Part 41
But there ended d'Artagnan's certainties. The field of conjecture opened at that boundary. Now, what was to be thought? The vessel had not returned. It is true that a gale had prevailed for three days; but the corvette was at once a good sailer and solid in her timbers; she scarcely feared the blasts, and the one that carried Aramis ought, according to d'Artagnan's reckoning, to have returned to Brest, or re-entered the mouth of the Loire.
Such were the ambiguous, but for himself personally almost reassuring, tidings that d'Artagnan reported to Louis XIV when the king, followed by the whole Court, returned to Paris.
Louis, content with his success, Louis, gentler and more affable since he felt himself more powerful, had not ceased for a single instant to ride at the carriage door of Mlle de La Vallière.
Every one had hastened to divert the two queens, that they might forget this abandonment by son and husband. All breathed of the future; the past was nothing any longer to any one. Only, that past came like a painful and bleeding wound to the hearts of a few tender and devoted souls. Thus, the king was no sooner installed in his own rooms than he received a touching proof of it.
Louis XIV had just risen and taken his first meal, when his captain of the musketeers presented himself before him. D'Artagnan was somewhat pale and seemed ill at ease.
The king perceived at a first glance the alteration of that countenance, ordinarily so even.
"What ails you, d'Artagnan?" said he.
"Sire, a great misfortune has befallen me."
"Good God! what?"
"Sire, I have lost one of my friends, M. du Vallon, at the affair of Belle-Île."
And, in saying these words, d'Artagnan fixed his falcon eye upon Louis XIV, to divine in him the first sentiment that should dawn.
"I knew it," replied the king.
"You knew it and did not tell me?" cried the musketeer.
"What good would it have done? Your grief, my friend, is so worthy of respect! I, for my part, had to spare it. To inform you of that misfortune which struck you, d'Artagnan, was to triumph over it in your eyes. Yes, I knew that M. du Vallon had buried himself beneath the rocks of Locmaria; I knew that M. d'Herblay took a vessel from me, with its crew, to have himself conveyed to Bayonne. But I wished you to learn these events yourself, in a direct manner, so that you might be convinced that my friends are, for me, respectable and sacred, that always in me the man shall be immolated to men, since the king is so often forced to sacrifice men to his majesty, to his power."
"But, Sire, how do you know?..."
"How do you know yourself, d'Artagnan?"
"By this letter, Sire, which Aramis writes me from Bayonne, free and out of danger."
"See," said the king, drawing from his casket, placed on a piece of furniture near the seat against which d'Artagnan was leaning, a letter copied exactly from that of Aramis, "here is the same letter, which Colbert sent me eight hours before you received yours... I am well served, I hope."
"Yes, Sire," murmured the musketeer, "you were the only man whose fortune was capable of dominating the fortune and the strength of my two friends. You have used it, Sire; but you will not abuse it, will you?"
"D'Artagnan," said the king, with a smile full of benevolence, "I could have M. d'Herblay carried off upon the lands of the King of Spain and brought hither alive, to do justice upon him. D'Artagnan, believe me, I shall not yield to that first impulse, quite natural though it be. He is free; let him continue free."
"Oh! Sire, you will not always remain as clement, as noble, as generous as you have just shown yourself toward me and toward M. d'Herblay; you will find near you counsellors who will cure you of that weakness."
"No, d'Artagnan, you are mistaken when you accuse my council of wishing to push me to severity. The counsel to spare M. d'Herblay comes from Colbert himself."
"Ah! Sire," said d'Artagnan, astonished.
"As for you," continued the king, with an unusual kindness, "I have several pieces of good news to announce to you, but you shall know them, my dear captain, from the moment I have finished my accounts. I said I wished to make, and that I would make, your fortune. That word is about to become a reality."
"A thousand thanks, Sire; I can wait, I. I beg you, while I go and learn patience, that Your Majesty deign to occupy yourself with those poor people who, for a long time, have besieged your antechamber, and come humbly to lay a petition at the king's feet."
"Who are they?"
"Enemies of Your Majesty."
The king lifted his head.
"Friends of M. Fouquet," added d'Artagnan.
