Part 39

But there was no longer time: the explosion sounded, the earth split open, the smoke, which shot up through the wide fissures, darkened the sky, the sea drew back as if driven off by the breath of the fire that burst from the cave like the maw of a gigantic chimera; the recoil carried the skiff twenty fathoms away, all the rocks cracked at their base and separated like blocks under the thrust of wedges; a portion of the vault was seen to leap up, torn from the earth as if by swift cords; the pink and green fire of the sulfur, the black lava of clayey liquefactions, clashed and struggled for an instant beneath a majestic dome of smoke; then were seen to waver first, then to lean, then to fall successively, the long rocky ridges that the violence of the explosion had been unable to uproot from their age-old sockets; they saluted one another like grave and slow old men, then prostrated themselves, laid low forever in their dusty tomb.

This frightful shock seemed to restore to Porthos the strength he had lost; he rose, a giant himself among these giants. But, at the moment when he was fleeing between the double hedge of granite phantoms, the latter, no longer supported by their corresponding links, began to roll with a crash around this Titan who seemed hurled from heaven into the midst of the rocks he had just hurled against himself.

Porthos felt tremble beneath his feet the ground shaken by this long rending. He stretched out his vast hands to right and left to push back the crumbling rocks. A gigantic block came to rest against each of his outstretched palms; he bowed his head, and a third granite mass came to weigh down between his two shoulders.

For an instant, Porthos's arms had bent; but the Hercules gathered all his strength, and the two walls of this prison in which he was buried were seen to part slowly and make room for him. For an instant, he appeared in this granite frame like the ancient angel of chaos; but, in pushing aside the lateral rocks, he removed his point of support from the monolith that weighed upon his strong shoulders, and the monolith, leaning with all its weight, precipitated the giant upon his knees. The lateral rocks, parted for an instant, drew together again and came to add their weight to the original weight, which would have sufficed to crush ten men.

The giant fell without crying for help; he fell answering Aramis with words of encouragement and hope, for an instant, thanks to the powerful buttress of his hands, he could believe that, like Enceladus, he would shake off this triple weight. But, little by little, Aramis saw the block sink; the hands clenched for an instant, the arms stiffened by a last effort, bent, the strained shoulders gave way, torn, and the rock continued gradually to lower.

"Porthos! Porthos!" cried Aramis, tearing his hair, "Porthos, where are you? Speak!"

"There! there!" murmured Porthos in a voice that was dying; "patience! patience!"

Scarcely had he uttered this last word when the impulse of the fall increased the heaviness; the enormous rock fell, pressed by the two others that fell upon it and engulfed Porthos in a sepulcher of broken stones.

On hearing his friend's expiring voice, Aramis had leaped to the ground. Two of the Bretons followed him, lever in hand, one alone sufficing to guard the skiff. The last gasps of the valiant wrestler guided them through the ruins.

Aramis, resplendent, superb, young as at twenty, sprang toward the triple mass, and with his delicate hands, like a woman's hands, raised by a miracle of vigor a corner of the immense granite sepulcher. Then he glimpsed in the darkness of this pit the shining eye of his friend, to whom the mass lifted for an instant had just restored breath. Immediately the two men threw themselves forward, clutched the iron lever, uniting their triple effort, not to raise it, but to hold it. All was useless: the three men bent slowly with cries of pain, and the rough voice of Porthos, seeing them exhaust themselves in a useless struggle, murmured in a mocking tone these supreme words that came to his lips with his supreme breath:

"Too heavy!"

After which, the eye darkened and closed, the face grew pale, the hand whitened, and the Titan lay down, uttering a last sigh.

With him sank the rock, which, even in his agony, he had still upheld!

The three men let escape the lever, which rolled upon the tombstone.

Then, panting, pale, sweat upon his brow, Aramis listened, his chest tight, his heart near breaking.

Nothing more! The giant slept the eternal sleep, in the sepulcher that God had made for him to his measure.

Chapter CCLVII — The Epitaph of Porthos

Aramis, silent, frozen, trembling like a fearful child, rose shuddering from upon this stone.

