Part 42

Returned to his house at Blois, having not even Grimaud left to gather a poor smile when he walked among the flowerbeds, Athos felt from day to day the vigor of a nature that had so long seemed infallible gradually failing.

Age, held at bay for him by the presence of the beloved object, arrived now with that cortège of pains and constraints which swells in proportion as it has been delayed. Athos no longer had his son there to school himself to walk upright, to hold his head high, to set a good example; he no longer had those bright young eyes, that ever-burning hearth where the flame of his gaze was renewed.

And then, must it be said? that nature, exquisite in its tenderness and its reserve, finding nothing now to contain its impulses, gave itself up to sorrow with all the vehemence of common natures when they give themselves up to joy.

The Count de La Fère, who had remained young until his sixty-second year, the man of war who had kept his strength despite fatigues, his freshness of mind despite misfortunes, his sweet serenity of soul and body despite Milady, despite Mazarin, despite La Vallière—Athos had become an old man in eight days, from the moment he lost the support of his second youth.

Still handsome, but bowed, noble, but sad, gentle and faltering beneath his whitened hair, he sought, since his solitude, the clearings where the sun came to pierce the foliage of the walks.

The rough exercise of all his life, he unlearned it when Raoul was no longer there. The servants, accustomed to see him risen at dawn in every season, were astonished to hear seven o'clock strike in summer without their master having left his bed.

Athos remained lying, a book beneath his pillow, and he did not sleep, and he did not read. Lying down so as no longer to bear the weight of his body, he let soul and spirit leap from their envelope and return to his son or to God.

They were sometimes greatly frightened to see him, for hours, absorbed in a silent reverie, insensible; he no longer heard the step of the fearful valet who came to the threshold of the chamber to spy whether the master slept or waked. It would happen that he forgot the day was half spent, that the hour of the first two meals was past. Then they waked him, he rose, went down into his dark walk, then came back a little into the sun as if to share for a minute its warmth with the absent child. And then the gloomy, monotonous promenade began again until, exhausted, he regained the chamber and the bed, his preferred dwelling.

For several days the count spoke not a word. He refused the visits that came to him, and during the night he was seen to relight his lamp and pass long hours in writing or turning over parchments.

Athos wrote one of those letters to Vannes, another to Fontainebleau: they remained without answer. We know why: Aramis had left France; d'Artagnan was traveling from Nantes to Paris, from Paris to Pierrefonds. His valet de chambre noticed that he diminished each day some turns of his walk. The great avenue of lindens soon became too long for the feet that had once traversed it a thousand times in a day. The count was seen to go painfully to the middle trees, sit upon the mossy bench that notched a side alley, and wait thus for the return of strength or rather for the return of night.

Soon a hundred paces exhausted him. At last, Athos would rise no more; he refused all nourishment, and his people, terrified—though he complained not, though he still had the smile upon his lips, though he continued to speak in his sweet voice—his people went to Blois to fetch the late Monsieur's former physician, and brought him to the Count de La Fère, in such a way that he might see the latter without being seen.

To this end, they placed him in a cabinet adjoining the sick man's room and begged him not to show himself, for fear of displeasing the master, who had asked for no physician.

The doctor obeyed; Athos was a sort of model for the gentlemen of the country; the Blaisois prided itself on possessing this sacred relic of old French glories; Athos was a very great seigneur, compared to those nobilities such as the king improvised by touching with his young and fruitful scepter the dried trunks of the heraldic trees of the province.

He was respected, we say, and loved. The physician could not bear to see his people weep and to see the poor of the canton gather, to whom Athos gave life and consolation by his good words and his alms. He therefore examined from the depth of his hiding-place the manners of the mysterious ill that bowed and bit more mortally day by day a man but lately full of life and the wish to live.

He remarked upon Athos's cheeks the purple of the fever that kindles and feeds, slow fever, pitiless, born in a fold of the heart, sheltering behind that growing rampart of suffering it engenders, cause at once and effect of a perilous state.

The count spoke to no one, we say, he spoke not even to himself. His thought feared noise, it touched that degree of overexcitement bordering on ecstasy. The man thus absorbed, when he belongs not yet to God, belongs already no more to the earth.

The doctor remained several hours studying this dolorous struggle of the will against a superior power. He was appalled to see those eyes ever fixed, ever attached to the invisible goal; he was appalled to see beat with the same motion that heart whose habit no sigh ever varied; sometimes the acuteness of pain gives the physician hope.

A half-day passed thus. The doctor made his decision as a brave man, as a firm spirit: he came abruptly from his retreat and went straight to Athos, who saw him without showing more surprise than if he had understood nothing of this apparition.

"Monsieur le comte, pardon," said the doctor, coming to the sick man with open arms, "but I have a reproach to make you; you shall hear me."