"Their names?"
"M. Gourville, M. Pélisson, and a poet, M. Jean de La Fontaine."
The king paused a moment to reflect.
"What do they want?"
"I know not."
"How are they?"
"In mourning."
"What do they say?"
"Nothing."
"What do they do?"
"They weep."
"Let them enter," said the king, frowning.
D'Artagnan turned rapidly upon himself, lifted the tapestry that closed the entrance of the royal chamber, and cried into the adjoining room:
"Show them in!"
Soon appeared at the door of the cabinet, where the king and his captain stood, the three men d'Artagnan had named.
Along their passage reigned a profound silence. The courtiers, at the approach of the friends of the unhappy superintendent of finances, the courtiers, we say, drew back as if lest they should be tainted by the contagion of disgrace and misfortune.
D'Artagnan, with a rapid step, came himself to take by the hand those unfortunates who hesitated and trembled at the door of the royal cabinet; he led them before the king's armchair, who, sheltered in the embrasure of a window, awaited the moment of presentation and prepared to give the suppliants a rigorously diplomatic reception.
The first of Fouquet's friends to advance was Pélisson. He wept no longer; but his tears had dried solely that the king might the better hear his voice and his prayer.
Gourville bit his lips to check his weeping out of respect for the king. La Fontaine buried his face in his handkerchief, and one would not have said he lived, but for the convulsive movement of his shoulders, heaved by his sobs.
The king had preserved all his dignity. His face was impassive. He had even kept the frown which had appeared when d'Artagnan announced his enemies to him. He made a gesture which signified: "Speak," and remained standing, casting a deep glance upon those three desperate men.
Pélisson bowed to the ground, and La Fontaine knelt as is done in churches.
That obstinate silence, troubled only by sighs and so dolorous moanings, began to move in the king, not compassion, but impatience.
"M. Pélisson," said he, in a brief and dry voice, "M. Gourville, and you, monsieur..."
And he did not name La Fontaine.
"I should see, with sensible displeasure, that you came to entreat me for one of the greatest criminals my justice must punish. A king suffers himself to be softened only by tears or by remorse: tears of innocence, remorse of the guilty. I shall believe neither in M. Fouquet's remorse nor in his friends' tears, because the one is corrupted to the heart and the others must dread to come offend me in my own house. Wherefore, M. Pélisson, M. Gourville, and you, monsieur... I pray you to say nothing that does not loudly testify the respect you bear my will."
"Sire," answered Pélisson, trembling at these terrible words, "we are come to say nothing to Your Majesty that is not the most profound expression of the most sincere respect and most sincere love due to the king by all his subjects. The justice of Your Majesty is dreadful; each must bow beneath the decrees it pronounces. We bow respectfully before it. Far from us the thought of coming to defend him who had the misfortune to offend Your Majesty. He who has incurred your disgrace may be a friend to us, but he is an enemy of the State. We shall abandon him, weeping, to the king's severity."
"Besides," interrupted the king, calmed by that suppliant voice and those persuasive words, "my Parliament will judge. I strike not without having weighed the crime. My justice has not the sword without having first held the scales."
"Therefore have we full confidence in the king's impartiality, and may we hope to make our weak voices heard, with Your Majesty's assent, when the hour to defend an accused friend shall have struck for us."
"Then, gentlemen, what do you ask?" said the king, with his imposing air.
"Sire," continued Pélisson, whom emotion was gradually gaining, "the accused leaves a wife and family. The little property he had scarce sufficed to pay his debts, and Mme Fouquet, since her husband's captivity, is abandoned by all the world. The hand of Your Majesty strikes like the hand of God. When the Lord sends the plague of leprosy or pestilence upon a family, every one flees and withdraws from the dwelling of the leper or the pest-stricken. Sometimes, but very rarely, a generous physician alone dares approach the accursed threshold, crosses it with courage, and exposes his life to combat death. He is the last resource of the dying; he is the instrument of heavenly mercy. Sire, we beseech you, with joined hands, upon both knees, as one beseeches the Divinity; Mme Fouquet has no friends left, no support; she weeps in her house, poor and deserted, abandoned by all those who besieged her door at the hour of favor; she has no credit left, she has no hope! At least, the unhappy man upon whom your anger weighs, guilty though he be, receives from you the bread his tears moisten each day. As afflicted, more destitute than her husband, Mme Fouquet, she who had the honor to receive Your Majesty at her table, Mme Fouquet, wife of the former superintendent of finances of Your Majesty, Mme Fouquet has no bread!
