Part 44

D’Artagnan was struck to see two open coffins in that drawing-room; he drew near, at Grimaud’s silent bidding, and saw in one of them Athos, handsome even in death, and in the other Raoul, his eyes closed, his cheeks pearled like the Pallas of Virgil, and a smile upon his violet lips.

He shuddered to see the father and the son, those two departed souls, represented on earth by two gloomy corpses incapable of drawing near to one another, however close they might lie.

“Raoul here!” he murmured. “Oh! Grimaud, you had not told me!”

Grimaud shook his head and made no answer; but, taking d’Artagnan by the hand, he led him to the coffin and showed him, beneath the fine shroud, the black wounds through which life must have taken flight.

The captain turned away his gaze, and, judging it useless to question Grimaud, who would not reply, he recalled that the secretary of M. de Beaufort had written more of the matter than d’Artagnan himself had had the courage to read.

Taking up again that account of the affair which had cost Raoul his life, he found these words, which formed the last paragraph of the letter:

“M. the Duke has ordered that the body of M. the Viscount be embalmed, as is the custom among the Arabs when they would have their bodies carried to their native soil, and M. the Duke has provided relays that a trusted servant, who had brought up the young man, might convey his coffin to M. the Count de La Fère.”

“Thus,” thought d’Artagnan, “I shall follow your funeral, my dear child, I, already old, I, who am worth nothing more upon the earth, and I shall scatter the dust upon that brow which I was still kissing two months ago. God willed it. You willed it yourself. I have not even the right to weep; you chose your death; it seemed to you preferable to life.”

At length came the moment when the cold remains of those two gentlemen must be given back to the earth.

There was such a throng of men-at-arms and of common folk that, even to the place of burial, which was a chapel in the open plain, the road from the town was filled with horsemen and footmen in mourning weeds.

Athos had chosen for his last dwelling the little enclosure of that chapel, which he had erected at the bounds of his lands. He had brought its stones, carved in 1550, from an old Gothic manor situated in the Berry, which had sheltered his earliest youth.

The chapel, thus rebuilt, thus transported, smiled beneath a clump of poplars and sycamores. It was served every Sunday by the curate of the neighboring village, to whom Athos allotted a rent of two hundred livres for that purpose, and all the vassals of his domain, some forty in number, the plowmen and the farmers with their families, came thither to hear mass, without need to go to the town.

Behind the chapel stretched, enclosed by two thick hedges of hazel, elder, and hawthorn, girt with a deep ditch, the little untilled close, yet cheerful in its barrenness, because the mosses grew high there, because wild heliotropes and charlock crossed their perfumes; because beneath the chestnut trees welled a great spring, prisoner in a marble cistern, and because upon the thyme all around settled thousands of bees come from all the neighboring plains, while finches and robins sang madly upon the flowers of the hedge.

It was there that the two coffins were brought, amid a silent and reverent crowd.

The office for the dead being celebrated, the last farewells given to those noble dead, all the company dispersed, speaking by the ways of the virtues and the gentle death of the father, of the hopes the son had raised and of his sad end upon the shore of Africa.

And little by little the sounds died out as the lamps lit in the humble nave were extinguished. The priest saluted the altar and the still fresh graves a last time; then, followed by his assistant, who rang a harsh little bell, he slowly regained his presbytery.

D’Artagnan, left alone, perceived that night was falling.

He had forgotten the hour in thinking upon the dead.

He rose from the oak bench on which he had seated himself in the chapel, and would, like the priest, go say a last farewell to the double grave which held his lost friends.

A woman was praying, kneeling upon that damp earth.

D’Artagnan stopped at the threshold of the chapel, so as not to disturb the woman, and also to try to see who was this pious friend who came to fulfill so sacred a duty with such zeal and perseverance.

The unknown hid her face beneath her hands, white as hands of alabaster. In the noble simplicity of her attire one guessed the lady of distinction. Without, several horses mounted by servants and a traveling coach awaited the lady. D’Artagnan sought in vain to guess what concerned her.

