond the walls. Come, sir!

— Say: 'My Lord,' cried Athos from his corner to Saint-Mars in a voice so solemn and terrible that the governor shuddered from head to foot.

Athos always wished respect for fallen majesty.

The prisoner turned around.

— Who spoke? asked Saint-Mars.

— I, replied d'Artagnan, who at once showed himself. You know well that is the order.

— Call me neither sir nor my lord, said in his turn the prisoner with a voice that moved Raoul to the very depths of his being; call me Accursed!

And he passed.

The iron door creaked behind him.

— There is an unhappy man! muttered the musketeer darkly, showing the chamber occupied by the prince.

Chapter CCXXXIX — The Promises

Scarcely had d'Artagnan re-entered his apartment with his friends when one of the fort's soldiers came to tell him the governor was looking for him.

The boat Raoul had glimpsed at sea, and which seemed so eager to reach port, had come to Sainte-Marguerite with an important dispatch for the captain of the musketeers.

On opening the packet, d'Artagnan recognized the king's handwriting.

'I think, said Louis XIV, that you have finished executing my orders, M. d'Artagnan; return then at once to Paris to find me in my Louvre.'

— My exile is over! cried the musketeer with joy; God be praised, I cease to be a jailer!

And he showed the letter to Athos.

— So you are leaving us? replied the latter with sadness.

— To see us again, dear friend, seeing that Raoul is a big boy who will go quite well alone with M. de Beaufort and who will prefer to let his father return in the company of M. d'Artagnan rather than force him to make two hundred leagues alone to get back to La Fère, won't you, Raoul?

— Certainly, stammered the young man with an expression of tender regret.

— No, my friend, interrupted Athos, I shall not leave Raoul until the day his vessel has disappeared at the horizon. So long as he is in France, he is not separated from me.

— As you wish, dear friend; but at least we shall leave Sainte-Marguerite together; make use of the boat that is to take me back to Antibes.

— With all my heart; we shall never be far enough away from this fort and the sight that saddened us just now.

The three friends therefore left the little island, after final farewells to the governor, and, in the last gleams of the departing tempest, they saw for the last time the walls of the fort whiten.

D'Artagnan took leave of his friends that very night, after seeing on the coast of Sainte-Marguerite the fire of the carriage burned by order of M. de Saint-Mars, on the recommendation the captain had made to him.

Before mounting his horse, and as he was leaving Athos's arms:

— Friends, said he, you resemble too much two soldiers abandoning their post. Something warns me that Raoul would need to be upheld by you in his rank. Will you that I ask to cross over to Africa with a hundred good muskets? The king will not refuse me; I would take you with me.

— M. d'Artagnan, replied Raoul, pressing his hand with emotion, thanks for that offer, which would give more than we wish, the count and I. I who am young need a work of mind and a fatigue of body; M. the count needs the deepest rest. You are his best friend: I commend him to you. In watching over him, you will hold our two souls in your hand.

— I must go; there is my horse growing impatient, said d'Artagnan, in whom the most manifest sign of lively emotion was a change of subject in conversation. Come, count, how many days more has Raoul to stay here?

— Three days at most.

— And how long do you take to get back home?

— Oh! a long time, answered Athos. I do not wish to part too quickly from Raoul. Time will push him soon enough toward his side, that I need not help distance. I shall only make half-stages.

— Why so, my friend? one grows sad walking slowly, and the life of inns no longer suits a man like you.

— My friend, I came on post horses, but I wish to buy two fine horses. Now, to bring them back fresh, it would not be prudent to make them do more than seven or eight leagues a day.

— Where is Grimaud?

— He arrived with Raoul's baggage yesterday morning, and I let him sleep.

— It is beyond all bearing, let slip d'Artagnan. Farewell then, dear Athos, and if you make haste, well! I shall embrace you the sooner.

That said, he put his foot in the stirrup, which Raoul came to hold for him.

— Adieu! said the young man, embracing him.

— Adieu! said d'Artagnan, who seated himself in the saddle.

His horse made a movement that carried the rider away from his friends.

This scene took place before the house chosen by Athos at the gates of Antibes, and where d'Artagnan, after supper, had ordered his horses brought to him.

The road began there, and stretched white and undulating in the vapors of the night. The horse breathed strongly the harsh saline perfume that exhales from the marshes.