Here, the deathlike silence which had bound the breath of Pélisson's two friends was broken by the burst of sobs, and d'Artagnan, whose breast was breaking as he listened to that humble prayer, turned upon himself, toward the corner of the cabinet, to bite his mustache in freedom and compress his sighs.
The king had kept his eye dry, his face severe: but the redness had mounted to his cheeks, and the assurance of his glances diminished visibly.
"What do you wish?" said he, in a moved voice.
"We come to ask humbly of Your Majesty," replied Pélisson, whom emotion was gaining little by little, "to permit us, without incurring your disgrace, to lend Mme Fouquet two thousand pistoles, collected among all the former friends of her husband, that the widow may not lack the things most necessary to life."
At that word _widow_, pronounced by Pélisson, when Fouquet still lived, the king grew extremely pale; his pride fell; pity came to him from the heart to the lips. He let fall a softened glance upon all those who sobbed at his feet.
"God forbid," answered he, "that I confound the innocent with the guilty! Those know me ill who doubt my mercy toward the weak. I shall never strike but the arrogant. Do, gentlemen, do all that your hearts shall counsel you to relieve the sorrow of Mme Fouquet. Go, gentlemen, go."
The three men rose in silence, their eyes dry. Tears had dried at the burning contact of their cheeks and eyelids. They had not the strength to address a thanksgiving to the king, who, moreover, cut short their solemn reverences by swiftly retiring behind his armchair.
D'Artagnan remained alone with the king.
"Well!" said he, approaching the young prince, who questioned him with a look; "well, my master! If you had not the motto that adorns your sun, I would counsel you another, ready to have it translated into Latin by M. Conrart: 'Gentle to the small, rough to the strong!'"
The king smiled and passed into the adjoining room, after saying to d'Artagnan:
"I give you the leave you must need to set in order the affairs of the late M. du Vallon, your friend."
Chapter CCLXI — The Testament of Porthos
At Pierrefonds, all was in mourning. The courts were deserted, the stables closed, the flowerbeds neglected.
In the basins, the fountains ceased of themselves, erstwhile expanded, noisy, and bright.
Upon the paths, around the castle, came some grave personages upon mules or farm nags. These were the neighbors of the countryside, the curates and the bailiffs of the bordering lands.
All this company entered the castle silently, gave its mount to a mournful groom, and directed itself, conducted by a huntsman clad in black, toward the great hall, where, upon the threshold, Mousqueton received the arrivals.
Mousqueton had grown so thin in two days that his clothes moved upon him, like those scabbards too wide, in which sword-blades rattle.
His face, blotched red and white like that of Van Dyck's Madonna, was furrowed by two silver streams which dug their bed in his cheeks, as full formerly as they were flabby since his mourning.
At each new visit, Mousqueton found fresh tears, and it was a pity to see him clutch his throat with his great hand, that he might not burst into sobs.
All these visits had for their object the reading of Porthos's testament, announced for that day, and to which all the covetousness or all the friendships of the dead man wished to be present, he leaving no relative behind him.
The assistants took their places as they arrived, and the great hall had just been closed when noon sounded, the hour fixed for the reading.
The proxy of Porthos, and naturally the successor of master Coquenard, began by slowly unrolling the vast parchment upon which the powerful hand of Porthos had traced his supreme wishes.
The seal broken, the spectacles set, the preliminary cough having sounded, every one lent an ear. Mousqueton had nestled in a corner to weep the better, to hear the less.
Suddenly, the two-leaved door of the great hall, which had been shut again, opened as by a prodigy, and a manly face appeared upon the threshold, resplendent in the liveliest sunlight.