She prayed still; she often passed her handkerchief across her face. D’Artagnan understood that she wept.

He saw her strike her breast with the pitiless compunction of the Christian woman. He heard her utter more than once that cry issuing from an ulcerated heart: “Pardon! pardon!”

And as she seemed to abandon herself wholly to her grief, as she threw herself back, half fainting, amid her plaints and her prayers, d’Artagnan, touched by this love for his much-regretted friends, took a few steps toward the tomb, so as to interrupt the sinister colloquy of the penitent with the dead.

But as soon as his foot had cried upon the sand, the unknown raised her head and showed d’Artagnan a face flooded with tears, a friendly face.

It was Mlle de La Vallière!

“M. d’Artagnan!” she murmured.

“You!” answered the captain in a somber voice. “You here! Oh! madame, I had liefer have seen you decked with flowers in the manor of the Count de La Fère. You had wept less, they too, I too!”

“Monsieur!” said she, sobbing.

“For it is you,” added the pitiless friend of the dead, “it is you who have laid these two men in the grave.”

“Oh! spare me!”

“God forbid, mademoiselle, that I should offend a woman or make her weep in vain; but I must say that the murderer’s place is not upon the victims’ tomb.”

She would have answered.

“What I say to you,” he added coldly, “I said to the king.”

She joined her hands.

“I know,” said she, “that I have caused the death of the Viscount de Bragelonne.”

“Ah! you know it?”

“The news reached the Court yesterday. Since two o’clock this morning I have made forty leagues to come ask pardon of the Count, whom I believed still living, and to beseech God, upon Raoul’s grave, that He send me all the misfortunes I deserve, save one alone. Now, monsieur, I know that the son’s death has killed the father; I have two crimes to reproach myself with; I have two punishments to await from God.”

“I will repeat to you, mademoiselle,” said M. d’Artagnan, “what M. de Bragelonne said to me of you, at Antibes, when already he meditated his death:

‘If pride and coquetry betrayed her, I forgive her in scorning her. If love made her fall, I forgive her in swearing that never did any love her as I.’”

“You know,” interrupted Louise, “that, for my love, I was about to sacrifice myself; you know if I suffered when you met me, lost, dying, abandoned. Well! never have I suffered as I do today, because then I hoped, I desired, and today I have naught to wish for; because this dead man bears all my joy into his tomb; because I dare no longer love without remorse, and because, I feel it, he whom I love—oh! it is the law—will render me the torments I made others suffer.”

D’Artagnan answered nothing; he felt too well that she was not mistaken.

“Well!” she added, “dear M. d’Artagnan, do not crush me today, I entreat you yet again. I am like the branch torn from the trunk, I cling to naught in this world, and a current bears me I know not where. I love madly, I love to the point of coming to say it, impious that I am, upon the ashes of this dead man, and I blush not for it, and I have no remorse. It is a religion, this love. Only, as later you will see me alone, forgotten, scorned; as you will see me punished for that which you are destined to punish, spare me in my ephemeral happiness; leave it me for some few days, for some few minutes. It exists perhaps no more at the hour I speak to you. My God! this double murder is perhaps already expiated.”

She was still speaking; a noise of voices and of horses’ steps made the captain prick up his ear.

An officer of the king, M. de Saint-Aignan, came to fetch La Vallière on the king’s behalf, who, he said, was gnawed by jealousy and unease.

De Saint-Aignan saw not d’Artagnan, half hidden by the thickness of a chestnut tree which cast its shadow upon the two tombs.

Louise thanked him and dismissed him with a gesture. He returned outside the enclosure.

“You see,” said the captain bitterly to the young woman, “you see, madame, that your happiness still endures.”

The young woman rose with a solemn air:

“One day,” said she, “you will repent of having judged me so ill. That day, monsieur, it is I who will pray God to forget that you were unjust to me. Besides, I shall suffer so much that you will be the first to pity my sufferings. This happiness, M. d’Artagnan, reproach me not with it: it costs me dear, and I have not paid all my debt.”