And he sat at Athos's bedside, who with great effort emerged from his preoccupation.

"What is it, doctor?" asked the count after a silence.

"It is that you are ill, monsieur, and that you do not have yourself treated."

"I, ill!" said Athos, smiling.

"Fever, consumption, weakening, decay, monsieur le comte!"

"Weakening!" answered Athos. "Is it possible? I do not rise."

"Come, come, monsieur le comte, no subterfuges! You are a good Christian."

"I believe so," said Athos.

"Would you give yourself death?"

"Never, doctor."

"Well, monsieur, you are wasting away; to remain thus is a suicide; recover, monsieur le comte, recover!"

"Of what? Find the ill first. I, never have I felt better, never has heaven seemed fairer to me, never have I more cherished my flowers."

"You have a hidden grief."

"Hidden?... Not so, I have the absence of my son, doctor; that is all my ill; I hide it not."

"Monsieur le comte, your son lives, he is strong, he has all the future of men of his merit and his race; live for him..."

"But I live, doctor. Oh! be quite at ease," he added, smiling with melancholy, "so long as Raoul shall live, it will be well known; for, so long as he shall live, I shall live."

"What say you?"

"A very simple thing. At this moment, doctor, I let life hang suspended within me. It would be a task above my strength, the forgetful, dissipated, indifferent life, when I have not Raoul there. You do not ask the lamp to burn when the spark has not attached the flame to it; ask not of me to live amid noise and light. I vegetate, I prepare myself, I wait. See here, doctor, recall those soldiers whom we saw so often together upon the ports where they waited to be embarked; lying, indifferent, half upon one element, half upon the other, they were neither at the place the sea was to bear them nor at the place the earth was to lose them; baggage prepared, mind tense, fixed gaze, they waited. I repeat, that word is the one that paints my present life. Lying like those soldiers, ear strained toward the noises that come to me, I would be ready to depart at the first call. Who shall give me that call? life, or death? God, or Raoul? My baggage is ready, my soul is prepared, I await the signal... I wait, doctor, I wait!"

The doctor knew the temper of that mind, he appreciated the solidity of that body; he reflected a moment, told himself that words were useless, remedies absurd, and he departed, exhorting Athos's servants not to leave him for a moment.

Athos, the doctor gone, showed neither anger nor vexation that he had been disturbed; he did not even enjoin that the letters which should come be promptly brought to him: he knew well that every distraction reaching him was a joy, a hope his servants would have paid with their blood to procure him.

Sleep had become rare. Athos, by dint of musing, forgot himself at most some hours in a reverie deeper, darker, than others would have called a dream. This momentary repose gave that oblivion to the body, wearied by the soul; for Athos lived doubly during those peregrinations of his intelligence. One night, he dreamed that Raoul was dressing in a tent, to go to the expedition commanded by Monsieur de Beaufort in person. The young man was sad, he slowly fastened his cuirass, slowly girded his sword.

"What ails you?" his father tenderly asked him.

"What afflicts me is the death of Porthos, our so good friend," Raoul answered; "I suffer from here at the pain you will feel there."

And the vision vanished with Athos's sleep.

At daybreak, one of the valets entered his master's room, and gave him a letter coming from Spain.

"Aramis's handwriting," thought the count.

And he read.

"Porthos is dead!" he cried after the first lines. "O Raoul, Raoul, thanks! you keep your promise, you warn me!"

And Athos, seized with a mortal sweat, fainted in his bed with no other cause than his weakness.

Chapter CCLXIII — Athos's Vision

When this fainting-fit of Athos had ceased, the count, almost ashamed to have weakened before that supernatural event, dressed and asked for a horse, quite decided to go to Blois, to establish surer correspondences, whether with Africa, or with d'Artagnan or Aramis.

Indeed, this letter from Aramis informed the Count de La Fère of the ill success of the Belle-Île expedition. It gave him, concerning the death of Porthos, details enough that the heart so tender and so devoted of Athos should be moved to its last fibers.

Athos therefore wished to go pay his friend Porthos a last visit. To render this honor to his old companion-at-arms, he counted on warning d'Artagnan, bringing him to recommence the painful voyage of Belle-Île, accomplish in his company that sad pilgrimage to the tomb of the giant he had so loved, then return to his house, to obey that secret influence which led him to eternity by these mysterious paths.

But scarcely had the valets, joyful, dressed their master—they saw with pleasure him prepare for a voyage that must dissipate his melancholy—scarcely was the gentlest horse in the count's stable saddled and led before the perron, than the father of Raoul felt his head grow confused, his legs give way, and understood the impossibility in which he was of taking another step.

He asked to be carried into the sun; they stretched him upon his mossy bench, where he passed a great hour before recovering his senses.