It was d'Artagnan, who had come alone to that door, and, finding no one to hold his stirrup, had tied his horse to the knocker, and announced himself.
The brightness of day invading the hall, the murmur of the assistants, and, more than all that, the instinct of the faithful dog, tore Mousqueton from his reverie. He raised his head, recognized the old friend of his master, and, howling with grief, came to embrace his knees, watering the flags with his tears.
D'Artagnan raised the poor intendant, embraced him like a brother, and having nobly saluted the assembly, which bowed entirely, whispering his name, he went to seat himself at the end of the great hall of carved oak, still holding the hand of Mousqueton, who suffocated and sat upon the step.
Then the proxy, who was moved like the others, began the reading.
Porthos, after a profession of faith most Christian, asked pardon of his enemies for the harm he might have caused them.
At this paragraph, a ray of inexpressible pride glided from d'Artagnan's eyes. He recalled the old soldier. All those enemies of Porthos, overthrown by his valiant hand, he reckoned their number, and told himself that Porthos had done wisely not to detail his enemies or the wrongs caused to them; otherwise, the task had been too hard for the reader.
Then came the following enumeration:
"I possess at this hour, by the grace of God:
"1° The domain of Pierrefonds, lands, woods, meadows, waters, forests, surrounded by good walls;
"2° The domain of Bracieux, castle, forests, arable lands, forming three farms;
"3° The little estate of Le Vallon, so named because it lies in the valley..."
— Brave Porthos!
"4° Fifty farms in Touraine, of five hundred acres each;
"5° Three mills upon the Cher, of a revenue of six hundred livres each;
"6° Three ponds in Berry, of a revenue of two hundred livres each.
"As for the _movable_ goods, so named because they cannot move, as my learned friend the bishop of Vannes so well explains..."
D'Artagnan shuddered at the gloomy remembrance of that name.
The proxy continued imperturbably:
"They consist of:
"1° In furniture which I could not detail here for lack of space, and which furnishes all my castles or houses, but of which the list is drawn up by my intendant..."
Each turned his eyes upon Mousqueton, who plunged into his grief.
"2° In twenty saddle and draft horses which I have particularly in my castle of Pierrefonds and which are named: _Bayard, Roland, Charlemagne, Pépin, Dunois, La Hire, Ogier, Samson, Milon, Nemrod, Urgande, Armide, Falstrade, Dalila, Rébecca, Yolande, Finette, Grisette, Lisette, and Musette._
"3° In sixty dogs, forming six packs, distributed as follows: the first, for the stag; the second, for the wolf; the third, for the boar; the fourth, for the hare, and the two others, for the setter or the guard;
"4° In arms of war and chase enclosed in my armory;
"5° My wines of Anjou, chosen for Athos, who loved them formerly; my wines of Burgundy, Champagne, Bordeaux, and Spain, filling eight storerooms and twelve cellars in my several houses;
"6° My pictures and statues which are pretended to be of great value, and which are numerous enough to fatigue the sight.
"7° My library, composed of six thousand volumes quite new, and which have never been opened;
"8° My silver plate, which may perhaps be a little worn, but which must weigh from a thousand to twelve hundred livres, for I could scarce lift the chest that contains it, and made but six turns of my chamber bearing it.
"9° All these objects, plus the table and household linen, are distributed in the houses I loved best..."
Here, the reader stopped to take breath. Each sighed, coughed, and redoubled attention. The proxy resumed:
"I have lived without having children, and it is probable I shall have none, which is a keen sorrow to me. I am mistaken, however, for I have a son in common with my other friends: it is M. Raoul Auguste-Jules de Bragelonne, true son of M. the count de La Fère.
"This young gentleman has seemed to me worthy to succeed the three valiant gentlemen of whom I am the friend and the very humble servant."
Here, a shrill noise was heard. It was d'Artagnan's sword, which, slipping from the baldric, had fallen upon the resonant board. Each turned his eyes that way, and one saw that a great tear had flowed from d'Artagnan's thick lashes upon his aquiline nose, whose luminous ridge shone like a flaming crescent in the sun.