Saying these words, she knelt again gently and affectionately.

“Pardon, one last time, my betrothed Raoul,” said she. “I have broken our chain; we are both destined to die of sorrow. It is you who depart first: fear naught, I shall follow you. See only that I was not cowardly, and that I came to say you this supreme farewell. The Lord is my witness, Raoul, that, had my life been needed to ransom yours, I had given my life without hesitation. My love I could not give. Once more, pardon!”

She plucked a sprig and thrust it into the earth, then wiped her eyes bathed in tears, saluted d’Artagnan, and vanished.

The captain watched horses, riders, and coach depart, then, crossing his arms upon his swelling breast:

“When shall it be my turn to depart?” said he in an moved voice. “What remains to man after youth, after love, after glory, after friendship, after strength, after riches?... That rock beneath which sleeps Porthos, who possessed all I have just named; that moss beneath which rest Athos and Raoul, who possessed yet far more!”

He hesitated a moment, his eye dull; then, straightening:

“Let us ever march on,” said he. “When the time comes, God will tell me as He told the others.”

He touched with the tip of his fingers the earth made wet by the evening dew, crossed himself as if at the holy-water font of a church, and took alone, alone forever, the road to Paris.

Chapter CCLXVII — Epilogue

Four years after the scene we have just described, two well-mounted horsemen crossed Blois at daybreak and came to make all ready for a fowling party the king wished to hold in that broken plain which the Loire cuts in two, and which borders on the one side Meung, on the other Amboise.

These were the captain of the king’s greyhounds and the governor of the falcons, persons much respected in the time of Louis XIII, but somewhat neglected by his successor.

These two horsemen, having reconnoitered the ground, were returning, their observations made, when they perceived small scattered groups of soldiers which serjeants were posting here and there, at the issues of the enclosures. These soldiers were the king’s musketeers.

Behind them came, on a good horse, the captain, recognizable by his gold embroideries. He had grey hair, a grizzled beard. He seemed a little bowed, though handling his horse with ease, and looked all about him to oversee.

“M. d’Artagnan does not grow old,” said the captain of the greyhounds to his colleague the falconer; “with ten years more than us, he looks a cadet, in the saddle.”

“True,” answered the captain of the falcons; “’tis twenty years I have seen him ever the same.”

That officer was mistaken: d’Artagnan, in four years, had taken twelve.

Age printed its pitiless claws at every corner of his eyes; his brow had bared, his hands, once brown and nervous, whitened as if the blood began to cool therein.

D’Artagnan accosted the two officers with that shade of affability which distinguishes superior men. He received in exchange for his courtesy two salutes full of respect.

“Ah! what happy chance to see you here, M. d’Artagnan!” cried the falconer.

“Rather is it for me to say that to you, gentlemen,” replied the captain, “for, in our days, the king makes more use of his musketeers than of his birds.”

“’Tis not as in the good old times,” sighed the falconer. “Do you recall, M. d’Artagnan, when the late king flew at the magpie among the vines beyond Beaugency? Ah! dear me! you were not captain of the musketeers in those days, M. d’Artagnan.”

“And you were but anspessades of the tiercels,” resumed d’Artagnan with gaiety. “No matter, but it was the good time, seeing it is always the good time when one is young... Good day, M. the captain of the greyhounds!”

“You do me honor, M. le Comte,” said the latter.

D’Artagnan answered nothing. That title of count had not struck him: d’Artagnan had become count these four years.

“Are you not right weary of the long road you have just made, M. le Capitaine?” continued the falconer. “’Tis two hundred leagues, I think, from here to Pignerol?”

“Two hundred sixty to go and as many to return,” said d’Artagnan quietly.

“And,” said the fowler very low, “does he fare well?”

“Who?” asked d’Artagnan.

“Why, that poor M. Fouquet,” continued the falconer in a low voice.

The captain of the greyhounds had drawn aside prudently.