Nothing was more natural than this atony after the inert repose of the last days. Athos took a broth to give himself strength, and dipped his dried lips in a glass full of the wine he best loved, that old Anjou wine, mentioned by good Porthos in his admirable testament.

Then, comforted, free in spirit, he had his horse brought; but he needed the help of the valets to mount painfully into the saddle.

He made not a hundred paces: a shiver seized him at the turning of the road.

"That is strange," said he to his valet de chambre, who accompanied him.

"Let us stop, monsieur, I beg you!" answered the faithful servant. "See, you are growing pale."

"That shall not prevent me from pursuing my route, since I am on the way," replied the count.

And he gave the reins to his horse.

But suddenly the animal, instead of obeying his master's thought, stopped. A movement of which Athos was not aware had tightened the bit.

"Something," said Athos, "wills that I go no further. Support me," he added, extending his arms; "quick, come near! I feel all my muscles relaxing, and I am about to fall from my horse."

The valet had seen the motion made by his master at the same time he had received the order. He approached briskly, received the count in his arms, and, as they were not yet far enough from the house that the servants, remained upon the threshold of the door to see Monsieur de La Fère depart, should not perceive this disorder in the ordinarily so regular gait of their master, the valet de chambre called his comrades by gesture and voice; then all ran with eagerness.

Scarcely had Athos taken a few steps to return toward his house, than he found himself better. His vigor seemed to be reborn, and the will returned to him to push on toward Blois. He made his horse wheel about. But, at the first movement of the beast, he fell back into that state of torpor and anguish.

"Come, decidedly," he murmured, "someone wills that I remain at home."

His people approached; they lifted him from his horse; and all bore him running toward his house. All was soon prepared in his chamber; they laid him in his bed.

"You will take good care," he said to them, disposing himself to sleep, "that I expect letters from Africa this very day."

"Monsieur will doubtless learn with pleasure that the son of Blaisois has mounted horse to gain an hour on the Blois courier," answered the valet de chambre.

"Thanks!" answered Athos with his smile of kindness.

The count fell asleep; his anxious slumber resembled a suffering. He who watched him saw upon his features, several times, dawn the expression of an inner torture. Perhaps Athos was dreaming. The day passed; the son of Blaisois returned; the courier had brought no news. The count calculated with despair the minutes, he shuddered when those minutes had formed an hour. The idea that they had forgotten him over there came to him once and cost him an atrocious pain at the heart.

No one in the house hoped any longer that the courier would arrive, his hour was long past. Four times, the express sent to Blois had repeated his journey, and nothing had come to the count's address.

Athos knew that this courier arrived but once a week. It was therefore a delay of eight deadly days to endure.

He began the night with that dolorous persuasion.

All that a sick man, irritated by suffering, can add of gloomy suppositions to already sad probabilities, Athos heaped up during the first hours of that mortal night.

The fever rose; it invaded the chest, where the fire soon took, following the expression of the physician they had brought back from Blois on the son of Blaisois's last journey.

Soon it gained the head. The physician practiced successively two bleedings which cleared it, but which weakened the patient and left power of action only to his brain.

However, that redoubtable fever had ceased. It besieged with its last beatings the numbed extremities; it ended by yielding altogether when midnight struck.

The physician, seeing this incontestable improvement, returned to Blois after having ordered some prescriptions and declared that the count was saved.

Then began, for Athos, a strange, indefinable situation. Free to think, his spirit bore toward Raoul, toward that well-beloved son. His imagination showed him the fields of Africa in the environs of Djidjelli, where Monsieur de Beaufort must have landed with his army.

There were gray rocks all greened in certain places by the sea water, when it comes to whip the beach during squalls and tempests.

Beyond the shore, variegated with these rocks resembling tombs, rose in amphitheater, among the lentisks and cactuses, a sort of borough full of smoke, of obscure noises and affrighted movements.

Suddenly, from the bosom of that smoke a flame detached itself which reached, though creeping, to cover the whole surface of that borough, and which grew little by little, engulfing all in its red whirlwinds; weeping, cries, arms stretched to heaven. It was, for a moment, a frightful medley of beams crashing down, of twisted blades, of calcined stones, of grilled, vanished trees.

Strange thing! in that chaos where Athos distinguished raised arms, where he heard cries, sobs, sighs, he never saw a human face.

The cannon thundered afar, the musketry crackled, the sea roared, the herds escaped bounding upon the verdant banks. But not a soldier to bring the match near the cannon batteries, not a sailor to help the maneuver of that fleet, not a shepherd for those flocks.

After the ruin of the village and the destruction of the forts that dominated it, ruin and destruction wrought magically, without the cooperation of a single human being, the flame went out, the smoke began to rise again, then diminished in intensity, paled and evaporated completely.