A Christian does not walk upon tombs.

But, capable of standing, he was incapable of walking. It would have seemed that something of dead Porthos had just died within him.

His Bretons gathered around him; Aramis let himself go into their embraces, and the three sailors, lifting him, bore him into the boat.

Then, having laid him upon the bench near the helm, they plied the oars, preferring to withdraw by rowing rather than hoist the sail, which might betray them.

Upon all that shaven surface of the former grotto of Locmaria, upon that flattened beach, a single mound attracted the eye. Aramis could not tear his gaze from it, and, from afar, at sea, as he won toward the open water, the threatening and proud rock seemed to him to rise up, as Porthos had once risen, and to lift to heaven a smiling and invincible head like that of the honest and valiant friend, the strongest of the four and yet the first dead.

Strange destiny of these men of bronze! The simplest of heart, allied to the most astute; the strength of body guided by the subtlety of mind; and, in the decisive moment, when vigor alone could save mind and body, a stone, a rock, a vile and material weight, triumphed over vigor, and, crashing upon the body, drove the spirit from it.

Worthy Porthos! born to aid other men, always ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of the weak, as if God had given him strength only for that use; in dying, he had believed only to fulfill the conditions of his pact with Aramis, a pact which Aramis, however, had drawn up alone, and which Porthos had known only to claim its terrible solidarity.

Noble Porthos! What good the castles overflowing with furniture, the forests overflowing with game, the lakes overflowing with fish, and the cellars overflowing with riches? what good the lackeys in brilliant liveries, and, amid them, Mousqueton, proud of the power delegated by you? O noble Porthos! anxious hoarder of treasures, must you have toiled so to soften and gild your life only to come, upon a desert beach, to the cries of the ocean birds, to stretch yourself, bones crushed beneath a cold stone! must it have been, finally, noble Porthos, to amass so much gold as to have not even the couplet of a poor poet upon your monument!

Valiant Porthos! He sleeps no doubt still, forgotten, lost, beneath the rock that the shepherds of the moor take for the gigantic roof of a dolmen.

And so many shivering heaths, so much moss, caressed by the bitter wind of the ocean, so many tenacious lichens have welded the sepulcher to the earth, that never would the passerby suspect that such a block of granite could have been lifted by the shoulder of a mortal.

Aramis, still pale, still frozen, heart at his lips, Aramis watched, until the last ray of day, the beach fading upon the horizon.

Not a word exhaled from his mouth, not a sigh heaved his deep chest.

The Bretons, superstitious, looked at him trembling. This silence was not of a man, but of a statue.

However, at the first gray lines that descended from the sky, the boat had hoisted its little sail, which, rounding to the kiss of the breeze and drawing rapidly away from the coast, boldly sprang forth, course set for Spain, across that terrible gulf of Gascony so fertile in storms.

But, scarcely half an hour after the sail had been hoisted, the rowers, become idle, bent over their benches, and, making a shade of their hand, showed one another a white point that appeared upon the horizon, as immobile as apparently is a gull rocked by the imperceptible breathing of the waves.

But that which would have seemed immobile to ordinary eyes moved at a rapid pace for the practiced eye of the sailor; that which seemed stationary upon the wave skimmed the billows.

For some time, seeing the deep torpor in which the master was plunged, they dared not wake him, and contented themselves with exchanging their conjectures in a low and anxious voice. Aramis, indeed, so vigilant, so active, Aramis, whose eye, like that of the lynx, watched ceaselessly and saw better by night than by day, Aramis was falling asleep in the despair of his soul.

An hour passed thus, during which the day gradually lowered, but during which also the ship in sight gained so much upon the boat that Goennec, one of the three sailors, ventured to say loud enough:

"My lord, we are being chased!"

Aramis answered nothing, the ship still gaining.

Then, of their own accord, the two sailors, at the order of the patron Yves, lowered the sail, so that this single point, which appeared upon the surface of the waves, should cease to guide the enemy eye that pursued them.

On the part of the ship in sight, on the contrary, the pursuit accelerated with two new little sails that were seen to mount at the extremity of the masts.