“No,” answered d’Artagnan; “the poor man grieves seriously; he comprehends not that prison is a favor; he says the Parliament absolved him in banishing him, and that banishment is liberty. He figures not that they had sworn his death, and that to save his life from the Parliament’s claws is to owe too much to God.”

“Ah! yes, the poor man grazed the scaffold,” answered the falconer; “they say M. Colbert had already given orders to the governor of the Bastille, and that the execution was commanded.”

“At length!” said d’Artagnan with a thoughtful air, as if to cut short the conversation.

“At length!” repeated the captain of the greyhounds, drawing near again, “there is M. Fouquet at Pignerol; he well deserved it; he had the happiness to be conducted thither by you; he had robbed the king enough.”

D’Artagnan cast upon the master of the dogs one of his ill looks, and said to him:

“Monsieur, if one came tell me you had eaten the crusts of your greyhounds, not only would I not believe it, but further, were you condemned for that to the dungeon, I should pity you, and would not suffer that any spoke ill of you. Yet, monsieur, honest man though you be, I assure you you are not more so than was that poor M. Fouquet.”

Having swallowed this sharp rebuke, His Majesty’s dog-captain lowered his nose and let the falconer gain two paces on him with d’Artagnan.

“He is content,” said the falconer low to the musketeer; “one sees well the greyhounds are in fashion today; were he falconer, he would not speak so.”

D’Artagnan smiled melancholily to see this great political question resolved by the discontent of so humble an interest; he thought yet a while upon that fair existence of the superintendent, upon the crashing of his fortune, upon the dismal death which awaited him, and, by way of conclusion:

“M. Fouquet,” said he, “loved the aviaries?”

“Oh! monsieur, passionately,” resumed the falconer with an accent of bitter regret and a sigh which was Fouquet’s funeral oration.

D’Artagnan let pass the ill humor of the one and the sadness of the other, and continued to advance into the plain.

Already afar one saw the hunters appear at the issues of the wood, the plumes of the horsewomen pass like shooting stars the glades, and the white horses cut with their luminous apparitions the dark thickets of the coppices.

“But,” resumed d’Artagnan, “will you make us a long chase? I pray you give us the bird right soon, I am very weary. Is it a heron, is it a swan?”

“Both, M. d’Artagnan,” said the falconer; “but trouble not yourself, the king is no connoisseur; he hunts not for himself; he would only give the ladies diversion.”

That word “the ladies” was accented in such wise as to make d’Artagnan prick up his ear.

“Ah!” said he, looking at the falconer with a surprised air.

The captain of the greyhounds smiled, no doubt to make his peace with the musketeer.

“Oh! laugh,” said d’Artagnan; “I know naught of the news, I; I arrived yesterday after a month’s absence. I left the Court still sad from the death of the queen mother. The king would amuse himself no more since he had gathered the last breath of Anne of Austria; but all ends in this world. Well! he is no longer sad, so much the better!”

“And all begins also,” said the captain of the greyhounds with a great laugh.

“Ah!” said for the second time d’Artagnan, who burned to know, but whose dignity forbade him to question beneath him; “there is something beginning, it appears?”

The captain made a significant wink. But d’Artagnan would know naught of that man.

“Shall we see the king early?” he asked the falconer.

“Why, at seven, monsieur, I slip the birds.”

“Who comes with the king? How does Madame fare? How does the queen?”

“Better, monsieur.”

“She has then been ill?”

“Monsieur, since the last grief she had, Her Majesty has remained ailing.”

“What grief? Fear not to instruct me, dear monsieur. I am just arrived.”

“It appears the queen, a little neglected since her mother-in-law died, complained to the king, who would have answered her: ‘Do I not lie with you every night, madame? What would you have more?’”

“Ah!” said d’Artagnan, “poor woman! She must hate Mlle de La Vallière well.”

“Oh! no, not Mlle de La Vallière,” answered the falconer.

“Whom, then?”

The horn interrupted this talk. It called the dogs and the birds. The falconer and his companion spurred at once and left d’Artagnan alone amid the suspended sense.