Night then fell upon that landscape; an opaque night upon the earth, brilliant in the firmament; the great flaming stars that scintillate in the African sky shone without lighting aught but themselves around them.

A long silence established itself which served to rest a moment the troubled imagination of Athos, and, as he felt that what he had to see was not finished, he applied more attentively the gaze of his intelligence upon the strange spectacle his imagination reserved for him.

That spectacle soon continued for him.

A soft and pale moon rose behind the slopes of the coast, and, moiréing first the undulous folds of the sea, which seemed calmed after the bellowings it had made heard during Athos's vision, the moon, we say, came to attach its diamonds and opals to the brushwood and thickets of the hill.

The gray rocks, like so many silent and attentive phantoms, seemed to raise their greenish heads to examine also the field of battle in the moon's light, and Athos perceived that this field, entirely empty during the combat, was now strewn with fallen bodies.

An inexplicable shiver of fear and horror seized his soul, when he recognized the white and blue uniform of the soldiers of Picardy, their long pikes with blue shafts and their muskets marked with the fleur-de-lis at the butt.

When he saw all the gaping and cold wounds look toward the azured sky, as to ask back the souls to which they had given passage.

When he saw the horses, disemboweled, morose, the tongue hanging sideways from the lips, sleep in the frozen blood spread around them, and which soiled their housings and their manes.

When he saw Monsieur de Beaufort's white horse stretched, the head shattered, in the front rank upon the field of the dead.

Athos passed a cold hand over his brow, which he wondered to find not burning. He convinced himself, by that touch, that he assisted, like a spectator without fever, at the morrow of a battle delivered upon the shore of Djidjelli by the expeditionary army, which he had seen quit the coasts of France and disappear at the horizon, and whose last gleam of the cannon-shot sent by the duke, in sign of adieu to the fatherland, he had saluted in thought and gesture.

Who shall paint the mortal rending with which his soul, following like a vigilant eye the trace of those corpses, went to look at them all one after another, to recognize whether among them slept not Raoul? Who shall express the intoxicating, divine joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thanked Him for not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead?

Indeed, fallen dead in their rank, stiffened, frozen, all those dead, well recognizable, seemed to turn with complaisance and respect toward the Count de La Fère, to be better seen of him during his funereal inspection.

However, he wondered, seeing all those corpses, at not perceiving the survivors.

He had come to that point of illusion, that this vision was for him a real voyage made by the father in Africa, to obtain more exact information on the son.

Also, weary of having traversed so many seas and continents, he sought to rest beneath one of the tents sheltered behind a rock, and upon whose summit floated the white fleur-de-lis pennon. He sought a soldier to be conducted to Monsieur de Beaufort's tent.

Then, while his gaze wandered in the plain, turning on all sides, he saw a white form appear behind the resinous myrtles.

That figure was clad in an officer's costume: it held in hand a broken sword; it advanced slowly toward Athos, who, stopping suddenly and fixing his gaze upon it, spoke not, moved not, and who wished to open his arms, because in that silent and pale officer he had just recognized Raoul.

The count tried a cry, which remained stifled in his throat. Raoul, by a gesture, indicated to him to be silent, putting a finger upon his mouth and receding little by little, without Athos seeing his legs move.

The count, paler than Raoul, more trembling, followed his son crossing painfully heaths and bushes, stones and ditches. Raoul seemed not to touch the earth, and no obstacle hindered the lightness of his step.

The count, whom the accidents of the ground fatigued, soon stopped exhausted. Raoul still made sign to him to follow. The tender father, to whom love gave back strength, tried a last movement and climbed the mountain in the wake of the young man, who drew him by his gesture and his smile.

At last, he touched the crest of that hill, and saw delineate in black, upon the horizon whitened by the moon, the aerial, poetic forms of Raoul. Athos extended the hand to arrive near his well-beloved son, upon the plateau, and the latter also extended his to him; but suddenly, as if the young man had been drawn despite himself, ever receding, he left the earth, and Athos saw the sky shine between the feet of his child and the soil of the hill.

Raoul rose insensibly into the void, ever smiling, ever calling by gesture; he withdrew toward the sky.

Athos gave a cry of frightened tenderness; he looked below. One saw a destroyed camp, and, like immovable atoms, all those white corpses of the royal army.

And then, raising his head, he saw always, always, his son who invited him to mount with him.

Chapter CCLXIV — The Angel of Death

Athos was at this point of his marvelous vision, when the charm was suddenly broken by a great noise coming from the outer gates of the house.

One heard a horse gallop upon the hardened sand of the great avenue, and the rumor of the most noisy and animated conversations rose to the chamber where the count was dreaming.

Athos moved not from the place he occupied; he but turned his head toward the door to perceive the sooner the noises that reached him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”