D'Artagnan took up the trot, and Athos began to return sadly with Raoul.

Suddenly they heard the sound of the horse's steps drawing near, and at first they thought it one of those singular reverberations that deceive the ear at every bend of the roads.

But it was indeed the rider returning. D'Artagnan came back at a gallop toward his friends. These uttered a cry of joyful surprise, and the captain, leaping to ground like a young man, came to take in his two arms the two cherished heads of Athos and Raoul.

He held them embraced a long time without saying a word, without letting escape a sigh that broke his chest. Then, as rapidly as he had come, he set off again, pressing both spurs to the flanks of the furious horse.

— Alas! said the count very low, alas!

'Bad omen! d'Artagnan said to himself, regaining lost time. I could not smile at them. Bad omen!'

The next day, Grimaud was on his feet again. The service commanded by M. de Beaufort was being happily accomplished. The flotilla, directed on Toulon by Raoul's care, had departed, dragging after it, in almost invisible little skiffs, the women and friends of the fishermen and smugglers, requisitioned for the fleet's service.

The so short time that remained to father and son to live together seemed to have doubled in speed, as grows the velocity of all that leans to fall into the gulf of eternity.

Athos and Raoul returned to Toulon, which was filling with the noise of carts, the noise of armor, the noise of neighing horses. Trumpets sounded their marches, drums signaled their vigor, the streets overflowed with soldiers, servants, and merchants.

The Duke of Beaufort was everywhere, hastening the embarkation with the zeal and interest of a good captain. He caressed his companions down to the humblest; he scolded his lieutenants; even the most considerable.

Artillery, provisions, baggage, he wished to see all himself; he examined each soldier's equipment, assured himself of each horse's health. One felt that, light, boastful, selfish in his hotel, the gentleman became soldier again, the great lord captain, face to face with the responsibility he had accepted.

However, it must be said, whatever care presided over the preparations for departure, one recognized there the careless precipitation and the absence of all precaution that make the French soldier the first soldier in the world, because he is the most abandoned to his sole physical and moral resources.

All things having satisfied or seemed to satisfy the admiral, he gave Raoul his compliments and gave the last orders for the weighing of anchor, fixed for the next day at daybreak.

He invited the count and his son to dine with him. They pleaded some necessities of service and withdrew. Reaching their inn, situated under the trees of the great square, they took their meal hastily, and Athos led Raoul onto the rocks that dominate the city, vast gray mountains whence the view is infinite, and embraces a liquid horizon that seems, so far is it, level with the rocks themselves.

The night was beautiful as always in those happy climates. The moon, rising behind the rocks, unrolled like a silver cloth upon the blue carpet of the sea. In the roadstead, the vessels maneuvered silently, coming to take their rank to facilitate the embarkation.

The sea, charged with phosphorus, opened beneath the keels of the boats that transferred the baggage and munitions; each shock of the prow dug into that gulf of white flames, and from each oar dripped liquid diamonds.

One heard the sailors, joyful at the admiral's largesse, murmur their slow and naive songs. Sometimes the creaking of chains mingled with the dull noise of cannonballs falling into the holds. This spectacle and these harmonies tightened the heart like fear, and dilated it like hope. All that life smelled of death.

Athos sat with his son upon the moss and heather of the promontory. Around their heads passed and repassed the great bats, borne along in the frightful whirlwind of their blind chase. Raoul's feet overhung the ridge of the cliff and bathed in that void peopled by vertigo and which provokes toward nothingness.

When the moon had fully risen, caressing with its light the neighboring peaks, when the mirror of the water was illuminated in all its extent, and the little red fires had made their breach in the black masses of each ship, Athos, gathering all his thoughts, all his courage, said to his son:

— God made all we see, Raoul; he made us also, poor atoms mingled in this great universe; we shine like these fires and these stars, we sigh like these waves, we suffer like these great ships that wear themselves out hollowing the billow, obeying the wind that pushes them toward a goal, as the breath of God pushes us toward a port. All loves to live, Raoul, and all is beautiful in living things.

— Sir, replied the young man, we have there indeed a fine spectacle.

— How good d'Artagnan is! interrupted Athos at once, and what a rare happiness to have leaned one's whole life on a friend like that one! That is what you lacked, Raoul.