The king appeared afar, surrounded by ladies and cavaliers.

All that troop advanced at a walk, in fair order, the horns and trumpets animating the dogs and horses.

It was a movement, a noise, a mirage of light whereof now naught will give an idea, save the lying opulence and false majesty of stage plays.

D’Artagnan, with an eye somewhat weakened, distinguished behind the group three coaches; the first was that meant for the queen. It was empty.

D’Artagnan, who saw not Mlle de La Vallière beside the king, sought her and saw her in the second coach.

She was alone with two women who seemed bored as their mistress.

On the king’s left, upon a fiery horse, held by a skilled hand, shone a woman of the most dazzling beauty.

The king smiled on her, and she smiled on the king.

Every one laughed aloud when she had spoken.

“I know that woman,” thought the musketeer; “who then is she?”

And he leaned toward his friend the falconer, to whom he addressed that question.

The latter was about to answer, when the king, espying d’Artagnan:

“Ah! count,” said he, “so you are returned. Why have I not seen you?”

“Sire,” answered the captain, “because Your Majesty slept when I arrived, and was not awake when I took my post this morning.”

“Ever the same,” said Louis aloud, satisfied. “Rest you, count, I order it. You shall dine with me today.”

A murmur of admiration enveloped d’Artagnan like an immense caress. Each pressed around him. To dine with the king was an honor His Majesty did not lavish as Henri IV. The king took a few steps forward, and d’Artagnan felt himself stopped by a new group amid which shone Colbert.

“Good day, M. d’Artagnan,” said the minister with an affable politeness; “did you have a good road?”

“Yes, monsieur,” said d’Artagnan, saluting upon his horse’s neck.

“I heard the king invite you to his table this evening,” continued the minister, “and you will find there an old friend of yours.”

“An old friend of mine?” asked d’Artagnan, plunging with sorrow into the dark waves of the past, which had engulfed for him so many friendships and so many hates.

“M. le Duc d’Alaméda, who arrived this morning from Spain,” resumed Colbert.

“The Duke d’Alaméda?” said d’Artagnan, searching.

“I!” said an old man white as snow and bowed in his coach, which he caused to be opened to go meet the musketeer.

“Aramis!” cried d’Artagnan, struck with stupor.

And he let, inert as he was, the wasted arm of the old lord hang trembling about his neck.

Colbert, having observed a moment in silence, pushed his horse and left the two old friends tête-à-tête.

“So,” said the musketeer, taking Aramis’s arm, “you are here, you, the exiled, the rebel, in France?”

“And I dine with you at the king’s,” said the Bishop of Vannes, smiling. “Yes, is it not that you ask yourself what use is fidelity in this world? Come, let pass the coach of that poor La Vallière. See how uneasy she is! how her eye, withered by tears, follows the king who rides yonder!”

“With whom?”

“With Mlle de Tonnay-Charente, become Mme de Montespan,” answered Aramis.

“She is jealous, she is then deceived?”

“Not yet, d’Artagnan, but that will not lag.”

They talked together while following the chase, and Aramis’s coachman drove so skilfully that they arrived at the moment when the falcon, plundering the bird, forced it to stoop and fell upon it.

The king alighted, Mme de Montespan imitated him. They had arrived before an isolated chapel, hidden by great trees already stripped by the first winds of autumn. Behind that chapel was an enclosure closed by a trellis gate.

The falcon had forced the prey to fall in the enclosure adjoining that little chapel, and the king would penetrate therein to take the first feather according to custom.

Each made circle about the building and the hedges, too small to receive all the world.

D’Artagnan held back Aramis, who would descend from the coach like the others, and, in a brief voice:

“Know you, Aramis,” said he, “where chance has brought us?”

“No,” answered the duke.

“It is here that rest folk I have known,” said d’Artagnan, moved by a sad remembrance.

Aramis, guessing naught and with a trembling step, entered the chapel by a little door which d’Artagnan opened to him.

“Where are they buried?” said he.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”