Unfortunately, it was the finest and longest days of the year, and the moon, in all its brightness, succeeded this fatal day. The balancelle that pursued the little boat, wind astern, had therefore half an hour more of twilight, and a whole night of half-light.

"My lord! my lord! we are lost!" said the patron; "look, they see us though we have furled our sails."

"That is not surprising," murmured one of the sailors, "since it is said that, with the help of the devil, the townsfolk have fabricated instruments with which they see as well from far as from near, by night as by day."

Aramis took from the bottom of the boat a spyglass, silently adjusted it, and, passing it to the sailor:

"Here," said he, "look!"

The sailor hesitated.

"Set your mind at ease," said the bishop, "there is no sin, and, if there be sin, I take it upon myself."

The sailor raised the glass to his eye, and uttered a cry.

He had thought that, by a miracle, the ship, which appeared to him at scarcely a cannon's range, had suddenly and at a single bound cleared the distance.

But in withdrawing the instrument from his eye, he saw that, save the way the balancelle might have traveled during that short instant, he was still at the same distance.

"So," murmured the sailor, "they see us as we see them?"

"They see us," said Aramis.

And he fell back into his impassiveness.

"How! they see us?" said the patron Yves. "Impossible!"

"Here, patron, look," said the sailor.

And he passed him the spyglass.

"My lord assures me," asked the patron, "that the devil has naught to do in all this?"

Aramis shrugged his shoulders.

The patron raised the glass to his eye.

"Oh! my lord," said he, "there is a miracle: they are there; it seems to me I am about to touch them. Twenty-five men at least! Ah! I see the captain at the bow. He holds a glass like this one, and looks at us... Ah! he turns, he gives an order; they roll a cannon to the bow; they load it, they aim it... Mercy! they fire upon us!"

And, by a mechanical movement, the patron drew away his glass and the objects, thrust back to the horizon, appeared to him under their true aspect.

The vessel was still at a distance of about a league; but the maneuver announced by the patron was none the less real.

A light cloud of smoke appeared below the sails, bluer than they and unfolding like a flower that opens; then, at about a mile from the little boat, the ball was seen to decrown two or three waves, to furrow a white trench in the sea, and to disappear at the end of that trench, as inoffensive still as the stone with which, in play, a schoolboy makes skips.

"What is to be done?" asked the patron.

"They are going to sink us," said Goennec; "give us absolution, my lord."

And the sailors knelt before the bishop.

"You forget that they see you," said he.

"That is true," said the sailors, ashamed of their weakness. "Command, my lord, we are ready to die for you."

"Let us wait," said Aramis.

"How, wait?"

"Yes; do you not see, as you were saying just now, that, if we try to flee, they will sink us?"

"But perhaps," ventured the patron, "perhaps under cover of night we may escape them?"

"Oh!" said Aramis, "they have some Greek fire, no doubt, to light their path and ours."

And, at the same time, as if the little vessel would answer Aramis's call, a second cloud of smoke slowly rose to the sky, and from the bosom of that cloud sprang a flaming arrow that described its parabola like a rainbow, and came to fall into the sea, where it continued to burn, lighting the space to a quarter league in diameter.

The Bretons looked at one another in terror.

"You see well," said Aramis, "that it is better to await them."

The oars escaped the hands of the sailors, and the little boat, ceasing to advance, rocked motionless at the extremity of the waves.

Night was coming, but the vessel still advanced.

It would have seemed that it redoubled speed with the darkness. From time to time, like a vulture with bloody neck raising its head from its nest, the formidable Greek fire sprang from its flanks and cast into the midst of the ocean its flame like an incandescent snow.

At length, it came within musket range.

All the men were on deck, weapon at arm, the gunners at their pieces; the matches burned.

It would have seemed that it was a question of boarding a frigate and fighting a crew superior in number, and not of taking a skiff manned by four men.

"Surrender!" cried the commander of the balancelle, by means of his speaking-trumpet.

The sailors looked at Aramis.

Aramis made a sign with his head.