— A friend? cried the young man; I lacked a friend, I!

— M. de Guiche is a charming companion, resumed the count coldly; but I believe that in the time you live, men concern themselves more with their affairs and their pleasures than in our time. You sought the isolated life; that is a happiness; but you lost strength therein. We four, a little weaned from those delicacies that are your joy, found much more resistance when misfortune appeared.

— I did not stop you, sir, to say I had a friend, and that this friend is M. de Guiche. Certainly, he is good and generous, nevertheless, and he loves me. I lived under the tutelage of another friendship, as precious, as strong as that of which you speak, since it is yours.

— I was not a friend to you, Raoul, said Athos.

— Eh! sir, why?

— Because I gave you cause to believe life has but one face, because, sad and severe, alas! I have always, without willing it, God knows! cut for you the joyful buds that incessantly spring from the tree of youth; in a word, because, at the moment we are in, I repent not having made of you a very expansive man, very dissipated, very noisy.

— I know why you say that to me, sir. No, you are wrong, it is not you who made me what I am; it is that love which took me at the moment when children have but inclinations; it is the constancy natural to my character, which, in other creatures, is but a habit. I believed I should always be as I was; I believed God had cast me upon a road all cleared, all straight, bordered with fruits and flowers. I had above me your vigilance, your strength. I believed myself vigilant and strong. Nothing prepared me: I fell once, and that time took from me the courage for all my life. It is true to say I broke myself there. Oh! no, sir, you are in my past only for my happiness: you are in my future only as a hope. No, I have nothing to reproach to the life such as you made it for me; I bless you and I love you ardently.

— My dear Raoul, your words do me good. They prove to me that you will act a little for me, in the time that follows.

— I shall act only for you, sir.

— Raoul, what I never did toward you, I shall do henceforth. I shall be your friend, no longer your father. We shall live by opening ourselves, instead of living by keeping ourselves prisoners, when you have returned. That will be soon, will it not?

— Certainly, sir, for an expedition like this cannot be long...

— Soon then, Raoul, soon, instead of living modestly on my income, I shall give you the capital my lands. It will suffice you to launch into the world until my death, and you will give me, I hope, before that time, the consolation of not letting my race die out.

— I shall do all you command me, replied Raoul, much agitated.

— It would not be fitting, Raoul, that your service as aide-de-camp should lead you to too hazardous attempts. You have proven yourself, you are known good under fire. Remember that the war of the Arabs is a war of snares, of ambushes, and of assassinations.

— So it is said, yes, sir.

— There is always little glory in falling into an ambush. It is a death that always accuses a little of temerity or of want of foresight. Often even one does not pity him who has succumbed. Those whom one does not pity, Raoul, are dead uselessly. Moreover, the victor laughs, and, we others, we must not suffer these stupid infidels to triumph over our faults. You understand well what I mean to tell you, Raoul? God forbid that I exhort you to keep far from encounters!

— I am prudent by nature, sir, and I have much good fortune, said Raoul with a smile that froze the heart of the poor father; for, the young man hastened to add, in twenty combats where I have found myself, I have yet counted but one scratch.

— There is, besides, said Athos, the climate to fear: a fever is an ugly end. King Saint Louis prayed God to send him an arrow or the plague before the fever.

— Oh! sir, with sobriety, with reasonable exercise...

— I have already obtained of M. de Beaufort, interrupted Athos, that his dispatches shall leave every fortnight for France. You, his aide-de-camp, will be charged with sending them; you will not forget me, no doubt?

— No, sir, said Raoul in a strangled voice.

— Finally, Raoul, as you are a good Christian, and as I am one too, we must count on a more special protection of God or of our guardian angels. Promise me that, if misfortune should befall you on some occasion, you will think of me first of all.

— First of all, oh! yes.

— And that you will call me.

— Oh! at once.

— You dream of me sometimes, Raoul?

— Every night, sir. During my first youth, I saw you in dreams, calm and gentle, a hand extended over my head, and that is why I always slept so well... formerly!

— We love each other too much, said the count, for that, from this moment where we separate, a part of our two souls should not travel with each of us and inhabit where we shall inhabit. When you are sad, Raoul, I feel my heart will drown in sadness, and, when you would smile thinking of me, think well that you send me from there a ray of your joy.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”