"Wherefore," continued the proxy, "I have left all my goods, movable and immovable, comprised in the enumeration above made, to M. the viscount Raoul-Auguste-Jules de Bragelonne, son of M. the count de La Fère, to console him for the grief he seems to have, and put him in a state to bear his name gloriously..."
A long murmur ran through the audience.
The proxy continued, sustained by the flaming eye of d'Artagnan, who, scanning the assembly, re-established the interrupted silence.
"Upon charge, by M. the viscount de Bragelonne, to give to M. the chevalier d'Artagnan, captain of the king's musketeers, what the said chevalier d'Artagnan shall ask of my goods.
"Upon charge, by M. the viscount de Bragelonne, to have a good pension conveyed to M. the chevalier d'Herblay, my friend, should he have need to live in exile.
"Upon charge, by M. the viscount de Bragelonne, to maintain those of my servants who have done ten years' service with me, and to give five hundred livres to each of the others.
"I leave to my intendant Mousqueton all my town, war, and hunting clothes, to the number of forty-seven, in the assurance that he will wear them until worn out for love and in remembrance of me.
"Moreover, I bequeath to M. the viscount de Bragelonne my old servant and faithful friend Mousqueton, above named, upon charge by the said viscount de Bragelonne to act so that Mousqueton shall declare upon dying that he never ceased to be happy."
At hearing these words, Mousqueton bowed, pale and trembling; his broad shoulders shuddered convulsively; his face, imprinted with a frightful grief, issued from his icy hands, and the assistants saw him stagger, hesitate, as if, wishing to leave the hall, he sought a direction.
"Mousqueton," said d'Artagnan, "my good friend, leave here; go make your preparations. I am taking you with me to Athos's, where I am going upon leaving Pierrefonds."
Mousqueton answered nothing. He breathed scarce at all, as if all, in that hall, must henceforth be strange to him. He opened the door and disappeared slowly.
The proxy finished his reading, after which most of those who had come to hear the last wishes of Porthos vanished, deceived but full of respect.
As for d'Artagnan, left alone after receiving the ceremonious reverence the proxy had made him, he admired that profound wisdom of the testator who had just distributed his wealth so justly to the most worthy, to the most needy, with delicacies which none, among the subtlest courtiers and the noblest hearts, could have found so perfect.
Indeed, Porthos enjoined upon Raoul de Bragelonne to give d'Artagnan all that the latter should ask. He knew well, that worthy Porthos, that d'Artagnan would ask nothing; and, in case he had asked something, none but himself made him his share.
Porthos left a pension to Aramis, who, had he had the wish to ask too much, was checked by d'Artagnan's example; and that word exile, thrown by the testator without apparent intent, was it not the sweetest, the most exquisite criticism of that conduct of Aramis which had caused Porthos's death?
Finally, no mention was made of Athos in the dead man's testament. He, indeed, could suppose that the son would not offer the best part to the father? The gross mind of Porthos had judged all these causes, seized all these nuances, better than the law, better than usage, better than taste.
"Porthos was a heart," said d'Artagnan to himself with a sigh.
And it seemed to him he heard a moan in the ceiling. He thought at once of that poor Mousqueton, whom he must distract from his grief.
To this end, d'Artagnan left the hall with eagerness to go seek the worthy intendant, since the latter did not return.
He mounted the staircase leading to the first floor, and perceived in Porthos's chamber a heap of clothes of all colors and all stuffs, upon which Mousqueton had thrown himself after piling them himself.
It was the lot of the faithful friend. These clothes belonged to him well; they had been well given him. One saw Mousqueton's hand extend over those relics, which he kissed with all his lips, with all his face, which he covered with all his body.
D'Artagnan approached to console the poor fellow.
"Good God," said he, "he moves no more; he is in a swoon!"
D'Artagnan was mistaken: Mousqueton was dead.
Dead, like the dog who, having lost his master, returns to die upon his coat.
Chapter CCLXII — The Old Age of Athos
While all these events were separating forever the four musketeers, formerly bound in a way that seemed indissoluble, Athos, left alone after Raoul's departure, began to pay his tribute to that anticipated death which is called the absence of loved ones.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”