The patron Yves set a white rag fluttering at the end of a boat-hook.

It was a manner of striking the colors.

The vessel advanced like a racehorse.

It launched a new Greek-fire rocket, which came to fall twenty paces from the little boat, and which lit it up better than would have done a ray of the most ardent sun.

"At the first sign of resistance," cried the commander of the balancelle, "fire!"

The soldiers lowered their muskets.

"Since you are told we surrender!" cried the patron Yves.

"Alive! alive, captain!" cried some excited soldiers; "they must be taken alive."

"Well! yes, alive," said the captain.

Then, turning toward the Bretons:

"You all have your lives saved, my friends!" he cried, "save M. the Chevalier d'Herblay."

Aramis trembled imperceptibly.

For an instant his eye fixed upon the depths of the ocean, lit at its surface by the last gleams of the Greek fire, gleams that ran along the flanks of the waves played at their crests like plumes, and rendered yet more somber, more mysterious and more terrible the abysses they covered.

"You hear, my lord?" said the sailors.

"Yes."

"What do you order?"

"Accept."

"But you, my lord?"

Aramis leaned further forward, and played with the tips of his white and slender fingers in the greenish water of the sea, to which he smiled as to a friend.

"Accept!" he repeated.

"We accept," repeated the sailors; "but what guarantee shall we have?"

"The word of a gentleman," said the officer. "Upon my rank and upon my name, I swear that all that is not M. the Chevalier d'Herblay shall have his life saved. I am lieutenant of the king's frigate _La Pomone_, and my name is Louis-Constant de Pressigny."

With a rapid gesture, Aramis, already bent toward the sea already half-leaning out of the boat, with a rapid gesture, Aramis raised his head, stood fully upright, and, eye ardent, inflamed, smile upon his lips:

"Throw down the ladder, gentlemen," said he, as if the command belonged to him.

They obeyed.

Then Aramis, seizing the rope rail, climbed first; but, instead of the fright that was expected to appear upon his face, the surprise of the sailors of the balancelle was great, when they saw him walk to the commander with a assured step, look him fixedly, and make him with the hand a mysterious and unknown sign, at the sight of which the officer paled, trembled and bowed his head.

Without saying a word, Aramis then raised his hand up to before the commander's eyes, and showed him the bezel of a ring that he wore upon the annular finger of his left hand.

And, in making this sign, Aramis, draped in a cold, silent and haughty majesty, had the air of an emperor offering his hand to be kissed.

The commander, who, for an instant, had raised his head, inclined himself a second time with signs of the deepest respect.

Then, extending in his turn his hand toward the stern, that is to say toward his cabin, he stepped aside to let Aramis pass first.

The three Bretons, who had climbed behind their bishop, looked at one another stupefied.

All the crew kept silence.

Five minutes after, the commander called the second lieutenant, who came up immediately, ordering to set course for Corunna.

While the given order was being executed, Aramis reappeared upon the deck and came to sit against the bulwark.

Night had come, the moon was not yet risen, and yet Aramis looked obstinately toward Belle-Île. Yves then approached the commander, who had come back to take his post at the rear, and, very low, very humbly:

"What course are we following then, captain?" asked he.

"We follow the course that pleases Monseigneur," replied the officer.

Aramis spent the night leaning upon the bulwark.

Yves, in approaching him, remarked the next day that this night must have been very damp, for the wood upon which the bishop's head had rested was soaked as with dew.

Who knows! this dew, it was perhaps the first tears that had fallen from the eyes of Aramis!

What epitaph would have been worth that one, good Porthos?

Chapter CCLVIII — The Round of M. de Gesvres

D'Artagnan was not accustomed to resistances like that which he had just experienced. He returned to Nantes deeply irritated.

Irritation, in this vigorous man, translated itself into an impetuous attack, to which few people, until then, be they kings, be they giants, had known how to resist.

D'Artagnan, all a-tremble, went straight to the castle and asked to speak to the king. It might have been seven o'clock in the morning, and, since his arrival at Nantes, the king had been early-rising.

But, on arriving at the little corridor that we know, D'Artagnan found M. de Gesvres, who stopped him very politely, recommending him not to speak loud, to let the king rest.

"The king sleeps?" said D'Artagnan. "I shall let him sleep then. About what hour do you suppose he will rise?"

"Oh! in about two hours: the king has watched all night."

D'Artagnan took up his hat, saluted M. de Gesvres and returned home.

He came back at half past nine. He was told that the king was at breakfast.

"That is my affair," replied he, "I shall speak to the king while he eats."

M. de Brienne observed to D'Artagnan that the king would receive no one during his meals.

"But," said D'Artagnan looking askance at Brienne, "you perhaps do not know, Mr. Secretary, that I have my entrée everywhere and at all hours."

Brienne gently took the captain's hand, and said to him:

"Not at Nantes, dear M. d'Artagnan; the king, on this journey, has changed all the order of his household."

D'Artagnan, softened, asked about what hour the king would have finished breakfast.

"One does not know," said Brienne.

"How, one does not know? What does that mean? one does not know how long the king takes to eat? It is an hour, ordinarily, and, if I admit that the air of the Loire gives appetite, we shall put an hour and a half; that is enough, I think; I shall wait here then."

"Oh! dear M. d'Artagnan, the order is to leave no one in this corridor; I am on guard for that."

D'Artagnan felt anger mount a second time to his brain. He went out very quickly, for fear of complicating the affair by a fit of ill humor.

As he was outside, he began to reflect.

"The king," said he, "does not wish to receive me, it is evident; he is angry, this young man; he fears the words I may say to him. Yes; but, during this time, Belle-Île is being besieged and one is taking or killing perhaps my two friends... Poor Porthos! As for master Aramis, that one is full of resources, and I am easy on his account... But, no, no, Porthos is not yet an invalid, and Aramis is not an idiotic old man. The one with his arms, the other with his imagination, are going to give work to His Majesty's soldiers. Who knows! if these two brave fellows were to refashion, for the edification of His Most Christian Majesty, a little Saint-Gervais bastion?... I do not despair of it. They have cannon and garrison.

However," continued D'Artagnan shaking his head, "I believe it would be better to stop the combat. For myself alone, I would support neither pride nor treachery on the part of the king; but, for my friends, rebuffs, insults, I must endure all. If I were to go to M. Colbert?" he resumed. "There is one whom I shall have to get into the habit of frightening. Let us go to M. Colbert."

And D'Artagnan boldly set out. He learned there that M. Colbert was working with the king at the castle of Nantes.

"Good!" cried he, "here I am back to the time when I paced the paths from M. de Tréville's to the Cardinal's lodgings, from the Cardinal's lodgings to the Queen's, from the Queen's to Louis XIII's. They are right to say that in growing old men become children again. To the castle."

He returned there. M. de Lyonne was coming out. He gave both hands to D'Artagnan and told him that the king would work all evening, all night even, and that the order was given to let no one enter.

"Not even," cried D'Artagnan, "the captain who takes the order? That is too much!"

"Not even," said M. de Lyonne.

"Since it is so," replied D'Artagnan wounded to the heart, "since the captain of the musketeers, who has always entered the king's bedchamber, can no longer enter the cabinet or the dining room, it is that the king is dead or that he has taken his captain into disgrace. In either case, he has no more need of him. Do me the pleasure of going back in, you, M. de Lyonne, who are in favor, and telling the king plainly that I send him my resignation."

"D'Artagnan, take care!" cried de Lyonne.

"Go, for friendship's sake."

And he gently pushed him toward the cabinet.

"I go," said M. de Lyonne.

D'Artagnan waited, pacing the corridor.

Lyonne returned.

"Well! what did the king say?" asked D'Artagnan.

"The king said that it was well," answered de Lyonne.

"That it was well!" said the captain with explosion, "that is to say he accepts? Good! I am free. I am a bourgeois, M. de Lyonne; pleased to see you again! Farewell, castle, corridor, antechamber! a bourgeois who is going finally to breathe salutes you.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”